Should Apple Make a Repairable Mac?

 

Should Apple Make a Repairable Mac?

Well, yes, I sure think they should!

Anthony Lawrence
My pile of used electronics waiting for recycling

Recently wrote a story about the Framework repairable laptop. I was absolutely astounded by what that laptop is and isn’t. I do recommend reading his post and following the links to the company that is making this machine.

If I still had the income I had in my heyday, I’d buy one of those just out of curiosity!

My instantaneous thought was, “If a small company like that can do this, why can’t Apple?”

The Framework is selling for $999.00. Sure, it is in no way equivalent to my $999 M1 MacBook Air, but still, that surprised me. It’s only .04 kg heavier than my Air and it’s actually thinner!

Would it dig into Apple’s envious profit margins to make a machine like this? Perhaps, though I imagine there also would be savings from being able to fix assembly line rejects much more easily. And the recycling opportunities are huge!

Recycling

Apple puts out a lot of ink about their recycling. If you’ve never seen their Daisy video, it is a lot of fun to watch.

Isn’t that inspiring? Yet one of the items in the recycling box shown in the picture at the top of this post is an old macBook that I kept forever out of sentimentality. It will soon become electronic waste.

We all know that the waste we humans create is shameful. I think that Apple, rolling in billions upon billions of dollars, should be particularly ashamed of their contribution to e-waste.

Laws

Laws about repairability are being considered even now. I expect that there will be enormous political pressure to not enact these measures or to weaken them so much that they will hardly matter.

And I certainly understand that smaller companies might find this difficult.

But there we have that Framework computer. They aren’t a big company. If they can do this, surely Apple, Google, Samsung can.

Public Perception

Wouldn’t it be better to do this NOW, to get ahead of the wave? Wouldn’t this be great publicity for any of the big tech companies?

If Apple did this across their product line, others would have to follow. Those of us who care about the environment would certainly cheer and customers who could then get inexpensive repairs — and sometimes do repairs themselves — would join in.

So should they?

I think it’s foolish not to.

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