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Apple sues recycler for allegedly reselling 100,000 devices it was hired to scrap
Apple alleges in a lawsuit that Geep Canada sold approximately 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches, which the recycler had received to be stripped down and recycled.
Apple has long been working to increase how much it recycles, and even as it attempts to move more of that process in house, it still continues to rely on certain partner companies. Since 2014, that's included Geep Canada, the electronics recycling firm which Apple is reportedly now suing.
According to The Logic, Apple estimates that Geep Canada stole around 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches that it had been hired to recycle.
Geep does not deny the thefts, but has filed a counter suit claiming that they were conducted by three "rogue" employees without the knowledge of the company. Apple argues that these employees were in fact senior management at the firm.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:05PM (6 children)
"sold approximately 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches,"
Which suggests these were still working and good enough to sell?! Or is there something else going on here?
Of course Apple just wants to make everyone buy all new stuff for more $$$, and everyone should hate them for being so wasteful.
Sorry, "recycling" is not free. A new item does not magically appear when an old item is "recycled". It uses power and materials to break something down and make something new.
One should always re-use something until it can not be re-used by anyone any more. Once it can't be re-used, then yes "recycle" to keep bad shit out of land fills and reclaim materials. To do otherwise is wasteful. Why does apple hate the planet?
(Score: 3, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:07PM
You overestimate the Apple-wannabes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:25PM (1 child)
As long as the partner is not labeling them as if they were new, refurbishment is one of the best, most efficient kinds of recycling, and Apple is demanding more waste so they can make more money.
Which undercuts whatever PR message having a recyclying program is supposed to broadcast so completely I cannot fathom a worse failure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Tuesday October 06 2020, @10:09PM
Maybe when Apple found out that this merchandise was sold instead of recycled, they had to recalculate their "percent recycled" metric which then came out lower than expected and made some management-type look bad. LOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:29PM (2 children)
It likely is that simple. Since according to TFA a lot of phones sent for destruction were actually activated on cell carrier networks, that almost certainly means they either worked or were easily repaired.
Now we can quite reasonbly say Apple is "right" here: they presumably hired Geep to destroy the phones and that Geep failed to provide the agreed-upon service as the phones were not destroyed.
But this tells you a lot about Apple's values. Apple would literally prefer to destroy perfectly working phones so that people have no choice but to buy a brand new one ...
... because it makes them bucketloads of money.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Tuesday October 06 2020, @08:21PM
They were repairable. Someone did a board level repair to replace a broken chip.
Apple wants no repaired product, ever. Apple also wants virtue signalling for being 'green'. So Apple outsources destruction of parts to a company labeled 'recycle' but contractually obligates them to destroy/shred everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @09:55PM
I disagree. They've got millions of used phones on their hands. The easiest way to take care of that is to dispose of them. If the 3rd party was paid to disassemble and recycle them, then that's what they should have done. If they wanted to repair/resell them, they should have worked that deal with Apple as it would have most likely changed the financial arrangement they had with them (presumably Apple would have paid them less since they were making money on the resale).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:07PM (6 children)
The three R's are in that order for a reason. Where possible, re-use is a better option than recycling. I applaud those rogue employees for that reason (although I would not be surprised if their motives were financial rather than environmental).
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:23PM (3 children)
Which would still only make them as bad as Apple is behaving.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Tuesday October 06 2020, @06:54PM (2 children)
Why? Aside from breaking the contract (which is dubious to me to being with), is there something wrong with dumpster diving that I'm missing?
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday October 07 2020, @02:38AM (1 child)
Liability (side note: I find that that's the answer to a lot of questions). Imagine if 10% of the iPhones out there would explode randomly because they were improperly refurbished and resold. Or if their security were compromised because some compromised component was used during the repair. And so on. Even if Apple demonstrates they aren't at fault, the net legal costs of fighting a class action would probably be higher than them suing right now (since they can recover the legal fees+damages).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday October 07 2020, @03:25AM
That doesn't explain why it makes dumpster divers as bad as Apple, but it's an important point that explains some of the craziness of Apple's behavior.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @04:33PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:18PM
Given that Apple routinely declares devices irreparable that end up being repaired good as new by a third party for about $100 (in spite of Apple's efforts to make replacement parts scarce), I'm not so sure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:24PM (20 children)
As much dislike as I have for Apple, I think I mostly side with Apple on this.
Apple wants to protect its brand. Control quality of products sold using their name.
The recycler clearly violated their agreement.
