You can't wave your wand and make the future week-long battery life laptop that weighs nothing appear out of nowhere. I mean that should be obvious right?Ĭonspiracy theorists are gonna see conspiracy theories.Įngineers look at ancient "luggables", imagine a future where Star Trek pads exist, then incrementally iterate reducing power consumption on 200 different individual components, shrinking the volume of 27 different assemblies, and making thousands of difficult choices - all of which has to yield a sellable product today so there will even be a chance to improve in the future. For another example SODIMM slots take up space and are larger than surface mount soldered DRAM chips. Depending on implementation it can also have a performance cost - for example a user-swappable battery means a 30-40% reduction in battery capacity OR a corresponding increase in weight+volume. Basically no laptop can have its CPU or GPU upgraded to begin with. The vast majority of upgradeable machines are never actually upgraded. It absolutely doesn't have to be that way, but it is, and IMHO calling this out and being critical is 100% fair, much like you would call out an oil and gas company who was intentionally generating waste to maximize their profit, regardless of how they compared to other oil and gas companies.īut it's also very fair to point out what you've pointed out, that compared to others Apple is pretty good, so this is not a compelling reason to avoid buying Apple products if you're going to buy a different one that generates just as much or more e-waste. Apple has full ability to dramatically lower the amount of e-waste their products by making them more upgradeable/repairable, and they choose not to in order to maximize profit at the expense of everyone else. The other tech companies are irrelevant for this. However, the comparison above is Apple to Apple. How do they create more ewaste though? Like many others report my experience is that apple products routinely last multiple times longer than other tech.Ĭompared to some other tech, you're correct that the e-waste is comparable or better.
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