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Apple CEO Tim Cook on creating a clean energy future
- baz00 3y agoStep one - reduce product cycles to every 2 years. I bet no one ever thinks that!
- lnsru 3y agoWhy? The factories manufacture something all the time. The hardware/software design engineers are already hired. Never saw somebody throwing fresh (1,2,3 years old) iPhones away.
- astrange 3y agoI think this would have much less effect than you think it would. People don't actually pay attention to when new phones come out and it's not why they buy new phones.
- beardyw 3y agoWell .. people buy new phones because of advertising (not you and I obviously). If it wasn't true they wouldn't spend so much on it. Those advertising folks want something new to talk about. That's why.
- sumuyuda 3y agoThe yearly updates hardly bring meaningful changes for most people. We don’t have new gaming consoles every year, with iPhones being just as locked down, we could have new ones coming out every few years.
- blitzar 3y agoJust so you know - you dont have to buy a new one every year.
- meibo 3y agoDoesn't mean they're not making them - a lot of people will buy them regardless, or get a new one from their carrier. For Apple devices especially, this is incentivized by the culture around them - a lot of folks just want the newest.
- blitzar 3y agoIf my 3 year old iphone falls off a cliff I shouldnt have to buy a "new" 3 year old iPhone because someone decided that people should only buy 1 every 4 years - that would be a collosal waste. Update the technology on a regular basis as everyone is on a different purchasing cycle.
- badcppdev 3y agoThat is such an interesting perspective. You're saying that buying this years model is an important part of buying 'new' for you. I get it but I've never seen it written down before. I guess cars are the same. If you walked into a dealership and all the models had been released 2 years previous you might feel like you shouldn't be paying full price even though you are getting a brand new car.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> saying that buying this years model is an important part of buying 'new' for you Arbitrarily lengthening release cycles like this is performative. Particularly in high tech. Doubly so in a category that’s reducing its energy and material footprint. Consider if we did this for cars. New model once a decade. This would be horrible for fuel economies. To say nothing about safety and EVs.
- garte 3y agoSome might say yearly release cycles may be a bad incentive to hold back innovations because you have to bring something new every year... So you do _not_ get the latest and greatest, but a carefully planned "older" product with newer stuff in the pipeline for the next 5 years.
- sgt 3y agoOn one hand, having annual release cycles encourages innovation to happen much faster. Sadly, it might also introduce bugs. Having product cycles as 2 years is probably reasonable, but might slow innovation a bit.
- sumuyuda 3y agoI don’t think much innovation happens year to year. At the beginning of iPhone development every other year Apple was releasing an S model of the previous year, which was just improved specs, but no new features. At this point the smartphone has stagnated, with small edge case features being introduced each year.
- lathiat 3y agoWould that really make a noticable difference. Most people don't upgrade every year, but those that do, typically have a still very good condition and usable second hand device to sell or hand down to another friend/co-worker/etc - that same person would otherwise just have to have bought a new device. So on net, no difference. I'm sure there are some people that both upgrade needlessly and just let them collect dust but I can't see it being a significant percentage? (This is coming from someone who had every iPhone from the 3G through to the X on Day 1, though now I am going from a 12 Pro Max to a 15 Pro max :)
- steve1977 3y ago> Most people don't upgrade every year, but those that do, typically have a still very good condition and usable second hand device to sell or hand down to another friend/co-worker/etc I don't upgrade every year and still was able to turn in my previous phone for some hundred bucks so far
- fs111 3y agohttps://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5 https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5 <- 5 year warranty, 8 years of software updates, easy to repair, made from recycled parts etc. etc. This all exists today. We do not have to wait for Cupertino.
- rollcat 3y agoApple product lifetimes are pretty good. iPhone 6s (2015, 8 years) still gets security updates, iPhone 8 (2017, 6 years) only now will stop getting new feature updates. The current trajectory seems to be supporting older models for even longer. If the device is not physically damaged beyond repair, you can just keep on using it.
- tacker2000 3y agoHow about making the phones and laptops easier to repair? Or at least make the batteries easier to swap?
