Apple Reportedly Stops Production of FineWoven Accessories (macrumors.com) 39
Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories, according to reliable Apple leaker and prototype collector known as "Kosutami." From a report: In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium accessories in the future. Apple introduced FineWoven, a soft fabric material, last year. The company claimed that the material is made of 68 percent post-consumer content and is overall more environmentally friendly compared to the company's previous line of leather accessories. As part of the introduction of FineWoven case, Apple also discontinued the use of leather for new Apple accessories. Reviewers didn't like FineWoven, calling it "bad. Like, really bad."
Wears like leather (Score:3)
There's a reason that there is a saying that goes "Wears like leather." Leather is an excellent material to make durable stuff out of if it can't be made out of metal or needs some give.
If you want something more environmentally friendly than cows, horse hide is even more durable than cow leather and can be produced from horses that die naturally, but people think that having things made out of horses is icky for some reason. If you see a pair of officer's boots in a museum that are 200 years old and look like new, they are probably horse hide.
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And well, it's an organic product too....cows are carbon based life units.
So, hell, you're checking two boxes right there.
And it isn't like anyone is forcing the vegans to buy a leather option that may be offered....
So...why again did they do away with the lea
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So...why again did they do away with the leather option?
Virtue signalling to the vegan / greenie crowdz. Or, pandering.
Pick one, or both, as both are equally plausible
Even fake leather is better (Score:1)
There's a reason that there is a saying that goes "Wears like leather." Leather is an excellent material to make durable stuff out of if it can't be made out of metal or needs some give.
Even if you can't bring yourself to use real leather from any animal (a waste Native Americans would chide you for given how much leather is produced as a bi-product from raising cattle for food), there are plenty go fake leathers that feel great and wear really well!
The "fine woven" stuff was crazy bad. I upgraded my phone
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But it's not like the leather is going to be thrown away and Apple is pulling cowskin out of dumps. It's still going to be used, with or without Apple. Just, Apple driving up the demand for leather means cow ranchers get paid more, which means cows are more economical to raise, which means more cows get raised...and raising cows is bad for the environment.
Wrong (Score:1)
But it's not like the leather is going to be thrown away and Apple is pulling cowskin out of dumps.
Wrong [leathermag.com]
The global leather industry creates four billion pounds of scrap leather waste every year. Currently, thatâ(TM)s mainly sent to landfills or incinerated
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> horse hide is even more durable than cow leather and can be produced from horses that die naturally
More people die naturally every year than horses? What's the durability of human leather?
If it isn't durable surely we could recycle it into lamp shades or something else decorative.
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Book covers perhaps? https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Even if it can be made from animals that died naturally, are there enough natural deaths to meet demand if Apple starts using it?
Anyway, they want to appeal to the vegan crowd.
As ever, wait until a new Apple product has been out for a few years and on version 3 before buying it.
Use actual quality leather (Score:3)
I can see Apple not wanting to use actual quality leather because then they know they can't sell you a new band in a few years when you buy a new watch. People who think leather is bad for the environment fail to consider that it can last multiple lifetimes meanwhile failing to consider the multiple replacements that will be needed for crap imitation products or the low-grade pressed scraps that only qualifies as leather in a legal sense.
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Plus, cows are a renewable resource. They operate off ordinary grass without any additional greenhouse gasses required, and turn it into leather and delicious steaks. Truly an environmental miracle.
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Cows are actually a significant global warming problem, they generate a lot of methane.
But leather is a non-issue, it's a byproduct. Nobody raises cows just for leather.
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Cows are actually a significant global warming problem, they generate a lot of methane.
Being a natural part of the carbon cycle, cow methane wouldn't even be an issue if humanity wasn't also digging up and burning fossil fuels.
Re: Use actual quality leather (Score:2)
This is nonsense. Cattle displaced bison in the USA, and they produce less methane per pound of meat.
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Cow burns and farts only matter because we're collectively unable/unwilling to cease all man-made sources of carbon emissions. By itself, the impact of shuffling existing atmospheric forms of carbon around between CO2 and methane by breeding a whole bunch of cows, would be negligible.
