[samatman]

It's just the Discourse in action.

For whatever reason, AirPods, of all things, have become a go-to example of environmental waste and throwaway culture.

It's bizarre to me. I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip. They also last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, which always die in a few months from work-hardening the copper wires until they break.

My model is this: some people just hate Apple. It's an identity thing, phones are very personal and bring out tribal instincts (blue vs. green speech bubbles!), and AirPods are a visible signifier of "team Apple". So some people just, don't like 'em ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The reasons are downstream of that.

I also think that, since the only consumables are the battery and speaker membranes, it's great that someone wants to replace the batteries when they go bad. Membranes as well! Making consumer goods last longer is virtuous.

[TaylorAlexander]

This seems way too conveniently dismissive of the environmental issue. Apple is the 800 lb gorilla that sets industry expectations. They have been gluing batteries and making repair difficult across their product line for a decade. This leads to higher consumer costs and manufactured goods filling landfills prematurely. As one of the most visible companies in the world making repair difficult, the criticism is well-deserved. The airpods are perhaps the height of unrepairable apple tech.

Sure any valid criticism of Apple is going to invite a pile-on from the apple haters but it does not follow that the original criticism is invalid.

[samatman]

Apple laptops and phones objectively last longer than the competition.

Most of that is software support. Some of it is that they make few models, and sell at a premium, so there is a robust secondary market in used devices. They continue to make and sell batteries for old models, and there are plenty of counterfeits available if you want to risk it.

Apple recently (late last year) replaced the battery on my Mom's iPhone 6, which will turn seven this year. I saw an estimate that half of all iPhones 4 are still in use, mostly in developing nations. That was two years ago, but, still.

As for laptops, same basic principle applies, except I have to give a shoutout to the Thinkpad T series for sheer longevity. You have to want a Thinkpad T, but if you do, they're excellent and durable computers.

But with that one (sterling) exception, Macbooks last about twice as long as anyone else's computers. You can easily confirm this yourself by checking eBay. The butterfly keyboard era may have put an end to that, though, which is a damn shame, but we can hope the return of the scissor keyboard will bring it back.

As for the AirPods. What are we talking about on this page again?

[kllrnohj]

> Apple laptops [..] objectively last longer than the competition.

Massive citation needed. Especially if you're going to talk about software support here since MacOS kills software support for old hardware long before Windows or Linux does.

The comment of "check eBay" isn't very compelling. Check it for what? What's your hypothesis and methodology here? Especially since you're claiming it's objectively longer lasting?

[TaylorAlexander]

> Apple laptops and phones objectively last longer than the competition.

I'm not sure if you've spent much time watching Louis Rossman's youtube channel, but it is full of examples of Apple telling customers a device needs to be replaced when simple repairs are possible. [1][2][3]

Apple worked with US Customs and Border Patrol to seize replacement batteries for laptops that apple will no longer service. [4]

Rossman has a lot of videos so I did not find original sources for the following, but he has also called Apple support about replacing a charging port on a phone. Apple support told him the charging port was soldered to the motherboard and the phone needed to be replaced. But that charging port on that device is attached via a cable and is not soldered to the board. It can be replaced for a few dollars in five minutes.

Rossman also says that apple prevents third party chip manufacturers from selling to repair shops. So Rossman could repair certain macbooks with a $6 chip from (I believe) Intersil, but Apple (being an 800lb gorilla) has asked Intersil not to sell those chips to anyone else. So apple won't replace that chip on your motherboard but they also won't let anyone else do it.

It's great that apple will replace batteries, but I seem to recall there was significant consumer (or government?) pressure to offer those replacements. And I would be curious if they do that worldwide or only where legally required.

But watching Rossman's youtube channel, it is clear that repair is about much more than batteries. It's good that their products are long lasting, but at some point they will all eventually break. Millions of apple products must break each year. Apple could help extend the lives of those products, saving customers money and cutting down on waste. Instead, they seem eager to blame every problem on water damage and quote $1200 for repairs which could be done for a few dollars. (the first three video links make that clear)

I don't see the point in defending Apple here. I am sure other companies are bad too, but Apple is the industry leader and their failure to embrace repair sets expectations across the board. If it was consumer pressure that led to their battery replacement program, we may be able to apply similar pressures for right to repair. But only if we're willing to acknowledge the problems with their behavior and push back against them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1A9y4S60kg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7RXJP4mxCc

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVL65qwBGnw

[samatman]

"Apple could do a lot better" isn't incompatible with "everyone else is even worse".

