Apple Is Wasteful and It’s Time to Stop Pretending It’s a ‘Green Company’

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I’m an Android engineer. I make Android apps. I can do that on a Mac, Windows PC, Linux PC, or even a Chromebook. If you want to make iOS apps, you need a Mac. That’s fine for me. I hate Windows and Linux is like buying a classic car. Sure, it’s cool, but you’re under it every weekend fixing something and if you need a car for commuting to work, a project car might not be the best choice. The same goes for a computer that requires upkeep constantly. Linux and, to a lesser extent, Windows PCs, are far more maintenance-heavy than Macs. For lack of a better option, I use a Mac (the same reason I use iOS, interestingly enough). So I should be fine as an Apple developer, right? I learned some Objective-C in the past, Swift, the language for modern Apple apps is surprisingly similar to Kotlin, the language I mostly use for Android apps, so it should be no problem. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’ve been jumping around various software platforms for years, picking up a new one won’t be a problem for me. I’m especially excited about the possibility of making visionOS apps.

But I can’t.

Because Apple wants me to create e-waste to develop apps. My Intel Mac should have no problems with developing visionOS apps, but Apple wants me throwing out my Mac and buying a new one from them. That’s the future Apple envisions.

EGPUs Reduce E-Waste

I bought a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro in 2019. The M1 chip didn’t support eGPUs, and I really wanted that. An eGPU is an external graphics card that lets you use a desktop-class graphics card instead of the underpowered one in your laptop. The MacBook Pro from 2019 was the last new MacBook to support these powerful graphics, as Apple has chosen to push users towards trading in their entire Mac rather than supporting eGPUs again.

Apple’s latest chips can’t come anywhere near to the performance of the latest desktop graphics cards. As graphics cards are increasingly used for machine learning and AI, having access to a powerhouse graphics processor is important not only for video and photo editors and gamers, but also computer scientists, app developers, and other software engineers.

In other words, for the sake of the future of software work, a powerful graphics card is necessary.

Apple has optimized their neural engine in their processors for AI work. However, if you have a MacBook Pro with an M3 Max right now, it’s as good as it’ll ever be. It can only get worse with time. However, my Intel-powered MacBook from 2019? I could start using a brand new graphics card with it, blowing past the performance of a brand new M3 Max MacBook Pro. My 4-year-old MacBook could outperform an M3 Max MacBook Pro with one upgrade, just one part to swap out.

Instead, Apple wants me to throw my entire MacBook in the garbage (“recycle”) and buy a new one just to work on their visionOS app which… would run just fine with my powerful eGPU and Intel processor.

Downgrade to Upgrade

Apple continually asks users to just dispose of their products to buy a new one. It’s not only expensive, inconvenient, and actually asks users to “trade up” to a less powerful device in some scenarios, it’s wasteful. Yes, Apple can re-use many of the materials in a MacBook, but not all of them. The rest goes to a landfill. That’s why we’re supposed to “reduce, reuse, recycle,” in that order. Recycling is a final effort, a last resort. It shouldn’t be your only option. The process for recycling electronics also creates a large amount of pollution, as melting down components to get at metals can release toxic fumes. However, rather than let us upgrade our own memory, our own graphics processors, our own batteries, Apple asks us to throw the entire thing out.

It’s time we stop pretending Apple is a “green” company, and start calling it out for its extreme anti-environment, pro-profit policies. There’s no reason the M3 Macs couldn’t support an eGPU. There’s no reason Apple couldn’t make it easy to swap out components. The only reason Apple does this is to force you to buy something brand new every three to four years. When Macs have gotten insanely expensive, costing thousands of dollars more than their equivalent Intel counterparts, it’s obvious that Apple’s only motivator is to remain the most valuable company in the world. Making the best products for consumers and the environment isn’t on their radar anymore.

Profit Over Being ‘The Best’

Apple has no interest in making the best products. Those would be ones that allow customers to use them for many years. They have no desire to help the environment, that would entail reducing e-waste by letting users upgrade components, rather than throwing out the entire device. Apple isn’t a good company, they’re extremely wasteful.

I’m holding out on buying an Apple silicon Mac until I know it’s something that could last me more than 3 years, something with eGPU support so I can upgrade it over the years, keeping it useful long enough to be worth the precious materials that were mined by human hands, long enough to prevent it from becoming waste in no time. A $7,000 MacBook Pro shouldn’t be obsolete in three years, and a Mac with the same memory and storage as my Intel MacBook shouldn’t cost over $1,000 more than it did over four years ago.

Apple is greenwashing their wasteful decisions with solar panels and lousy iPhone cases. Forcing people to upgrade to a Mac that won’t last as long as their old Mac and doesn’t have the performance potential of a nearly 5-year-old Mac is ridiculous, especially when the waste such an upgrade entails. Normally, I’d be all for a rapid upgrade. I love being on the bleeding edge. But for me, Apple’s target demographic, “upgrading,” spending $6,000+ on a new MacBook Pro, would be a terrible idea. I’d love to make apps for Apple’s ugly new electronic ski goggles, I just don’t want to create $6,000 worth of e-waste to do it. But Apple doesn’t mind.