Apple products have the most thriving second hand market out of perhaps any electronics manufacturer today. Their product resale value and reliability alone make them a far better option with regard to the environment than almost anything else.

The products have extremely long usage cycles relative to the industry standard. It's such that they've integrated the environmental impact deep into their product design and business.

You can argue that this is simply a byproduct, but they've talked a lot about it over the years that it's pretty deliberate.

Yup. My old iPhone 4S, 6, iPad 2, iPad Mini and Macbook (Late 2008) are all still in daily use by other members of the family. That's almost 10 years of laptops, 7 years of phones and tablets still in circulation.

Wasn't Apple the one who created the trend for non user replaceable batteries?

Or non upgradeable pcs?

Or making you dispose your perfectly good screen, when your iMac gets old?

Resale value is high due too really good marketing and brand recognition combined with high prices.

People will often buy a 3 year old iPhone instead of technically superior new Android phone for some price, just to have this brand.

> People will often buy a 3 year old iPhone instead of technically superior new Android phone for some price, just to have this brand.

Not necessarily. Using one specific data point, I can also claim to make this argument invalid. The three year old iPhone will certainly, and surely, run the latest iOS, whereas the new Android phone (priced the same as a three year old used iPhone) is highly likely to have an OS that's already a year or two older and will never get updates in the future, putting the user at a much higher risk. So which is better?

Compare iPhone 6 to Xiaomi mi A1 or HTC U11 life.

Both new are priced in the range of used 6.

Both run latest Android and will have updates for 3-4 years, since they both have non vendor modified Android.

My 2014 RMBP is still the best laptop I have ever owned and everything before that was a Thinkpad, one of them a real IBM one. User-serviceability is overrated in general. You can still replace the battery in a MacBook, it just isn't easy. Mine is 4 years old and gets heavy daily usage and the battery is still acceptable although it is showing signs of age. I will probably look at getting it replaced next year.

My iPhone 6s is starting to act up, especially when cold but I haven't replaced the battery in that yet. I'll probably get that done this summer when the phone gets to the point it can't go a full day without a charge.

I don't care about the supposed technological superiority of a cellphone. I just want it to work. Apple seems to put more effort in to privacy and security and I like their business model more than Google's. I prefer to be a customer instead of a product.

> My 2014 RMBP is still the best laptop I have ever owned

And my desktop PC is better. What's the point of this?

You can't upgrade anything on a new MBP, and every computer i had so far had at least a RAM upgrade in it's life. With Macbook, you just have to throw it away, which isn't too eco friendly, is it?

> I don't care about the supposed technological superiority of a cellphone.

Why don't you buy a Nokia 8100 then? It just works :)

While I'm no Apple fan, I've replaced the charging port on my brother's 4S, and I can tell you that the "non replaceable" claim is overstated. It may not be as easy as a Nokia, but anyone with YouTube and a steady hand should be able to do it.

iPhone 4 had it quite easy, take out two pentalobe (annoying, but screwdrivers are available) screws at bottom and you have access to battery.

On the other side, every other phone on the market at the time had a battery cover and toolless replacement was possible.

It got a bit harder with iPhone 5 though, since screws now secure front panel, not back to the chassis.

> Resale value is high due too really good marketing and brand recognition combined with high prices.

Which means that your old iPhone goes to someone else rather than the landfill…

> People will often buy a 3 year old iPhone instead of technically superior new Android phone for some price, just to have this brand.

Technically superior in what way?

> Which means that your old iPhone goes to someone else rather than the landfill…

Your Android phone will too, you will just be paid less for it.

> Technically superior in what way?

Bigger screen with better resolution,

better camera,

faster UI,

NFC,

wireless charging,

USB-C with fastcharge,

longer battery life,

expandable storage,

and most important, possibility to install a decent web browser instead of having to rely on app for every website you visit :)

>Apple products have the most thriving second hand market out of perhaps any electronics manufacturer today.

I think the big N still has it going.

Nintendo?

Yes.

