Apple's sections about the environment in their announcements always makes me feel like I'm being gaslit as they mention anything but repair and supporting the consumer's right to reduce and re-use
Unpopular opinion here but Apple’s approach to environmental stuff is more right than wrong. The biggest environmental impact of devices are in the manufacturing and disposel of them. At Apple’s scale all of the things they do add up. Their use of recycled materials, elimination of certain more toxic materials, and even just making lighter products and packaging all help. At a minimum, those efforts are better than not having them and seem to be more than any other manufacturer is willing to do. Apple has set a goal to have a closed production loop, using only materials that they have recycled from older ones. That’s really ambitious and I doubt they’ll get there 100% but once again, what other company is even trying that?
Usually the only thing people can point to for Apple not being as green as they’d like is the repairability of the products. I’m willing to bet that whatever additional waste that is created by that is more than offset by having devices that last longer. Devices that require fewer repairs and have good software support allows either you, or whoever gets your old devices, to keep using the same device for longer. Every device has a lifecycle, making it as long as possible is the best way to avoid environmental impacts.
They're doing a horrible job. You're right that the biggest environmental impact is manufacturing and disposal. But keeping a device running longer is better than manufacturing a new one from recycled parts . The way Apple handles storage and memory means ENTIRE devices need to be replaced when a new larger SSD or a few more gigs of memory are all that's really needed to keep a device in service for a few years longer. Not to mention stuff like just being able to actually replace the keyboard in any reasonable fashion, etc.
There's really very very little reason for all the Macs at least to not have M.2 slots besides letting Apple save pennies on SSD controller costs and convincing users to spring for overpriced upgrades. Even the iPad could probably use an M.2 SSD! The Surface Pros do!
Until Apple makes their devices with user replaceable batteries all their environmental efforts are falling short. Making consumable part -- a battery -- an integrated component that requires special tools and training to replace is environmental crime in name of planned obsolesce. Everything else Apple does are second-order effects.
Personally I think it’s better to do some good for the environment than no good for the environment. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. They should absolutely let us repair every device, but I’m glad they make the environmental efforts they currently do as well.
I think the source of your sort of unconscious discomfort is because corporate speak is not about truth or justice or any moral/ethical system, it's about reputation-management of the firm and profit. They usually won't make direct provable lies, but will leave out any information that does not boost their reputation even if it's relevant or contradicts their messaging. But importantly, they are appealing to a sense of moral virtue when they brag about environmental responsibility or privacy, even if they aren't taking a lens of truth and justice to their analysis and messaging, but a biased one that ultimately favors profit.
This dissonance in tone vs real motive is really painful to people who care about nuance and truth and moral good, because it means they muddy the waters of what is right and wrong and confuse us.
AH could that be why their "thinnest iPad" advertisement was to crush usable piano, metronome, etc? the iPad division // department does NOT respect reuse?
They're bold enough to say they're carbon neutral.
"Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chain and life cycle of every product."
Yeah their Watch bands are made of recycled plastic and they don’t use leather anymore. But the quality of the bands is often so bad that you have to replace them after a year or even only some months.
I bought a braided solo loop of theirs and it became stretched out within 5 months. I didn't do anything but take it off my hand each night to charge it. If that's the norm, and the Apple store employee made it seem that way, they shouldn't even sell them.
I genuinely don't grok who is buying iPad Pros; outside of maybe artists & graphic designers? Maybe? But even there, wacomb-like tablets on Mac is still super popular, and the iPad Air in a bigger size is going to be crazy popular.
A 13" iPad Pro with keyboard is $1650. And you can't even get the nanotexture glass below 1TB; so that + keyboard is approaching $2300.
I don't have a personal laptop and use iPad Pro instead. I have a work laptop that I only use for work and I never take on vacations with me.
iPad Pro gives me:
- amazing SSH terminal
- ability to download content from streaming services to long-haul flights
- a decent size screen for watching TV in bed (my bedroom has a layout that prevents me from placing TV anywhere)
- a good steam/xcloud client
- when latency is too high for SSH, I have RPi I connect with USB-C to iPad and shows up as Ethernet adapter powered from iPad.
- a few games to play on the iPad itself when away
- I have a thunderbolt dock that my main PC is connected to, I can switch to my iPad. That with Stage Manager gives essentially focus-mode mac.
