

City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products - Jagat
http://mashable.com/2012/07/10/san-francisco-apple/

======
raganesh
To quote from the article:

"The letter to municipal agencies will cite a 2007 policy that mandates that
city funds only be used to purchase EPEAT-certified desktops, laptops and
monitors..."

Later on: "...the EPEAT registry does not yet include certifications for
smartphones or tablets..."

Finally it also says: "...the city spent $45,579 on Apple desktops, laptops
and iPads (the last of which are not certifiable under EPEAT and would not be
barred by the city’s policy.)"

Headline too generic?

------
MJR
I think Marco Arment summed this up nicely.
[http://www.marco.org/2012/07/09/coverage-of-significant-
appl...](http://www.marco.org/2012/07/09/coverage-of-significant-apple)

"I think Apple no longer wants to follow the EPEAT recycling guidelines
because they think not following them allows product designs that will be more
compelling for consumers and bring more value to Apple than their continued
participation in EPEAT.

And I don’t think it matters much. Apple still accepts their own computers for
recycling. It’s not unreasonable to ask the people who recycle old computers
properly, who I imagine are very few, to bring their Apple computers back to
Apple to guarantee the “best” recycling."

~~~
danieldk
That's really too much Apple love. While it's true that old machines can still
be recycled. But, in older models you could easily replace the battery --- you
can pop them out with a lever, get a new battery at the Apple store, and put
it in. Without removing any screws (or warranty).

While this change does not matter that much to most people here (I readily
admit that I replace my laptop every one or two years, selling the old one),
the average consumer uses a laptop much longer, especially when a laptop is a
huge investment for them. Apple's latest designs drastically shorten the
lifespan of laptops, unless you want to pay the exorbitant fees of having the
battery replaced or adding memory.

It is bad for the environment (more laptops need to be produced), the
consumer's pocketbook, and only serves Apple.

~~~
neild
I just picked a random laptop off of Dell's small business site: The M4600[1].
Dell will sell you a replacement 97Whr battery for $170[2]. The M4600 gets 3.5
hours of life with the larger battery[3].

Apple will replace the 95Whr battery in a Retina MacBook Pro for $200[4]. $30
more than Dell charges for a similar-capacity battery, but this does include
labor and the MPB gets 7+ hours of life with it[5].

I do not believe your assertion of "exorbitant fees" is supportable.

[1] <http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/precision-m4600/fs>

[2]
[http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&l=...](http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=soho&cs=ussoho1&category_id=2999&mfgpid=223510)

[3]
[http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6400&re...](http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6400&review=dell+precision+m4600+mobile+workstation&p=4)

[4] <http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/>

[5] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/retina-macbook-pro-
maxi...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/retina-macbook-pro-maximizing-
battery-life-with-gfxcardstatus/)

~~~
danieldk
I just did a quick eBay search, and you can get a genuine battery for that
particular Dell model well under $80. And as with most Dells, you can probably
replace it yourself (which was my main point). Replacing the battery in the
MacBook is 2.5 times the price of replacing the battery in the Dell.

And what if the SSD or memory is not large enough anymore for your needs?
(Which often happens after a few years of use.) In most other laptops and non-
Retina display MacBook Pro's one can replace them at market prices. Not so
with the new retina display MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, etc.

A friend of mine recently asked a quote for upgrading memory in his (pre-
aluminium) Mac Mini, it was over 200 Euro. The market value of the memory was
40 Euro.

Edit: I would like to add that I am a happy Mac user. But I think Apple is
rapidly moving into the wrong direction with their changes to rapidly
deprecate older models, either by making them non-upgradable or pretty
randomly removing support for them in new operating system versions (both OS X
and iOS).

~~~
dasil003
Like Twitter, Apple thinks they don't need the geeks anymore. My fear is they
may be right.

------
jwildeboer
So on the one side we have the Buy Your Own Device* (BYOD) trend and on the
other side we have stuff bought with public funds. Guess what - people will
bring their own Macs, iPads etc and thus are exempted from the EPEAT rule -
and the city saves money. Win-win? Well, except for the environment, but hey
...

(*) I refuse to call it Bring your own device. This trend really is about
moving investments from the company to the work force. It's effectively
workers paying fro their job - and that is so wrong ...

~~~
hopeless
There's a long history of other professions providing their own equipment:
barbers buy their own scissors, chefs buy their own knives and
builders/plumbers/electricians are often required to buy some equipment
themselves.

I'm not saying I agree with it, particularly when working for big
corporations, but it's not unprecedented.

