[bitsoda]

So they only support Apple Pencil Gen 1, but remove the Lightning port which it requires for charging, so they sell you a dongle, but the environment is important to Apple. Okay.

What's the point of the flat edges if you're not going to support the Apple Pencil Gen 2? I get that a company like Apple deals in massive scale, but this seems so off-putting as a consumer. Just merge the iPad Air and iPad lines already, they're doing some sad technical gymnastics trying to differentiate the lines.

[lm28469]

> but the environment is important to Apple

Nobody even themselves believe that, it's 100% marketing, they wouldn't be shitting ten new devices with welded batteries per year if they cared

[VLM]

Its a very 1980s Soviet Union vibe. Sure, we have to say we believe all this stuff that nobody believes anymore, yeah.

[lm28469]

In a way it is, but capitalism has been way more successful than the soviet's Pravda could have dreamed of

[andrekandre]

in terms of "true believers" or propaganda?

[ndmdlspsu]

In terms of being a functional system which allows for political dissent, unlike the Soviet Union and every other communist country

The difference between capitalism and communism is that communism requires everyone to believe in it and participate in it or corruption takes over, but capitalism works whether you believe in it or not.

There's still corruption in capitalist societies, but sometimes the ability to have political dissent keeps the corruption from completely destroying the system. In communist countries the control of the Party is more like a feature than a bug..

[lm28469]

You know you can criticize the monstrosity capitalism became without begin a communist right ?

There are a lot of alternatives between full blown consumerism and eating potatoes in a sad looking brutalist apartment complex.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

You know it bullshit when the page is a mile long

https://www.apple.com/environment/

[jjtheblunt]

Are you ignoring the effort to clear their supply chain and own engineering of all sorts of chemicals known to be toxic during manufacture, use, and recycling/disposal?

It's been completed over 10 years ago easily.

[lm28469]

The process is inherently a waste of resource, you can make it as efficient as you want, selling airpods with glued batteries, 200 millions phones per year, pushing people to continuously upgrade, &c. is an unsustainable waste

This is like the aviation industry, rolls royce making their engine 5% more efficient over a decade is nice, if in the meantime we multiplied the number of flights by 30 we're still fucked

So yes apple removed some plastic wraps and uses a bit of recycled aluminum, its all marketing, carbon neutrality isn't a thing, green capitalism isn't a thing, it's a feel good marketing slogan for 30 years old techbros buying a new apple watch every 9 months

[scarface74]

Have you looked at the typical AirPod and how much of is actually the battery?

[lm28469]

Well you're making my point... when the tiny ass battery inevitably fails after being cycled 1-3 times per day every day you have to get rid of the whole otherwise perfectly fine working product because no one can swap the battery in an economically viable way

How efficient is that ? You could have a screw in battery taking the same amount of space and allowing a basically unlimited life, but I guess I'm not a "genius™"

Just so you know this is how e waste is "recycled":

https://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electronic-was...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...

https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/t...

[scarface74]

And the alternative is a larger battery and a heavier headphone for something that goes directly in your ear.

[scarface74]

If only Apple offered a service to replace just the battery…

[layer8]

My guess is:

- They want to standardize on the flat-edge design for aesthetic/consistency/synergy/slightly-more-usable-volume reasons. The entry-level iPad was the last remaining iPhone/iPad with non-flat edges.

- Pencil 2 charging conflicts with a landscape camera. (This also explains why the new iPad Pros have kept the portrait camera.) They chose the landscape camera, and the missing Pencil 2 support provides an additional differentiator for the iPad Air.

- They have to migrate to USB-C before the end of 2023 due to EU regulations, and the next update of the entry-level iPad may not happen before 18 months from now.

It probably all makes sense from Apple’s perspective, even though the result is confusing and irritating for consumers.

[gpt5]

This is an overly negative comment for what is a positive move. Supporting USB-C instead of lightning is good, and it is a reasonable cost to have older accessories face backwards compatibility issues.

[gregoriol]

They could have support Pencil 2, which is being sold quite some time now... the point is that is doesn't make much sense to only support Pencil 1.

[gpt5]

The Pencil 2 uses a different technology, with different hardware costs. According to your logic, they should have either not switched to USB-C because a niche accessory has not switched yet, or alternatively, incurred the higher costs and raise price for the consumers (again, for that niche accessory).

Why does it seem so weird that they chose to switch to USB-C while using the adapter as a non-ideal stop-gap solution for that niche use case? It seems like a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.