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Apple Exits "Green Hardware" Certification Program
westlake writes "CNET reports that Apple is turning its back on the EPA supported EPEAT hardware certification program. One of the problems EPEAT sees are barriers to recycling. Batteries and screens glued into place — that sort of thing. There is a price for Apple in this: CIO Journal notes that the U.S. government requires that 95 percent of its electronics bear the EPEAT seal of approval; large companies such as Ford and Kaiser Permanente require their CIOs to buy from EPEAT-certified firms; and many of the largest universities in the U.S. prefer to buy EPEAT-friendly gear."
Profit > The Environment
No xserves, Lion Server is a piece of shit, ARD is a $90 add-on, took 3 years for a corporate iOS configuration tool, 5 for a competent one, Final Cut X rivals Windows Movie Composer, Mac Pros are $4,000 for almost 3 year old hardware, and with 10.8 tethering every machine to the App Store there are no "unregistered" machines...
They're pro-sumer devices anymore.
It seems that some of the EPEAT requirements lead to bulkier designs and quite possibly extra parts needed to hold it all together. It seems inevitable that this would violate the design principles Apple has been using for the last decade-plus, at least with portable products. If there's a way to shave a millimeter or a gram here and there, Apple will find a way to do it. It's one way they achieve product differentiation from the competition. Unfortunately, doing so means gluing things together and wedging things up tight in ways that don't want to be disassembled.
I'm a bit surprised Apple isn't outright saying "EPEAT compliance means making our products ugly, and you don't want THAT, do you?"
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
an increasing part of its product mix is made up of iPhones and iPads, which are not currently certifiable under EPEAT.
Total Environmental cost = manufacturing impact + use impact - recylcing recovery
typically
recylcing recovery << manufacturing impact
all else being equal you'd like to increase recycling recovery but when there is a trade-off in that that increases the manufacturing or use cost it doesn't balance out.
The hangup is the "easy disassembly" requirement whereas electronics is going to more and more unibody assembly. EPEAT probably is going to have to give on this or be replaced if that is the trend. Since most of the environmental impact happens in manufacture and there isn't a big gain for the environment in recycling It's not necessarily environmentally unfriendly to manufacture a device that is more economical to make and to use. Generally the cheaper something is the less total energy and resources were required to make it. The exception to that is when there is a large exogenous cost not paid by the maker (e.g. say some manufacturer dumping mercury into a river but not having to pay for the consequences). Apple has not said it is planning to shortchange that part of it's environmental policies.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Where I work we buy a lot of Mac laptops, but all must be EPEAT-compliant (or a variance must be granted, which isn't likely for that many machines.) I sense a lot of disgruntlement coming.
Good move, Apple - you may have just saved Steve Ballmer's job.
EPEAT is only valuable in assessing products that don't have dedicated recycling programs in place. I.e. It's useful for assessing the general case, but fails to take into account any special considerations pertaining to particular products.
For instance, Apple has had a recycling program available for years that is available as a free service to any of their customers. Given that Apple is promising to recycle your devices (including non-Apple ones) for you regardless of how difficult it is to do so, the ease of recycling them should be a non-factor to anyone but Apple, rendering the difficulty of recycling a meaningless measurement for outside consideration. And the fact that they've provided a decent incentive to use their service rather than go to a general purpose recycler has provided a good reason for it to be widely used. Most of the Apple folks I know are aware of the recycling program, even if they haven't had a reason to use it yet.
Specifically, to use it, you just tell them what you have, and they'll send you pre-paid packaging for your device. In the case of computers (including non-Apple ones) or iOS devices, they'll give you a gift card for the fair market value of your device, and they give you 10% off a new iPod if you bring your old one into a retail location for recycling. They also take non-Apple mobile phones free of charge and with pre-paid shipping, though they don't offer any gift cards or discounts.
To me, at least in this one narrow area, that all renders EPEAT's assessment obsolete, since it's failed to keep up with the times. It needs some way to account for such programs.
Posting as AC because I'm an Apple service tech in my day job.
There's been internal jokes about the majority of the Retina MacBook Pro being a disposable computer. It's a very nice system and the display is gorgeous, but the way Apple constructed these machines is a bit perturbing. We can't even remove the battery pack- what iFixit reported is 100% true. The batteries are literally fused to the top of the unibody chassis, there's no magical Apple tool for prying the cells off the aluminum.
When you pay $199 for a replacement battery, the service procedure for actually swapping out the cells is stupendously involved. Everything must be stripped from the chassis- the logic board, port boards, and display all have to be removed. What you're getting for $199 actually includes a new keyboard, trackpad, battery, and upper chassis- because it's all one unserviceable part (much in the same way that the display and iSight is considered a single P/N).
A lot of people are wondering why they've done this- when a few screws and half a millimetre on the thickness would have allowed us to remove and swap the batteries in under 5 minutes. Heck, they could have built the batteries onto the bottom panel instead, that way battery swaps don't require removing the logic board. But they didn't.
The only logical reason that anyone can come to is that this is simply a progression of technology. We are rapidly moving towards integrated devices that are completely unserviceable, essentially disposable, and as cram packed with technology as physically possible. Nobody has any doubt that if Apple could build everything onto a flexible circuit board adhered to the back of an LCD panel, then essentially immerse the entire thing in varying forms of resin to create a completely solid and totally sealed device- they would. Because that's where we're headed.
The iPad 2 and iPad 3 have already taken the first steps towards this. They are sealed, we have no service procedures for doing anything to the devices. If it breaks or is defective, the customer gets a new one.
Apple would just love to have all their hardware like this, because then us Apple techs become irrelevant and redundant. Any old monkey can plug a device into an automated suite of software testing tools and wait for the big green "PASSED" or red "FAIL" text, then take the appropriate direction to replace that hardware. All you need then is a system to handle defective hardware and make it go away- who cares about repairing it, the device is busted and it can't even be repaired anyways.
-AC