This shifts blame off suppliers and on to consumers. Suppliers can do whatever they want: it's the responsibility of consumers to choose what is best for society.
In my opinion this is not an effective approach for society, for example because of unbalanced information. I think the responsibility needs to be shared.
> The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.
I don't think the author is disputing that the designs were good decisions, when the goal is profit. They are complaining that sustainability was not taking into account.
I don't believe in this equality. The consumer is limited to buying what is available in the market, which may not be what the consumer wants.
For example, if I had the option to buy a current Macbook Pro without a touchbar, and with the circa-2015 keyboard, I'd do so.
Apple made the decision to sell the Macbook with the touchbar, and you're free to either buy it or not. Personally, I don't like Macs or Apple, so I don't buy them at all, and I advise my friends and family to avoid them too. Most of them don't listen to me, and insist they "need" Apple products and pay top dollar for them, even though many of them are struggling financially. I try showing them my nice Android phone with removable batteries and dual cameras that I got for $140 on Ebay and that has MVNO service that costs a fraction of what they pay monthly to the big carriers, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Then they wonder why they're always broke and why I seem to be loaded....
Anyway, if you don't like the current Macs, don't buy them. It's really as simple as that. I have a Dell Latitude laptop that's (I think) 4 years old and easily repairable which I also bought used (ex-corporate lease), so I'm keeping it. And I have a phone that's 2-3 years old and has replaceable batteries, an SDcard slot with a 128GB card in it, and that cost me relatively little, and I'm keeping that for the time being too. Maybe if I see something better that I get excited by, I'll buy it, but I'm not dumb enough to buy something just because that's what some company wants me to buy.
No other company can legally sell OS-X computers; some of the software on the platform is Mac only. So if you're in the Mac ecosystem then making a switch to Windows or Linux can be a major hurdle.
I'm saying that as a die-hard Windows fan (well, after Nadella took over) who's now currently enjoying Windows Terminal (beta), the Linux Subsystem, and some major improvements in the usability of the Win10 OS. Not to mention their new Edge Browser, Code, and .net Core - the list goes on.
Even though I believe the grass is much greener on this side, I can fully understand that a huge number of people don't want to or can't easily change. The new Macbook Pros are beautifully designed, if it just wasn't for that missing row of keys and total lack of travel in those that remain.
It is? Forced upgrades and fucking ads in the OS, not to mention tracking that cannot even be disabled in the Enterprise editions?
I rather pay more for a Mac and not be haunted by ads. There's enough ads on the Internet even with an adblocker, all over public space (TV, radio, newspapers, on the sides of buildings, cars, in public transport), I don't need them in my OS too...
I agree the pre installed games are a nuisance and need to go.
I can manage my updates by using the many tools provided in the Pro edition in later updates (1 year ago). You probably haven't seen those?
I don't mind Microsoft collecting telemetry that relates to Windows updates Vs hardware configurations. You don't really need so much of that in osx land as Apple owns all the core hardware. In Windows, there's many magnitudes more configs.
One should not be supposed to do manual clean-ups simply to have an OS that's ad free. We pay for Windows, after all.
> I don't mind Microsoft collecting telemetry that relates to Windows updates Vs hardware configurations.
The problem is that the "telemetry" is totally intransparent and uncontrollable. In the case of Office 365 there is no way to operate it inside the EU and conforming to the GDPR (https://www.datenschutz-notizen.de/office-16-und-office-365-...).
I like my Android phone, and I am happy buying non-Apple laptops for myself. However, my company machine choices have me stuck on Apple. It's just not as simple as you'd like it to be.
This isn't really a problem. The whole point of work is to make money to support yourself; you're being paid to put up with whatever BS is entailed with that job. No one likes everything about their job, and for software people, there's very, very few jobs where they actually love their IT environment. Usually they complain about it in one way or another. The IT environment is just another factor to consider when choosing between offers, along with company culture, commute, office environment, salary, etc. You can't have it all. So my advice before doesn't apply to whatever your employer chooses to make you use in exchange for you collecting a salary, it's only for your personal use, where you really do have the power to choose what's best for you and what you like the most without worrying about external factors (unless perhaps you have a spouse/SO who will dump you because they don't like your choice, but if that's the case you're probably better off without them).
