
Apple now strives to design and build products that last as long as possible - atlasunshrugged
http://www.asymco.com/2018/09/13/lasts-longer/
======
beloch
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 frequently soldered on.

Are other manufacturers better? They _used_ to be. Apple leads the way, and
now the average phone is nearly as difficult to repair as an iPhone.

Hey, it's great that they managed to get iOS 12 to run on a 5S. It probably
runs like an absolute dog, but it runs! Just wonderful. How easy is it for
end-users to replace the battery in that off-warranty 5S? Oh. I see. Well,
running iOS 12 on a 5S isn't so practical then, is it?

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

~~~
sokoloff
> How easy is it for end-users to replace the battery in that off-warranty 5S?
> Oh. I see.

I did it in about 45 minutes the first time, and could do another in 20-30
minutes pretty easily.

It's now a 5-year old phone. 10 minutes labor per year is OK in my book.

How easy is it for end-users to replace the clutch in that off-warranty Civic?
For that matter, how many people even change their own brakes (one of the
easiest DIY tasks, IMO)?

~~~
janlaureys
The 5 series and SE phones are pretty easy to repair indeed. I've replaced a
screen and battery with no experience, a few tools from ifixit and a youtube
video without much hassle. It's gone pretty downhill from there with the
iphone 6. Especially because the screens are much more intricate.

~~~
basch
The newer phones are easier to lift the screen out of, and replace the
battery? Have you taken apart a 4 and a 6? A 6 is MUCH easier.

~~~
saagarjha
Replacing the battery in an iPhone 4 requires taking off the back cover, not
the screen. And it was really a pleasant process when I did it two weeks ago.
I had expected much worse, but I only had to get through three screws
(granted, they were a bit small, but still).

------
cryptos
That is all very well and I really appreciate Apple's long support for
iPhones, but Apple did popularize firmly bonded batteries in its phones and
even in notebooks. A battery is a wear part and should be easy to replace.
Every thing else leads to more waste.

~~~
Pamar
I do not necessarily disagree about the fact that batteries should be easily
replaceable. On the other hand, I do not think that Apple's motivation was
pure greed: if you make the battery an easily replaceable part you also need
to encase it in a shell, and make it robust enough that even untrained users
can safely handle these.

This means that you have to make it bigger (externally) sacrificing actual
internal volume. A softer shell (that will be reached only by qualified
personnel who will later properly dispose of the old battery) give you a
slightly longer battery life.

So they decided that (battery life+markup in handling replacements+making sure
only certified batteries will be used) > (user convenience) which I think is
not such a stupid idea: outside HN maybe not everyone is willing to grab the
closest screwdriver when having to deal with their phones...

~~~
collyw
Plenty of other manufacturers manage a decent replaceable battery, I don't see
why Apple can't.

~~~
archagon
Other manufacturers tend to also have way bigger phones.

~~~
AstralStorm
Are you sure? The differences between say Samsung J3 and iPhone 6 are
negligible (iPhone 8 is even slightly fatter). About 1.5mm thickness and that
mostly because plastics have to be thick to survive falls and not because of
removable battery. If it were made partly of steel it could be a match.

The size is different (J3 is bigger) and materials are a bit better in the
iPhone... But we're comparing a budget phone with a flagship here.

Oh, and the battery is also bigger.

------
hjek
> 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...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-
iphones-macbooks)

[1]: [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/09/targeting-
apple...](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/09/targeting-apple-
designing-slow-down-iphones-small-french-consumer-group-punches)

~~~
ashleyn
The original iPad also had OS updates discontinued incredibly quickly.

~~~
sitkack
When Apple no longer supports a device, the boot loafers should be unlocked so
they can be reflagged. This should be a requirement for all hardware.

~~~
vbezhenar
At least let me roll back to old software version. I have 4S which is unusable
and locked on iOS 9. It's not like it's secure today, so just let me get back
to iOS 6 and have at least fast phone.

~~~
saagarjha
This opens the door to rolling back devices once you've waited for them to
become obsolete and then reading their contents, though.

------
userbinator
I'll believe them when I see their products come with replaceable batteries
and more expansion options, and they start selling parts on their site.

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

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

~~~
Tor3
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.

~~~
tialaramex
No. I used Nokia phones from the mid-1990s until I reluctantly bought an
Android phone a few years back.

The 6110 needed a different battery from the 2140 I had originally, but from
there all the way until the 6310i in mid 2000s they were compatible.

Its even spelled out on their Wikipedia entry. "Accessories (such as
batteries) can generally be swapped between all these models."

