Apple ran one of the most famous television advertisements ever; the famous 1984 spot, implying that Apple would challenge the dominance of a certain company based in Redmond. Smaller than MicroSoft they may be, but they are more closed than the Empire of Gates [update – IBM, not MS. See comments].
Exhibit one is the App Store. Apple will only allow you to download applications that they have approved. They could offer all apps, but mark approved or supported apps as such, like Canonical do. Selling their kit in this way maximises vendor lock-in and, in short, acts in a way that would bring bucketloads of opprobium onto MicroSoft.
Exhibit two is my broken iPod. I have an iPod that can be described as bricked (as in so broken it’s about as useful as a brick). I took it to the Apple Store on Regent Street. I know, dear reader, that you might not be familiar with me, but suffice to say that I am currently wearing cords and tweed. I don’t want to make an appointment at the genius bar or, frankly, spend any time in the shiny, white, plastic bubble of sterility that is the Jobsian utopia which, frankly, looks too much like something of which Hugo Drax would approve.
That aside, it turned out that the hard disk on my slightly more than two-year-old iPod had died. They could repair it for £170; a new model, with twice the memory, would cost £180.
Apple, IMHO, must forfeit quite a lot of green credentials for that. No-one is going to repair when they can have new for ten more pounds; that means effectively junking the old iPod because Apple won’t repair it. Forget closed cycle; not only are Apple trying to sell another piece of kit I don’t want, there’s no recycling facility for iPods and similar that have gone to the great Apple Store in the sky.
Apple do like to portray themselves as having a certain je ne sais quoi that puts them ahead of MicroSoft in the evil, corporate monster league. Having such a poor attitude to repair, reuse and recycling doesn’t help matters; it would not surprise me if the aversion to easy repair is as much to do with preventing non-Apple approved people from tinkering with the little box.
I won’t be buying another iPod. If I do buy another mp3 player-type-thing, it might be an Archos. For the time being, a pair of headphones connected to my phone are sufficient. Since buying that iPod, I’ve come over all Linux, so it’s not surprising that I’m not keen on the incredible lockdown Apple uses. Besides that, Apple’s products just aren’t worth it.
xD.
On the disk point: an iPod pretty much *is* the disk, plus a battery and a fiver’s worth of electronics, so I’m not sure there’s too much difference between junking the HDD and junking the whole thing.
On recycling, surely (like all electronics vendors) they’re in breach of WEEE if they don’t offer recycling for old/used/broken products?
Very well said, old bean. And may I heartily congratulate you on your aversion to the Logan’s Run themed Apple Stores… we don’t all want to be shining models of clinical homogeneity. Go for the Archos… Android is the future anyhow.
xx
John,
My iPod had an eighty megabyte hard drive. A one terabyte hard drive from Seagate is currently available new on Amazon for £60. I know the iPod is particularly small, but it seems hard to justify the price tag for the repair.
Apple don’t recycle iPods themselves in the UK; you have to take it to a municipal recycling facility (link).
Shrubs,
I know some people like them; I just found the Apple Store clinical and sterile.
Over on Facebook, Mustafa Arif points out a mistake – the 1984 ad was aimed at IBM, not MicroSoft.
The sad fact is that most consumer electronics are non-economical to repair. This is because labour costs remain relatively expensive whilst the components are inexpensively sourced from the far east.
I don’t doubt that, but it doesn’t cost that much to swap out a hard drive. I know it’s different, but you can change the hard drive on a computer in a matter of minutes. I suppose my complaint is that Apple made no consideration of extending the life of the iPod by making it easy to change the battery or hard disk and so made it a disposable good.