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Apple Recycling Old Macs for Free
charleste writes "CNN is reporting that Apple is going to recycle Macs for free. I wonder if this means they will actually recycle them in Cupertino, or sent overseas to be dumped as many 'recycled' computers do, or if they will actually mine them. And does this make the MacQuarium obsolete?"
This isn't about being green, it is about removing older macs from the 2nd hand market. The exact same reason that HP offers a similar program.
I remember a quote from him once, pretty excellent example of Steve Jobs' mentality actually. It was both very poetic and utterly ridiculous. This was from back in the early Apple days before he was fired by Scully. He said (paraphrasing), 'I want a computer factory that takes raw beach sand in one end and outputs fully assembled Macs from just that raw material.' What a crazy, wonderful idea.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
No, no... cost more...
When there are less items available on the market, the value increases if there's still a demand for it. (if there's no demand, then the value's effectively 0)
The conspiracy theorist would assume that Apple's trying to corner the market on MacQuariums, and they need more spare parts, so they're tricking people into giving them the parts under the assumption of 'recycling' (which it is). They might even have a company that's willing to buy lots of thousands of these for the very purpose. (pbfixit comes to mind)
They might also find that it's more cost effective to strip and refurb some machines than to have new parts manufactured for those with extended warranties. (this assumes that the product is on the market long enough for people to recycle out of warranty machines while other people still have them under warranties)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
If the machines are still working, then reusing them is going to be better than ripping them apart for the gold.
I am also now offering a similar service, where I will just use the mac, hell, I'd even pay for the shipping... It seems like giving them away to people would be a far better way of getting rid of old, but still usable, computers... onyl recycle when they no longer work
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
donate them to poor urban schools, or third world countries?
Urban schools have plenty of technology, thanks to programs like E-rate. What they don't have is people to set it up, whether it's old junk like this or brand new machines. Take a walk around a typical city school some time; it's enlightening.
(I live in Buffalo, not an exceptionally wealthy city by any means.)
--saint
A few points:
1)This isn't only Apple computers, they will recycle computers made by anyone.
2)I'm sure if the computer has value people will sell it. I put an old 486 up on EBay before (working Pentium system). No one even bid a dollar on it, something like that has no value on the market I could find, if this program was around then I would have recycled it, but it ended up going into the trash.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
10 years ago that was true. Now it's cheaper to buy a used G3 or G4 Mac entire than screw around with clones or emulation (if any of these are still sold at all) of an obsolete OS.
Crack Babies. (ok, oversimplification: should also include FAS & LD kids)
DC has an astronomical rate of $$/student as a whole. The problem is that the cash is largely being spent on "Special Needs" kids, with everyone else left to suck. But if you want, Linda Crapp (former chairperson of the schoolboard & current city council chair) is running for mayor. I beleive her slogan is "I couldn't fix it on the school-board, I couldn't fix it on city council, I can't fix it as chair of the city council, but I'll fix it as mayor."
I used to refurb older computers, clean them up, give them away to kids (rural poor kids in my community). They were all decent, worked well enough for school reports, surfing the web, email, etc. They all had legit licensed copies of the OS too, stuff I paid for, 95 and 98 primarily, then I would install like zone alarm and similar on them, get them all set up (no linux I found-and I tried a BUNCH- would run on pitiful amounts of RAM in GUI, so I used older windows) Not a one of them ever really bothered to learn computing, or programming or anything intelligent, ALL of them used the machines primarily for videogames. Closest they came to making them practical was to slap stickers on the outside of them...it's was nuts and a big waste of my time and money.
I don't do that anymore, not worth it, I'm relatively poor, not going to pay to subsidise that so called industry. It's stupidity, this generation's waste of time and effort. Might as well watch pro wrestling or NASCAR or something for all the good it does.
As to the schools, hell ya, if I had school age kids now they WOULD be home schooled, I have seen up close the results of the social engineering and alleged educational system as it is run today. It has gone downhill BAD since they created the federal department of education. There are a few fed agencies that should just be totally shut down as complete failed experiments, that one is near the top of the list, IMO.
Maybe I have a skewed view of the typical Mac user[...]
What makes you say that? Your views are perfectly in line with what Apple's marketing team wants you to think.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire