San Francisco To Stop Buying Apple Computers 392
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."
Re:conscience? (Score:2, Informative)
It is possible to remove a glued on component. Glue does not actually form an eternal bond.
Re:conscience? (Score:5, Informative)
Replacing the Retina batteries involves the replacement of the enclosure as well (source : iFixit).
Captcha : poorer ...
Re:This is blindingly obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly.
The issue here is that in order for a recycling program to be effective, it has to be sufficiently easy for things to be recycled, that there is a financial benefit for said recycling. Otherwise, recycling has no incentive.
The design choices at apple make it too difficult to properly seperate the battery from the housing.
From an engineering standpoint, this is ideal! You don't want the battery falling out!
From a recycling standpoint, this is deplorable! You can't recycle the LiON battery pack without incuring a significant loss!
Rather than accept that they need to implement a less ideal retainer mechanism for their batteries, apple has thumbed their nose at regulators.
There will be consequences.
Case closed.
Oh my god (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:conscience? (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:conscience? (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, you seriously know nothing about the current state of these products. It is prohibitively expensive to separate the materials now. Sure it's possible, but it's not cost effective anymore. This is the whole reason Apple left the initiative. They recognize their machines can't be easily recycled anymore and they're perfectly fine with this shit finding its way into landfills if it means their pretty hardware can be even prettier.
Re:This is blindingly obvious (Score:4, Informative)
apple then sends the unit to a 3rd world country, where it is disassembled using hazardous but cheap methods
Nope.
This is Apple's recycling vendor. [simsrecycling.com] They don't ship anything out of the country.
Got anything else you want to make up, or have you embarrassed yourself enough?
Re:conscience? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
"Plastic is burned off" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Informative)
The beginning of the end for Apple
At last the jerks have dug their own graves good riddence to bad crap .
Re:conscience? (Score:4, Informative)
special solvents? I use fricking Goo gone.
any idiot can fix an iphone or ipad if you know how and have the right tools.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ohhh shiny (Score:5, Informative)
Problem with most of the Certification Agencies, is that by giving particular rules to make things certified, is that people know the rules, follow them to get the certification, however find loopholes where the overall goal of what they are trying to do fails.
Re:False Dillema (Score:3, Informative)
It really depends on what you want. Apple Computers are not overpriced! There is a limited selection of Apple computers. So you may not get what you are looking for.
Take an Apple Computer. Go to Dell, or HP, or Lenovo. Try to find the closest model that matches the Apple computer. Match the specs up... All the specs, if you can, none of this we don't need this feature idea (If apples keyboard glows find the upgrade to make the PC keyboard glow.) You will find that their price is about the same as the Apple computers price +/- $100.00
Apple computers do not cost much more then any other Name Brand PC.
That said. Apple has a limited amount of models. So chances are you can find a PC that matches your needs and budget much better, because you can make other trade-offs.
You can not bother with the Back Lit keyboard, you don't need to get the video camera, You can get the model that is 1/2 inch thicker or 1/2 a pound heavier. So you can get the faster CPU or more Memory, for less cost.
Re:False Dillema (Score:4, Informative)
Spec for Spec Apple is vastly more expensive, atleast it is here in the UK.
13" (resolution not advertised) Macbook Pro with a Core i5 2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, 500GB (5400rpm) Sata HDD, Intel HD Graphics costs £999
15.6" 1080p Dell Laptop, Core i5 2.5Ghz, 6GB Ram, 500GB (7200rpm) Sata HDD, Ati Radeon HD 7670 Graphics Card costs £569
The 15" version of the Macbook costs £1499 and it's only improvements are an i7 which is only faster with Turboboost enabled and a Nvidia geforce GT 650M....
The dell has the Camera, Backlit Keyboard... yes it's heavier and thicker but what they hell difference does that make? That's Apple's whole market strategy, make people buy it because it's in a shiny case, even if it's is significantly less powerful. And all that compact case really does is make it almost impossible to fix and upgrade, the new Macbook Pro has the battery glued in! Pretty much making it impossible to protect from a short if should ever spill anything on it and need to remove the battery quickly.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
The latter actually has practical application!
Re:False Dillema (Score:5, Informative)
Take an Apple Computer. Go to Dell, or HP, or Lenovo. Try to find the closest model that matches the Apple computer. Match the specs up... All the specs, if you can, none of this we don't need this feature idea (If apples keyboard glows find the upgrade to make the PC keyboard glow.) You will find that their price is about the same as the Apple computers price +/- $100.00
I did exactly this comparison a couple weeks ago
Envy 15
Display: 15.6" 1920x1080
Processor: 3rd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM Processor (2.3 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)
Graphics: 1GB Radeon(TM) HD 7750M GDDR5 Graphics
Storage: 750GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
Memory: 6GB 1600DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Height: 1.11 inches
Weight: 5.79 lbs
Warranty: 2 years
Price: $1,354.99
Macbook Pro 15
Display: 15.4" 1440 x 900
Processor" 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz) with 6MB L3 cache
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5
Storage: 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive
Memory: 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3
Height: 0.95 inch (2.41 cm)
Weight: 5.6 pounds
Warranty: 1 year
Price: $1799.00
For ~$450 less with the Envy I'm getting better graphics, more storage, more memory, better display, bigger display, longer warranty, and I'm also getting a quality build laptop with premium features like aluminum casing, slot load DVD, and backlit keyboard, and basic features not available on the Macbook pro like HDMI port, display port, 3 USB ports, higher maximum memory. The macbook pro has better battery life and is a little bit thinner and lighter. Oh and OSX of course. Is that worth $450? I don't know maybe to some but not me.
And by the way, this price is without any of the rebate ninja magic you can pull with HP. For my last purchase, and Envy 14, I got a discount off the list price, 30% off through Bing, and another $100 off just because I asked them. I paid over $1000 less for my Envy 14 (SSD, higher memory, better processor, higher resolution display) than for a similarly specced Macbook Pro 15 (minus the display size of course, but then again my display has a higher resolution than those displays did in 2010).
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)