Hi. In today’s episode, we look at Planned Obsolescence, the resulting mountains of e-waste, and why companies don’t want you to be able to fix their crummy products.
If you expect Cody to be nice to Apple, you will be very disappointed.
Damn, did Technology Connections get everybody fired up? I just watched an Unlearning Economics video on the same topic.
What video did he do recently that would have gotten people fired up about this?
Tech Con: https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY
UnEcon: https://youtu.be/Fz68ILyuWtA
Might be more of a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon for me, because those two videos were just recommended to me back-to-back, and I’ve only watched the second one so far.
I really expected zero updoots here and maybe a reply saying I’m dumb cuz Tech Con barely said anything about obsolescence. I was just stream-of-consciousness’ing, but I guess others are feeling the same vibes? ¯\(ツ)/¯
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Baader-Meinhof??? I hardly know her Meinhof!
It was the one about lightbulbs, I presume. Two months ago…
You will find no argument here about the problems that arise when corporations are not required to pay for the garbage they produce.
However.
Optimising incandescent lightbulb efficiency is actually not easy to do. It is easy to make a lightbulb that lasts literally forever, if you run it cooler. But if you do that, your power efficiency will be total shit. (And your light will be uncomfortably red, but let’s say that’s less important for now.) You will waste a lot of money on your electricity bill. There will come a point when you will be wasting more money on electricity than the lightbulb is worth. This breakeven point is difficult to determine. It is a calculation that the average consumer shouldn’t be burdened with.
Apple in my opinion is one of the worst companies at sustainability. Like yes the product is fast and reliable until it doesn’t. Then you have to throw the whole thing away instead of being able to change the single piece that it’s not good anymore.
This take is hilarious. Apple, which has phones that are the longest lasting with the longest updates, is somehow the worst company? Have you ever worked on tech before? Dude, I cannot tell you how many shitty ass galaxy S3-4s I repaired that had “pillow pack” where the battery dies and inflates. Or how many LG phones got stuck in a boot loop, or how many HTC devices had broke ports that were soldered to the mobo so it was either charge to solder (yeah ok) a new one on or buy a new phone again.
When I was working on enterprise systems it was the same story too. MacBooks only ever had problems if someone dropped it and broke the screen, otherwise those things lasted upwards of 8 years and that was 10 years ago when laptops didn’t last for shit. We threw out thousands of Acer and Asus Chromebooks every 4 years back in the day because Google and the manufacturer would stop giving them security updates so they couldn’t test with them. Or god forbid it was one of those crap Samsung Chromebooks at which point the little DC pin connector just basically broke and it was again a port soldered to a mobo.
I get that Apple isn’t perfect. I can shit on them for their monopolistic behavior, their longstanding hatred to self repair, and their walled garden systems that make it impossible to administrate over as a sysadmin. However to say they’re the worst offender in an industry with peers like Samsung, LG, Acer, Asus and others is laughable. At least we can get 8 years out of a device. Hell the iPhone 6 received almost a full DECADE of security updates with 6 solid years of full system updates. Sustainability is beyond just repairability. It’s also how long a device can actively, and safely, be in service.
I got torn apart a few days ago for pointing out that these phones are actually very easy to repair. Barring the VIN locking on recent models, they’re pretty modular devices and, at least in my experience, are on the easier end of devices to repair. Also, when the iPhone 11 was the latest model, the bulk of the phones I was repairing were the 7 and 8, so even with the locking, that I will agree is bullshit, the bulk of devices are not the absolute newest. This notion that iPhones have to be thrown away if they have so much as a hairline is kind of stupid. There’s plenty of reasons to hate Apple without stretching the truth.