~~~
mjwalshe
None of those are "profesions" in the strict sense of the word

Dont forget that many builders/plumbers/electricians are not employees but
contractors.

And Hairdressing (at least in the UK) has some bysantine working practices
that only exist in that industry

~~~
snowwrestler
Doctors buy their own stethoscopes.

~~~
mjwalshe
Again Doctors are a special case

They are all self employed in the UK. They have a day job in the NHS and have
private practice.

------
mojowo11
From this article: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57469635-37/city-of-san-
fr...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57469635-37/city-of-san-francisco-to-
stop-buying-apple-computers/?tag=reddit)

"According to stats from the Journal, this won't be much of a blow to Apple.
Only about 500 to 700, or 1 percent to 2 percent total, of San Francisco
computers are Macs."

So yeah, you'll have to pardon me if this strikes me as non-news.

~~~
jmduke
The bigger issue is that more organizations than just SF have EPEAT compliance
standards -- notably universities.

~~~
mojowo11
I don't disagree, but for some reason nobody seems to be writing that article,
they're just writing about the city of San Francisco and hoping it feels
important.

~~~
waa
Bloomberg's coverage extends the discussion a bit, and mentions purchasing
policies at Universities as well as companies like Ford.
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-11/apple-quitting-
gree...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-11/apple-quitting-green-
registry-leads-to-purchasing-fallout.html)

Apple may be right in claiming EPEAT wasn't evolving - but large organizations
with environmental targets & commitments to meet depend on standards rather
than the non-scalable need to scrutinize & validate every individual vendor's
approach.

------
reitzensteinm
Mashable appears to be down. Same story from a different source:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/07/10/san-francisco-
officials-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/07/10/san-francisco-officials-
plan-to-block-apple-procurement/)

------
drivingmenuts
I don't think this will hurt them much - Apple is a consumer-oriented company,
not government, business or education.

Students will continue to buy Macs and eventually the weight of all those
purchases will bleed over into other areas, whether there are guidelines or
not.

Governments will get a small propaganda boost for a bit, but eventually people
will start to question whey they're so behind the times.

Business doesn't want to pay a premium for it's computer equipment, so no big
loss there.

~~~
Mythbusters
yeah good riddance I say. For each SF city that decides to not buy Apple
product, many more iFans like me will some forward in support and buy more.
What do I care if the product is bad for the environment? It looks shiny and
expensive and makes me look cool.

~~~
stcredzero
The only part that's a sticking point with EPEAT is they mandate that any shop
can dismantle the device. Apple wants to push manufacturing past that. How's
that any worse for the environment, so long as they recycle all of their own
stuff?

(You can mail it in for free.)

~~~
Mythbusters
So you don't really get it do you? It's not just about recycling its about
reuse. I can buy a used laptop and a new battery and I have a good usable
laptop. I don't need to purchase a new one. That's where the dismantling
helps.

~~~
stcredzero
_> It's not just about recycling its about reuse._

No, I get that part. It just strikes me as a stretch.

------
ekianjo
It's funny that the only thing San Francisco city has a problem with is the
fact that you cannot dispose of the battery by yourself. That's clearly
another way Apple removes power from the user (and forces them to go back to
the Apple store for maintenance, recycling and all - as a company which LOVES
centralization of power) but that's probably not the worst. The fact that
devices such as iPad are locked to the death in terms of software do not seem
to get any reaction, however.

Microsoft was judged on antitrust grounds for far LESS than what Apple is
doing nowadays.

~~~
fredoliveira
Something not being user serviceable doesn't mean that it warrants an
antitrust process. The two things couldn't be further apart.