- nice screen (quality and size) to read things (not books, eInk is king there)
- nice screen to look at recipes while I cook
You might notice that none of these tasks require a powerful CPU, and you will be right. I got iPad Pro because of screen size and thunderbolt. Might switch to the new one because the camera is finally in the right place.
If I could run IntelliJ on iPad, even in remote mode - I wouldn't even think about buying a laptop.
The screen quality is surely good, but why wouldn't an iPad air or Samsung whatever work just as well for all these use cases?
Also, it seems that you connect a keyboard, a mouse, a game pad and a display... Cool that it works, but that is very far from out of box experience.
Currently an iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is my main personal computer. I’ve found that it’s the most enjoyable device to use for internet browsing. It replaced my Chromebook, which had that role before. Like the Chromebook, it’s got a physical keyboard, so it’s good for typing. The cantilever also places the screen closer to my hands, helping me to fluidly switch between keyboard and touch navigation, which both work well. The browser is noticeably snappier than my Chromebook was, although that might come down to a better processor generation.
A secondary use-case is watching movies while traveling. I did my taxes on there too - Google sheets, scanning receipts from the camera into the Files app, all work well. I plugged in a monitor for that.
The one thing I’m not doing on there is coding. I only do that on my work laptop. If I had personal programming projects, I’d surely be using a laptop that lets me run my own code as my personal computer.
The price for the new Pro sure is high, but I’m tempted. The phone’s 120Hz OLED has spoiled me. Surely they sell more of the cheaper models, but they might as well make a halo device to rake in as much margin as they can from people who are willing to pay for the best.
Every time I think about buying an iPad, I just find myself wishing there was a legit / better approach to, you know, computing on it.... I don’t do much for fun besides work on things that need compilers, debuggers, dynamic analysis, linking, JIT execution, tracing, and suchlike. All such endeavors are firmly impossible on iOS and iPadOS.
I think touch computers had enormous potential that has mostly been permanently squandered by making them into entertainment devices for users — not owners, and certainly not operators. The product barely even really belongs to you from that perspective.
This is something that Stallman and the Free Software movement got absolutely bang-on: proprietary software seeks to control its users and prevent them from truly owning and operating their computers. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important free computing is, and how much more important it will become in the future if we don’t secure our access to it.
Meh a Chromebook let's you run Linux apps thought. I can run full blown IDEs locally without problems. And yes, that is with 8Gb ram, ChromeOS has superb memory management.
I'm going to. Every digital thing I do outside of my job happens on an iPad Pro and I absolutely love it. I make music in Logic Pro on an M1 iPad Pro - it's hard to overstate how amazing it is to be able to carry around an entire recording studio in such a tactile form factor. I can't get on with desktop DAWs at all.
One segment - old people. It’s a great device - reliable, fast, convenient, and portable. Large screen is a godsend for old guy like me. If you own one, I think you may find it really pleasant to use as side device on your desk.
I had one from 2020, use it all the time over my phone, and I’m upgrading to this one. 512GB though - shame I can’t get the glass :(
I bought one last year to code with and give demos/workshops of our products. This worked mostly well given that I could remote into my work computer through a Tailscale subnet router.
I ultimately ended up selling it in lieu of a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini, as I really missed having a local dev environment.
However, laptops at my current employer are more locked down, so I can't SSH and VNC into them like I could before, even through Tailscale.
Given that I will still travel a lot with them and like to work on non-work things during flights without carrying two laptops, I decided to get the OLED 11" iPad Pro with the Keyboard that I can use to remote into my laptop at home.
I also draw heavily during deep dives and workshops; so much so, that I always have a Pencil with me in my fanny pack, which I carry with me everywhere. Given this, I also got me a Pencil Pro to replace it.
Not an artist but the Wacom-like graphic tablets are tethered to the laptop or workstation, with at least two cables (one for power, another for the HDMI) so some artists do prefer the more portable solution of iPad plus that nice Procreate app.
I use my M1 iPad Pro for graphics work (from simple sketches to full illustrations), and for making music with multi-track recording apps. I don't bother with the keyboard since little of my input is text-oriented.
People with government grant or unrestricted access to company money. Already spoke to people wanting to know when they can use their Cost center for one.