The market bears out because you vote with your money. It may not be quite what you want, but you'd rather make the trade off and pay Apple what they want you to pay than go without or have the alternative product. Thus you pay for what you want. Your money tells Apple that even though you may not like their product completely, they're still doing a good enough job for you to pay what they demand you to pay for it. That's all companies really care about.
It's like an abusive relationship with a narcissist, they give you juuuuuust enough to keep you there, but never enough to feel truly happy about life.
Given enough money I'm sure you could find someone to do a custom build :)
And the supplier uses AI-guided targeted advertising to tell the public exactly what it wants.
The market decision loop has been broken for a long time.
You could go back to the US auto industry of the 1950s - early 70s, telling (and convincing) the buying public that it wanted huge, heavy, overpowered, inefficient, unsafe, poorly-handling, and tremendously fuel-inefficient cars. Until reality did what it does and imposed, and the buying public didn't, and Japan and Germany were more than happy to sell them what they discovered they did want: well-engineered, efficient, inexpensive (until 1980s import quota limits drove manufacturers up-market), better-handling, and safer cars.
You can’t really be a “sustainable” company (or anything, really) when you’re out of business.
Just look at similar failures in the past where corporate interest spread disinformation to continue making money (cigarettes, lead in gasoline, health insurance companies today, sugar industry, etc.). When people learn the actual facts the prevailing opinion tends to change pretty heavily. Sure suppliers must cater to demand, but that ignores the fact that often suppliers play a large role in cultivating that demand regardless of the moral value of that demand.
For an individual user who may be disinclined to repair a machine, it may make no material difference. For society as a whole, it has an impact.
Of course, if the overwhelming behavior is disposal, repairability may have negative environmental impacts (extra material use for modularity, etc). A similar example would be people discarding reusable plastic bags after one or two uses, resulting in more plastic waste than with bags intended for single use.
It takes time for markets and users to adjust, and we may find that Apple was well-positioned to take advantage of market trends in processor and efficiency improvements at the right time for portable device markets like phones and laptops. Maybe we'll swing back to longer lifetimes and more modularity at some point...
Wether you agree with it or not, this is how capitalism and a free market works. It's a feature, not a bug.
Nothing in the article argued otherwise.
The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good, or a good decision. The use of gas for powering cars made a lot of companies very valuable, but one can certainly question that decision in light of the impact on the environment. One can cite plenty of other examples where a decision made sense if you look at it in a very myopic sense, analyzing only the short term financial implications... while the longer-term view yields a much different analysis.
They grew because of their obsession with thinness, BUT at some point they should have recognized the diminishing returns, that people wanted battery life and real keyboards. They left money on the table, with regard to opportunity cost, that wont ever be calculatable, by not changing their tune once they became thin enough.
Sadly every brand has been imitating the cool kid.
Case in point: Thinkpads.
Thinkpads used to be an absolute beauty of engineering. I have an old x220: You could swap battery by hand, change the memory and hard disk by undoing one single screw, swap the keyboard by undoing 3 screws.
I also go a new one recently, a T480. Changing memory and mass media means taking the whole bottom off, which means which is almost impossible to do with breaking some small plastic tabs. Changing the battery and keyboard is close to heart surgery.
Their newer model downright solder memory in the machine, making it impossible to upgrade or repair.
Another example, OneOps was one of the few company making sane decision, their latest model does not have a jack for headset.
I also had an x220 (I actually keep it around my office as a spare). Adding a second SSD to the WWAN slot required basically a complete teardown of the machine. The swappable battery seemed nice, but the battery in mine falls out because the locking mechanism broke.
For my use I actually prefer the newer style thinkpads. If I need to replace the battery I'll deal with the 5 screws on the bottom. Regarding the t490 RAM, it's like my T470s, one stick soldered and one DIMM slot.
I'll also add that although Lenovo is far from perfect (superfish), they do have a history of correcting bad design decisions based on customer feedback (see the t440/x240 trackpads).
