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Comment by laborcontract | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I don't feel the sacrifice. My house is flooded with old chargers. They're in a bin like old legos.

The e-waste related to including chargers in the box is a real thing. That change also allowed them to halve the size of the boxes, effectively doubling the shipping yield. On a billion-device level that's a non-trivial change.

And yes, it's good for their bottom line. And yes, it effectively increased the price by $30. Sucks for me, yes. So what?

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I think for "power users" or people who buy/receive devices often, it's easy to have way too many chargers. A lot of other people buy a new phone every 3-5 years, and by that point, your cables are probably worn out and your charger might even be broken and some of them lost. Older chargers also operate at a much lower wattage, and with batteries getting bigger, charging time will be dramatically longer for people still using old ones (assuming they're even compatible, since not everything used USB3 a few years ago).

>> and by that point, your cables are probably worn out

Apple(and everyone else, as far as I know) includes the cable though. And it's hard to wear out a power brick that just sits plugged into a socket all day.

>>assuming they're even compatible, since not everything used USB3 a few years ago

Apple chargers were always just AC to USB-A though, so all you need to change is the cable. Which....comes included with the device. It's a bit more of an issue if it's now a USB-C to USB-C cable, but a USB-A to USB-C cable is not exactly expensive.

Apple now ships a USB C cable. They shipped 1 year of iPhone with a USB C brick, so I doubt most iPhone users had one except maybe for their MacBook.

Hm, you got me thinking about my parents, who still use the cube chargers for their newer iphones. So you do make a good point there.

For me, gallium nitride have changed the charger game for me and I refuse to use stock apple chargers on account of their ungainly largeness.

Charging a macbook with a tiny charger is so satisfying.

If that was the genuine intent, they would have deducted the price to buy one from the device, but that never happens, so allow me to be skeptical of the reason.

I totally get the sentiment of your comment. They have pricing power, and they flex it. It doesn't feel great, I agree, especially when it comes from the largest company in the world.

Perhaps I was being too flippant in my original comment because I really miss the apple that cared a lot less about profitability and would give you a free new model year macbook when your old one broke (probably a lot worse for the environment too lol)

The two things can go hand in hand.

I think the real e-waste is buying a new phone so often that your house is flooded with old chargers.

Android update support is still just around 2-4 years and countless other devices come with their own charger as well, while chargers last much longer and usually just become obsolete (no fast charging etc)

Exactly. It is in companies' best interest to keep the device support as short as possible as a way of planned obsolescence, so they can somehow convince consumers (especially the rich western ones) they need a new phone every year (or two). In truth, for the majority of the users, a flagship should last for at least 5. It's not like what we do on phones get computationally more expensive, except the bloat and lack of optimization (both the OS and apps, due to unnecessarily fast processors).

> Honestly I don't feel the sacrifice. My house is flooded with old chargers. They're in a bin like old legos.

If only any USB-C cable was compatible with iPhone or Pixel it would be fine, but I have 4 USB-C cables that don't work with them.

That's a valid criticism. The only thing that usb-c got right as a standard was the symmetrical shape.

Just like mobile phones had in '90s.

Oh my god, not from sony, at least!

That company had tremendous hardware but the serious affliction of being grotesquely obsessed with proprietary everything. I have nightmares trying to sort through my old boxes of cables.

Outside of barrel plugs, I don’t remember any 90s phone having a symmetrical connector of any sort.

> Sucks for me, yes. So what?

Keep living with attitude like that, eventually you’ll realize.

Honestly I've lived in countries (Korea) that have recycling programs that are a kafkaesque nightmare where you literally have to peel the plastic off a tissue box to recycle both the plastic and the paper, and if you don't, you have neighbors who dig through your trash to snitch on you, pushing a fat fine down your throat. That, I cannot tolerate.

I'm a big fan of tackling the low hanging fruit of recycling and waste reduction, and not including a charger is definitely up there.

Yeah. There is a reason why “recycle” comes third after “reduce” (which this does) and “reuse” (which this promotes).

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