That’s why Apple gets to be worth $3T, but that’s not why people buy AirPods over Sennheiser. If they can make longer lasting fully wireless ANC headphones for not much more on the price, they’d be good competition for AirPods customers.

Which is why it should be required (if sustainable manufacture was deemed a bugger social benefit to profit).

If Apple had to make headphones that were either robust or repairable (or both, can you imagine), they'd find a way, if only to avoid losing money on replacing broken ones.

Yes, because if it wasn’t required, companies like Apple could make products that people wanted beyond the robustness and repairable aspects. By keeping all companies hobbled by the same regulatory requirements, Apple can no longer cheat with better functionality and aesthetics.

Of course, there is obviously a trade off.

I think that back in the day before Sennheiser become the last man standing to produce robust and repairable headphones, they competed with other manufacturers of robust and repairable headphones on factors like functionality and aesthetics.

TL;DR: Nice strawman ya got there. Would be a shame if it burned down.

Could we at least make this comparison in good faith?

Apple is not a company that "makes disposable earphones". AirPods are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of its business. The vast majority of its products can easily last a decade or more and are recyclable after that.

Saying that Apple is worth trillions because of a side product like AirPods is ludicrous. Make your argument without this sloppy, inaccurate Apple-blaming.

> "and are recyclable after that."

Ohh come on... Apple requires them to be shredded, after which some of the base metals can be recovered but there is still a ton of waste in that.

> products can easily last a decade

As long as you are fine with them reducing your battery life to get you to upgrade.

Apple, and the carriers have lots of incentive programs design to get people to "upgrade" the phones and when using those programs those phones go strait to recycle (i.e shredder)

Recycle is the LAST RESORT for sustainability, remember the triad is "REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE" Apple only even plays lip service to the Recycle part, and want to prevent the Reduce and Reuse part by preventing / disincentivizing repair and resell.

You can look at the figures. Their most recent earnings statement[1] has “wearables, home and accessories” at 11.9% of their revenue. We don’t know how much of that is AirPods but I’d be surprised if it’s less that 50% given Watch and HomePod sales.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q1_Consolidated_Fin...

I've had multiple Sennheisers crap out on me after way less than 20 years.

Is Sennheiser going bust? Can't the pro market sustain them?