Apple: Difference between revisions

Apple had numerous hardware design issues in the 2010s, often poorly acknowledged by the company and frequently charging exorbitant amounts for repair.  

====Recent attempts to do better====

This includes:

For instance, pricing for parts on the [[Apple Self Service Repair|Self Service Repair]] store is virtually identical to having the part replaced by Apple themselves (including both the price of the part and labor), alternate app installation options are limited to users in the EU, still require developers to be registered with Apple, have them approve the apps and in many cases paying them fees, and the upgradeable SSDs do not use common standards such as M.2 NVME. Unlike standard SSDs, they are also not always swappable between different models and require access to a second Apple computer to provision after installation.

*Full security: Only allow the latest version of macOS, do not allow any other OS.

===Class action lawsuit===

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Apple claims to be environmentally friendly and invests significant amounts of funds in corresponding PR campaigns,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Environment {{!}} Mother Nature |url=https://www.apple.com/environment/mother-nature/ |access-date=2025-09-15 |website=Apple}}</ref> but the reality is not quite as green.

Customers are lead to think that their purchases and frequent replacement of their devices do not have a negative impact on the environment, which is not the case.

Apple shares manufacturing capacity at Chinese/Taiwanese companies FoxConn and Pegatron with other companies. If Apple uses a hypothetical 20% of their manufacturing capacity, and company B, C,  D, and E also each take up 20%, and the company doing the manufacturing runs on 20% renewably generated energy, now Apple as well as companies B, C, D, and E will each publicly claim that their manufacturing runs 100% on renewable energy. In other words, each company will claim the 20% renewable energy was used for ''their'' production.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gieselmann |first=Hartmut |date=2023 |title=Von wegen CO2-neutral – Umweltexperten werfen Apple Greenwashing vor |url=https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2023/23/2326512021124424489 |journal=c't Magazin für Computertechnik [Germany] |volume=2023 |issue=23 |pages=49}}</ref>

…

Apple, like many companies, regularly emphasises how environmentally friendly their packaging is and highlight advancements in this area.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Apple 2030 – We’ve reduced our emissions by over 60% |url=https://www.apple.com/environment/ |access-date=2025-09-15 |website=Apple}}</ref>

Some of the environmental advancements touted by Apple could also be argued to be environmentally beneficial side effects of purely economic decisions aimed at maximizing profit, such as shipping iPhones without chargers.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Dragan |first=Lauren |date=2023-09-12 |title=iPhones No Longer Come With a Charger or Headphones. Here’s What to Get If You Need Them. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/iphone-12-charger-headphones-options/ |access-date=2025-09-15 |website=The New York Times}}</ref>

In 2020, it came to light that Apple had filed a lawsuit against a recycling company, revealing that 100 000 iPhones had been illegitimately shipped to China to be sold there instead of being shredded as had been agreed with Apple.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lovejoy |first=Ben |date=2024-04-24 |title=100,000 iPhones stolen instead of scrapped; Apple accused of shredding usable devices |url=https://9to5mac.com/2024/04/18/100000-iphones-stolen-instead-of-scrapped/ |access-date=2025-09-16 |website=9to5mac}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Carrique |first=Felicitas |date=2020-10-04 |title=Apple sues recycling partner for reselling more than 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Watches it was hired to dismantle |url=https://www.theverge.com/apple/2020/10/4/21499422/apple-sues-recycling-company-reselling-ipods-ipads-watches |access-date=2025-09-16 |website=The Verge}}</ref>  

Apple likely does not want the public to know about these processes, since security seems to be tight around the shredding process:<blockquote>In some cases, Apple hired outside security consultants to escort trucks to its recyclers and monitor the destruction process, which the tech giant could further analyze through data reports charting scrap weights and commodity yields to ensure the input matched the output.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Carr |first=Austin |date=2025-03-17 |title=Apple Drops Lawsuit Against Recycler in Mystery of Missing iPhones |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-03-17/apple-drops-lawsuit-against-recycler-in-mystery-of-missing-iphones |access-date=2025-09-16 |website=Bloomberg News}}</ref></blockquote>Apple later retreated the lawsuit, most likely to avoid having to disclose how many devices they are really shredding.<ref name=":1" />

The first iteration of Apple's iPhone recycling robot, designed for the iPhone 6, was never more than a publicity stunt, according to an article by Bloomberg:<ref name=":0" /><blockquote>Liam’s precision automation, however, proved a dead end. It could handle just one iPhone model, and not that well. If a device had corroded screws or sticky insides, the robot would glitch. A person familiar with the project estimates Liam could run for about 10 minutes without human intervention. Another person says Apple at times fed the robot still-functioning iPhones and, for media demos, cherry-picked cleaner units so it didn’t crash, suggesting Liam was geared more for promotion than scalability.</blockquote>The same article cites industry insider claiming that the new iteration of the robot is only able to recycle as many devices in a year as Apple sells in just 48 hours.<ref name=":0" />