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San Francisco To Stop Buying Apple Computers
New submitter djnanite writes "Following on from the story that Apple has exited the 'Green Hardware' certification program, the BBC reports that City officials in San Francisco plan to block local government agencies from buying new Apple's Macintosh computers. Will they be the first of many, or will cheaper products override people's conscience? 'Other CIOs in government and educational institutions, where Apple has a strong presence, could find themselves asked to drop MacBooks and iMacs. The federal government, for example, requires 95% of its laptops and desktops be EPEAT-certified.' Apple defended the move by saying their products are environmentally superior in areas not measured by EPEAT."
The beginning of the end for Apple
Apple defended the move by saying their products are environmentally superior in areas not measured by EPEAT."
They must mean those superior shiny rounded rectangular areas.
"Will they be the first of many, or will cheaper products override people's conscience?"
Considering Apple computers are more expensive than certified non-Apple computers; I think it is safe to say whether you are environmentally conscious or a bean counter the choice is definitely not new apple products.
Will they be the first of many, or will cheaper products override people's conscience?
San Francisco can do whatever they want, but I sure don't feel any pain of conscience over EPEAT. Apple products are recyclable.
I also don't see what this has to do with 'cheaper.' Apple products may be worth the higher price, but they are not the cheap option.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Environmentally superior = You don't have to repair it (cause you can't)! Just buy a new one!
Seriously? Are people around the world basing their IT decisions on what the City of San Francisco does? Does the City of San Francisco's hardware purchases make a significant impact on Apple's bottom line?
What a waste of bandwidth.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
As more government and private organisations move to BYOD, where there is less control over these purchasing decisions I wonder if BYOD policies will also be updated to exclude employee's using devices that aren't adhering to EPEAT, I doubt it.
When I first heard this decision I just wondered if Apple were again abandoning the Enterprise market, because they can just attack the consumer market, which is now well and truly making inroads into Enterprise IT.
The federal government, for example, requires 95% of its laptops and desktops be EPEAT-certified.
So, only the top 5% elite of government folks get Apples, and the other 95% normal folks just get inferior, non-cool and non-chic EPEAT made of unreliable biodegradable materials that dissolve in the rain! This just isn't fair! Why should only the top 5% get Apples!
Occupy the federal government!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You're implying that Apple are the cheaper products?...
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Or obliviously blinding? (Gotta be one of the two! :D )
Anyway, the deal is that apple is used to living in the reality distortion bubble.
The reality that their design choices have political consequences, and that these consequences should and will have effects on the salability of their offerings is not respected, because they are used to altered reality where their design choices are fawned over and lauded as innovative and amazing.
In this case, we have a clearly foolish decision (ignore the EPEAT requirements for service and recycling), so that they can enforce an ideological position (our way is best, and we won't compromise. You should just change your requirements, because our products are just so awesome that they floor the competiton in every imaginable metric, including environmental friendliness!) that is sure to come back to haunt them. (Strict fed reqs regarding EPEAT compliance means no apple products purchased, and existing ones are phased out for compliant replacements.)
I am actually enjoying the spectacle of reality creeping into the fantasyland antics at apple. Hopefully they will learn their lesson that projecting a false reality hs consequences that they can't just wish away, and come away wiser for it.
I believe Apple doesn't want to comply with the EPEAT standard because it doesn't start with a lower case 'i' --> iPEAT
San Francisco does today what the more advanced parts of the developed world will do tomorrow. It is enormously influential. Its geography is a roll call of large parts of the US computer industry. The first development system I ever used came from Marin County, the second operating system from a place called Berkeley, and much of what has followed has come from Cupertino or Palo Alto. And a slap from the City Council for the largest corporation in the area will play well with the residents.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You probably shouldn't buy any smart phones or tablets of any brand - EPEAT doesn't even attempt to certify those.
I have to wonder how effective this will actually be. There are processes to get around this ban - they're supposedly onerous, but the city would of course claim that whether it were really true or not.
