San Francisco turns its back on Apple after green registry pull-out | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco turns its back on Apple after green registry pull-out

arstechnica.com

37 pointsjhack38 comments

And the interesting info in the article that makes this headline link-bait:

"Observers have pointed out that a tiny percentage (around 1-2 percent) of municipal PC purchases are Macs, and the number of governments that require 100 percent EPEAT compliance is also relatively small, so the impact on Apple's bottom line may end up being minimal."

While I see the argument that this the title is link-bait, I don't think they are necessarily trying to overstate it's significance -- how would you title an article like this without it sounding like link-bait?

It's just showing some of the backlash to Apple's decision. It may not be a significant percentage, but who knows what other potential purchasers may follow suit.

"... how would you title an article like this without it sounding like link-bait?"

Oh, I don't know, maybe by avoiding language like San Francisco turns its back on Apple ...

That's not an answer to the question. The question was "how would you title it if not like that?", so answering "not like that" is just begging the question.

I submitted the same subject some hours earlier and not sure that title(taken directly from WSJ) is any better.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224661

"...and we hope that the city saying it will not buy Apple products will make Apple reconsider its participation"

Not sure Apple is willing to reverse their current design trend over this. They would have to move away from 'cutting edge' designs to get back to disassemble-able products (a requirement for the certification) My "wanna-be eco-friendly soul" is somewhat pleased at this stance though. I think the future disposal of a product should be a concern in the design and if it makes it a millimeter thicker, so be it.

Does anyone have any insight into what Apple's play is all about?

It has led to the Federal gov't and military to have to pull all Apple devices from procurement and project considerations.

where did you see this?

I believe that Retina display devices are too hard to disassemble to qualify for the program.

Is this an all-or-nothing thing? All other Macs are just as hard or easy to disassemble as ever. And iPhones or iPads are much harder to disassemble than the Retina MacBook Pro.

The EPEAT rules required that 95% of your products comply with gold to keep your gold.

Apple has calculated that design is better than ease of recycling. They have been moving this direction for a while, but the completely non-serviceable Retina display MacBook Pros are what likely tipped the scale.

Right, but why withdraw products that were already certified?

Presumably because they'd like the EPEAT standards changed, and they think the best way to do that is to make a big show of pulling out, rather than have one model after another fail to make the cut.

Thus they're going to find out in short order whether EPEAT is serious about working with them on their new design directions. If they are, then great: new standards are promulgated and Apple's back in the fold. If not, then this was a big story for a few days in July: The Band-aid came off quick, which is usually good PR.

I don't know what the standards are so I can't make any sort of informed guess about if they need to be changed or not. But why does EPEAT need to work with Apple to amend the standards to accommodate their new design direction? Apple chose their new design direction fully aware of the EPEAT standards. You can't blame EPEAT for that and get mad when they don't adjust standards for you. I'm not sure how many people really care, but it seems SF Dept. of Environment cares.

The government has a mandate to buy a certain percentage of technology that falls under EPEAT standards - something like 95% to account for tech that can't meet it. So it may still be possible for federal agencies to buy some Apple devices, but many will probably refrain from doing so just to help make sure they stay within the law on this.

Why do city workers need Macs anyways? They should be using eMachines. Good that Apple pulled out.

Why should the city have poor quality equipment? Besides things like reduced support costs and that Macs only made up a very small percentage of the city's computers, don't you imagine there are city jobs that would be better served with a Mac? I'm sure there are web and print designers on SF city staff for example.

The city should have the bare minimum equipment possible required to perform the functions required of it, because it's purchased from tax revenues, which are forcibly extracted from the population, and thus should be spent only on things that are necessary for the proper governance of the city.

Sure, web and print designers should have Macs if they need them but it's pretty clear that a lot of people who don't need them have them.

Yes, heaven forfend that a public employee should have anything more than the lowest possible standard of work and/or living.

This kind of thinking is shortsighted at best, for obvious reasons. I'm not saying they should all get two 24" monitors, but if all you give people is the bare minimum to do their job, for all the money that you save up front, I suspect you're not gonna get much more than the bare minimum in return.

______ employees should have the bare minimum equipment required to perform the functions required of it, because it's purchased from money that belongs to shareholders, which invested for the purpose of earning a return, and thus should be spent only on things that are necessary to support the business.

That is incredibly myopic. Almost to the point that your statement implies you are above civil servants.

I certainly believe that some city workers would benefit greatly from macs. And how about programmers? Web and graphic designers? Not everyone in civil service is a case worker.

Maybe qq66 is the kind of boss who gives you a 2004-vintage Windows XP machine that's so full of dust you can't even tell what components are inside and expects you to work 16-hour days on it without overtime.

If you don't need to do anything that you can't do effectively on a 2004 machine, why would you need anything more? City employees are welcome to buy iPads and Lexuses with their own money (although it comes from my pocket, it's theirs to dispatch as they see fit), but when it comes to spending mine, they shouldn't have anything beyond what they need to perform their job function.

You know what I love? Waiting a tiny eternity while a city employee waits for their crappy, slow computer to load up a simple form so they can help me with something routine.

Next time you're put on hold for that reason, remember money spent on appropriately powerful hardware is never wasted.

Are there programmers and graphic designers that are City employees?

I don't see why not. But even if they are contractors and not full-on "city employees" they are still likely to be working on city issued equipment which makes their actual employment status a moot point.

I certainly do believe that some city workers would become more effective through choice of their computer, but Mac purchases, if allowed, should be limited explicitly to these individuals. The way governments work, that doesn't happen - everyone finds a way to justify it.

Don't be a dick.

Purchase cost is a tiny fraction of the lifetime cost of a system. Your IT department's time isn't free.

A single incident could cost several hundred dollars when you count lost productivity and technician time. Each time you don't have an issue you save money.

This would be a valid reason to spend more money upfront. If this is the actual reason (not just the reason put on paper), I'd be pleasantly shocked.

Man, I hope you don't run a business. A small upfront cost that will make your employees more productive is a worthwhile cost. We are all government employee's bosses (as you so gleefully say), so we should want them to be as productive as possible.

There's a reason the most successful companies give their employees good equipment -- it makes them better employees. I don't understand why you think somebody working in the City would be different? Unless you want them to be less productive?

"What's this with wanting two monitors? I say you share one with someone else. Think of the money we'll save!"

To do cutting edge graphic design. To program in python. To develop engaging new web applications for government data access. I know you can do these on my OSes, but I'm guessing your view of government "computer work" might be slightly limited.

This is not meant to be inflammatory, but in my experience Macs last twice as long as most PCs anyways, say nothing of saving the IT department time.

I DON'T WANT the thing to come apart easily with common tools.

I think your intuition is 100% wrong, actually. PCs in cost-sensitive IT environments (especially government ones), are routinely stretched into useful lifespans far longer than consumer devices. It's routine to walk into a government office and see people limping along with 6-8 year old desktops, dusty CRT monitors with screen burn, etc... The ability to take the machines apart and replace components is an important part of this.

I could get along with a 6-8 year old desktop, as well. The reason I don't is because it would suck, not because it would physically break down.

say nothing of saving the IT department time. [...] I DON'T WANT the thing to come apart easily with common tools.

You might not, but let me tell you: IT departments do. It doesn't make as much sense for an individual, but the benefits of manually repairing machines increases when you're buying them in bulk.

Tell that to the buyers of first or second generation macbook pros. My family owned 3 of those things, all of which failed within 3-4 years.

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