Make the vendor responsible for actual recycling and this issue goes away over night
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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https://www.apple.com/shop/open/free_recycling
It’s not really free, but it’s there as an option.
It's not at all free - you pay for it when you buy their new product. This is just sale incentives.
There is no scenario where a company doing this would not be paid for by customers in a roundabout way. So if we want to require that every company to do this, that means every company is going to balance their finances to make it happen and if it costs them money, it costs us money.
Well, even so it should probably be don't just to make sure electronics can be recycled.
Like paying a $5 disposal fee when you buy your new tires so you can dispose of them for free when they're done. Or a $20 disposal fee for a new mattress.
Pay a $5 disposal fee for your new electronics and then all electronic retailers should be required to take the old ones and have a way to recycle them.
Yeah I agree the fee should be up front, otherwise customers aren't gonna do it. And it should be mandatory that companies participate. There's way too much consumer waste.
amazon's local showrooms.. err, i mean bestbuy locations across the u.s., accepts many things for recycling--at no charge. including cell phones, desktops, laptops, all-in-ones, and printers. details here
It's true, they make a good profit by recycling those things too from what I've heard
The fact that you can't buy the cable needed to unbrick a Chromebook, and have to solder it together yourself from Google's schematics is ridiculous.
Chromebooks are straight up hostile towards attempts at repairs, maintenance, or upgrades. It’s wild, they really went the extra mile towards rampant consumerism.
It's not ridiculous it's designed that way
It can be designed ridiculously
I bet you can get it on Etsy.
I'm using external keyboard on my macbook because the letter i is not working and replacing the keyboard means completely gutting the thing and ripping the old one out by force as it's locked in place with plastic rivets.
Having worked in a repair shop, I can give you instructions, but that would be assuming you have the resources and the tools to follow said directions and nothing should designed like that..
Thanks. There's plenty of instructions on how to do it but in my case the biggest issue would probably be sourcing a new Finnish keyboard for it
Ah yeah, good fucken luck
This makes me happy and sad at the same time.
Where do I get the keyboard as a part from? I bought a keyboard from a seemingly branded seller on Aliexpress and the keyboard was really shit. The spacebar didn't balance at the edges and all the key felt mushy.
I also bought a battery from iFixit and got two warranty replacements and not a single one lasted more than a few hours before bricking itself. As in the battery still measured a voltage and it could keep the ram contents in sleep but the controller/battery info no longer showed up in macOS.
I can do these repairs as difficult as they are but where do I actually get the parts from?
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Buy Framework laptops, these have amazing repairability and upgradability, as well as good Linux compatibility. They even offer ChromeOS options, if you ever need a Chromebook.
If you upgrade the motherboard, you can actually 3d print or buy a $60 case and use the old motherboard as a desktop.
edited for clarity
Yeah it's really cool. Also works very well with an external Gpu.
I mean can't you just plug it into a monitor and then use it as a desktop?
Yup - as someone else pointed out I wasn't clear in what I said. If you buy a new mobo to upgrade your laptop, you wind up with an older mobo that sits there. You can then actually use the old mobo as a desktop computer as long as it has ram and an SSD. The form factor and IO were designed with this functionality in mind.
Ok gotcha that's badass.
Yes, but open contacts aren't that nice ^^
Yes, the point they're making is that if you upgrade the laptop components, you can use the old components as another PC
I think I could justify Chromebooks to a degree when it comes to hardware. The goal is clearly to produce cheapest hardware possible, which inevitably means soldered components and mass production with features disabled in software. I can't excuse software locking and bad practices, though. However what Apple is doing is just sinister.
Ohh yeah, I literally work as a field technician fixing computers for some of the big companies. Literally the only computers that make me & my competitors go insane are Chromebooks. Hardware is ok at best. Software is absolutely HELL though.
They're the non rechargeable ecigs of the laptop world
You mean the "disposables", even though that's a misnomer. Many of them require a charge one or more times throughout their shitty little lives.
I used to be a field technician doing that and repairing printers. May the roads you drive be safe and your lunch choices to your tastes.
I'm curious what about the software is hell as a technician? I was under the impression that the ChromeOS part being normally unmodifiable by the user would lead to fewer problems. Is there something about it that makes it worse than a comparable Windows or Mac computer?
What's wrong with the software? They are client web devices and with crostini you can develop at a pinch. But they aren't meant to be laptop/desktop replacement.
Oh boy i sure do love you have to hack into the bios just to install a usable os on the only truly mass market linux laptops
Mrchromebox is doing the Lord's work.
I don't think anyone is surprised by this outcome one iota.
shockedpikachu.jpg
that they have to replace each member of their family's $1,000 phone every other year because it's not designed to last
What do they do? I'm on my third phone since they came to be and the one inbetween only because it became infeasible to repair a broken screen. While my Galaxy S3 just retired from being an alarm clock, because the battery can't be charged anymore (and replacement batteries were bad-as-new in 2016 already).
Maybe don't buy $1000 phones then.
You can get much more reliable and sturdy phones for like $300-$400 and they last longer than the flimsy fancy flagship phones. They just don't have the best features.
Yes? That's what i do. High end doesn't have the features i like and cpu and camera are outdated 3 or4 years later anyway.
I can only go by people like Luis Rossman on Mac stuff, but I've done my fair amount of Chromebook repairs. Granted it's been a few years, and most were dell and splash of HP/Lenovo. Hardware wise there's not much to them, physically. Pretty easy with simple tools. However, the shimming/reloading the OS is a whole different monster. Dell was the easiest, but was still involved.
I worked on mostly Chromebook repairs for 6 months last year, and I found it to be pretty straightforward as well from a hardware standpoint...especially when there was no point in doing most repairs because it would cost more than just getting a new one.
For any OS issues, we'd simply take a flash drive and reinstall it from scratch. It's definitely gotten easier, but holy crap could it be slow as hell lol
From what I remember, even the dell process was a testament to following instructions to the T. Having to do some steps with the battery connected, then more with it disconnected, then connected again. HP used some special screw for board locking. Lol what a wild time.
Oh yeah, now it's all pretty standardized with like the same screws for everything.
Its no longer quite as silly with the specific steps to follow, but god, is it boring as all hell to work with too lol
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apple and Google have long been criticized for selling devices that are deemed harder to repair than others.
Worse, PIRG believes that the two companies are failing to make laptops easier to take apart and fix.
The "Failing the Fix (2024)" report released this week [PDF] is largely based on the repairability index scores required of laptops and some other electronics sold in France.
For laptops, that criteria includes providing updates and the ability to reset software and firmware.
PIRG also docked companies for participating in trade groups that fight against right-to-repair legislation and if OEMs failed to “easily provide full information on how they calculated their products."
PIRG’s report doesn't factor in software support timelines, but even if it did, Chromebooks’ repairability score wouldn’t increase notably since the move only brought them to “industry norms,” Lucas Gutterman, Designed to Last campaign director for the US PIRG Education Fund, told me.
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