Apple claims they'll recycle any computer returned to them. It would be interesting to pin them down on the specifics regarding how their non-EPEAT-certified hardware is recycled, piece by piece.
#DeleteChrome
cheaper computers usually don't have EPEAT certification anyway. What share of sales would SF account for? very little I would guess.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I have a really witty comment about San Francisco stopping buying Apple computers, but it's in poor taste, and would probably be perceived as an attempt at flamsterbaition, rather than the sincere attempt at being a smartass that it would actually be.
So I'll skip posting it, but you might want to pretend I did and mod me town as a troll anyway, just for thinking of it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Can people really be this pig ignorant about what recycling entails?
Recycling is NOT dumping it in a landfill, burning it OR bringing it to a recycling center. It is about removing materials requiring special handling and separating a product into distinct materials so those materials can be re-used.
For metal, this is easy. You can simply take a complete car, grind it up, melt and scoop all the bits non-metal. You have fully recycled the metal... but still, burning all that plastic, battery acid, glass is a bit nasty.
You COULD use a magnet to separate the metal from the rest but not all metals are magnetic and this will STILL leave you with a mess of non-metal that would take a legion to sort by hand.
So, how do you REALLY recycle a car? You take it apart. You remove the plastic bumper and put it on the pile with other plastic parts that you know are the same type of plastic because it is stamped on the part. Same types of plastics can be for better recycled then a pile of all sorts combined. This goes so far that for instance plastic bottles can be shredded and just melted into new ones. Failed bottles at production go right back into the process.
Once you separated all the different materials, you can re-use them or dispose of them in a safe manner. But the separation must be relatively easy OR the costs just sky-rocket. Taking of a bumper is easy especially if you don't have to care about damage. Separating two bonded plates, not so much.
A prime example of this is in electricity cables. Copper is expensive enough to make recycling worth while but separating it from the plastic surrounding it, is near impossible. What is done instead in many places is that the plastic is burned off. A very polluting process and not the idea behind recycling at all.
Now Apples devices are hard to take apart. If a screen can't be screwed open, the screen can't be separated from the shell, meaning it has to be shredded instead. You can still reclaim some materials but not as easily as with a screw driver.
The above poster seems to think that recycling means re-using working parts or re-selling the entire device. This is a FORM of recycling but NOT what this article is about. In the end, after re-selling the device will either end up in a landfill, be dumped OR be taken apart. The first two are wasteful, the second becomes more costly when the separate materials are harder to separate. Apple has basically said, we don't give a fuck about the environment and try to hide it by saying they are better but in areas nobody measures. Well, I am a better sportsman then anyone at the Olympics, just not in any Olympic sport.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now they'll have to settle for IIc's, IIe's, and IIgs's. Ah well, at least they can still play Castle Wolfenstein when work is slow.
I'm amazed they were buying Apple computers in the first place. Do San Francisco's taxpayers know that their local government is willing to spend twice what they need to on a computer just so they can have one that looks pretty?
oh nevermind.. ;)
"Apple defended the move by saying their products are environmentally superior in areas not measured by EPEAT."
First line from front page of the EPEAT website:
"EPEAT is a comprehensive environmental rating..."
Which means they were for "select few". And I kinda doubt that those who want a new Retina MBP will not get one -- they'll probably simply expense it (instead of having the IT department buy them one). :)
Either that, or there will be a new exemption soon, for "ultra-thin computers" with "has to be able to disassemble" requirement removed
Hyperom.com
Apple sounds like the oil industry explaining why they don't need regulation since they self monitor.
You mean to tell me a cash-strapped California city was wasting money on Apple products in the FIRST PLACE?!? No wonder that state's going bankrupt... well, good for them. Maybe they'll wise-up and switch to systems running Linux or other FLOSS OS's and applications software, so they can stop squandering tax-payer money on overpriced junk...
The June 2012 changes to the EPAT verification criteria require them to permit on-site compliance audits by third parties.