Everything you've objected to here falls under right to repair, which I support. I understand why Apple would want to exert control over the parts which go into their devices, because flaky secondary-market parts which fail will be blamed on Apple, not the fly-by-night chop shop which put them in; but I don't find it compelling and think the entire industry should be forced to allow it.

This is what a reply looks like, by the way. What you did wasn't so much a reply as using my post as a launch-point for your own rant.

In particular, not a word of what you said went to refute or even address the quoted part of my post. There's no if by the way: Apple has been replacing batteries since they popped out of devices, at no point has that service not been available, ever. Instead of looking this up, you used your own mental ambiguity to say a bunch of things which implied they're worse than they are. That's lazy.

[dann0]

I support RTR. I find Rossman annoying and abrasive, but he makes good points.

However, we are never going to live in a world of repaired devices. Feature development and performance increases happen too quickly.

Most people buy new phones every two years and upgrade not because the device isn't working or its become unusuable.

The better path, the one that Apple is pursuing, is improving the reclaim-ability of materials in devices.

I'd rather trade my old laptop in and buy a new one that has been made from the reclaimed materials of my old laptop, than have my older, slower, less capable one repaired.

[TaylorAlexander]

> However, we are never going to live in a world of repaired devices.

This is not a binary thing. Devices are repaired all the time. For example cracked screens are one thing that people still repair. We already live in a world with repaired devices. The question is whether or not we should allow big companies that profit from new device sales to lie to customers and interfere with third party repair.

> Most people buy new phones every two years

I would suspect that "most people" do not. I did that when I was 24 and obsessed with having the latest tech. Now my phone is 5 years old and fine. Most people in the USA for example do not earn enough money to buy a new phone every two years. Those folks would love to be able to repair things and use them a bit longer.

> The better path, the one that Apple is pursuing, is improving the reclaim-ability of materials in devices.

This is not an either/or choice. Remember the phrase is "reduce, reuse, recycle". Recycling is fine, but re-using uses less resources and so should be a component of a real sustainability program.

[dehrmann]

> This leads to higher consumer costs and manufactured goods filling landfills prematurely.

Citation needed. Apple claims, and I'm fine with taking it with a grain of salt, that because batteries aren't replaceable like old Nokia phones, they can make the battery larger, possibly reducing consumer costs and how often batteries are changed. It's not just Apple, either. Consumers seem to not care.

[TaylorAlexander]

It seems obvious to me that this is true at least with laptops. And whatever costs are saved by a 5% larger battery must surely be offset by the higher costs of replacement when the battery ultimately dies?

I don't know it's so clear to me that this is true that I've not felt the need to research it. By all means if you have sources to the contrary I'd be happy to read them.

To me, we could save significant environmental waste if everything we manufactured was made to be repaired. I designed several pairs of 3D printed headphones [1] which are now the only headphones I wear, and the idea that I can replace any part if it breaks seems significant to me.

[1] https://github.com/tlalexander/reboot-headphones

[wyre]

It takes a long time for modern batteries to get to a point of unusability and replacement. Yes, Apple and others want consumers to purchase the new product and that is often the case because of the fast advancement of technology. This is worse with android phones because the support cycle is much shorter.

I often drop my phone and it’s great not having to worry about my phone’s battery falling out making me lose my data.

I’m glad there is a small section of the market with brands like Fairphone and Lenovo still offering replaceable batteries because it is very important to some consumers, but most people dont care or think about it at all.

