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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.
Environmentally superior = You don't have to repair it (cause you can't)! Just buy a new one!
Are people around the world basing their IT decisions on what the City of San Francisco does?
Yes, we're planning to incarcerate our network security guy in Q4.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you cannot disassemble them to separate the components, then they are not recyclable. Thats the big issue here: Apple is now making their products so it is impossible to taking it apart by gluing dissimilar components together.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
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!
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.
If it is impossible to take apart the retina MBP, how are they able to offer battery replacement service?
I guess they use magic or something, and recyclers are normal people so they are unable to tear apart the new MBP's.
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.
What? Apple's using inferior glue? Why, that's outrageous! Demand GNLUE, the free adhesive that will liberate us all from Apple's proprietary, impermanent adhesives!
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
The deal with the glue is that it makes the recycling effort cost prohibitive, and removes the already small margin for fiscal incentive for said recycling. The glued features cannot be easily seperated, increasing the cost to recycle above a critical metric.
Apple says it won't stop this practice, because finding an alternative means they would have to make thicker devices, or devices more likely to come apart on their own.
The consequence of this decision is that they are no longer EPEAT certified, and now their products are less salable.
What is so hard to comprehend here?
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
Replacing the Retina batteries involves the replacement of the enclosure as well (source : iFixit).
Captcha : poorer ...
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.
Since AppleCare handles the batteries as well, and Apple will replace them for $200, it stands to reason that Apple has a way to properly remove the batteries. Probably a solvent of some kind that is specific to the glue they use.
They'll just replace your laptop.
I went to an Apple store the other day to replace my now dead battery out of my iPhone 3GS. I left with a brand new iPhone 3GS (or refurbished, I don't know, but not the unit I walked in with).
Write boring code, not shiny code!
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.....
"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..."
And that 3GS will later be repaired, refurbished, then either resold or given to another customer like yourself.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
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.
...they'll do it in China, where labor costs are low and the special solvents aren't banned yet.
No sig today...
Speaking as one who has seen Apple refurb lines at Foxconn in Shenzhen, this is correct. They'll reuse the main board and the display (if the backlight still meets the spec), but not the case or the external connectors. They don't want any visible wear on a refurb unit.
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."
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.
Supposedly, they offer battery replacement by removing the entire upper chassis, battery, keyboard and trackpad assembly, throwing it out, and installing a new assembly. Likewise, screen replacement involves replacing the entire lid assembly as a sealed unit.
special solvents? I use fricking Goo gone.
any idiot can fix an iphone or ipad if you know how and have the right tools.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...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.
What is interesting to me in all of this is that they are removing the certifications from products already certified. I really have a difficult time understanding why they would do that? It isn't like they can go back and make the iMac on your desk less recyclable. Though my guess is this is going to matter more to institutional buyers than the general public. If you took a poll I suspect you'd find that maybe 10% of the laptop buying public even knows what EPEAT is.
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.
Since Apple will recycle your Apple machine for free, I fail to see how the economics of it are really relevant. They will even pay YOU for your machine, depending on just how old it is.
www.apple.com/recycling
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
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 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"?
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.
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"?