Whos that? Nokia?

Nokia doesn't do consumer hardware anymore (HMD isn't Nokia)

Big N?

>> The products have extremely long usage cycles relative to the industry standard.

I don't see this trend at all in my environment. Actually quite contrary. Some, who love Apple products, always upgrade really soon. I've got an Sony smartphone for 6 years. Regarding tablets, my parents, sisters, parents in law have an Android tablet, Surface and iPad and independent of the brand they all have theirs for years and don't plan to upgrade soon.

So, this is a myth common to premium products. Probably part of the marketing strategy (same for cars, kitchen gear, etc.).

The use cycle doesn't have to be by the same person. If the iPhone they are ditching is sold to a person who would otherwise buy a new phone, the net production of phones is the same.

> Next, focus on making products that can be repaired and upgraded by end-users for an extended period of time.

Not sure if I want them to spend resources and make products more expensive just so I can repair my 10 year old iPhone myself. I have no desire spending time repairing an old phone that isnt usable already anyway due to its aged hardware.

I seem to recall a statement from Apple recently that if you return an iDevice to an Apple Store when you're done with it, it is torn apart and 100% of it gets recycled.

Not sure if that only applies to recent devices, or everything it's ever sold.

To be fair Apple products have a very long life compared to some competition.

Not only is this true -- I've twice used iPhones for 4 years before replacing them, with full software updates the entire time -- there are also plenty of 3rd parties who can repair things like cracked screens and tired batteries.

huh, my battery runs down, GPS breaks, and software gets too slow for the aged harwdware after about 2 years everytime.

So did you go for the $89 battery replacement, or were you lucky and got it for $29 because of the cpu-throttling problem?

Not when my four year old drops the iPad on my tile floor.

Don't give your four year old an iPad then.

Having a kid is among the worst decisions a person can make for the environment. A childless person could smash iPads all they wanted and not make a dent in comparison.

Unless one of the kids you raise does something really great to improve the world. Not having kids to help the environment has no chance of working unless there is a world government that enforces the policy on everyone. This idea that not having children is a great good should be put rest. Raising children well is a lot of hard work and anyone who would do it well should be encouraged to have them.

> Unless one of the kids you raise does something really great to improve the world.

This is like saying “if he grows up to be a pro basketball player, he’ll be rich.” Should be pretty obvious that it’s an astronomical longshot at best.

Whether a child is raised well or not has nothing to do with their effect on the environment. Simply existing in the modern world clearly has a huge cost.

Overall net positive environmental impact over the generations I guess would be a better way of stating it. A culture that believes in not breeding (for any reason) will not last very long.

> Overall net positive environmental impact over the generations I guess would be a better way of stating it.

Multiple generations just multiplies the negative impact- it doesn't reverse it. At some point (which we may discover sooner rather than later) humanity's impact will be beyond repair.

Odd that I wasn't thinking about the environment when my wife and I discussed having children. Are you serious?

Yes. The environmental cost of a person is huge. People don’t like hearing it but there’s no amount of electric cars, recycling, etc. that can undo the damage of having a kid.

That's nice. I guess we should just get rid of everyone, then the Earth would be perfect!

Found the evolutionary dead-end.

Yes. Just less delusional about the impact my choices have than most people. It's fine to choose to have a kid. But don't fool yourself into thinking you're making a responsible choice when it comes to the environmental impact of doing so.

A South Park episode comes to mind... http://gph.is/2bjK3lK

I just don't know where you get off telling people they shouldn't have kids. Maybe you're just immature, I don't know, but there's nothing to be gained from it.

I specifically said, "It's fine to choose to have a kid."

My point is that if a person is concerned about the environment and the toll humanity is taking on it, recognize the affect your personal choice is having.

>It's fine to choose to have a kid.

Thanks for your blessing. It's everything else you said )moreso the way in which you said it) that's wrong.

Would you judge someone who said they were environmentally conscious but lived in a McMansion and drove a hummer? I don't see why having kids is any different.

