2) Apple makes a big stink about their carbon footprint and sustainability. It is on every product page. But Apple products are not very sustainable when you consider beyond materials. Remember it is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" (there's 3 arrows on the recycle symbol for a reason!), and I'm concerned that a lot of the focus for green stuff has shifted to only the last R. They're big fighters against the Right To Repair, meaning, they are against Reduce. They also really lock down the OS (especially on iPhones) meaning it is difficult to Reuse.
I am a bit of a hypocrite, as I'm now mostly on Apple (Air for laptop, switched to iPhone this month, but main machine is Linux). I switched because privacy, but I'm also mad about this loss (I felt that they have won, especially with overcharging...): But my old laptops? They become servers or machines I give to others. My old phones? Same thing. Your old phone is probably more powerful than a raspberry pi and comes with a battery backup, microphone, camera, and other things you might want. This is the __Reuse__ part of all of this.
Here's the thing Apple:
- If you want to "go green" you need the other R's. Reduce and Reuse matter MORE than recycling!
- If you want better products, stop blocking power users
You were the first trillion dollar company, the first 2 trillion dollar company, and the first 3 trillion dollar company. But you're losing your place. It's time to think different.
Small companies like Framework and Fairphone proved that you can make very repairable and reusable laptops and phones without sacrificing much in the way of form factor (since this used to be the biggest excuse). I think it's safe to say big manufacturers won't follow suit unless forced by legislation.
> They just need to have a good enough reputation to make sure environmentally-conscious people don't boycott their products.
Change the tides and they follow. It isn't futile because as you said, they need enough reputation. They don't want the negative effect on their bottom line. So maybe instead of "correcting" me, push it too. They seem to benefit more from your comment than we do, despite you seeming to agree with the sentiment.
I wonder how much it would cost to have someone replace the BGA NAND chips in my Macbook. Apple charges $6-800 for a 2TB upgrade for a Macbook (depending on whether it's a 250 or 500GB drive originally). Someone would have to be able to do it for like $2-300 for it to be a feasible upgrade, especially considering that my warranty would be void. I assume there are people overseas who could do it cheaply. I assume it would be fairly quick for someone who knows what they are doing.
What I'm immediately looking forward to is someone making after market flash modules for the M4 mini, which uses a proprietary card format similar (but not compatible) with the Mac Studio (which does have after market cards available now).
They should absolutely not reuse the slot type for incompatible products.
They should make one though, their storage offerings are lame.
How much is too much to upgrade a system vs replacing it and paying more apple tax?
Better ROI making them run linux in a less-needy desktop environment than trying to keep them usable as a mac with macos.
I remember when this came out, but more recently I recall finding something indicating that this was either untrue or pointless-- for example, while the ICs can be changed out, either the SoC or board knows what SKU it is due to an e-fuse or config locked into a cryptographically-signed firmware package, and refuses to address a different amount of RAM. I can't find that reference, however.
The fixed RAM is annoying, but is done to make the product better — the packaging allows the RAM to be significantly faster than otherwise. It’s a major reason why the M-series CPU and GPU performs so well.
It’s the same reason why you don’t see slotted RAM on GPUs. The performance penalty would be great enough that nobody would buy them.