That's not analogous. Not including the charger in newer iPhones actually reduced e-waste for me personally. I have collected many charges over the years and don't need more. When a device fails or I trade it in - I keep the charger (as most people I would think).

Perhaps they should have made the charger optional... but completely agree overall with the decision not to include it.

I would agree that its fine to not include it, had they not switched to usb-c right when they stopped including bricks so all my new devices came with usb-c chargers but I only have usb-a bricks

iPhones stopped shipping with power bricks with the iPhone 12 back in 2020, so it's not exactly new that they're not including the charging brick.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/13/21514480/apple-iphone-ch...

To be fair, they did include a USB-C charger with the iPhone 11 for one year. But yeah, people on a two-year upgrade (or longer) cadence will likely not have had an Apple USB-C power adapter included with any of their devices.

Only the Pro models, the base model still came with a 5W A brick

Probably like 98% of customers already have a USB power source of some kind, so that seems like a reasonable cut corner.

Not really, modern phones have fast charge capability that's been improving generation over generetion, so what happens is new chargers are bought to take advantage of that. The older gen chargers are E-waste either way, and apple gets to charge us for something they should have included.

Not that I endorse cutting more corners, but I personally gave away the 30w dual USBC charger that came with my MacBook Air since I already own plenty of higher powered ones that work with other devices like my work MBP and Nintendo Switch etc.

I think it'd be great if Apple offered a small discount for opting out of unnecessary items.

I don't know the percentage of course, but I think you'll agree that at least part of the client base will simply reuse their existing charger.

Older gen chargers didn't just become e-waste suddenly because newer bricks that support faster charging are available. I've still got a couple of the 5W USB-A bricks sitting around that I like for slow-charging devices.

USB Power Delivery has been pretty stable; even my oldest charger, bought in 2017, is capable of fast charging the latest iPhone and Android devices – except for those exclusively using some proprietary "fast charge" crap (which is strongly discouraged by the USB-C specification).

iPhone fast charging hasn't really changed over the years, it's still only 25W max, which can be satisfied even by early USB PD chargers.

Androids have their fancy ~100W fast charging where all of the charge controlling is in the brick for thermal reasons and those require special proprietary chargers that become obsolete after a generation, but Apple doesn't do that.

That doesn’t mean they have chargers that meet the wattage and port needs of newer phones. I still use an iPhone XS Max, which uses a 5 watt usb a charger. If I upgrade to an iPhone 15 I will need to get an usb a to c cable and the phone will take forever to charge. I don’t even know if that wattage is enough to charge the phone while it’s on, especially with the pro models.

Or they could just include a 20 watt usb c charger with my $800-1200+tax and activation fees phone and not force me to spend another $60 on their power adapter. though to be fair a third party option would certainly be less expensive.

It’s amusing that you’re getting downvoted when that was the entire point of forcing Apple to standardize on USB-C like the rest of the electronics industry.

I don't want a cheap charging brick with my $1,200 phone. And I don't want to pay more for a nice brick to be included either because I already have one. Good bricks outlive phones. No brick is much better. Buy whatever brick you need whenever you need it.

The only argument is "well, then they should have dropped the price of the phone." Okay dropped it relative to what? "Obviously relative to last year's price." Why? There is/was heavy inflation and other products became more expensive but the iPhone didn't. At most you are complaining about shrinkflation.

I have a box full of various Apple chargers. Anybody who wants one can have one.

I’m pleased Apple stopped adding enormous amounts of ewaste by not producing tens or hundreds of millions of these things every year for the majority of people who do not need them.