I’m always confused when people focus on Apple when it comes to waste. Aside from Apple’s best in class environmental practices, are people aware of the mind bogglingly large amount of crap that gets produced and disposed of every second of every day? Plastic bottles alone.
A couple reasons come to mind: the size of the company and the short lifecycle of fancy products. There is no doubt people could squeeze an extra decade or so out of most phones before they upgrade. I'm still on my 5s, for example, and aside from software being outdated it still runs fine.
The ‘short lifecycle’ is a common idea, but it doesn’t match my experience. I think few people actually upgrade their iPhone every year or two, and if they are then they’re probably selling it or trading it in (in which case I assume it’s refurbished and re-used) because it has years left of life in it.
My friends who have Android phones seem to upgrade them almost twice as often as I upgrade my iPhone (about every four years). I’m still using my mid-2015 MacBook Pro for work every day, it’s a little long in the tooth so I will upgrade early next year (assuming there is a new Apple Silicon model around the end of this year). That will be six and a half years of heavy use out if it, which is longer than most laptops I’ve had from other brands have lasted…
It's all tech/consumer products nowadays, everything has a 'short' lifecycle, which I guess means I shouldnt call it short since it's the norm. Relative to 50 years ago, perhaps.
Right, a decade may be a stretch, but that is what this article is getting at- these phones are being designed NOT to last (at least that is the claim), hence the wastefulness. In another timeline, I can imagine upgradeble phones where people put value on long-lasting durability.
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I’m always confused when people focus on Apple when it comes to waste. Aside from Apple’s best in class environmental practices, are people aware of the mind bogglingly large amount of crap that gets produced and disposed of every second of every day? Plastic bottles alone.
A couple reasons come to mind: the size of the company and the short lifecycle of fancy products. There is no doubt people could squeeze an extra decade or so out of most phones before they upgrade. I'm still on my 5s, for example, and aside from software being outdated it still runs fine.
The ‘short lifecycle’ is a common idea, but it doesn’t match my experience. I think few people actually upgrade their iPhone every year or two, and if they are then they’re probably selling it or trading it in (in which case I assume it’s refurbished and re-used) because it has years left of life in it.
My friends who have Android phones seem to upgrade them almost twice as often as I upgrade my iPhone (about every four years). I’m still using my mid-2015 MacBook Pro for work every day, it’s a little long in the tooth so I will upgrade early next year (assuming there is a new Apple Silicon model around the end of this year). That will be six and a half years of heavy use out if it, which is longer than most laptops I’ve had from other brands have lasted…
It's all tech/consumer products nowadays, everything has a 'short' lifecycle, which I guess means I shouldnt call it short since it's the norm. Relative to 50 years ago, perhaps.
A decade? So that iPhone 4 I purchased around 2011 should be a viable phone up until about now or so?
As a pure phone, sure, but I don't think it'd be able to run much, even if its OS was still being updated.
Right, a decade may be a stretch, but that is what this article is getting at- these phones are being designed NOT to last (at least that is the claim), hence the wastefulness. In another timeline, I can imagine upgradeble phones where people put value on long-lasting durability.