Ars OpenForum

OrangeCream said:

Hold on.

Say you have a repairable Mac.

What do you do with the old RAM, SSD, power supply, CPU, GPU, case fans, WiFi module, motherboard, and HSF when they all get replaced or upgraded?

Fundamentally the problem is the same, right? With Apple’s current setup all of them get replaced all at once while in a repairable setup they get replaced one at a time over several years.

In the end they both need to be recycled, right? The key difference is that with Apple the CPU, GPU, and RAM are one unit 1/100th the size of separate CPU, GPU, and RAM, and the resulting HSF is also 1/10th the size of separate CPU/GPU/RAM.

I understand that you can increase longevity of a system if pieces could be replaced individually, but the best I can envision is SSD on a daughtercard, CPU, GPU, and RAM on a separate daughtercard, and WiFi, eth, and USB on a third, all wired together using some kind of PCIe bus.

Click to expand...

Except that those components probably still work and can be upcycled to poorer countries that can actually still use them unlike Apple's which literally get ground down and recycled.

Reduce > Reuse > Recycle

Apple is trying to be "environmentally friendly the worst fucking way and basically just paying lip service lol.

Not sure how you're getting the chips are 1/100 the size of others, since other than the SOC, they use the same DRAM chips as everyone else, the same NAND flash memory as everyone else, and etc... sure, you're missing the small extra PCB that other products attach it to, but the ability to actually reuse it and extend it's life is way better than having to recycle something and getting a only portion of it back.

Not sure how It's so hard to envisioning something that literally exists already... on pretty much every other design other than Apple's... Socketable RAM, SSD, WIFI, and etc... those have even been the standard before Apple moved to the M1 and integrated everything...

Unlike Apple, there's actually processes that other companies tries to actually repair and resell/reuse those.

Apple's design is the worst fucking thing environmentally since literally every other PC can be upcycled... and you even see it too in the US. Just look at all the upcycled "gaming" productivity dell/HP/etc systems being put on ebay and other retail stores...

They're all old ass PCs, some are even 10 years old and still functioning fine and usable in the modern world.

Not even gonna go into the entire mess of Apple basically not selling parts and only allowing repairs to be EXTREMELY expensive to try to coerce customers to buy a new device rather than to fix it and now every major manufacturer is following their example lol.