[agentultra]

I had young kids. I took my laptop to conferences and events. Performances.

Things happen in these circumstances. Drinks spill. Laptops fall from heights. Cords get pulled.

You know what happens when a MBP encounters a liquid? It depends. But one thing almost every device will have in common in such an encounter: they cannot be repaired.

You have to replace the entire mainboard. And the cost is enough that you may as well buy a new one. The rest ends up in an unlicensed dump somewhere in the global south where a kid is going to get exposed to cancer causing chemicals when they drag it out and bring it to some back alley disassembly shop.

The cost for a laptop is pretty high. Building them to be bench repairable and upgradeable help extend their useful life. As the article points out the best we can do is use them for as long as possible.

[kevinh456]

This is part of why Apple is pushing trade in when you buy a new device. They recycle it.

[agentultra]

They claim to. I would love to read an independent audit of their recycling process. I suspect the vast majority of devices they extract the battery, the screen if it’s viable, and the rest ends up in a dump. “Recycled,” in a sense but not really.