Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday April 23 2017, @10:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the force-them-to-buy-new dept.

From Motherboard (Vice.com),

Documents obtained by Motherboard: "No reuse. No parts harvesting. No resale."

Apple released its Environmental Responsibility Report Wednesday, an annual grandstanding effort that the company uses to position itself as a progressive, environmentally friendly company. Behind the scenes, though, the company undermines attempts to prolong the lifespan of its products.

Apple's new moonshot plan is to make iPhones and computers entirely out of recycled materials by putting pressure on the recycling industry to innovate. But documents obtained by Motherboard using Freedom of Information requests show that Apple's current practices prevent recyclers from doing the most environmentally friendly thing they could do: Salvage phones and computers from the scrap heap.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday April 24 2017, @04:32AM (2 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Monday April 24 2017, @04:32AM (#498652) Journal

    I am an ardent re-user of electronics. Have been since I was a little kid, gleefully removing vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitors, sockets, and transformers out of old electronic things the neighbors tossed into the trash. I built all sorts of stuff out of these "free" parts. It took a helluva lotta time, but I got a helluva lot of education doing so.

    Electronic "kits" were expensive. Mine were free ( as in $$$, definitely not time ). And I got the education of learning to design with what I had.

    I had every electronic gizmo of my day a kid could want. Hi-Fi... Stereo... guitar amps. Everything. All home-made. I did not even want the store stuff. Mine worked exactly how I wanted it to work.

    These days, there is very little stuff I can recover from modern electronics. Too special purpose. And not designed to be messed with. Way too tiny for my hands to work on.

    About the only things I could salvage from a modern computer is its power supply, some LED's, a fan/heatsink, disk drives, memory, some wire, and maybe a speaker.

    They even started making the cases such that they were damned useless to build something else into. They got all "arty", and looked like someone left 'em out in the hot sun, and were so curvy that they were useless for stacking.

    A cellphone... nothing. Its all so special purpose that unless you have the design notes on that run of silicon... lots of wasted time.

    It wasn't that long ago I had a real disappointing discussion with what was my church leaders over our sound system. They had an old one. Very serviceable - and I knew I could keep that thing going indefinitely. It was a top-of-the-line system, and made to last. They wanted to throw it out and replace it with something I was completely helpless if the thing broke. All computer controlled. Special purpose parts.

    I knew I was only one good-sized inductive powerline kickback from having absolutely no sound over what the pastor could bellow out in the church. But how does one explain something like this to people with leadership and faith mentalities? The old system had multiple analog amplifiers, as well as redundant backups. The new one had lotsa panels and all sorts of flashy displays, and could even be controlled over the internet. But how long would it take me to debug and get something serviceable running in time for church services? My cries were ignored. I got a whole different impression about what it was to be a church member. Seems like I had insufficient faith to believe that kneeling in front of a broken amplifier with steepled hands and bowed head would result in a fixed amplifier. I knew it was time we parted ways.

    My guess is God must have agreed with me. The church building as I type this now has for-rent signs all over it. After having someone else come in ( a paid job, no less. I was doing it out of a love for the church - for free - as I am older, unemployed, and have very little to tithe ) and install a very expensive sound system. Geez.....

    I feel quite comfortable in the older stuff I have, and can maintain.

    Why people toss good stuff for the new, shiny is beyond me.

    My guess is they will value stuff for what it can do only after they have to make do with a new,shiny that doesn't work, and no way to fix it.

    If its not made to be repairable, I typically don't want it. I did make exception for a cellphone. Like I do a light bulb - ( you know, those fluorescent light bulb inverters have a lot of useful parts in 'em!!! I take every one I get my hands on, saw it open, remove the inverter, then trash the rest ).

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @07:59AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @07:59AM (#498695)

    Yeah.

    ...and these days if you want to sell some electronics that you designed, you need to be prepared to build them by the thousands--and if you aren't, there's somebody who will dupe your idea and he'll make them in quantity and eat your lunch.

    ...and with all the USAian supply lines gone (because the manufacturers are gone), the guys on the other side of the Pacific have had the edge for years.
    It's been a losing game for quite a while.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday April 24 2017, @08:50AM

      by anubi (2828) on Monday April 24 2017, @08:50AM (#498719) Journal

      Quite right. If I am lucky, at least I kinds "set the standard" for the interface design.

      I have come to the conclusion a long time ago there was no way for me to build stuff in quantity profitably.

      But I can build really neat stuff. My plan so far is I have been working on a specialized Arduino-like configuration built on the Arduino system. With it, I can build all sorts of simple controllers. Interface boards are the main thing with me. And they all have to play together like tinker-toys.

      Currently, I am building a demo set which will use the diesel van I just bought. It needs its systems upgraded to this century. I need one of these, so by golly, this is what I had trained years in aerospace to do. Do it!

      As I type this, I am designing the SMPS power supply for it to isolate the system power from vehicle power, as vehicle power can be really nasty with voltage spikes resulting from inductive things like air-conditioning clutches, starter motors, and alternator load-dumps. Under no circumstances should those spikes be able to make it across to the system's power rails. Or should any failure of the power supply components result in vehicle power going directly to the system.

      Other boards control relays and solenoids. While yet other boards read sensors and current monitors. If I command a solenoid on the transmission to engage, I want a current sensor acknowledging the expected current draw, as erroneously engaging solenoids on a live transmission in a moving vehicle can have disastrous results.

      When I finish the designs, I will release the whole thing open source. Probably first through GitHub, FarmHack, and the Diesel truck forums.

      This can only appeal to Arduino buffs or similar though, as one MUST have a firm hold on microcontroller programming techniques to use it, though. If you want the thing running for your machine out of the box, best buy a MegaSquirt or Baumann engineering box. I am not in that business.

      What I am designing is the hardware that should be flexible enough to drive darned near anything. Its up to the user to know how to program it.

      If anyone out of China wants to replicate this, I would appreciate it if we worked together so as to avoid putting erroneous crap out there and ruining my design concepts.

      I have placed a helluva lotta thought effort in the fundamental architecture of the interface communication methods, so I don't run out of I/O.

      But yet keeping it all extremely simple.

      Like music artists, I may never see a cent of "record sales". That's just the way it is. I can't own a fire. No one can. If its good, I am quite sure the Chinese will replicate it, just as good music gets uploaded to YouTube.

      Trying to chase down copyright violation is probably about as productive as trying to own a gust of wind.

      I hope to make any money by custom work, custom designs, or teaching.

      I believe a fellow Soylentil here, mcgrew, has a very similar approach.

      This is something I am going to do, whether I get paid or not.

      The main reason I am not doing this for someone else as an employee is I am an old fart and not all that good at ass-kissing and office politics required to maintain corporate employment. If I am going to work in a company, I need to work for the top guy, not his pretty-boy suit-guy who is afraid I am after his job.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]