A Big Green Apple
I find myself simultaneously in love and infuriated by Apple products. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 he was asked how he would solve the company’s problems, to which he answered; design. This is evident in the company’s attitudes and I understand they are fighting for valuable market share. However, it shows such little appreciation for the costumer to offer the best product on the market and not present it honestly. Yesterdays launch of the new brick/unibody Macbook was no exception.
Despite all their claims, Apple rarely innovates, instead delivering refinement and accessibility. With regard to the unibody, CNC machining seems wasteful and unnecessary. A recyclable product is not a greener product; design for disassembly only works if the product finds its way to a disassembly plant. Apple claims to have recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, which is equal to 9.5% of the weight of all products Apple sold seven years earlier. They even have a graph and ISO 14001 certification. However, they have also bred a culture of unaccountability in their users, a side effect of building a product with out evident seam-lines and fixing. Tied with planed obsolescence and lust, insures they sell more iProducts then they otherwise would. Environmental sustainability is an attitude, not a feature.