[TaylorAlexander]

> most people dont care or think about it at all

This is orthogonal to the question of whether or not the practice is environmentally friendly. Most people have been buying gasoline for 50 years but that’s also causing environmental problems. All of these manufactured devices take a lot of resources to create. Often “unusability” means the operating system has outgrown the hardware, but we can easily imagine Apple allowing third party operating systems on their unsupported phone and tablet devices. This would extend the life of the hardware, significantly reduced waste, and lower people’s cost of living. But even when Apple devices can be fixed for free the company will quote exorbitant repair prices and suggest the customer replace the device. (See links below which I also shared in another comment)

From this we can see that Apple is not making the effort to keep old devices functional and they will mislead customers about it to sell them a new device. This leads to hardware waste and higher costs for consumers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1A9y4S60kg [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7RXJP4mxCc

[wyre]

Why is it always about Apple being so bad? Sure, I’ll agree their market share and ecosystem let’s them take advantage of their customers, but Apple is one of the few companies where normies are still comfortably using 5+ year old phones and computers. I’ve heard MacBooks make great Linux machines, too. They are far above the curve for longevity of devices.

If AirPods are making people lose sleep because they aren’t environmentally friendly, then let me introduce you to PuffBars or any of those disposable nicotine vapes that aren’t rechargeable or refillable and often lose all battery life before juice. Or simply the entire lithium lifecycle is incredibly wasteful regardless of the product it is in.

I want to point out EVs aren’t going to last significantly longer than a MacBook will and contain much more lithium that needs to be dealt with.

I get that it’s fun or hip to be anti-Apple, and I’ll agree that they could be better from an environmental standpoint, but they are doing a lot better than most and there are a lot more environmental travesties occurring than the small batteries in AirPods.

[dann0]

I love the idea that you have designed and made your own headphones. I'm also glad that these work for you.

However, your argument about reducing environmental waste is flawed. AirPod, in total, weigh less and use far less plastic than your design.

Given the scale of production, the raw material to final product path will be short and relatively low impact. Your process involves much more packaging, transport and middle-man costs.

Feature set wise, your design is also significantly less.

I'm very supportive of people making product that is better suited to them, but the idea of this approach being somehow less wasteful is completely ridiculous.

[TaylorAlexander]

Because the airpod is a small device, this is true. However in general I believe open source hardware and infinitely repairable devices across the board would lead to less waste than proprietary technology with restricted repair.

My vision is not that one person designs open source headphones. My vision is that the primary suppliers of consumer products make their products open source. That would be a very different world, but I argue that it would be one with significantly less material waste.

In such a world, headphones would be both well designed and infinitely repairable.

By the way I have a new design that is more attractive. https://twitter.com/TLAlexander/status/1403968653406597122

[slg]

You can't just blame this on "the Discourse" or Apple haters. I have owned countless devices with batteries over my life. None has made me as acutely aware of its battery degrading as Airpods. Eventually I couldn't even make it through a full workout or work call on a single charge. They basically became worthless through nothing but normal usage. There was no visible physical damage. I treated them exactly how I was supposed to treat them according to Apple and still only got 2-3 years out of them. That is frustrating. It also is unlike many other Apple products as lots of people are perfectly satisfied with their 5+ year old Macbooks and iPhones.

[crazygringo]

I don't own anything powered by li-ion where the battery lasts more than 2-3 years.

Both my MacBook and iPhones I've had the battery swapped after not being able to hold a charge for more than ~25% of original after 2-3 years. I'm still satisfied, but I absolutely had to get the battery swapped. Twice in one case.

AirPods are no worse in this regard. After all, why would they be -- li-ion chemistry is the same.

[salamandersauce]

Seriously? Nothing? I have a Game Boy SP with it's original battery. Still has a few hours runtime. Not as good as new but it's still usable. My Vita still holds a few hours too and it's almost 10 years old at this point. I've heard of people's airpods not holding any charge after a year or two. Mine still work but they are very degraded and can't handle a 1 hour phone call anymore.

[slg]

>Both my MacBook and iPhones I've had the battery swapped after not being able to hold a charge for more than ~25% of original after 2-3 years.

I have never experienced this with the laptops or phones I have owned. I am still rocking an iPhone X that is almost 4 years old and I just checked the battery health and it shows max capacity at 86%. That matches with my expectations as the degradation is barely noticeable and I still have no problem making it through an average day on a single charge.