You don't see why reproducing is different than owning a Hummer? You're obviously not a reasonable person.

Both are choices. Both have consequences. Why ignore one and not the other?

“Just less delusional...than most people.”

I can’t handle this level of edginess.

"Just less delusional about the impact my choices have than most people."

Please quote me in full during your ad hominem attacks.

How is being ignorant of or willfully ignoring the consequences of one's action not delusional?

I'm not sure - from my experience it seems they've been going further and further along the road of planned obsolescence.

Is this an actual statistic or is it your impression in general?

For software updates, it's hard to imagine that any other phone, tablet, or laptop can compare. For example, I'm typing this on a "late 2012" mac mini, which is running the latest OS X.

I use a 2010 laptop running the latest Windows 10.

Congrats, you're a pretty rare user. You don't have to google for very long to discover a large number of people complaining about forced Windows 10 updates. The equivalent situation for OS X is that almost everyone updates.

This is especially visible on phones. Twice I've had a 4 year iPhone, twice it ran the latest software. There are very few Android phones for which this is true.

Where I live it's pretty common to have a 6-7 year old gaming PC with SSD, and RAM upgrade among less tech savvy people.

They are fast enough to do web browsing and media consumption.

i5-5350u from newest Macbook Air is actually way slower than 9 year old i7-960, and it's sufficient for most people.

Four year old Nexus 6P has latest system version. Android One phones will have it too.

Time to live was a big difference in favor of Apple few years ago, but it's getting way better for Android phones now.

You're being incredibly disingenuous.

> Where I live it's pretty common to have a 6-7 year old gaming PC with SSD, and RAM upgrade among less tech savvy people.

Why would a "less tech savvy" person have a gaming PC?

> They are fast enough to do web browsing and media consumption.

That's not what a gaming PC is for…

> i5-5350u from newest Macbook Air is actually way slower than 9 year old i7-960, and it's sufficient for most people.

1. i7-960 is the processor from the Mac Pro. i5-5350u is from an ultraportable laptop.

2. The "newest Macbook Air" hasn't been substantially updated in around three to four years.

> Four year old Nexus 6P has latest system version

There's many things wrong with this statement, so let me break it down.

1. Nexus 6P came out in September 2015, so it's not even three years old yet.

2. Nexus 6P will not be getting the Android P update, which is currently in beta.

3. Nexus 6P is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Google. No other Android phone is going to get updates as long as it does.

4. iPhone 6, which came out in 2014, will most likely be getting the update for iOS 12.

> Why would a "less tech savvy" person have a gaming PC?

Kids. Adults buy kids new hardware to play latest games, and older stuff that is replaced is good enough for them.

> That's not what a gaming PC is for…

Repurposing old hardware for new uses is what being eco friendly is about.

> i7-960 is the processor from the Mac Pro.

No, it's a processor you would go and buy off shelf (hard to imagine, I know) and use in a decent gaming PC in that time, that happens to also be in a mac pro.

>The "newest Macbook Air" hasn't been substantially updated in around three to four years.

It's for June 2017 model, latest that was on Wikipedia. Is there a newer one which is twice as fast?

>The processor you've selected is from an ultraportable laptop

I wanted to state that for quite some time people don't actually need better hardware for web browsing or watching movies. This is a response to claim that 2010 PC users with Windows 10 being so rare, and that Mac mini from 2012 still having updates making it something special.

>Nexus 6P is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Google. No other Android phone is going to get updates as long as it does.

iPhone is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Apple. No other iOS phone is going to exist...

> Kids. Adults buy kids new hardware to play latest games, and older stuff that is replaced is good enough for them.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. You mention that adults are buying their children new hardware, but you're also talking about 6-7 year old gaming PCs? Not quite sure what you mean.

> Repurposing old hardware for new uses is what being eco friendly is about.

Yeah, but these are gaming PCs. They're terribly impractical for casual use. They're bulky and hot and noisy, with terrible battery life and a large power consumption.

> It's for June 2017 model, latest that was on Wikipedia. Is there a newer one which is twice as fast?