During the era of the galaxy S3-4 and the note 7 debacle (and I owned several notes) I never once in my time as cell phone repairs had a single bad battery iPhone come in. They just didn’t happen all that frequently. iPhones aren’t the best for repairs, but during the last two iPhone keynotes they’ve specifically started talking about what steps they’re taking to make them more easily repairable. Coupled with the absolutely amazing software and security updates and you end up with a device that’s better than almost every competitor for environmental impact. Even the darling of “repairability and environmental impact” the fairphone still only receives about 6 years of support. The modular repairable design of the fairphone is certainly amazing, but if you only give it 6 years of OS and security updates you’ve effectively made a phone that still has a service life of 6 years. Far below apples 8.5 years with the iPhone 6 and onward. Of all the companies they’re the largest and they’re still trying to at least be better about the environmental impact and their repair-ability. People just like to shit in Apple because they think it makes them “cool” or counter culture, or some kind of dumbass IT wannabe. The reality is that for 99% of people it’s a great phone, for its damage to the environment it could always be better, but compared to its peers it’s making massive improvements and pushing the industry in other areas. I think Apple sort of recognized that phones aren’t changing much these days so finding a new “thing” like repair and sustainability is what will set them apart.
iPhone 6
8.5 years
It has not been that long…
Edit: fuck it has, make it STOP
Are You fucking thick, or being paid by apple? They release the same phone every 2 years and force you to change by slowing down software. I’ve had a cheap Xiaomi phone for 5 now. Still works fine. My friend has a Samsung for 8 years. Either one of these cost less than a fifth of a price of an iPhone. Laptops? I’ve had an Acer for 7years. It cost less than a quarter of a price of an apple with lower specs. Now I’m using a Lenovo for 3 years, end when I needed more storage space, I dismounted the 1TB hard drive from my 7 year old laptop and installed it in my current pc. And the 7yo Acer? I gave it to my grandma, she still uses it, so it’s being used for a decade now. Do any of this shit with an overpriced apple product, I dear You. Not to mention their stupid design. I was working once in an office where they used apple. Only time ever when my hands hurt from using a keyboard. And the moronic wireless mouse which looked the same front and back so people regularly held it backwards. And the charging port was on the bottom, so you couldn’t use it while charging. Overpriced, overadvertised shit.
I am sorry but what about creating new charging standards so that you can sell your own charging cables, adapters, etc. Don’t tell me that Apple is good, no they are not. Why do you think even today, you cannot use their headphones with Android or MS devices? They are actively trying to create extra hurdles and they only adopted the USB-C because of the pressure the EU put on them. Aren’t all those incompatible parts not increasing the e-waste?
Oh and if I am not wrong they were the first to introduce the non replaceable battery, and eventually the rest of the pack followed suit.
Lightning was leaps and bounds better than anything else on the market. Fully reversible, sturdier connector, sturdier plug. The only drawback was the apple tax, and that is easily overcome with third party cables.
USB C was released a full 2 years after Lightning, and Apple was part of the group that helped develop it.
And by “headphones” are you talking about EarPods? Because those things are garbage and most people wouldn’t even notice that they don’t work with other devices. Or are you talking about their AirPods, which all work with virtually any device that realistically supports Bluetooth headsets.
I started this comment intending to play devils advocate, then realized you’re just an uninformed individual with a hard-on for a company you don’t like. At least try to know what you’re talking about next time?
Galaxy s3-4s batteries were user replaceable
Also those are phones from 13 years ago, despite not having removable batteries the new Samsung phones get updated and are built to last, much longer.
This is a very jaded and warped take with some bias.
It’s probably just the only phone he has
Yeah and I wonder how much gets recycled. E-waste is a massive issue that’s been around now for decades
I wonder how much gets recycled
To put it simply.
It doesn’t.
It is still cheaper to dig new shit out of the ground (due to all the environmental costs being ignored) than it is to breakdown the many metals etc within a phone for reuse.
microelectronics will be inherently difficult to upgrade, reuse and recycle. their continued hyper-evolution prevents any real programs. it will happen, but there are plenty of more voluminous, low-hanging-fruit we could be working on immediately.
these are bigger items that are now made like garbage like all home appliances. these things should absolutely be user-upgrade able, 100% recyclable and designed to last decades. they could easily be designed in more modular fashion, and absolutely used to last decades.
