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Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

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Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#51

Post by vbezhenar »

EZ-E wrote: post #21

Real talk here : what makes an iPhone slow after 2 years? - the battery aging? - the apps using more ressources than before? - the newer OS version using more ressources than before? I've started using my old Android phone again after it being unused 3 years (Nexus 4), the apps are extremely slow now, the camera takes forever to open : what's going on? Computers don't age as much

I had iPhone 4S, it was insanely fast and snappy with iOS 6, become a bit sluggish with iOS 7 and very slow with iOS 8 and 9, almost unusable. I jailbroken it and installed iOS 6 and apparently it was fast again, so it's not about battery or anything, it's purely software which expects very fast CPU and huge amounts of memory. Mobile hardware evolved significantly over the last years, so it's understandable that developers wanted to leverage that speed.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#52

Post by DeRock »

arooaroo wrote: post #38

Tell that to the person/people in charge of the lightning port and headphone jack on the iPhone. I know headphone jacks are no longer on Apple's radar, but they always seem to get messed up after a year so that the stock iPhone headphones are not recognised and thus the control buttons don't work. However, the lightning port drives me mad because the blasted device won't charge up properly without me fiddling with an…

Check if there is any debris/lint built up in the port. If so, use a toothpick to remove. The downside of a tab-less female connector is that it picks up more stuff and you have to clean it every once in a while.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#53

Post by alliecat »

swerner wrote: post #6

If longevity is what they want, they should release private keys and hardware specs for hardware that they drop from their own OS updates. That way, we could continue using old iPads and iPhones, albeit with custom Android builds.

I don't buy an iPad because I like Android...

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#54

Post by vbezhenar »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #23
EZ-E wrote: post #21

Real talk here : what makes an iPhone slow after 2 years? - the battery aging? - the apps using more ressources than before? - the newer OS version using more ressources than before? I've started using my old Android phone again after it being unused 3 years (Nexus 4), the apps are extremely slow now, the camera takes forever to open : what's going on? Computers don't age as much

Of course you're missing out one option - perhaps they actually aren't actually that much slower, but you're just used to newer stuff being much faster. The definition of slow changes.

I have iPhone 4S with iOS 6 and iPhone 8 with iOS 11. iPhone 4S is not slower.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#55

Post by badpun »

digitaLandscape wrote: post #29
BillinghamJ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you're missing out one option - perhaps they actually aren't actually that much slower, but you're just used to newer stuff being much faster. The definition of slow changes.

This is clearly not the case: the C64 could respond to input faster than the a few-year-old iPhone.

Sadly, the C64 is also quicker than Apple's iCloud website. Frequently, when I type a new note or a reminder, the lag between my pressing a key and character appearing on the screen is in several seconds. This is on a 4-core machine with 16 GB of RAM that's not doing anything else.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#56

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

edhelas wrote: post #19

Tell that to Thinkpad users that can upgrade 15 years old second-hand Thinkpads with compatible parts bought from China (also apply to other notebooks). How easy it is to change the faulty keyboard on a MacBook Pro?

Isn't it possible that replacing parts all the time embraces disposable culture? "Oh I can just get a new battery? Great, I'll get one way more often than I need to, because I can." The old one gets in the garbage, or isn't recycled properly. And believe me, it happens often.

I don't see why improving durability is a bad thing. And also not sure why whenever anything positive gets posted about Apple, so many enter "APPLE MODE: RESIST IMMEDIATELY IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE."

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#57

Post by raverbashing »

beloch wrote: post #12

You know what helps products last longer and reduces waste at the same time? Repairability . The repairability of apple products is so poor that even Apple can't fix most of their own products without replacing surprisingly large portions of any given Apple device. End user repairability has been utterly neglected. Disassembly is frequently impossible without causing damage, and components such as batteries are frequ…

To be fair, replacing battery/screen of Apple phones is easier and cheaper than some competing products. (phones are easier, iPads are harder)

Some phones require heat gunning the screen as a start to open, then the battery is deep inside. Not with iPhones.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#58

Post by Tor3 »

cptskippy wrote: post #13
matwood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery is replaceable in most (all?) of their products, just not by the user. Battery service is sold on their site today.

I believe was asking for something akin to old Nokia phones.

The old Nokia phones used another strategy (and so did most other vendors): Every new model used a different battery. Which at the same time obsoleted the battery in the old model, i.e. no new batteries were produced. You could still buy them, but they would have stayed on the shelf for a long time - in other words, they were as old as the battery you replaced. I bought a number of replacement batteries over the years, and without exeception the new battery (originals, mind) were as bad at keeping charge as the old one, after a couple of months. Into the drawer with the phone, buy a newer one, repeat. I'm absolutely certain that this constant change of battery form factor was just that: No point in replacing a battery because you could only find old ones. Buy new phone instead.

This year I emptied a drawer full of old phones going back to around 1997 (the very earliest used NiCd batteries) until recent. Wow there were many. And I never got a new one unless the old one still worked - they all went into the drawer because they couldn't take a charge anymore.

It should be said though that batteries don't die on me as quickly as they used to - the change seems to be from the last few years. They seem to keep better in storage, but charging strategy also matters - old phones used to really deep-discharge batteries before declaring them below 10% charge.

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#59

Post by krn »

beloch wrote: post #12

You know what helps products last longer and reduces waste at the same time? Repairability . The repairability of apple products is so poor that even Apple can't fix most of their own products without replacing surprisingly large portions of any given Apple device. End user repairability has been utterly neglected. Disassembly is frequently impossible without causing damage, and components such as batteries are frequ…

> I'll believe point #2 when Apple stops making every succeeding generation of their products harder for end-users to repair.

Shiftphones[1] can be completely dissembled and repaired by the end-users, and they don't look any different from other smartphone. So, it's certainly possible to do. However, I don't think that's what an average Apple customer prioritizes. "The thinnest and lightest iPhone ever" sells much better in the ad.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scWxjE7IyMo&t=42s

Re: Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible

#60

Post by volkl48 »

mrpopo wrote: post #9
hjek wrote: post #2

> After a long life of use, ensure that they are recycled properly. Anyone ever read about Apple's must-shred agreement[0] with recyclers? Is that what "properly" refers to here? > Ensure that Apple products last as long as possible. Anyone read about Apple's recent lawsuit[1] for planned obsolescence in iPhones? [0]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recy... [1]: https://www.commondreams.org/ne…

Thanks for the context. I am extremely doubtful that a company like Apple is going to commit to durability, parts reuse and recycling. Repairability score of iPhones are not so bad, but the latest MacBooks are unrepairable.

They can be repaired in the sense that everything in them can be replaced. However they've integrated a lot of components so a lot of things that would traditionally be able to be replaced individually can't be.

You basically have 3 major components in the current Macbook Pro line:

- Logic board - MB/CPU/SSD/RAM

- Top Case - Keyboard/Trackpad/Battery/upper shell

- Display

Then you have minor miscellaneous parts like fans, heatsink, bottom case and wi-fi antenna/vent module.

Surprisingly, the USB-C ports are actually a separate replaceable component, and I believe the 2018s make the headphone jack one as well.

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