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Re:Use actual quality leather (Score:4, Informative)
"Genuine" lather is nothing like Full grain leather. It is more like "contains leather". It is processed a lot more than proper leather and often time just split leather with a coating of man made materials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To me this is very close to false advertising since 'genuine leather' is not much better than artificial leather.
For belts I only buy full grain, since all the "genuine" ones get destroyed rather quickly.
Re:Use actual quality leather (Score:4, Insightful)
Most belts that have the 'genuine leather' stamped deeply into the underside of the belt seem to be ok. If it is printed or on a label of any kind it means that the material won't take the stamping imprint well so it probably isn't worth your time either.
If it's reversible then it is not full grain anything. Real leather has a good face side and the rough underside with no need to fancy up the back with a glued up layer.
I bought a reversible Dockers belt once, in one day worth of wear the glued on leather layer was already wrinkled and blistering. I guess they are ok for playing dress-up once or twice.
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I've found belts to be unreliable the last few years. Mostly it's the breaking of the buckle, not the "leather", but I've seen leather wearing out too. Which surprised me because I saw the words "genuine" and "leather" and assume it was old fashioned leather. But no, it isn't.
It's like if they started calling particle board, genuine wood."
I understand the economics that favor conspicuous consumption of short lived products (just witness Apple's short lived items). But customers are complicit also in accep
Re: Use actual quality leather (Score:1)
That's quite a cynical take given there's no such thing as a FineWoven watch band.
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"Fine" being a word with so many meanings that it's nearly worthless. I have got very fine hair myself, which I hate, I'd rather have coarse hair. There are the fine cotton sheets that you have to be careful with in the wash. Fine Woven might have been a thing when weaving was done by hand, but with machines you can indeed make Fine Woven products with crappy fibers and end up with Fine Woven Crap.
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The problem with leather is it's an animal product, and something that vegans and the ilk are strongly opposed against.
That's the main reason Apple moved away from leather. It's also why Tesla offers an alternative to using leather in their steering wheels (this was back when Elon Musk actually cared about such things). (Start to see an overlap in customer base?)
Plus, I'm sure, leather is out of the question in India for obvious reasons, and Apple is looking into moving manufacturing there.
It's not that you
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But I'm sure a large proportion of their customer base, being vegan, would strongly oppose such a move.
*blinks*
In the U.S. (Apple's biggest market at 44% of net sales), only 3% of people are vegan. About 57% of U.S. phone users use iPhones. Even if every single vegan who uses a cell phone at all uses an iPhone, that would still be *barely* over 5% of their customer base. They might be one of the more *vocal* parts of Apple's customer base, but they're certainly not a large percentage of it.
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It's not so much for actual vegans as for people who find the word "Vegan" to have a vague positive connotation. (I think this kind of thing sells half of the junk that gets produced today.)
You, too, can be hip and avant-Vegan. All you have to do is buy the watch.
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Correct on all of that.
Nevermind that leather is biodegradable, environmentally friendly, and a low carbon option vs a petroleum derivative.
They were just catering to their ecoterrorist customers who lampooned them for killing animals to make a profit/product.
I wouldn't be surprised if they try to go back to leather. It's a natural choice - literally.
whelp... (Score:2)
There's always third party. Lots and lots of third party.
leatherette case (Score:2)
Leather vs Microplastics. Obvious choice here. (Score:2)
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"Pumped out of the ground" means the grass that the cows eat and transform into leather?
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Blame cow farts all you want, but Leather is still a very durable natural By-Product.
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Sooo (Score:3)
Nomad (Score:1)
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I've used Nomad leather cases for iPhones for years. I switched to an Apple leather case a few years ago, and found it inferior. YMMV.
Not waterproof, less grain than a Nomad. Lame. :-D
Them rubber cable quality ain't much better. (Score:2)
For each MacBook/iPhone you'll be purchasing at least 4 charger cables.
The MacBook ones are the worst because you need to replace the entire adapter.
names (Score:2)
Is there any high tech product or software that has a name that in the least offers the customer some way to guess what might be its function?