Other brands have faired a much worse fate. AEG for example was once a brand which stood for good german quality, nowadays everyone who wants to use that name only has to buy the right to do so from some turkish company.
Beko use standard components (except the main board) found on dozens of other brands and most of them only require you to remove the bottom cover for access.
To be fair, Beko branded machines are pretty good. Just not that good. Especially for the premium price they want for some of their other brands.
I've worked on several Beko washers that overheated until the glass on the door cracked (flooding the place). But that's nothing compared to some Miele that will power the heater even if there's no water, getting it red hot and risking a real fire. Ditto for Indesit dryers.
I've heard this line of thought repeated alot--"Thinkpads went to crap once IBM sold them to Lenovo"--but I could swear I read an article stating that the Thinkpad team went to Lenovo as well, such that the same people still work on them.
I'll edit my post if I can find the source.
The 2012 is still going pretty well for me and quite useful as my #2 dev machine. I have a much higher powered desktop. I'd like a new X1C, but won't replace it until it breaks - and currently it looks like I better not hold my breath for that to happen; it's holding up incredibly well.
How's that for reducing waste; buying top spec laptops and making them last not 2, not 3 but 7 years and going.
>>sacrifices had to be made in terms of repairability"
It's not just repairability. There are substantial sacrifices made to usability; Ive chooses form over function.
Example 1: Thanks to Ive's fetish with "smaller/slimmer", everyone is now carrying around a bag full of adapters and dongles to connect the devices they use: usb, video, network, etc.
Example 2: The butterfly keyboard. Loud, an ergonomic mess, and unreliable.
Example 3: The absurd decision to place the charging port on the wireless mouse on the bottom - rendering it unusable while it charges. But it looks so sleek.
I'd like to see Apple try to take this even farther, such as making Macbooks require a dongle just to use WiFi, making it so that they only work with genuine Apple WiFi dongles, and then charging more for the dongle than the Macbook itself costs. I seem to remember a Space Quest game that had something like this in the plot. With the stupidity that consumers have shown regarding Apple, I have no doubt that this would work out just fine for them.
So a hypothetical consumer could like 1950 decisions, deeply dislike 50 and it would still be worth it for them to buy the product.
This is exactly what's happening for Apple, their products are still good enough to be bought, but at the same time they make a lot of stupid design decisions which frustrate us.
In my case, the MBP has so many reliability issues that I would no longer personally purchase it.
Everything else is just another hardware iteration on the same spyware.
That's kind of assuming that Apple users are all the same.
I would unscientifically break down the users as:
1 - People who love the OS too much too switch to something else
2 - People who love the OS and hardware
3 - People who love the hardware form factors, and don't necessarily care about the OS
4 - People who love the owning an Apple products (loyal to the company more than the products)
I don't know how big each group is, but I tend to think the people in group 1 are the bulk of the people complaining, and are begrudgingly buying new Apple hardware until it eventually stops making sense to.
I recall watching a young child from a poor family in an Apple Store trying to get the iPad that she loved repaired and the family being told that her only option was to purchase a new one which they clearly could not afford. Seeing how distraught it made the little girl really bothered me. That was the day that I started to intensely hate Apple.
In fairness, however, hindering repairability feels like a business decision that Ive may not have been responsible for.
Obviously this is not the only alternative world, but I think it is realistic. Say the design initiatives were inverted: Repairability were king and form & function were subservient to it. In such a world, we would still have giant beige boxes on our desks. That's not to say there is not a balance to be struck that could result in a more repairable iPad, but my point is that Apple's design initiatives have resulted in many new, successful computing form factors (touch, tablet, watch, AirPods even).
I will hitch my wagon to the horse that continues to plow new ground, even if there is some theoretical ideal that is "better."
I personally believe that Apple's resistance to repairability (or, more accurately to repairability outside their dominion) stems from a desire to control a customers experience with their product, not from some business case or greed. This goes all the way back to Steve Jobs and the original Macintosh [0].