On the flip side, I fault Apple for not making products more serviceable and repairable and for their monopolist mindset inspired from wanting to be Microsoft back in the 90's.
The fact that if I wanted to develop for Apple (which I do not any more) I would have to pay Apple every step of the way, does not exactly make me a fan.
On Android, I can download development tools, for free. And they run on any platform! I can build my app without anyone's permission. I can install the app onto my own and my friend's phones without Google's permission. And especially without having to PAY for the PRIVILEGE of contributing my development efforts to Apple. And then to add injury to insult, that Apple can ban my app for no particular reason, and then introduce their own app which is loosely a clone of mine. What a way to welcome developers.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:48PM (17 children)
Ah the many dichotomies in life. I'm with you 100%. I'm not a fan of Apple's branding and marketing ways and means, but if I had to, I can explain / defend (mansplain?) Apple's stance of wanting to control the entirety of their product image, quality, reliability, culture, etc. I don't agree with their methods, such as you the developer having to pay Apple for the privilege. But one could argue that it's a bit of insurance that developers won't just slap spaghetti-code together and wish it well. So the whole thing becomes a fanboi club in a binary way. You're either very vested in all things Apple, or you're not. I know there are shades of gray in between, but it's a low valley between two mountains.
Which for some unknown reason reminds me of something I caught in the news- Pamela Anderson wants Julian Assange to be pardoned. Not sure how I made that connection...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:06PM (16 children)
A year or two ago I fully switched from Windows 10 to Mac and just wanted to say I can vouch for this statement. If you are aligned to Apple's views on how computers should work it is excellent. If your needs step outside of whatever Apple has anticipated, well fuck you "Do it right wayy!!1one!" I have to get a new IDE, for example, because the one I was using is not supported on the latest OS. (I *think* this is because the app developer never went past 32-bit but it's not like Apple tells you these things.) But if you do you'll grow addicted to having "solutions to problems" instead of just 'features'. One example, if you run multiple displays and have Safari (Apple's web browser) windows on them you can have what are effectively 'tab instances'. Meaning the site is only loaded once but if you click on its tab instance in the other window it transfers over to it. Less energy/memory usage, better continuity. It's not a mode you put it in, you just 'pin it' and it does it automatically. It makes intuitive sense... but in keeping with my remark about Apple arrogance they'll flip you the bird if you don't want it to work that way.
Having said all that I would NOT recommend people around here switch like I did unless they've done their research, I mean the expense alone is likely overkill. I didn't leave so much because Apple is better but because MS chased me away. Note to OS developers: "*I* control when my machine reboots. End of story. No more debate. Fuck you if you don't agree."
It's also not all sunshine and roses. While software compatibility is NOT a problem I've had (I'm still stunned by this...) Apple is arrogant and can shift directions right out from under you. I do STRONGLY recommend treating something like this as "best tool for the job" and not "I like my sports team".
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:26PM (4 children)
Which is why I like GNU/Linux (to distinguish it from Android/Linux).
If one distro decides to screw me over, there's always another.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:32PM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday October 06 2020, @06:01PM (1 child)
Not definitive (I have to disqualify things I write here because I have some trolls who will troll me with [citation needed], and argue from the standpoint that I've made an absolute statement covering 100% of all cases when I certainly did not...) but I believe that most older distro versions would have difficulty installing on UEFI-only machines. I know of some machines that allow you to put them in UEFI _or_ BIOS mode, which is pretty cool. But even then you'll most likely have difficulty with drivers for newer hardware.
All that said, that's why I keep some older hardware around- just in case, and every now and then I need it.
I have many reasons to (strongly) dislike MS, but one thing I give them huge credit for is that I can still run 30 year old apps.
I'm not running Win10 yet, and may never, for many reasons. I'm still running 7 and can get updates (a little too easily maybe) but that support ends this month IIRC.
I'm one of those fairly few who also use Apple stuff, but it's all older. I have friends who are very vested in all things Apple because they're artist / photographers and have big investment in hardware and software that's Apple only.
My personal gripe with Apple, but I understand why they get away with it, is they do NOT support OSes for very long, and you often can NOT upgrade the OS. So you might have little to no luck putting a newer MacOS on older hardware.
One of the things I find surprisingly cool about MacOS- you can pull a hard drive from one Mac and it'll boot and run in many other Macs without complaining or trying to rebuild the OS / kernel. That said, I tried that with my Mac Mini- a friend loaded up a hard drive with a great running version of MacOS and it refused to boot in my mini. And changing the HD in a mini is NOT fun.
