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A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

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Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#331

Post by hugecannon »

magoon wrote: post #325

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.

> charger that comes in its own packaging. Net new waste.

I think the point is that the charger itself is the waste being avoided. Not the charger packaging.

Surely Apple have done some analysis into what portion of their customers will not require an additional charger with each phone purchase.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#332

Post by wizzwizz4 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #276
xondono wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the network with no new participants is in some sense static, the participants themselves aren't. The income of most people tends to grow over time, which would imply an increasing demand for bitcoin from those participants. Since supply will become more and more constrained over time, while demand has no realizable upper limit (that we know of), this assumption is wrong: > Obviously bitcoin price won't grow to…

So the question is: if bitcoin replaces US dollar as an international currency, what would look it like today? According to some Google searches, there are 80 trillion dollars in the world. Total Bitcoin supply is 21 million. It means that 1 BTC would be valued around $3.8 million or 277 times more of its current valuation. Currently bitcoin eats around 7.46 GW, so it'll become 2 TW. Current world energy consumption…

1.2% extra energy spent.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#333

Post by lui8906 »

MengerSponge wrote: post #159
hombre_fatal wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do notice a certain glee we have when we can frame other people wasting energy in ways we don't happen to waste ourselves. As if wireless phone charging or bitcoin mining or X are the last unturned stones in the pursuit of zero waste. Some condescension we can share on HN before we drive to Walmart for a single gallon of milk. It's weird how tempting it is. I had a roommate that used our clothes dryer daily. I have…

Lol at your false dichotomy with bitcoin. Bitcoin mining uses a mind-boggling amount of power, and we don't get anything useful for all those emissions. I agree that we're quick to look at other people's small wastes with condescension, but bitcoin is not a small waste.

> Bitcoin mining uses a mind-boggling amount of power, and we don't get anything useful for all those emissions.

I see this take quite regularly and it seems a normal response to clickbaity headlines like "BTC has same power usage as Switzerland", but I think it misses some important nuance to the debate.

* Most studies locate miners and then assume their CO2 output based on energy use assuming a general energy mix of the country, this is not useful because energy usage != CO2 output, it depends very much what energy source is used * Miners are strongly incentivized to find the cheapest possible electricity, often means finding pockets of excess wasted energy, which is also often renewable or hydro and using it rather than letting it go to waste * BTC can be thought of as converting frequently excess wasted units of energy into a commodity which can be sold * The above might change and if for some reason coal became the most competitively priced energy source then this would be very bad for the environment indeed.

Whether or not BTC is useful, it undeniably holds value, in the literal sense that if I gave you 1 now you could sell it at a market rate

All the above notwithstanding, a lot of research is going into finding an alternative to Proof-of-Work that is less energy intensive and I would hope that in the future a secure alternative will be found.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#334

Post by acqq »

SifJar wrote: post #311
acqq wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With wireless charging being 60-75% efficient, the literal worst case scenario is that you go from 2kWh to 3kWh. Maybe the difference isn’t so low as you estimate it? Maybe the wired chargers use much less power when the phone is not being charged, compared to the wireless chargers? Then the difference could be approximately 0 (as your phone is charged only a few hours per day) to approximately N kWh (due to a cons…

In principle, wireless chargers can have very low power use when idle; I've seen figures quoted as 0.1mW i.e. over the course of a year 0.876Wh (so ~0.0009 kWh). Of course, this will likely vary based on the specific charger in use. I don't think this is substantially different to the idle draw of a wired charger.

The practice is often very different from the principle. I’ve had a set top box that in the “off” state used 29 watts, 24 hours per day. In the “on” state it used 30 watts. In principle, it didn’t have to be so but it was.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#335

Post by faeyanpiraat »

4ggr0 wrote: post #297
errantspark wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The new solution to every problem on our planet: GAMING!

RTX 3090 SLI to the rescue

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#336

Post by fiblye »

chrisseaton wrote: post #306
fiblye wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not as useful because without a charger I can only use it until the battery dies. It’s like selling a car without tires, saying it’s a big savings for the company while not changing the price.

It's expected that everyone has a charger these days. If you do not, you can buy one for a few dollars. It's more like selling a kettle without water. It's expected most reasonable people will have their own water supply.

It's more like selling an electric kettle without a charger. People are already expecting to pay for water to fill a kettle, just like they pay for electricity to fill the battery.

First time buyers of iPhones aren't unreasonable. Being unreasonable is saying a trillion dollar company is fine to charge more for less.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#337

Post by alistairSH »

Schiendelman wrote: post #317
alistairSH wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own more than 1, but they all get used regularly. There's one on my nightstand, one in my car, and one in the office. I can swap them around, but that doesn't solve the problem - at the time I'm ready to buy a new phone, one of them is worn out.

Have you considered wireless charging? It seems like you’d save money over buying more cables, in the long run.

Maybe, but wireless is new (my iPhone 7 doesn't have it), so it hasn't come up before now.

But, that just means I have to buy 2 new wall warts (need the high power one, IIRC), still need 1 new cable (unless it's included with he wireless pad), and 2 wireless pads.

And it's not an option in the car, because CarPlay requires a cable (in 90% of cars, AFAIK only BMW has implemented wireless CarPlay).

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#338

Post by IndySun »

bradlys wrote: post #146
IndySun wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bradlys, Do you use a phone that cannot go higher than iOS10, or have you ingeniously managed to not update for all this time? You must use iTunes to back up, via cable, right?

I had another phone that broke. So I went back to my iPhone 5S that still had iOS 10. I didn't want to update because I figured it would make the experience worse. To be honest, I don't know if my significant other's phone (iPhone 11 Pro) can even connect to my car anymore through the cable. (Bluetooth being the only other option - which has significantly worse audio quality and issues like static or something of the…

Thanks!

Upgrading OS is the main source of frustration and time wasted in my pro-audio world. So I salute you - iOS10 survivor!

Note - listening to audio in cars, it's a compromise. It's never ideal, so I wouldn't sweat the quality - but you're right to question the reliability.

Use the good old, eco-friendly, headphone jack!

(All consumer wireless is ONLY instigated by Apple because it is cheaper for Apple, but consequently a poorer, less eco, experience for the world)

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#339

Post by CrazyStat »

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)…

I drive an electric car. I was giving a friend a ride one day and offered him a USB port to charge his phone, since he was low on battery, but he was reluctant because he didn't want to waste my car's battery.

We did some quick mental math and figured that charging his phone from empty to full would take about as much energy as driving the car a few inches. He plugged the phone in.

Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store

#340

Post by whywhywhywhy »

It's called a BOM reduction, Tim Cook has to make phones more profitable year on year, one way to do that is to reduce the cost it is to manufacture them.

Small savings add up. The environmental excuse is just PR, they still have to put cables and chargers in boxes and ship them half way across the world.

If they really cared about waste they'd make their hardware last longer, my Powerbook G4's power cable still works fine 18 years later and isn't frayed. Every modern Macbook power cable I have it frayed and dangerous just months after purchase requiring 2-3 units to be bought over the life of the laptop to remain safe.

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