I'm thinking someone with a long history of working for Samsung has enough familiarity with the electronics industry to be a qualified third party auditor, then quit the auditing company and go back to work for Samsung.
This seems to be an attempt to look in Apple's manufacturing shorts to see how their assembly lines are run.
"*gasp* My beloved iiiiiiiiiiiBook!" (Or is it "iMac" now? I forget.)
"OMG! I'll do everything on my iPad from now on - I swear, I swear to God! - everything!
...how generous of them to take away my very expensive hardware (that would have otherwise only needed minor repair) in exchange for a 10% discount on an iPod. /sarcasm
This move by Apple shows they no longer have any shred of conscience post-Jobs and that is the final straw for me. The very minimum I would expect from a corp trying to be responsible in conjunction with a move like this would be to extend the warranty options (by years) over what is currently available through Applecare. If you think that is infeasible with portable devices, you may be right. But that would also mean Apple's new policy is unworkable as well.
As for car batteries, I believe they are about 95% recyclable. Although sulfuric acid is nasty stuff, it is easy to pour off and treat. In fact, most liquid handling is very easy with well established procedures. Years ago the company I worked for acquired a plating plant (tanks of alkali, nickel and chrome salts, cyanides, concentrated sulfuric acid, you name it). Our insurers promptly cancelled our insurance. The local safety executive recommended us to a specialist insurer, who told us that, though many insurance companies were frightened of plating plants, they actually have an excellent safety record and rarely result in insurance claims. It is a matter of sticking to well-established procedures. There is no reason at all why recycling plants should not be the same.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
At least that's my assumption. Perhaps you are referring to some other activity. But that would be unlikely, since only trolls do that on Slashdot.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The green fanatics have already hired russian hackers to write malicious code that downs glued-together, purposefully unservicable Apple hardware. The methods are SSD storage cell burnout by repeat writing after disabling the write shifting protection plus tripping the circuit breaker of the built-in, glued-in Li-ion battery via irregular charging commands, as well as messing up the BIOS/EFI content so much, that not even a USB "vampire cable" can boot the device any more.
The finished malware code, complete with spreading routine for the public net, will be presented and demonstrated to Apple execs and they will be asked if the mega-company wows to refrain from making un-openable, un-servicable, un-recyclable, glue-based chassis products? If the Apple bosses balk and refuse to return to screws and peg clips for EPEAT compliance, then the russian malcode will be released "in the wild" over the worldwide public net/web. Then many millions of unopenable, unservicable, unrepairable Apple mobile devices will suddenly become permanently disabled and end up in the landfills of 3rd wold countries, causing a huge media scandal.
This will cause the collapse of Apple as a company, leading to a worldwide meltdown of stock exchanges, as the farcically inflated 200 bn USD value of Apple evaporates overnight. The end result will be a great victory for greenness and environmental protection, because people will learn not to buy and use hipster e-gizmos, instead of going out and enjoying the company of each other under the Sun that shines over all of us for free!
Don't think for a minute that malicious software cannot hurt hardware. Stuxnet broke up iranian uranium refining centrifuges and Skywiper set an iranian oil filling sea platform on fire this April. Small, simple device, like an iPhone, iPad or Apple ultrabook are very easy to permanently disable and make into a landfill, since the evil Apple company made them unservicable to screw the users and the Mother Environment.
Install Xubuntu (which has a silimar desktop UI layout & runs on anything you throw at it) on fully-supported PnP hardware, then maybe slap an OSX theme on it. Tell everyone Microsoft Word is now Libreoffice Write. Crisis averted.
...in any practical sense. You're correct that these design choices have consequences, but your interpretation, which appears to be that Apple products are actually less green because of it, is completely false.
The EPEAT requirements are dated, and Apple provides comprehensive recycling for all of its products, making the ability to disassemble them moot — do you really believe individuals, businesses, or government agencies are disassembling Apple — or any other — products themselves for recycling? Those parts of the EPEAT guidelines are designed that way so that all manufacturers' products are broadly recyclable.
