> The MacBook Air is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, a first for the company. This includes 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled tin in the solder and gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards, 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets (which is 99% of the rare earth elements in the device), 100% recycled cobalt in the MagSafe connector’s battery and magnets, 100% recycled copper in the main logic board (also a first), 90% recycled steel in the battery tray, keyboard feature plate, and trackpad beam plate, and 35% or more recycled plastic in other components.
> Additionally, over 25 percent of the electricity used to manufacture the device was sourced from supplier clean energy projects. And 100 percent of the wood fiber used in the packaging is recycled, as is 99 percent of the fiber-based plastic.
Don't be fooled, while it is nice they do this, at the end of the day it is just greenwashing.
They design their laptops in such way that they are not (easily) repairable, and the failure of one component could mean replacement of the entire logic board. And echoing the parent comment, if you think 8G/256GB is good enough at the time of purchase but find it unusable because of a change in the way you use your computer, the only option is to trade-in/sell it instead of just upgrading them. (The vast majority ofWindows laptops on the market has a replaceable SSD.)
On the other hand, every Apple device I’ve had has been usable for longer (and mostly with no repair) than the non-Apple laptops or phones I’ve had.
For example, my old MacBook Pro was from mid-2015, I only replaced it with a new M2 Pro early last year - it was my primary machine for almost eight years, with just one battery replacement. The current iPhone I’m writing this on is from late 2020 (12 Pro) and still in fine working condition, I can’t see myself having any reason to upgrade this year.
And I have a HP ZBook G3 purchased in 2016 that I still use and have no need of replacing, it came with 32GB RAM, 512GB nvme SSD, 4k display, 3 year on-site warranty and has been upgraded to 64GB RAM 2TB nvme SSD + 4TB nvme SSD.
I have mid 2020 Samsung Galaxy FE20, inherited from my wife when she upgraded on a work plan, still getting regular firmware updates and again I seen no need to upgrade this phone for another few years.
Oldest computer I use on regular basis is Samsung ATIV Pro 700T from 2013 with upgraded storage (I would have upgraded the RAM if it was possible).
At work I have a 2020 i5 macbook air which is almost useless compared to both of those non-Apple machines and 2022 M2 air which works quite nicely for now but since it is not possible to upgrade it will likely be obsolete in a couple of years (like the 2020 macbook) when Apple decides that you now must have 16GB RAM for Mac OS 14 or 15 or whatever.
So Apple hardware is neither special nor unique nor worth the premium.
This is nice in theory, but to call this greenwashing, you would need to have some idea about how often SSDs in "easily repairable" laptops actually do get replaced. If it is a large percentage, then sure, you're right. But if it is a very small percentage (which I am almost certain it is), then Apple's efforts to use recycled materials / have more power efficient chips / in general make devices that seem to last longer than various competitors is going to have a much larger impact than the repairability.
this isn't really an apple thing. thunderbolt requires the ability to use multiple displays, if you don't then you can't advertise thunderbolt.
since macbook airs don't have multi-display capability, you can't call it thunderbolt. you can call it usb4, or usb-c 40gbps, or whatever, but it's not technically thunderbolt - thunderbolt is the brand for the full-capability standard.
this is not something consumers normally bump up against since x86 laptops generally either have multi-display support or don't exist in a product tier where 40gbps is a thing. Stuff like chromebooks falls into the latter, too cheap to have 40gbps, and the entire x86 space is dominated by literally two companies both of which happen to support multi-display. but you'll probably see this show up more in ARM notebooks once other vendors have a shot at releasing processors besides just those 2.
like idk what you expect anyone to say here - usb standards are kind of a shitty free-for-all and always have been. usb gives you the freedom to make a confusing port that doesn't support everything. The simple fact of the matter is the base-tier Mx processors don't support multi-display without a software-driven dongle, that's all you need to know, it's otherwise a full-capability tb3 port, basically usb4 but without the baggage of being unable to connect to certain tb3 devices like usb4 sometimes does.
there is absolutely a justification for laptops like air to not have multi-display support. not everybody needs it, and those processors cross-over between the tablet and laptop spaces. it's a fancy tablet apu, regardless of how good it performs. the sin is not offering a M3 Pro variant on the 15" MBA, and I'd say offering the M3 on the MBPs at all. But it totally makes sense for ultramobility laptops to cut power and cost, and you'll almost definitely see ultrabooks start doing that as the wintel monopoly crumbles over the next year or two. That will be branded as USB4 and won't necessarily support all the capabilities of TB3... or be compatible with all legacy TB3 devices. USB standard sucks, or rather: USB Implementers Forum is responsive to their customers, who aren't you (at least not directly).
I mean, I don't have any problem with what Apple is doing. I was just adding a correction to the poster I was replying to: that all Apple laptops do not support TB4. Based on their single display support, they're fully-featured TB3, and that's perfectly fine.
What they don't tell you is that all of those recycled metals are both cheaper and greener than freshly mined and almost always have been. Steel and aluminum take less energy to recycle that to mine and extract.
There's more demand for metals like aluminium and iron than gets recycled, so only part of the demand gets satisfied this way and there's still demand for metals produced through mining. This is also why the price stays at the level of the mined metals.
> Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium from the raw ore. In 2022, the United States produced 3.86 metric tons of secondary aluminium for every metric ton of primary aluminium produced.
The only reason it's not industry standard to use 100% recycled metals is that it's pointless greenwashing. Everyone already uses as much recycled metal as they can get their hands on because it's cheaper.
> The MacBook Air is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, a first for the company. This includes 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled tin in the solder and gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards, 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets (which is 99% of the rare earth elements in the device), 100% recycled cobalt in the MagSafe connector’s battery and magnets, 100% recycled copper in the main logic board (also a first), 90% recycled steel in the battery tray, keyboard feature plate, and trackpad beam plate, and 35% or more recycled plastic in other components.
> Additionally, over 25 percent of the electricity used to manufacture the device was sourced from supplier clean energy projects. And 100 percent of the wood fiber used in the packaging is recycled, as is 99 percent of the fiber-based plastic.