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A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

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Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#321

Post by majewsky »

ashtonkem wrote: post #287
imtringued wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thermal power plants generate lots of waste heat that can be used for district heating. If you don't use that waste heat it will still be there. Worse if you need electricity for cooling you end up with even more waste heat. Your assumption falls flat because a lot of people don't need to generate extra heat from electricity, they already have too much of it.

First off, AC is a heat pump, and heat pumps are always much more efficient than direct heating. A well designed AC system can be up to 500% efficient, since it only needs to move heat and not generate it. Secondly, municipal heat is pretty rare in the US; few cities have it and the number keeps getting smaller each year. What few municipal heat systems that do exist are largely for business districts too, unless if…

> few cities have [municipal heat] and the number keeps getting smaller each year

I'm assuming by "municipal heat" you mean district heating. Can you explain why those systems keep getting rarer in the US? Over here in Europe, we are investing a significant amount of money in expanding those systems and connecting more houses.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#322

Post by read_if_gay_ »

funnybeam wrote: post #283
ashtonkem wrote: post #143

I really hate arguments about how much electricity wireless phone charging wastes because it makes people feel like they’re doing something when in fact they aren’t. Charging a cell phone every day for a year consumes about 1-2 kWh per phone. The average American household consumes 10,399 kWh per year, meaning that a typical smart phone consumes one 5000th, (0.02%) of a typical home’s electricity (excl. natural gas)…

Just because the waste is small doesn’t mean it is insignificant when you consider how many phones there are. A quick search indicates there are 3.5 billion smart phones in the world, assuming these are all wirelessly charged and wasting 1kWh per year that gets you 3.5TWh which is more than the annual consumption of many countries I had a similar discussion with a friend recently about all the cars driving around wit…

> which is more than the annual consumption of many countries

Yes, countries like Liechtenstein, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. Even a generous upper bound estimate like 3.5TWh is vanishingly small in the face of our ~21PWh annual global energy consumption. [0]

The point is: by focusing on wireless charging, we'd be investing effort in ineffective endeavors while there's far more low hanging fruit we could pick. And people's willingness to put in effort for the environment is a finite resource as well. So we should be smart about spending it.

For example: instead of worrying about daytime lights, how about cycling instead of driving, even just once in a while, whenever the weather is nice and you're feeling like it? That's sure to have a greater impact on the environment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#323

Post by inbx0 »

dagurp wrote: post #305
0df8dkdf wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop supporting new devices. Do we really need them?

Kind of, smartphones are not designed to last.

Idk, my average has been about 5-6 years. Could keep even longer but at that point the battery lifetime starts to be a problem and needs to be changed, which can be so expensive that it's not worth it.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#324

Post by KMnO4 »

errantspark wrote: post #292
ashtonkem wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incandescent light bulbs should really be understood as space heaters that happen to emit light.

At the end of the day all electronics are just space heaters with interesting side effects. It's getting cold and I'm using my GPU to heat my living space, it just happens to emit computation as well. Gotta keep gaming to capture the excess value!

I did this several years back in university. Bitcoin mining wasn’t really profitable on my GPU, BUT it made enough to pay for its own electricity. I considered crypto to be a wash, but the real profit came from free heat.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#325

Post by magoon »

By removing the charger from the package, you may have to buy a charger that comes in its own packaging. Net new waste.

Including the charger in the package was actually the best way to prevent additional waste.

Moreover, an iPhone box is potentially an item people will not throw out, while the charger packaging is.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#326

Post by everdrive »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #280
dheera wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the single biggest environmentally-unfriendly move Apple made is not allowing user serviceability. Even a simple ability to swap your phone's battery for a new one would reduce a lot of emissions. But they want you to spend $$$ on new stuff, so they make it hard for you to fix. And on laptops, soldered SSDs, soldered RAM, non-swappable batteries. You HAVE to buy a new PC even if you just want a little more hard d…

Might there be more customers asking for phones to be thinner than there are customers asking for swappable batteries? If so, that might drive the design evolution.

>Might there be more customers asking for phones to be thinner

But those customers have a worthless opinion.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#328

Post by cpcallen »

f6v wrote: post #278

> I have bought a new iPhone every 2 years for as long as iPhones have existed, I'm extremely loyal! So I can use one of the half dozen bricks I have in my house already? I mean, just don't buy iPhone every 2 years. 4+ years with iPhone 7, I'm very friendly towards environment.

I acquired my previous phone in 2009, and continued to use it until early 2018. I expect it's replacement will last me a comparable length of time, though it will be more expensive to keep it going as it does not have a user-replaceable battery, unfortunately. :-(

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#329

Post by Olreich »

everdrive wrote: post #326
jjtheblunt wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might there be more customers asking for phones to be thinner than there are customers asking for swappable batteries? If so, that might drive the design evolution.

>Might there be more customers asking for phones to be thinner But those customers have a worthless opinion.

Sucks to be ruled by a majority. Would be much better if you could have everything you wanted in spite of all those people asking for something different.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#330

Post by chrisseaton »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #310
chrisseaton wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices aren't set by production costs though. They're set by the market.

In a working competitive market, prices are expected to be asymptotically approaching production costs.

But phones aren’t commodities. Different models do different things.
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