BUT APPLE HAS A FREE RECYCLING PROGRAM FOR ALL OF ITS PRODUCTS, not to mention leads the industry in the amount of recyclable materials in its products. In other words, even without EPEAT, Apple is still better than other manufacturers on the environment front. Now, it's understandable that government and institutional customers would look to such a standard, because it makes things easier and has many other benefits — but Apple not being a part of EPEAT doesn't mean Apple is "less green" in a real sense.
For what it's worth, this is Apple's response.
Apple's problem is the EPEAT certification is required by government. If you don't meet the requirements, your bid won't even pass the first round of competition.
Period.
It doesn't matter how "cool" or "popular" your devices are -- you lose the bid.
They made their design decisions knowing they wouldn't be EPEAT certified, now it's time to suck up the result: lost business.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think that's a good decision, also saves the taxpayer a lot of money as an Apple computer/screen costs a lot more than another system, and it's not necessary for the job they do..
It seems nobody on this board has a clue about recycling (me neither), but can someone who has perhaps explain:
what happens to a LiOH battery when it get recycled after
(1) it gets pried from the metal it was glued to and partly damaged in the process,
(2) it gets removed from the casing with no damage?
I assume in both cases the battery is dead.
What happens now? Does it get magically refreshed without being ground up etc?
Instead of using glue that's difficult to remove, why not use the same stuff that's used in those 3M Command removable wall hangers? When you need to separate the components, just give the little strip a tug and the glue pops right out!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
If it weren't for the "walled" garden, one could probably emulate a IIGS on a 3GS.
Now, if only somebody would make completely EPEAT compatible PCs, and get them to run GNU/Hurd and completely Liberated GPL3 software, San Francisco's computing problems would be solved.
Wasn' t this their target demographic, the flaming h...
*ducks*
In my experience with Government procurement the top 5% of the Government gets the latest greatest hardware that then sits on their desks unused. The people actually doing the work are using some ancient machine that the rest of the world retired five to ten years ago. Usually configured in such a way that they have to hand out "suicide prevention" kits with the machines.
Don't blame Apple. Blame our own love affair with disposable devices. How many geeks scramble for the latest iDevice or smart phone as soon as they are released, then promptly forget about their previous device - only to rot in some drawer somewhere?
If Apple products are superior to EPEAT standards, then why stop getting EPEAT certification? Apple should re-think this. Not only will government agencies and municipalities quit buying, because they are required to meet EPEAT, the environmentally concerned will, too. I can see the MIcrosoft slogan now: Save a tree, buy a Windows PC.
"The rest of us" hoist by own petard.
I know, gross oversimplification and generalization, but still.
So you are defending Apple's position of trust me, I will make sure my products are green because they were in the past? Obviously, if Apple no longer wants to be certified as EPEAT, then there must be some change they want to make that wouldn't be compliant with EPEAT. Otherwise, why ask to be decertified? Even the Apple Response link you posted is double speak. Apple is dropping EPEAT certification because Dell isn't Energy Star listed? What's that about?
It's not enough. San Fran has to outlaw the sale and possession of all Apple products. Viva La Revolucion!
The point is that EPEAT alone isn't the end-all, be-all of green certifications. Organizations use EPEAT because it is a metric; a box that is easy to check; an easy way to define the "greenness" of a product. Apple helped develop the EPEAT standard, and has been one of the most committed and transparent manufacturers to green tech, environment, and recycling.
Apple pulled all of its products — even all of them that are certified — because EPEAT isn't consistent with Apple's design directions. Apple explicitly told EPEAT this. EPEAT requires that the products be able to be completely disassembled with normal tools for recycling. The Retina MacBook Pros do not meet this.
But Apple will completely recycle the laptops itself (other manufacturers do not do this), and even contracts with a zero-landfill recycler to recycle ANY brand of equipment for free.