- TheSpiceIsLife 3y agoMake the phones 3mm thicker and put bigger batteries in them.
- andy_ppp 3y agoThey could just do this by making the phone the same thickness as the camera bump... Battery could be 2 days+ I suspect.
- jb1991 3y agoMy iPhone 10 battery already lasts me over 2 days on a charge and I use it all day.
- dewey 3y agoCan you define „use it all day“? I find that claim hard to believe as someone who used a 10 until recently and even got the battery replaced.
- jb1991 3y agoI’ll start using it as soon as I wake up in the morning, and while I do not talk on the phone much, I am constantly using messaging apps, a brokerage app, and reading webpages for many hours throughout the day. I do a full charge every two or three days.
- andy_ppp 3y agoI suppose there is a distribution for processor efficiency, screens, battery size and so on that could put you at an extreme end of the range, being charitable. Still, this seems unlikely given most people's experiences with these devices.
- DiabloD3 3y agoHow about not producing substandard products that need to be replaced frequently, and are tied down by yesteryear user-hostile operating systems?
- steve1977 3y agoI guess the operating system part is subjective, but what do you mean with substandard products that need to be replaced frequently? If anything, the Apple products I had held their value much better than their Wintel counterparts. Writing this on a MacBook Pro from 2017 for example.
- fredoliveira 3y ago> How about not producing substandard products that need to be replaced frequently Let's be honest - in terms of reliability, it is very hard to out-compete Apple. What leads you to say they produce substandard products?
- fodkodrasz 3y agoI think Apple can be fairly critized for lots of things, but not for the quality of their products. (Especiall not for hardware, their software leave more to be desired, while still being top shelf)
- desro 3y agoIt appears as though Apple doesn't consider nuclear energy "clean". They don't mention it in writing anywhere, and from my locale in Chicago, the "Grid Forecast" available in the Home app is very stingy with its determination of "cleaner" energy, despite IL running on at least 58% nuclear energy (as of 2020).
- audunw 3y agoIn terms of global warming, nuclear energy can never get to zero because they’re thermal power plants that directly contribute to warming of the planet. The effect is surprisingly significant. Though, as long as we’re burning fossil fuels, green house gases will dominate enough that I personally think we can consider nuclear energy as clean. I’m just wary of making it the primary solution.
- danw1979 3y agoThe thermal output of any nuclear or fossil fuel power station is not a significant source of global warming.
- nonethewiser 3y agoHow do they warm the planet? They don’t emit CO2 right? So are you saying its just from radiant heat, or what? Seems hard to believe the heat it generates actually warms the planet.
- lozenge 3y agoThe process of refining ore is energy intensive and probably emits co2 in itself.
- eptcyka 3y agoThis is a moot point, if a power plant operates at any significant efficiency, it doesn't matter what the process of generating power is - the generated power will 90% of the time be turned into waste heat anyway.
- dig1 3y agoIs this yet-another Apple scheme to avoid taxes or raise stock prices? Many of these "clean energy projects" are incentivized by the governments through tax benefits, additional investment, or giving land basically for free (and land is investment these days). > This past week Apple announced its first totally carbon-neutral product, its new Apple watch I'd be happy if Apple announced an acid-neutral project (not counting other carcinogenic materials used to produce every single component in that device). Plants (even animals and, to some extent, people) can neutralize carbon compounds, but those acids can't. And let me not start with all the necessary mining and production pollution for batteries and other components no one talks about.
- donkykong22 3y ago[flagged]
- donkykong22 3y ago[flagged]
- Simulacra 3y agoGiven their prowess for design and engineering, and a clean energy future, I'm surprised Apple has not developed an electric car.
- lr1970 3y agoTo start, Tim Cook should pledge user-replaceable batteries in iPhones, iPads, MacBooks. People are replacing the entire gadget just because battery capacity went down contributing to electronic waste. Without addressing this elephant in the room his "clean energy future" is a cheap talk.
- mindcrash 3y agoMaybe a "green future" starts with making Apple products self repairable, without all the current shenanigans.