Some years ago I had a last of the species dual G5 Mac that I loved. To install the newest and last of the MacOS which ran on G5 I had to hack the installer. Once hacked, the install went perfectly. In other words, there was NO good reason for Apple to block the install, except they want you to shell out $5k for a shiny new Mac. As cool as they are, no thanks. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday October 06 2020, @08:03PM
If necessary, there's a fair chance that with a little work you could get SeaBIOS to run under UEFI and have it boot an old distro.
Worst case, you could use qemu w/ SeaBIOS to boot a VM with the old OS.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Wednesday October 07 2020, @03:39PM
There's one piece of free software I used to use that seems to be hopeless today -- GPE Calendar.
I used to use it on my Nokia N800 (which was *not* a cellphone) and I'm wondering how to recover the old historical agenda entries before it dies.
Yes, I had it running on my 32-bit x86 computer a long time ago. But it disappeared from Debian ages ago; I remember a rumour that it didn't work any more on the new release and there was no one to maintain it.
I've glanced at the source package ... it has a large number of dependencies which no longer seem to be around either, and the ones that still exist have changed the format of the data base, making my old calendar data base unreadable.
Unfortunately, I didn't check whether GPE calendar has a viable export mechanism when I started using it.
It would be nice to have the old calendar in a readable -- even just human-readable -- form as a kind of historical record. But it's really not essential.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:30PM (5 children)
>"*I* control when my machine reboots. End of story. No more debate. Fuck you if you don't agree."
A fine sentiment - but one to which Windows has never adhered. The only recent difference is that Windows has started rebooting without permission to install updates, rather than just because its many flaws caused it to crash.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:44PM (4 children)
Wow, jokes like this belong in an exhibit right next to jokes about the Olsen twins turning 18.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @06:46PM (1 child)
It's not even a joke.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @06:55PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @10:06PM (1 child)
Blue screens never entirely went away for me on Windows, but they were much less common; however, they were replaced with the need to manually reboot because stuff would stop working, most common being things like wireless connectivity, resuming from a locked screen, can't communicate with the printer even though it says it is online, etc.
Now those didn't happen a whole lot because on a certain Tuesday of every month it rebooted on my all by itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @10:08PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:49PM (2 children)
I prefer to control when I buy a new computer, as opposed to when Apple wants me to buy one (and forces it by ending OS support). I have an eight year old computer that happily runs Linux (and Windows 10, if necessary) and a 15 year old one which could easily run anything except the latest games.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:56PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @10:09PM
Like you, I have found that macOS support is generally very good. Upgrades generally do improve performance whereas on Windows they went entirely in the opposite direction. Catalina did catch me with the 64-bit only thing. I didn't expect the extent of that when I upgraded, but things have settled down now.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday October 06 2020, @06:16PM (1 child)
I aligned myself to that way back in the early 1980's. I have a personally autographed copy of Bruce Tognazzini's user interface guidelines for Apple, from about 1983 -- after seeing the UI of our text based "green screen" application.
I also very much remember Apple's much larger and longer guidelines after the Lisa and Mac came out. Then later, other books like POET (the Psychology Of Everyday Things) which goes into user interfaces of everything from computers to door handles, water faucets, and many other everyday things. Lots of underlying principles. That book later changed its title to: The Design of Everyday Things.
Those things had a profound impact on how I think about software and user's interaction with it.
Sort of like how a few years of Lisp will forever change how you think about programming. (I spent six years seriously dabbling with CL for amusement.)
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday October 07 2020, @04:56AM
I miss the days when coherent, well-reasoned user interfaces were a thing. At some point everyone just tossed their HIGs (human interface guidelines) out the window to be "cool" or "edgy" or "darkm0de lol".
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:26PM (1 child)
On the other hand, Apple suckered it's customers into accepting a trade-in for a tiny fraction of their old devices residual value, primarily so they could get a high margin sale, then wants to make the old device someone else's problem (there's not a lot to recycle unless you repair) and cries foul when that someone else notices that it just needs an inexpensive repair.
I suspect that Apple is actually more afraid people will find out their old devices actually are repairable, in spite of that their "geniuses" are trained to tell the customer.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 06 2020, @05:36PM
Yeah, pro-tip, don't take your iPhone to Game Stop. 🙄
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06 2020, @10:12PM
Commited with the ecology and the environment well being. Apple is proud to present to all the people of the world, the iLandfill.