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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."
Environmentally superior = You don't have to repair it (cause you can't)! Just buy a new one!
Because a city government choosing to avoid a particular tech product for environmental reasons is news for nerds AND news that matters? It is a rebuke of Apple's move, one that might be repeated in other cities across the US. It is also interesting because it represents an opportunity to get linux into government offices. If Apple wants to avoid the official certification, then there is room for competition. As an added bonus, less tax dollars spent on hardware.
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.
On the flip side, the significantly larger quantities of aluminum (as opposed to plastic) probably offset the glue removal in the cost balance equation.
EPEAT defines specific processes for recycling and doesn't acknowledge other alternatives or new technologies. Even with the glue, the brand new Macbook Pro I'm typing on right now is more recyclable than any laptop which uses screws to attach batteries to the chasis.
LEED (green building construction) is a much better model for certifications like this because it's flexible. No one single "dirty" technique would cost you certification. Instead, you earn points for doing a myriad of different things for cumulative score used for certification.
Adhering to strictly-defined standards results in stagnant products and services, since the government is rarely pressured to update their certification requirements.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
In my experience Apple gear is no more nor less likely to break than other good-quality stuff. Most of the internal components are the same after all. But the recent stuff is harder to repair of course; significantly more so than Lenovo for instance. Have to love a company that actually puts disassembly and repair manuals for their products on the web for anybody to view.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
I wholly agree with your post, but I have one addition/correction. It is in fact possible to separate out non-magnetic metals from the waste stream (or in fact anything that conducts), using a clever device called an eddy current separator. It uses a varying magnetic field to induct an eddy current in any conducting bits of trash, which in turn creates an EM field. The two fields repel, and the conductive part is flung away from the non-conductive thrash. Here's a link to a company that makes them with a bit more explanation.
According to an AC comment on the previous discussion about this by someone who claimed to have access to their internal servicing documents, Apple just replaces the whole keyboard, upper case and battery assembly on the new Macbook Pro with Retina Display as a single unit. Apparently they can't unglue the batteries either.
Suing everybody for everything is very much a Jobs initiative. In his biography, he infamously pledged to spend Apple's entire fortune to "destroy" Android for "stealing" "his" ideas.
Very true. I was on the receiving end of cease and desist papers from Apple for some silly desktop themes that may have looked somewhat similar to Apple interfaces. During Job's tenure. There's a long history of using lawyers to protect what Apple considers its own.