If you can't understand that Apple might exceed EPEAT in real, practical terms, including more than other certified manufacturers, then you're unlikely to understand Apple's motivations for departing EPEAT because the EPEAT standard simply doesn't reflect in real terms what Apple does to be "green". What if someone meets EPEAT for disassembly and percentage of recyclable parts, but it's a lot lower percentage than Apple? In what world does that make the lesser product "more green"?
Will they be the first of many, or will cheaper products override people's conscience?
Cheaper products? From Apple? What insane universe are YOU from?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I was about to mod you up until I realized something: there is no guarantee that Apple's free recycling program will be around tomorrow. Given that people may hold on to their hardware for up to six years or more, there are decent odds that Apple's free recycling program could be gone by the time users are ready to recycle their hardware. Since EPEAT is an industry-wide standard, that is what most recycling programs depend on. Instead of continuing to support EPEAT, they're pulling a move from Microsoft's 1990's playbook: "we're better than the standard, therefore the standard should conform to us". That would be acceptable if they worked with the standards organizations to get the standard formally updated, but instead they've made a unilateral decision that divides the industry.
...and there's no guarantee anyone will be EPEAT-certified tomorrow, either. The future is never guaranteed. All we can do is look at Apple's track record and the trends in its green and environmental commitments.
Minimum standards are designed to bring the worst of the worst up to the lowest acceptable standard (sort of like "No Child Left Behind.") But they also have a way of dragging down the best of the best.
EPEAT is more than "long in the tooth," it's downright archaic by Apple standards. In recycling (even before they had a transparent recycling program) Apple has been way ahead of other computing device companies (and Greenpeace) for at least a decade. Their design decisions in packaging and product energy efficiency alone put them far ahead of everyone else long before anyone mentioned the term "CO2 footprint."
Minimum standards are designed to bring the worst of the worst up to the lowest acceptable standard (sort of like "No Child Left Behind.") But they also have a way of dragging down the best of the best. EPEAT is more than "long in the tooth," it's downright archaic by Apple standards. In recycling (even before they had a transparent recycling program) Apple has been way ahead of other computing device companies (and Greenpeace) for at least a decade. Their design decisions in packaging and product energy efficiency alone put them far ahead of everyone else long before anyone mentioned the term "CO2 footprint."
-- My apologies if the above facts contain any opinions, or vice versa! --
The post says "Apple defended the move by saying their products are environmentally superior in areas not measured by EPEAT."
Sounds like another typical rigid, narrorly focused, misguided government policy missing the mark.
This is a prime example of why we need to move more infrastructure out of the government sector and into the private sector where WE have OUR best interests in mind, rather than worrying about getting re-elected and who we have to back favors (campaign contributions, aka bribes) to.
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The next battle is going to be citizens vs their local city council who has accepted Agenda 21 and continuously pump this BS out on the people.
Fuck RoHS. all it does it make it so you have to suck soldering fumes to replace the cheap parts that don't even run for seven years
The problem isn't apple, it's those fascist pieces of greenwashed shit on the city council
If the people keep voting for these cocksuckers, then the people will in the end be sucking cock.
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"Will they be the first of many, or will cheaper products override people's conscience?"
Since when are Mac's a cheaper product?
Good riddance to that crap.
Seems like a pretty dick move for Apple to abandon and undermine a standard they once supported. These standards can't be quick to get adopted and implemented... seems a shame they've just pointed to a huge, probably worthwhile, set of standards and said "this doesn't mean anything," rather than working to fix it.
Yeah, never mind that EPEAT doesn't cover where Samsung is copying/competing with them (tablets and phones), and the auditors would only have access to their PC lines. Your conspiracy theory isn't even internally comprehensible -- much less a simpler explanation (Occam's razor, anyone?) than that the changes are actually about auditing for compliance.
The difference between attractive forces and repulsive forces can be an explosive result.