Because the pro used to be the largest iPad with a pencil. Now you can get the air instead and "pen and paper" certainly does not need "pro" performance.
> With these advanced features, Apple Pencil Pro allows users to bring their ideas to life in entirely new ways, and developers can also create their own custom interactions.
Can someone please make it so that if you turn the "Pencil" upside down it acts as an eraser, like a real pencil would?
This has been around for so long I wonder if there's a patent that is in the way of apple implementing it.
Even though I tend to like Apple gear: if there is such a patent in the way I'm sure they'll add this once the patent expires, and call it a revolutionary development.
if it’s parent-encumbered, it’s literally been recognized as a novel and advanced innovation, that’s why it’s granted a patent in the first place. Choosing to license vs wait is a business decision but you’re spinning something that’s objectively true into somehow being a “trick”, which is a really common pattern when discussing apple for some reason (“selling or renting first-party tools is a trick”, for example).
I think it would depend on there being bits for the iPad to track where the tip is for it to work well. Kinda funny that Apple calls their stylus a Pencil and lack this functionality while the Surface and Wacom "Pens" do.
There's a double tap gesture on the second gen (and newer I think) version of the Apple Pencil that switches between the eraser and whatever tool you're using. I find this to be much more efficient and ergonomic than having to turn the whole pencil over to erase.
But you wouldn't be required to use it, just erase how you do now. I would love for this and for it to be customizable. It could be used to become a highlighter/selector tool or some other concept that we don't know yet. Adding in more features to a pencil and ones that mimic and improve on old analog equivalents sounds exactly like that kind of improvements I would like to see.
This is muscle memory that's built into every person who's taught to write. You should reuse that muscle memory if you can to make writing flow easier.
Sure if you were teaching people to write exclusively on these devices then coming up with something new would make sense but since we all go back and forth using the real world method makes the most sense.
The pencil for the Remarkable tablet has this feature. I found that it was a great way to ease into digital note taking. Matching a real-world feature felt very natural.
All these new chips and tbh it doesn't really matter if I still can't code on it yet.
These devices have been absolute workflow game changers for the artists in my life, but for coders, it's like a toy and nothing more. They're handcuffed from doing any creative work with it.
It's incredible how powerful these devices are, but so much potential only usable for watching youtube.
Running code from outside of the appstore is coming within the next six months in the EU. That should alleviate the problem somewhat. I look forward to apple getting more compliant with how the DMA is actually supposed to function.
This comment comes across as being from someone who has never paid attention to Apple’s business tactics. No offence.
Maybe I’m on the opposite end and too cynical, but I don’t think we know a) whether Apple will practice malicious compliance in a way that makes the ruling meaningless or b) whether they will comply at all.
And if they do comply in any way, we don’t know how long they will keep it that way before clawing back little by little or simply ending that compliance.
Is this tandem OLED display a first? I'm familiar with stacked LCD displays, they've been around for a while though mainly in reference monitors due to their inefficiency, but this is the first I've heard of anyone stacking two OLEDs on top of each other.
First I have heard of it in a consumer device. I suspect this is why the M4 is launching with this device. They are probably using the added efficiency to power the Tandem OLED without sacrificing performance / battery life compared to the previous gen.
I will be interested to see what this looks like in person and if it makes it to consumer televisions. I personally find OLED bright enough for indoor use, but a lot of people complain about the reduced brightness on OLED TVs and monitors.
Aside from higher peak brightness I would assume it's also less prone to burn-in, the rate that OLED pixels degrade is proportional to how bright they run, and distributing the brightness over two stacked layers means each layer only needs to run roughly half as bright. Not exactly half since the top layer won't be perfectly transparent, but close enough.
The most common situation where screen brightness is an issue for me is in rooms with big windows and a lot of natural light. On sunny days I find ~400nits to be about the minimum required to cut through glare on matte displays… for mirror-like glossy displays it’s even higher.
I don't understand the fluff about thin devices. I bought an iPad air a few years back and every time I picked it up the screen warped and I could see my fingers pressing through the back. I got a case for it thinking that'd help but I could still see it happen if I pressed hard enough. Returned immediately for the iPad Pro. I can't help but expect this would have similar problems AND it's Pro priced.