As to your first point, would you agree that, say, 95% of all devices are
"locked to the death in terms of software"? Because if you think about it,
you'll see it is quite true. Note that by this I don't disagree with openness,
I'm just contradicting the assumption that Apple is not the norm here.

~~~
ekianjo
If you are talking about computing devices, I don't know if your number of 95%
is really true.

I don't really care if my oven is hackable or not, but I do care about my
computer/tablet/smartphone/other computing device. I am not really a fan of
Windows, but it's certainly NOT a deeply locked system: you can develop your
own programs and install whatever you like, and even modify the registry.
Android is "relatively" open. You can still develop software for it on your
own, without any expenses as long as you have the SDK on your computer. True,
you can't tweak the system as much as you'd like, and the manufacturers do put
some additional locks on the device (preventing root access, for example).

All of this is impossible on any Apple device, out of the box. You just can't
produce software. It's just as disposable as your oven/washing machine.

That's definitely not the kind of computing device that I want, no matter how
shiny the interface looks like.

------
podperson
Apple's response is here:

<http://www.tuaw.com/2012/07/11/apple-responds-to-epeat-move/>

tl;dr -- EPEAT is out of date, doesn't cover phones or tablets, and you can be
EPEAT certified without even being Energy Star compliant (Dell is cited as an
example).

So the knee jerk response from City of SF etc. is idiotic posturing. Are they
also boycotting Dell?

~~~
bonzoesc
> So the knee jerk response from City of SF etc. is idiotic posturing.

Is the government of San Francisco known for much else?

------
nextstep
Apple claims that the environmental standards are outdated.

~~~
nodata
Then they should publically commit to permanently exceeding the EPEAT
guidelines.

------
chaud
Discussion from this afternoon: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4225338>

------
hessenwolf
In fairness, Apple produces luxury products, and you can pretty much always
get a cheaper version. (yes, the cheaper versions of an iPad were not so
comparable, but you could have used a laptop) It's not unreasonable for a
government organisation not to furnish it's staff with such treats.

------
readymade
This just in: San Francisco possesses inflated sense of self-importance

~~~
pyoung
From what I understand, many government agencies and administrations require
that a certain percentage of their computers comply with EPEAT standards.
According to the article, SF requires it for all of there computers, so this
is really just an administrative decision to keep within previously
established guidelines, and has nothing to do with self-importance.

------
momma-joe
This looks like the same scenario as the car engines - mechanics adapted -
those who didn't - perished. Same will happen here, if this works, rest of the
industry will follow and everyone who tweaks has to adapt(invent new tools to
fix) or perish. The industry would like it to perish so more $ in their
pocket.

------
bradfeld
Wow - what a completely, totally, idiotic and tone deaf move on the part of
the City of San Francisco. Government continues to baffle me.

------
Mordor
Apple could be a leader and show everyone else how to care for the
environment. What does this say about their customers?

------
bcl
Their loss. Would they rather Apple continue to claim their products were
recycle friendly? I applaud Apple for their honesty.

~~~
ubernostrum
As I recall, Apple's opinion is that the recycling standards aren't keeping
up. Which may be true -- these kinds of electronics aren't, so far as I know,
particularly well-suited to begin with for the type of mass assembly-line
recycling techniques that would have problems with ungluing a glass panel, and
there are lots of recycling programs that almost certainly _can_ handle that
step, including Apple's own, but the standards won't allow you to mention
that.

------
javert
This "green" stuff seems extremely shortsighted to me.

No point in sacrificing economic efficiency (read: better lives for actual
humans) when just putting all the stuff in a gigantic landfill is a perfectly
viable option.

~~~
wpietri
A landfill is not a black hole or a magic box. The stuff is still there.
Decaying. Reacting. Leaching into the groundwater and into the air. And
holding lots of valuable materials that now have to be dug out of the ground
elsewhere.

Saying, "fuck it, put it all in landfills" isn't economic efficiency; it's
short-sightedness and bad accounting. Thinks like EPEAT work to take societal
costs hidden through negative externalities and put them back in the purchase
price.

------
hell0_th3r3
there are numerous laws in place at local and state levels that prohibit
purchasing electronics that do not meet this certification. the state of
california is also governed by such rules (and will also have to stop
purchasing apple equipment), as are parts of the federal govt

so apple basically just took itself out of govt procurement

~~~
ubernostrum
_so apple basically just took itself out of govt procurement_

Or made a rather strong lobbying point for changing the standards.

~~~
jhack
If by changing you mean weakening.

~~~
ubernostrum
See my other comment in the thread; based on the information out there, it
really feels like the standards have not kept up with what's going on in the
real world, and may be too strict in their definition of whether something's
recyclable.

Of course, it's hard to say for certain, because the actual criteria aren't
public -- some digging around turned up the fact that you have to buy the
documents from IEEE.

