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Comment by ezst | Hacker News Reader

Not op but that's missing the forest for the tree. Those devices are not meant to be e-waste conscious at all, which is the undertone here: you can't replace the battery yourself, you can't expand storage when you need, you can't safely expand their life when they are outside of Apple support period because they are soft and hardware black boxes. Instead, you just buy anew.

True, Apple is no more no less guilty of this than the competition, but they are also not shifting the needle while pretending to do so, with so many untaped opportunities.

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> you can't replace the battery yourself

Not true at all. I have a close friend (not an electronics or programming nerd in any way) which has replaced the battery (and a screen) on multiple iPhones with nothing more than iFixit instructions.

> you can't safely expand their life

Again, not true. See above.

> with so many untaped opportunities.

Which is obvious I agree with, since I said they absolutely should be better at repairability. But consider the dismissive tone of the original comment, which is justified with false information.

To give you an exaggerated example, let’s say someone is telling you about all the awful practices Nestlé engages in. All of them are true, but then they end with “and their CEO is literally Hitler, who survived and changed his face due to an agreement with the Beelzebub, and is going to control humanity through chocolate”. At that point most people would dismiss them as a nut job and ignore the other true valid points as fabrications too.

Which is why we should criticise, yes, but based on truth, not lies and rage bait.

They didn't say "nobody can replace the battery themselves", and "you" here was probably intended to mean "a normal consumer". Relative to items with replaceable batteries (a TV remote control, a camera, a pre-iPhone mobile phone), the batteries are extremely hard to replace.

The batteries are also not safe to replace, relative to items with replaceable batteries. There is a very low chance of me accidentally damaging my TV remote control while replacing the batteries.

None of the information you're responding to is false, and it's perhaps worth asking yourself why you're here defending Apple.

There's an easier argument that is simply "But Samsung!".

> and "you" here was probably intended to mean "a normal consumer".

Which is why I used a normal consumer as an example.

> None of the information you're responding to is false, and it's perhaps worth asking yourself why you're here defending Apple.

I’m not defending Apple, I’m defending accuracy. When someone says something inaccurate about someone or something I oppose, I try to correct that too. It’s important that arguments are based on truth, because when they are not people start dismissing the true with the false.

My comment history shows I’m an Apple user but am constantly criticising its current state and Tim Cook. You’ll find more comments of mine criticising than praising them.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Perhaps it’s worth asking yourself why you see someone making an argument once and immediately assume they may have ulterior motives, and why you’re actively ignoring the arguments which do not feed your view, including my clear and repeated assertions in the thread that Apple should absolutely do better.

> There's an easier argument that is simply "But Samsung!".

Which was not once my argument. I abhor whataboutism.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I’d appreciate if you didn’t straw man.

A "normal consumer", at least in most of the US, can take their iPhone to an Apple store, a Best Buy, and probably several small phone repair services that have small stores or kiosks in a nearby mall or inside a Walmart.

From an environmental point of view it doesn't matter if you do the repair yourself or you have it done by someone else.

> From an environmental point of view it doesn't matter if you do the repair yourself or you have it done by someone else.

The added cost and friction will de facto make it less repairable.

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