It's the "latest" in the sense that they bumped the clock speed of the process slightly and kept the Broadwell-era CPU in 2017; otherwise it's all parts from 2015 or before. Even the MacBook from today is faster, and MacBook Pro, while not "twice as fast", is around 1 1/2 times faster or so.

> This is a response to claim that 2010 PC users with Windows 10 being so rare, and that Mac mini from 2012 still having updates making it something special.

You know, I've never seen anyone still using a PC from 2010. Macs from 2010 aren't that uncommon though; I know at least a handful of people who use the non-Retina MacBook Pros from like 2009 every day.

> iPhone is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Apple. No other iOS phone is going to exist...

Yes, that's my point. You buy an iPhone because it's a high end phone that Apple's dedicated to support for years. With Android it's hit-or-miss. Sometimes you hit Google and get updates for two or three years. Sometimes you get Samsung and wait six months to get a two-year old version of Android from your carrier. You buy an iPhone and you are instantly guaranteed updates straight from Apple, immediately and regularly, for the next five years. And that's any iPhone, from iPhone X to iPhone SE.

>I don't understand what you're trying to say here. You mention that adults are buying their children new hardware, but you're also talking about 6-7 year old gaming PCs? Not quite sure what you mean.

You buy a new PC, what happens to old one? It doesn't magically disappear.

>Yeah, but these are gaming PCs. They're terribly impractical for casual use. They're bulky and hot and noisy, with terrible battery life and a large power consumption.

I'm talking about desktops, not laptops. They're not noisy and hot unless you run them at 100%, which you don't do when not gaming. You could also remove GPU and save some power, but I rarely see people doing this.

> You know, I've never seen anyone still using a PC from 2010. Macs from 2010 aren't that uncommon though; I know at least a handful of people who use the non-Retina MacBook Pros from like 2009 every day

This is why i stated 'where I live'. Macs aren't common here (there's a trend for last 3-4 years for MacBooks, but still low market share), and in 2010 they were almost nonexistent. This is why there aren't much of old ones around.

Everyone had a PC though, and it can be seen that they can handle new versions of Windows as well if not better than macs can handle new OSX.

> Even the MacBook from today is faster, and MacBook Pro, while not "twice as fast", is around 1 1/2 times faster or so.

Yes, but did you see people owning Airs complain about slugishness? For same reason they don't on 2x faster, 7 year old machine.

> With Android it's hit-or-miss.

With Android you have choice. You pay premium for a pixel and updates, or go cheap and don't get those. There's also Android One initiative, which gives phones updates straight from google. Yes, harder for uneducated guesses, but you can still stay good knowing only that Google = longer life.

With iOS there's only one choice.

A better comparison would iOS to Android. A 2012 android is a paperweight, heck most 2015 androids are too

Not true, and not really a good comparison because the Android world is enormous with all levels of models (super cheap up to premium). In fact there are projects out there to repurpose these old devices that wouldn't even be possible under the heavy control of a different platform. You can find lots of projects. One interesting one I saw recently was using old Android phones to detect illegal lumber cutting. There also some cool DIY home security projects that make use of older phones. Another that comes to mind is a crypto currency mining setup. You can also use the phones as routers or firewalls for your home. Anecdotally I still have and use an old tablet from 2011 that my kids play on.

To be honest, Android got good around 2013-14, before that it wasn't a best experience.

If you get a galaxy S4 now, it's not the fastest, but perfectly usable phone.

Does S4 still get OS-level monthly security updates?

Does iPhone 5? They're 5 months apart in release dates.

Add another six months to the S4's release date and you get iPhone 5S, which has the latest version of iOS and every security update that Apple has to offer.

And also 20 to 30% slowdown when updated to iOS 11.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-on-the-iphone...

Same thing happened to iPhone 4 a while ago, it was literally killed by iOS 7.

I'd rather not update in this case.

Also, google is sending security patches for older versions of Android. Latest one for S5 is from beginning of 2018.