Let's say that, for whatever reason, all manufacturers cease being EPEAT certified at some point in the future. In that event all the devices they made during the period they were certified are recyclable under the EPEAT standard.
On the other hand, imagine a scenario where Apple's recycling program has ended. Maybe Apple goes out of business, as unlikely as that may seem, or maybe they just decide the recycling program isn't profitable. All the equipment made prior to that change wouldn't be recyclable under the standard, and with nowhere for it to go it becomes a problem.
So we know that a good chunk of government agencies require the EPEAT cert but what about public schools? Could this slowly put an end to ipads/apple products in general being used in the school environment?
You can get a Chevy Impala with a lot more power than an Acura TL and at a cheaper price. Of course, the TL is a far better vehicle, better engineered, better built, more reliable, and overall more pleasant to use.
You pay for lightness and thinness in the notebook market regardless of the brand. Check out the prices on Sony's ultra-thin notebooks. Asus has competition to the MacBook Air. It's about $200 less, but it has a slower last-generation CPU (Sandy Bridge, which means last-generation GPU too), is a bit thicker, has a low-res camera, and is missing Thunderbolt.
A lot of people, myself included, obviously disagree.
Apple having their own "recycling program" doesn't solve the problem. The requirement isn't for a buy-back program, or for a company to have a disposal program with the word "recycle" in it, the requirement is to meet actual real life physical standards that recycling companies have. Those companies have worked with the government already to come up with the EPEAT standard.
And you miss the point. We actually care about recycling, that is why we support these types of standards. Just because the glue gets in the way by the time the recycled goods have worked their way downstream into the care of foreign companies, doesn't make a bit of difference. We want it to, in the end, eventually be disassembled and recycled.
There is also some trickery when you claim Apple "leads the industry in the amount of recyclable materials in its products." Yes it is true that they have lots of materials listed as recyclable, but that is what this is about; once you glue them together, they are no longer recyclable... and yet Apple still lists them because the material itself is still categorized as recyclable, even if the part made from it no longer is.
Apple helped create the EPEAT standard alongside the other stakeholders who helped define it.
And you have missed my point: I actually care about recycling, which is why I'm making this argument in the first place. You're making the claim that, e.g., the Retina MacBook Pro can't be disassembled and recycled. But Apple has a zero-landfill recycling program for all their products — which includes the Retina MacBook Pro. So to cut to the chase, are you saying Apple is lying, or doesn't have a technique to do this, just because iFixit or someone else believes it isn't possible?
(Apple even has a contract to recycle products from ANY manufacturer, for free, with free shipping fees and boxes provided. What other vendor does this? Who puts their money where their mouth is on the environment?)
My entire point is that Apple's products, in real, practical terms, are MORE recyclable, in terms of recyclable content contained therein, and the ability to actually recycle them — albeit by using Apple's programs for things like iPhone, iPad, and now the Retina MacBook Pro — and that many other EPEAT-certified products may be (and are) markedly worse than Apple's products in this sense, but can still be certified because they are able to be disassembled with conventional tools.
So who's "greener"?
They just can't be easily recycled according to their outdated criteria. They require screws to certify it can be recycled, but apparently have never heard of a heat gun to disassemble glued parts.
They don't care about the case of the battery. Maybe if the case is recyclable plastic, they'll ship it to a plastic recycler where it gets crushed up anyway.
What they want to do is extract the lithium compounds from the innards of the battery.
BUT APPLE HAS A FREE RECYCLING PROGRAM FOR ALL OF ITS PRODUCTS,
I can bring e-waste to a collection point here that is paid for by enviro fees (what's left after all the TV commercials and the salaries/pensions/etc. for the directors) when you buy electronics.
Most of your still-working Apple products you can recycle through Kijiji or similar services and get a wad of cash in return.
Apple helped create the EPEAT standard alongside the other stakeholders who helped define it.
Then they'll have an uphill battle fighting it.
