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Apple's Blue Ocean

hypercritical.co

71–80 of 262 posts

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I'd be happy with an LED bulb that lasted a year. I haven't yet found one that can do that reliably." I do remember in the early days of LED bulbs, many were quite unreliable, especially dimmable ones. It was probably more the electronics in them failing more than the LEDs themselves? But now days LED bulbs seem much more reliable and I very rarely have to replace them. In fact the only bulbs I can recall replacin…

What brand of LED bulb do you buy? I'm consistently replacing one or two bulbs a month around the house. I don't know if it's the electronics or the LEDs; I don't really care either.

Jumping in to recommend Cree if they're still around. Used to be able to get them at Home Depot here in the US.

I started going Cree when I was renting 10 years ago, I've yet to have a single failure of the bulbs that I've drug with me to the place I live now. Have at least 25 bulbs currently in the house that are Cree LEDs. Their reliability actually has me frustrated at the current trend of lighting fixtures with integrated LEDs that I have 0 trust in.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#72

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

> "Why not no battery in the device?" How about a nuclear battery, aka radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? This would be sealed in (carefully!) and would last the lifetime of the device, with no need for charging, ever. Would need special steps/handling to ensure safe disposal at end of product life, however.

What about a fusion reactor, generating its own hydrogen molecules to power nuclear fusion through electrolysis from the water vapor in the air.

There isn't really a theoretical limit to how small a fusion reactor can be, although clearly this would not achievable for a long time.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#73
People not realizing this ship has sailed. Apple switched to supporting right to repair because

1) They are no longer dependent on the loss of battery capacity to drive new device purchases — meaning this issue is effectively over. Batteries now last all day for longer than most new device users will keep a device.

2) Margins on services sold to hand-me-down family devices are a growing high-margin and young-user market and much of the market isn’t open to buying a device here — they will only use the service if they get a device for “free.”

3) The net outcome is an increase in service revenue and decrease in recycling costs for Apple.

All these trends will only accelerate from here.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I'd be happy with an LED bulb that lasted a year. I haven't yet found one that can do that reliably." I do remember in the early days of LED bulbs, many were quite unreliable, especially dimmable ones. It was probably more the electronics in them failing more than the LEDs themselves? But now days LED bulbs seem much more reliable and I very rarely have to replace them. In fact the only bulbs I can recall replacin…

What brand of LED bulb do you buy? I'm consistently replacing one or two bulbs a month around the house. I don't know if it's the electronics or the LEDs; I don't really care either.

Ikea and generic home depot LEDs have lasted 13 years of daily use with zero failures. Also, I've never seen that high a rate of LED failure. You may want to have your house checked out by an electrician for peace of mind.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#75
I thought that EU regulations were going to force smartphones to have removable batteries within the next few years. That’s hardly swimming out into the blue ocean.

But regardless, easily removable batteries are going to create more e-waste, not less. Replacing a battery is perfectly doable right now, but there is a hurdle you have to jump over - you aren’t going to do it until you really need it. Once those batteries are easy to replace, people are going to be replacing them much more frequently, they’re going to be buying spares, etc. And people are going to be throwing old batteries in the trash without even thinking about it.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#76

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

> "Why not no battery in the device?" How about a nuclear battery, aka radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? This would be sealed in (carefully!) and would last the lifetime of the device, with no need for charging, ever. Would need special steps/handling to ensure safe disposal at end of product life, however.

You can't really have more than 4-5 watts of heat in a phone, so even with the friendliest heat source don't expect more than a quarter watt of electricity.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#77
Two things I've been waiting on for years:

• MST (DisplayPort daisy chaining) in MacOS. The hardware has supported it for over a decade. The OS is the weak link here. It's the difference between spending $75-$300 for a dock in addition to the cables and just connecting the monitors together along with a single cable to the first monitor.

• Non-soldered storage. Seriously. Storage is the most likely component to fail. SSDs only have so many write cycles.

• BIOS on a separate chip. To make matters worse, with the introduction of the T2 chip, the BIOS is stored on the SSD as well. This means if the SSD fails, you don't just lose your data; you have an expensive brick. You can't even boot to external drive anymore if one of the two SSD chips fails.

• Safer SSD chips. If a cheap capacitor fails on newer Macs, 13V gets shorted straight to the SSD. The SSD commonly doesn't survive this. And since the BIOS is on the SSD now… Literal ten cent part blows up your multi-thousand dollar laptop with zero warning.

https://youtu.be/RYG4VMqatEY

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#78
This article frustrates me.

>Starting in 2009, Apple began to phase out removable batteries across its laptop line in favor of batteries that were sealed inside the case and were not user-accessible. >The upsides, which Apple touted, were many: lighter weight, smaller size, better reliability, longer battery life.

What are you talking about? The link provided to Apple's press release for that laptop did not include anything about why a non-removable battery was advantageous. They provided other reasons the new battery was great, but they did not say the elimination of user-serviceability allowed for any of those benefits.

>The iPhone defied so many other norms that the sealed battery was less remarked upon than it might have been, but it was still noted.

Noted by who? Remarked upon by who? It sounds like this author is generalizing his own opinions to the entire population. I'm sure this comment sounds nitpicky but I just don't like this kind of fast and loose writing.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#79

I thought that EU regulations were going to force smartphones to have removable batteries within the next few years. That’s hardly swimming out into the blue ocean. But regardless, easily removable batteries are going to create more e-waste, not less. Replacing a battery is perfectly doable right now, but there is a hurdle you have to jump over - you aren’t going to do it until you really need it. Once those batterie…

[deleted]

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#80

I thought that EU regulations were going to force smartphones to have removable batteries within the next few years. That’s hardly swimming out into the blue ocean. But regardless, easily removable batteries are going to create more e-waste, not less. Replacing a battery is perfectly doable right now, but there is a hurdle you have to jump over - you aren’t going to do it until you really need it. Once those batterie…

I think its "replaceable" not "removeable" batteries, using "readily available tools".

So don't think removeable batteries of the past held together by a sliding cover - more like grab an eyeglass screwdriver and a few minutes later its out.

I think the distiction is slight but there is a difference between an object meant to attach/de-attach (like old laptop batteries) and the m2 hard drive in my laptop. Both are technically replaceable, only one was designed to be removeable.

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