------
EZ-E
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

~~~
BillinghamJ
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.

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

~~~
badpun
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.

~~~
Someone1234
It really does perplex me that the iCloud website is as bad as it is. I'd
almost think it was abandoned-ware except that Apple continues to update it.
Their whole cloud offering (iTunes store, Apple Music, iCloud) needs a MASSIVE
overhaul. Everything should be available via the web and on a modern
accessible website.

I'd go as far as to say that they need a new point-person in charge of their
Cloud Services because whoever is doing it now is completely out of touch.
iTunes in particular is embarrassing, and I personally buy less stuff because
I don't want to run it (instead use Vudu, Amazon Digital, etc).

~~~
rbrcurtis
iirc, icloud was written in sproutcore. version 2 of sproutcoure became ember
which is now in version 3. there was no upgrade path from sproutcore 1 to
ember, so likely its a case of needing a rewrite and that not being
prioritized.

------
BooneJS
To this point, iPhone performance has grown by first doing their own silicon
and then by offering more hardware blocks to do what used to be done purely in
SW. Of course, they also rode the wave from 45nm to 7nm.

As you look forward from 7nm, the picture is less exciting. Claims of 2x and
4x improvements will give way to 20% benefits from the hardware alone, and
they'll have to work really hard on technologies like Metal to limit the
amount of SW layers between an API call and the instructions in the chip.

Making products that last as long as possible _is_ good for the Earth, but
without breakthroughs in semiconductor physics, the space is maturing.
Software already ate the world, and must now learn to coexist with the
remaining resources.

------
dalbasal
This is an interestingly a reverse of Europe's (effective) policy and on
greening the auto-market. Most European jurisdictions _effectively_ ^ tax (and
otherwise discourage) old cars wuth a higher rate.

For an example from my country. A 2007 2L Passat is a common old car currently
taxed @ €1,000 pa. It quickly escalates to 2,000 as engine size/emissions
increase. Passats are decent quality cars with long lived engines, so most of
the 10-15 year olds are still alive. For their time, they were average CO2
producers, say 200g/km.

The tax system is designed so that an incremental decrease in emissions
substantially decreases annual tax. A 30% carbon saving (say 60g/km saved, in
this example) will save you 60% -70% on your annual tax (€600-€800 ish).
People buy/drive 12 year old cars for value, and the tax system (by design)
takes that value away.

The way to lower your annual tax is to buy a car designed _after_ the new tax
regime was designed. The net effect of the policy is that perfectly good old
cars are being crushed and replaced with newer, "greener," short lifecycle
cars. There's no point building a car that will last more than 8-10 years
because tax laws will probably get it off the road by that time. The most
economical way to drive is not the old cars, it's cheap new cars.

The real (environmental) question is whether the net effects of building a new
car outweigh the case by output of the older car.

Idk what the carbon cost of manufacturing a car is, but the number to beat
(for my example, anyway) is about 600 kg co2. My uneducated guess is that it's
about even, ie the policy is just another Volkswagen subsidy.

~~~
lloeki
> A 2007 2L Passat

Turns out my SO got her hand on a second hand '06 New Beetle which has a TDI
engine with a CO2 production of ~146g/km. The car has 300000km on the clock.

> 600 kg co2

How did you get there? I seem to miss something to make sense of this value.

Over the 12 years the car has been on the road it emitted:

    
    
        300000 km * 146 g/km => 44 metric tons
    

The equivalent engine today is the 1.6L BlueMotion and emits ~85g/km. That's
40% less, about 18 tons saved.

But such a churn is quick at first yet soon enough has diminishing returns, as
the low hanging fruits get reaped until we reach minimal ICE emissions or even
zero emission, then (environmentally) you'll soon want the longest living
cars, so this phenomenon should only be temporary.

~~~
llampx
Its not only about tons of CO2 saved, since that can be fixed by trees.
Asthma-causing particulates and other cancer-causing compounds are completely
ignored in that calculation, not to mention the opportunity cost of not having
that $25k go into something else, like a house.

~~~
lloeki
I agree, but:

\- the point was about whether changing cars every 5-10 years offsets the cost
of building a new car

\- whatever the car you can still plant the same trees

\- living near a heavily polluted crossroad in a city, I guarantee you I'd
rather have less CO/CO2 (as well as all the other NOx/particles crap) right
out of the exhaust, not captured over decades

~~~
llampx
Most of that pollution is coming from diesel engines in the form of
particulates. Which the EU happily allowed so as to reduce CO2 emissions.
Which they're backtracking heavily on at the moment. Not to mention that cars
by themselves are a very small part of overall pollution today, compared to
good transportation and factories.

------
rixrax
Does the 'Ensure that Apple products last as long as possible' assume wrapping
new iPhone into one of those cases?

I don't know if I am alone here, but I find it counter intuitive that to
protect my new shiny, I would have to cover it with more or less ugly case to
avoid it breaking when I eventually drop it? And since I don't [use cases],
maybe consequently, I seem to break them at about ~11 month intervals
(although last one, iPhone SE, was lost by accidental submersion - with this
at least the new Xs's promises to be slightly better).