I personally can, and have, repaired my Apple devices with 3rd party parts, and the results have been less than sub-optimal. A screen that was deeply blue-shifted (so extreme that even software adjustments didn't help), a home button that became nonfunctional, and a battery that became swollen. I've had some repairs that worked great, but buying quality parts is a bit more expensive, to the point it is worth it (to me) to have Apple repair.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Expansion
The non-TouchID button of an iPad broke and my only option would have been to essentially buy a new iPad, because they send the broken one to HQ and give you a refurbished device in exchange.
They can't repair a broken button! That is incredibly lame.
Furthermore, their devices have become less repairable and more failure-prone for no good reason. For example the MBP screen will die just from opening and closing the lid, because they used too short cables. Major fuck-up, but they will easily fix it by replacing the cable, right? No, they designed it in such a way that the entire screen must be replaced.
I'd like to see you try to explain away this idiocy please. Tell us how we couldn't have had MBPs and iPads if Apple would have been able to fix their own devices instead of force-recycling them.
Beyond that, my argument, more simply, is the following:
1. Apple has a set of philosophies and priorities in design. Within these, repairability is a lower priority than Vice and some customers would prefer.
2. From those priorities comes expertise and processes that result in the creation of new products and entirely new product categories.
3. Apple has seen success unlike any other company from those resultant products. Not just successful, but the most successful ever. No other company has replicated some of those products.
4. Given the above, Apple sees no reason to make any changes to their design priorities. Even if those priorities have resulted in missteps, they have been overwhelmingly rewarded by their decisions. Indeed, it is plainly obvious that it would be foolish to change those priorities based on the voices of Vice and Louis Rossman who look at a part of the design but not the whole. This is akin to fans asking LeBron James to take fewer shots because he missed a single game-winner.
That is to say, even if the "thin and light" priority has resulted in missteps (I think this is objectively true, re: keyboards, MBP screen cable, etc), Apple would not have been able to create a product like the Apple Watch without the expertise and processes that flow out of those priorities.
I think Apple can, and most likely will, make adjustments to the processes that come from those priorities to correct and prevent those missteps, without changing the priorities themselves.
Some commentators here miss that the iPad may be today's equivalent of a child's doll. Not being able to replace the iPad is like telling the child their playtime friend is dead and never coming back. This strikes me as good reason to have your children bond to something easily replaceable... and consider buying a backup!
Some things you could have done:
1) Offer to buy the parents a replacement.
2) Offer to take the iPad to a third party to repair. Like Louis Rossman and offer to pay for the repair.
3) Offer to setup a GoFundMe for the replacement or to cover the cost of the repair.
4) Educate the parents that Android is a cheaper better option and determine the best action to recover the data (can be done) and move over to Android.
5) Educate the parents that companies like Louis Rossman exist and can repair Apple devices and to research on the internet for more information.
And yet, you did nothing.
As for #1 (and #3), why would he want to help fund Apple and their high prices and anti-consumer practices?
More generally, will you please (a) not post unsubstantive comments to HN, and (b) edit the nasty swipes out of the comments you do post? We're hoping for a bit better than that here.
Do consumers have the costs of their choices spelled out clearly, or are they hidden and deferred as externalities under the false pretence that neither customers nor anyone they know will ever have to worry about them?
How accurately do market costs include physical, ecological, environmental, and political/social costs?
Is a system that cannot accurately present costs to consumers without interpreting them through its own value system actually credible and trustworthy?
Are you sure about this? Personally, I almost never see people wearing AirPods in public, but I do see a lot of other headphones. It cannot be said that they "overwhelmingly" captured the headphone or earbud market.
Googling around it seems they are the best selling for wireless according to some sources. But most earphones I see in public seem to be wired still. Yet more googling seems to suggest the whole of the headphone market sells > 10x the number of units as AirPods. It falls far short of an "overwhelming" impression.
If you believe consumers are responsible for the choices they make, then Ive is responsible for the choices he made too.
I was more referring to the fact that colors are available only in certain years. So if you have the "Rose Gold" iPhone, this identifies you as being on the latest release in one year. And also identifies you as being a year out of date when they don't make that color available in the following year.
(And I'm not casting a stone here: I say this as someone who bought a Watch from each generation.)
