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WOW! ..

Apple, you just know what we want .. But what we want sometimes we just can’t afford .. :-(

Kuddhos to the movers and shakers at Apple.

B.

It maybe the greenest apple yet, but I can’t help but think this akin to an over-priced, somewhat impractical piece of jewelry gadget (go consumerism!). At such an expensive price for the 1.6GHz (or at almost double that for 1.8GHz with 64SDD instead of hard disk) and with no optical drive, I find it hard to imagine what market this is targeted at.

One thing all computrer manufacturers are still failing to address is the structural obsolesence they build into their machines. After only a few years, you have to throw the whole computer away, because each indivual component is not upgradable separately. Not to mention the so called “improvements” in design which are actually nothing but a mechanism to create a fabricated market, thus creating more consumption and more waste. At least its a start though.

it’s been said but well worth repeating that this thing is pretty, but not green.

it’s not upgradeable, and the only reason to buy apple products now that they’re on intel architecture is they’re pretty. they don’t do a thing better than win xp, or many linux builds, and security through obscurity isn’t.

other vendors make MUCH greener, lower footprint machines that are upgradeable and play well with others.

wake up and smell the digital coffee. open architecture and open source are generally greener in terms of distributed workload interoperability (my widget dies so i put in a replacement widget instead of buy a whole new machine)

apple does charge more for it’s parts. on average 150~200% more for hardware, and if you think the installation labour isn’t priced into the replacement of a part i’ve got a nice bridge to sell you.

Hello,

I am an avid reader of Inhabitat.com, and I love reading articles about all the different stuff every day! I have looked into this whole deal with Apple, and I have thought about it a good deal.

I have read around many technology blogs, seeing too much of the same thing, repeatedly; People saying it’s overpriced, non-upgradeable, not really green, and complaining about the internal processes of manufacturing. If this is such a concern, why don’t you just give Apple PR a call and see what they have to say, and do some further research into it?

Phil, that is probably the most negative thing I have read about Apple, and their efforts to go green and develop more efficient products. Now, even if the computer was “waste” after 2 years, it’s the owner’s job to properly take of the “waste,” since it is your property. Here we see Apple trying to make a difference taking whatever baby steps it can, using LED displays, PVC free plastics, easily recyclable aluminum, and you are calling it a fabrication mechanism. That’s not really fair, is it? Put yourself in Apple’s shoes, how would you feel about people responding similar to this about your efforts to make a difference?

Realistically, when you’re on the go, do you really plug in multiple peripherals in the computer? Do you really need to lug around an extra battery that you’d have to shut the computer down for anyway? I mean, electric outlets are pretty much everywhere now – even in cars!

I’ve even heard from some people that Apple’s green doings are exaggerated and they’re not as “green” as it sounds like it is. Rather that is true or not, at least it’s SOME effort, and more companies should be attempting it.

I stand strong with Apple’s efforts to go green, and as technology advances, it will become more easier to be greener. I also stand strong with Apple’s decisions they are making technologically with hardware, software, and services. They have a very “plant a tree and watch it grow” type of a methodology, which has been proven to work several times. I am willing to elaborate on the technicalities of the steps Apple are taking, so if anyone’s interested, lemme know. :)

All the best,
Enthusiast

Ben, exactly my thoughts on that.

People these days just tend to do nothing but take things for granted. They want and expect to see as many things as possible, as customizable as possible, because that’s just what this industry has grown into, in a sense, while not even really requiring these “necessities.”

Personally, being in the graphic design field, this machine would serve me well with most of my needs. 2GB of RAM for this kind of a machine is just fine – that’s how much I have on my desktop computer. It would do well with portability, clearly, and when not portable, you can fuse it into some kind of a desktop solution if your “needs” aren’t as heavy as mine would tend to get.

Thank you,
Enthusiast

Enthusiast: You are of course right in saying that one can’t expect wonders from a notebook weighing less than 1,4kg, and I did not want to imply that. It’s just less green than the competition. As I mentioned, the lack of user-replacable (= way cheaper) parts like battery,disk and ram lessens the financial incentive to increase the lifetime of the device by another year by upgrading these parts. And other vendors show that this is possible: notebooks from the IBM/Lenovo X Series weigh 0-50 grams more and offer these features (see http://tinyurl.com/ytc6qg) . Of course they look different, thats a matter of personal taste.

Yeah this cool I like this post are you going to do a follow up? I just won a Mac Book Air today :) I am so happy about that found a freebee site http://budurl.com/MacBookAir