If it was just a case that hardware capacity has reached a point where most of us really don't need to upgrade our computers any more, that would be one thing. But the article also says that many of Apple's decisions are making their laptops less recyclable - even if the actual materials they're being made from are more so. This is a serious issue that people should care about.
People should also care about not being able to replace their batteries. Even if the rest of the hardware remains useful after 2, 3 or even 4 years, a battery is a consumable. It gets used up. In the article, it says the original Macbook Air was rated for 300 charges. That's not a lot, and since you can't replace it, you're going to find yourself buying a new laptop in 2 or 3 years even if the rest of the hardware would have lasted 5 or 6 years. And your old laptop won't be recycled either, because they decided to glue everything together.
First of all Apple has a battery replacement program that is way, way cheaper than buying a new laptop ($129-199 for a MBP depending on the size of the laptop).
And you'll probably be able to buy aftermarket batteries just as you can with iPhones. I replaced the battery in my 3GS and it wasn't difficult at all even though the battery was glued in.
It's not like it's glued to the chassis with epoxy resin, it's designed to be replaced. iFixit didn't want to completely ruin the battery of their new laptop, so they kept it in.
You'll probably get one use of that, then. I doubt they'll still have 2012 Macbook Pro batteries sitting around in 2018, much less a person who knows how to install them.
I took my 2006 Macbook in to an Apple retail store to get a new battery, and they don't stock them any more. They said they could special order one, but actually suggested I try Amazon.
Gives an interesting alternative to business as a zero sum game. Bob Young, founder of Red Hat:
"The challenge is to focus on market size, not just market share. When consumer demand for bottled water grows, Evian benefits, even though many of those consumers start with a bottle other than Evian. Red Hat, like Evian, benefits when other Linux suppliers do a great job building a taste for the product. The more Linux users there are overall, the more potential customers Red Hat has for our flavor.
The power of brands translate very effectively into the technology business. We have evidence of this in the Venture Capital investors who have recently invested in several Open Source software companies. The one common denominator between all of the investments to date have been that the companies or their products have great name recognition, and are recognized as being quality products. In other words, they have successfully established a brand."
Everyone responding to these stories says that the advertiser did things wrong. If that's the case, what I'd really like to see is a story by someone who's run a successful Facebook campaign. What they did and what measurable impact it had on their business.
I have a Toshiba Equium R630 and it works well. It's small and lightweight, although not quite ultrabook standard, and it feels very well put together. I think this model is EOL now, but you can find newer ones. Everything just works.
Does anyone else think there's something strange about these figures?
There's still more iOS tablets being sold than Android, so how did Android manage to gain market share? Surely for that to happen, Android would have to be selling substantially more units?
One site that I think deals with this problem quite well is Metafilter. The comments are full of thoughtful and well reasoned discussions between the readers. Sure, there are problems: sometimes someone posts something that's mean spirited, or there's a few too many one liners in the comments thread, but, on the whole, these problems are rare.
In fact, the quality of the comments are so high that there's even an Ask Metafilter sub-section, where readers post, often very personal, questions and do so without fear of the kind of reaction they'll get.
What's most interesting about the Metafilter model is that there's no up- or down-voting, only favouriting.
So how do they ensure the quality of the comments? Well, to become a member you have to pay a one off $5 charge. It's not much, so almost everyone can afford it, but it seems to be enough to discourage drive-by comments or anyone who's not serious about contributing respectfully and substantively.
There's also the possibility for posts and comments to be deleted, and for an account to be banned completely if someone fails to follow the guidelines. I don't think this happens often.
As a MeFite: even the favouriting isn't necessary. It can polarise discussions and turn them into a back and forth where each side tries to get higher scores. I'm hiding those, and idly wish they hadn't been introduced.
Exeter University is open to the public, although they've just done massive amounts of work on it and I don't know how it's turned out.
It might be worth taking another look at your nearest Uni library, as I think quite a few are similar to Exeter/Durham, at least in the day and if you don't want to take out books.
My local university is Lincoln and I'm on campus every now and then as I have friends who work in their enterprise park. They have an excellent and reasonably new library but you need a student card to even get in since they put barcode scanner gates in when they built it. Their Web site notes this also :-(
That said, I might go and explicitly ask sometime, as there may be an unpublicised way around the problem.
People should also care about not being able to replace their batteries. Even if the rest of the hardware remains useful after 2, 3 or even 4 years, a battery is a consumable. It gets used up. In the article, it says the original Macbook Air was rated for 300 charges. That's not a lot, and since you can't replace it, you're going to find yourself buying a new laptop in 2 or 3 years even if the rest of the hardware would have lasted 5 or 6 years. And your old laptop won't be recycled either, because they decided to glue everything together.