But Apple has a zero-landfill recycling program for all their products — which includes the Retina MacBook Pro
What a load of crap. Yes, they keep the stuff out of American landfills. That is not the primary issue with recycling toxic electronics. Do they require their buyers to give them a piece of paper that claims it won't end up in a landfill anywhere? Yes. so does everybody else. It is a known feature of the landfill problem that most of what is landfilled or unsafely processed got some corporate stamp of green approval.
The funniest part of Apple's recycling program is their metrics... they take the weight of materials they recycled this year and compare it to the weight of product they sold 7 years ago. So nearly everything in their metric is the cases and batteries. The toxic stuff they glued together doesn't weight much compared to a case or power supply. Duh. And then they blame the metric on Dell! How many times in their propaganda do they talk about Dell? Just when they're saying something so stupid that they have to point a finger to say, "well it's his number!"
Ah, now that's some good reality distortion spin. So Apple left EPEAT not because they aren't meeting the requirements, but because they're actually exceeding all of the requirements. Apparently EPEAT is grading on a curve and Apple decided it wouldn't be fair to everyone else if their high level of excellence was throwing everyone off.
Seriously, why are government institutions using the best available, most expensive, consumer grade hardware available? In the middle of a national budget crisis one has to wonder who approved using apples in the first place.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm wondering how the glued-in battery in the new Retina Macbook Pros are going to be recycled?
I assume they would need to be removed because of all the toxic/dangerous chemicals inside, but is it that they don't need to be removed? How will you recycle the case if you don't remove the battery from it?
If it needs to be removed, then how do you do that without damaging the battery and leaking toxic chemicals in the process? Does Apple have a secret and environmentally way to break down the glue while preserving the structural integrity of the case and batteries? That would be impressive, but wouldn't that enable them to achieve EPEAT certification?
Maybe this new construction can be disassembled, but Apple want exclusive control over the disassembly process while EPEAT requires anyone to be able to disassemble it?
It would be nice if Apple gave out more specific information, and reassuring to those of us who want to be able to buy their products but keep our principles related to protecting the environment.
A better question is, why were they buying Apple products in the first place? They should run on cheapest, shittiest bottom of the barrel Dell laptops, and that's if they have a justification to get a laptop in the first place. They only need to be able to access the web, run Office/Outlook and a few LOB apps. That's it. You don't need a high-end laptop for that! Not for taxpayer money!
Of course Apple will recycle your old mac for you, because it's better to waste energy recycling something that can still be used then let people fix it and sell it on the secondary market to compete with your new products.
We can't forget about reuse reducing the number of items which need to be recycled in the first place. Make computers last twice as long and you reduce the number that have to be made in the first place which reduces energy waste all around.
I agree, i don't know why Apple is moving to the dark side, with the continuous upgrades in their hardware and with the incompatibility between some older hardware and the new OS the number of "obsolete hardware" for the Mac Fans will increase so much.
Orvil Juarez http://www.jacons.net | Linux, Asterisk Call Center and VICIdial Consulting. http://www.orviljuarez.com |
Lion is better than Snow Leopard.
People grumbled about a few things but if you care about the technology at all Lion is really a lot better, and you can tell when you use it day to day also.
Apple is still doing just fine, they simply have more critics trying to bring them down.
Also, I think we'll see the 17" come back at some point....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's exactly it. That's exactly the reason why Apple will go down.
They've become such trolls, that leaving them will make the patent process faults much more obvious.
The fact that that are not is EXACTLY why Apple endures.
And EXACTLY why Apple's continuing success will remain an utter mystery to people like you, until you realize you have the world backwards.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So Apple left EPEAT not because they aren't meeting the requirements, but because they're actually exceeding all of the requirements.
Yes, it's obvious - all Apple products were EPEAT certified before Apple left.
Thus Apple was meeting the requirements, and they left EPEAT.
All of this is public knowledge, why do you argue against it?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Munich has already saved enough money on MS licensing to cover their conversion to Linux.