TL;DR; I am rooting to be able to buy an iPhone someday that will tolerate my
'normal' use as purchased without any covers or other add-on protections.

~~~
saagarjha
No offense, but I think the problems you haven't been solved by any phone
vendor. They seem to be "you" problems. Protecting an iPhone when you drop it
would (with current technology) require a bulky phone–though water resistance
has significantly improved since iPhone SE.

------
14
The biggest take away I got from the article was the need to make software
last and function even on older devices. They mention ios 12 working on an
iphone 5 which really does not impress me. I have an iphone 4s as my daily
driver and it can only get ios 9.x. The biggest problem lies in the app store.
I can not use many of the apps, some that previously worked because they all
want the person to be on the latest ios. Nothing wrong with the phone other
then I am slowly being locked out of apps.

~~~
llampx
> Nothing wrong with the phone other then I am slowly being locked out of
> apps.

This is the main reason I swore off the iOS ecosystem. Apple encourages
developers to target the latest iOS and the latest devices, which is great if
you are on the upgrade treadmill. If you aren't, then your apps stop being
compatible fairly quickly. If you have bought an app in the past you are
allowed to re-download it, but if you haven't, you just get a message saying
that you should upgrade your OS.

------
bfrog
Phones being disposable isn't going to change, so looking at the annual cost
of ownership is really all I care about. If a $1K iphone lasts 5 years vs my
$170 android lasting 2 years, its still a better deal to simply spend $170 on
the android. Better yet they usually last far more than 2 years, you just
don't necessarily have the latest OS, which I mean, seeing as these devices
change so little now, who cares?

~~~
ceejayoz
> Better yet they usually last far more than 2 years, you just don't
> necessarily have the latest OS, which I mean, seeing as these devices change
> so little now, who cares?

Security holes care.

------
makecheck
I had a cheese-grater Mac Pro G5 for 8 years that _still worked beautifully
when I gave it away_. I did upgrade memory at one point. An external display
had a power supply problem after a few years. I replaced the graphics card.
The ability to replace parts does help but I’ve also had a MBP since 2013 that
has no accessible parts that also works fine.

Of course, on the flip side I’m grateful for this reliability because there’s
no _way_ I want to replace my 2013 MBP with any current Apple offering.
They’ve truly screwed their product line and I figure I can only wait one more
generation for them to come up with something sensible.

~~~
rsync
In February my daily driver machine for development, VMs, "normal work", etc.
will begin it's tenth year.

It's a 2009 Mac Pro. I don't notice any slowness or issues. Have not needed to
replace anything. Have not upgraded beyond the original 8GB of RAM.

I just loaded El Cap on it this past year (latest OSX release it will take
without a firmware upgrade) and plan to continue using it for years ...

~~~
nonamenoslogan
I'm in the same boat with my circa-2010 Macbook Air. Its still supported as it
has an i5, but its ancient by today's standards. Still holds a 3+ hour battery
charge on its original cells though, boots in under 20 seconds on SSD (running
10.12 on it, haven't taken the High Sierra plunge), and everything on it
works. I'd love to have more RAM and a retina display but tbh, it ain't broke
so I'm not replacing it and when/if I do, it will likely be replaced with the
2016 version that just upgraded the RAM and I'll use it for another decade.

------
arooaroo
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 angles and pressure for that
goldilocks zone. It just sits there vibrating away in a charging/not-charging
loop. One assumes it's the cable but that makes no difference.

~~~
DeRock
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.

------
post_break
To me it sounds like Apple wants to be "seen" as building products that last
as long as possible to justify the cost of the product. They want you to
justify the buy it for life cost, because they want you to believe the
marketing that it will last longer than competitors, even while laptop
keyboards fail early, the repair process costs over $800, the screens on
laptops look like someone sprayed brake cleaner all over them when they've
only lived in an office environment, iPhones get "touch disease" etc etc.

~~~
IBM
You don't have to believe Apple. All you need to do is look at the secondary
market and see how prices for used devices hold up and see that it's true.

~~~
EpicBlackCrayon
But is that because people immediately take a $1000 device and wrap it in a
protective case, or by virtue of the device being durable, etc.?

------
edhelas
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?

~~~
ntsplnkv2
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."

~~~
saagarjha
> And also not sure why whenever anything positive gets posted about Apple, so
> many enter "APPLE MODE: RESIST IMMEDIATELY IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE."

There are people here that have both positive and negative opinions about
Apple, as there are people that have opinions about nearly every other
company. Perhaps with Apple these opinions are a bit more strongly held.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
It seems to be with any of the big tech companies.

It's just best to ignore it - the conversations offer no value.