I think this may have been true at some point, but not anymore. I know so many people that are blinded by brand loyalty to Apple that they'll buy basically any product they put out. They wouldn't consider an Android device because it doesn't portray the same "status". The same is true with the MacBook Pro. I used to be a happy MacBook Pro user, but when it was time to upgrade and I saw the current lineup there was no way I could consider buying one. I've never been the type to just buy Apple for the sake of buying Apple. Many people go ahead and buy a $2000 device that they only use to browse social media solely because Apple made it.
Your choices are not intrinsically more rational than theirs. They value status. You don't. It would be silly of them to buy in the way you buy because they don't value the same things.
Apple serves a very large market of people who consider status more important than features (if we accept your initial assertion). Their designs are made to appeal to that group.
That assumes the unrepairable hardware is an isolated choice by customers when it isn't. There are a hundred other reasons why to buy a particular laptop or not, a huge one being the ability to run macos.
If you want to see actual consumer preferences then produce a repairable Macbook and see if anybody buys that. Which they did in 2006 when that was the case -- so by your logic doesn't that prove that the market has spoken and people want repairable hardware?
Relying on the market to indicate preferences works when there is aggressive competition providing every possible combination of alternatives people might want. If the actual combination that people want isn't available then all you're proving is that some people like macos more than they dislike disposable hardware, which is a crap excuse for destroying the environment.
The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making oil companies some of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.
See where we are now.
Critics don't owe us better products just because they have the audacity to write about other people's products.
I think the world needs more articles criticising companies for making unrepairable crap.
Good design decisions, perhaps. Good environmental decisions, not at all. I think we're all starting to realize the impact of externalizing the environmental costs, so I can't say the article's basic premise is far off.
This is false. Massively.
The available options are not many, not strongly different neither much freely available to choose. Most, at best, start with "can I at least afford it?".
I know many that wish to have an Apple device but must use a very bad and cheap android... because is what them can afford.
Also, consider developers, supposedly a group that "could choose best".
How many times "where is a good laptop that run linux" you hear? Is because it not EXIST. I can't choose it. Only accept a decent approximation.
If you pay attention, you will see that the market is not close to provide good options in so many fronts.
I remember a few years ago: "Where is the RDBMS GUI front-end for osx?", It not EXIST at the time. But you can "chose" to use linux? Linux not have good UI tools at large. Only windows in my niche.
That is the market at work. The market doesn't exist to serve every possible need, only profitable needs. The demand for Linux laptops is so low that it supports only a handful of specialist businesses, none of which have the investment or infrastructure to build laptops like Apple's.
I imagine one is also free to write about why they don't like it...
I never understand this argument. So people should just keep their mouths shut about anything they don't like assuming they have a market alternative? Why? Maybe I like a lot about X but don't like where X is now headed? Why shouldn't I speak up?
One could very very easily make the case that apple's popularity is not due to super sleekness but the boost of ipod+itunes (hey, portable music i can easily use without piracy) followed by iphone (mobile internet and touch ui) and the coherent combination of these user-useful tools under a single brand with a single design language.
Nothing precludes the same phenomenon from happening using a different design language, even one that is still sleek but yet doesn't generate mountains of unrepairable trash and set a precedent for other companies to do the same.
Instead, apple used sleekness to sell unrepairability and thereby boost it's bottom line to the detriment of consumer rights and the environment.
Or at least while our planet is inhabitable. 44.3 degrees today in France, the highest temperature ever recorded in that country. Free markets and design decisions are great, protecting our common environment is also not such a bad idea...
Where can I find an expandable, repairable laptop that runs MacOS?
You complain "we live in a free market". Of course we do.
One of the key features of a free market is that it rewards not only better products, but it also very handsomely rewards people/companies who can externalize costs -- optimize one thing that makes profits for them, while leaving the society or the planet to pay the costs.
You apparently advocate a commercial ethos where it is good to trash the commons, as long as you can make a profit.
Just because trashing the commons can result in a company becoming one of the largest in the world, does not mean that any criticism of it is trash.
As I understand it, design is the study of how form can be improved in order to improve function. Ive's focus on slimness appears to be improving form at the expense of function.
Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.
If you really think what the world needs is airpods with a replaceable battery, go build one.