Are you by chance leaving these devices charging for extended periods of time? That appears to be one of the primary problems with Airpods. The design choice of making the carrying case a charging case means that the individual Airpods spend almost all of their life at 100% charge. That degrades the battery quicker than normal usage. If you treat your laptop as a desktop and have it plugged in 24/7, you are doing a lot of unnecessary harm to your battery which might explain what you are experiencing.

[alisonkisk]

The same degradation happens to my clothing, food, and wired headphones.

[slg]

I am guessing your are just trolling by throwing food into that list, but I have had clothes and wired headphones last for over a decade with proper care. There is no way to properly care for Airpods that would extend the life of their batteries past a few years.

[an_opabinia]

> last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, which always die in a few months from work-hardening the copper wires until they break

Hmm...

> It's just the Discourse in action... I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip

It's interesting to reduce environmentalism to "joy per unit size * time." To its credit, if you do the accounting right, a lot of environmentally really bad things, like gasoline and meat, have very poor joy per (size time), while being a tourist in a conserved rainforest has very high joy per size time.

But it's still flawed. Like Bitcoin has high joy per unit size and time, it turns cheaper electricity into more money you can spend on jetskis. No intellectually honest person claims that is environmentally friendly. You've chosen a framework that's idiosyncratically very friendly to electronics and things nerds are into, that I'm not sure would even make sense to people in almost any time prior to 1970. They by and large lived without the joys of electronics and did nothing to address the environmental disaster they're dying too soon to experience. Surely you see the same thing happening now, and right to repair is just one of many fronts of forward-thinking people trying to right those wrongs.

I'm not advocating for "end to end emissions" as the framework either, because what you're saying people hate on Apple for is almost always true about Tesla. People complaining about electric cars having higher emissions are both wrong and saying that stuff in bad faith.

But to go on social media and complain about the "Discourse" you are participating in is definitely intellectually dishonest. AirPods are shitty in their own unique way, and I'm not sure if any intellectual is seriously advocating, in their raw quoted form as opposed to a headline, that the way that they are shitty is exclusively your reductive perspective on "environmentally friendly."

[samatman]

You misread me, my case was joy * time / embodied energy.

How else should we justify the use of energy except through such means? Subjectively I mean, I wouldn't suggest actually quantifying it.

I don't burn energy in the winter because I like to spend money, I do it because there's an interior temperature below which I'm miserable. Once I've achieved that homeostasis, the only think left to me is to do it with as little energy as possible.

> AirPods are shitty in their own unique way

That's just like, your opinion, man.

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, I will never reply to you again.

[an_opabinia]

I own AirPods, I like them, but it sucks that they die when their battery dies, and they have to be thrown away for pretty much no good reason - just because that's how Apple designed it, and it could have many design priorities, and one of those priorities is to not throw nice shit away after two years.

In the spirit of advancing curiosity, it was interesting to just see, is it possible to reduce environmentalism to something like "joy * time / embodied energy"? Bitcoin is mined because a bitcoin is worth more than the electricity used to mine it, so if your joy * time is "making money quickly" - which it is for a lot of people! - it seems really attractive to mine bitcoin but it isn't environmentally friendly.

[alisonkisk]

The point is that the environmental focus on airpods is irrational. look at everything in your trash can this week.

If you are upset that they are too expensive, don't buy them. The price isn't going to waste; it has an enormous profit margin over the BoM. (a lot, perhaps most, of the true cost is fixed overhead, so buying more airpods makes them more efficient!)

[kllrnohj]

> look at everything in your trash can this week.

My trash can almost never has electronic waste in it? It seems really odd that you're seemingly claiming that it's common for people to regularly throw away ewaste to such a degree that airpods are a rounding error.

There's more to airpods than plastic after all.

[an_opabinia]

> look at everything in your trash can this week.

You’re just saying, “if it’s small it’s okay” again. It’s not that reductive. I agree that plastic is bad. I also think throwing away AirPods is bad, for a different reason than plastic is bad, but really, are they the same reason? It’s so much more interesting when it’s not as reductive as “small things are okay to throw away” or whatever like, really simplistic thought is going on here.