------
lowlevel
This "should last as long as possible" was already assumed... and frankly kind
of insulting after buying apple products for many years. And we do expect to
be able to repair... I took my iPhone 6 to apple because the battery was done.
They "tested" it and said it was fine. I paid a third party to replace it
since apple would not. Phone was fixed... couple weeks later apple admitted
there were battery problems and were handing out cheap replacements.

~~~
rosege
And after your experience would you buy Apple again?

------
jhokanson
Has the iPhone screen durability improved at all? It seems like they are (or
were?) extremely susceptible to damage from dropping and I always took that as
a sign that Apple wanted to force people to upgrade.

Edit: Here's a link discussing the issue:
[https://www.fastcompany.com/3063238/why-wont-apple-fix-
the-i...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3063238/why-wont-apple-fix-the-iphones-
one-huge-design-flaw)

~~~
hellweaver666
I would argue yes... they keep on improving the materials in every generation.
I have a 7+ and my kid has thrown it across the room multiple times and
dropped it onto a wooden floor more times than I can remember and even on
concrete a couple of times. Each time my heart is in my mouth but each time it
comes up without a scratch.

~~~
jhokanson
Yikes! Good to know. I just wonder if there has been any official mea culpa
announcement or if I (along with many other people) are just suffering from
sort of selection bias. Did the screen material change at all?

------
pier25
I was asked by Apple Mexico $350 to replace the battery on a retina MBP with
the excuse that they have to replace the complete top panel (battery,
keyboard, trackpad, etc).

The initial price was closer to $600 but I got a discount because they buy the
old part from me.

Of course I said no. I will try to do it myself for less than $100 with a
battery I bought from Ebay.

------
carlosrg
Tell that to my iPad 3, which got unusable just after one major iOS upgrade.
So I'm a bit skeptical.

~~~
dep_b
There were a few "bad Apples" in the iOS lineup, the iPad 1 and 3 and the
iPhone 4 were a bit underpowered the day they launched and didn't fare well on
iOS 7 (or even 6...).

~~~
josefresco
My iPad 1 aka "the tank" (as we call it in my house) is still (hardware wise)
100% functional. Software is another story. I believe the only thing it's used
for is Netflix (which shockingly works). Web browser/Safari is a complete no-
go.

------
rosege
The discussions here reminded me of [https://www.theonion.com/apple-announces-
new-trade-in-offer-...](https://www.theonion.com/apple-announces-new-trade-in-
offer-for-customers-to-exc-1829001894)

------
baxuz
Bullshit. I broke a keycap on my 2015 MBP that was out of warranty. The
solution from the official distributor/service? Buy a new bottom shell with
the battery, trackpad and keyboard for 700€. Longevity my ass.

------
crispyambulance
Sure they do.... NOT!

I'll believe THAT when it's possible to replace the battery without dealing
with microscopic screws, glue, heat guns, and hard-to-source clippy
thingamajigs that require super-human dexterity to install.

------
jokoon
Well start by making features and software run on less capable hardware,
hardware becomes obsolete because of the software it runs.

I'm waiting for companies to just stop following wirth's law.

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

{Looks at unrepairable phone}

{Looks at unrepairable laptop}

{Looks at cord with no strain relief}

I don't believe you.

------
ArchTypical
When my 2k mac became unsupported after 4 years, Apple lost me permanently.

------
bastawhiz
I'll believe it when the keyboard on a six month old MBP doesn't feel like the
keys are about to fall off.

------
swerner
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.

~~~
scarface74
You can still use a first generation iPad today and do all of the stuff you
did with it in 2010. Yes you can also redownload older apps from the store.

~~~
swerner
No, I can't unfortunately. Too many apps rely on web backends that have been
upgraded and are incompatible with the versions that run on iPad 1. For
example, the built-in YouTube application on iPad 1 is completely non-
functional. Also, the newer iCloud features require you to "update" your
iCloud to a version incompatible with the old iPad.

Many older apps have now also been pulled from the store. My iPhone 1 can only
reinstall Skype from an old iTunes backup, but not from the store.

~~~
scarface74
Being able to download the last compatible version doesn’t work with iOS 3 but
does work with iOS 5. I don’t know about iOS 4.

I have a first gen iPod Touch running iOS 3.x and a first gen iPad running iOS
5. Of course I have newer devices too.

------
norswap
Hard to believe, that would be a 180 degree turn. The two iPhones I owned (3G
and 4) had shit durability. I'm not sure the fault laid in the hardware
(although my mute button broke on the 3G), but software updates made the phone
unusable.

Otoh, my Galaxy S4 from 6 years ago stills runs well (if not always _cool_ ).
I've repeatedly seen Android phones actually get _faster_ when applying
updates.

~~~
spupy
> I've repeatedly seen Android phones actually get faster when applying
> updates.

 _IF_ the get updates. My Android phone managed to get slower even without
getting any OS updates...