It's a feature, not a bug. Just like the iPhones, it doesn't sit flat on a table so that people can't grind dirt into it and scratch up the back and complain on the internet about how it scratches all the time.
Totally agree - I don't find "stunningly thin and light design" to be a selling point any more. I want to hold a durable device without feeling like it might break or slip out of my hands, without needing a chunky case.
I generally prefer thin devices to a certain point, and then after that I agree that it’s just fluff. I think showing how a product is “thinner” is an easy way to show that it weighs less, which is what I care about in thin devices.
I don't know; I had an ipad air 2 (until now the thinnest ipad ever) and now use a 2020 ipad air and never had those issues -- I even carry my coffee using the ipad as a tray.
The ipad 2 would lie flat on the table. I don't understand the fetish for a camera bump. It makes the phones suck too. You need a case of some sort to make them lie flat. They could just make the batteries bigger and keep the whole thing flat.
The iPad Pro plus keyboard folio was thicker and heavier than a MacBook Air. So honestly, this change is welcome. If they can get the keyboard+ipad combo into the same range as the MBA…I’d take the iPad instead. Today I’m at a conference and took my MBA because it’s the lightest option for all day carry.
The home button was a nice UI affordance, but it tended to fail after a few years. Every old iPhone and iPad that my parents used had home buttons that didn't click correctly - an minor annoyance in the years where upgrading your phone every two years was normal, but not for the present where people keep their devices for much longer, especially iPads with a much bigger battery.
I never had a device with the solid-state home buttons (like the iPhone 7 and 8), but I assume these were not an option due to cost.
It hasn't been a button in quite some time - their last implementation is a fixed button that doesn't move, the same way the trackpad on Macs doesn't have any switches.
Don't get me started on the home button. I miss it dearly. The UI/UX of a home button is unmatched by any of the replacement gestures. Some of them are just plain bizaree too eg swipe up, right, up to get your apps.
The biggest problem is that swipe up depends on orientation of the app and that's not always clear, particularly if playing video. The app might be orientation locked in landscape even though you're viewing it in landscape.
And of course there's Face ID, which I personally hate. I know others like it but the false negative rate is horrendous. Plus they increase "security" by having a really lot limit on failed attempts before you have to enter your passcode anyway. And since attempts can be passive, you can hit the limit pretty often. Touch ID is just better in almost every way.
Plus Face ID is an accessibility nightmare as anyone who is vision impaired can tell you. The distance the device needs to be for Face ID to work is not the distance yo use the device at.
Every Apple device should have the option of Touch ID on the power button just like the iPad Air does. It's also why I own the iPad Air specifically.
That button is an increasingly expensive component at scale, as it's a separate component to manufacture and build a supply chain for, as well as an additional component to add which can potentially fail.
This is why most carmakers are moving towards touchscreens now as well.
If you want to keep prices roughly comparable to previous SKUs in the midst of trade and supply chain kerfuffles, there has to be cost cutting somewhere.
if Apple of all companies -- after decades of moral high standing about polished user experience and charging a premium for their brand -- is shaving pennies off the cost by removing physical buttons ... that's a shame!
if 3nm chip manufacturing receives so much interest -- why not a fraction of that investment in engineering more durable, lasting, and cheap physical components too.
years later Apple might be the company doing "radical innovation", being "uncompromising when it comes to UX" and add a physical button and charge a premium for it
Carmakers are moving to touchscreens because they don't have to custom design hard keys for each model and can just reuse the same design in every one, just tweaking the software. It's pure cheapness, not an improvement in any way.
Apple has been building the same home button for a decade. It's a simple, familiar interface. iPads cost hundreds of dollars. Engineering the cost of a button out of it at this point is pure greed.
For me at least, it's an excellent trade off. I haven't had an iPad with a home button for years, and I can't imagine why I'd want to give up screen real estate or device size for a button. The swipe interface works perfectly and does the same thing.
All I'm thinking about is what will Square do now. None of the iPads fit their Square Stand... I loved having a general compute iOS device on the stand for other apps, I hope they don't make us get their dedicated terminal...
What do you mean? The previous iPad Pros didn't have a home button either. The last iPad with a home button was the 9th generation iPad, released in 2021.
Yeah try as I might I'm not able to help my autistic daughter understand how to process this change. I should probably buy a few of the old ones to keep on standby.
Readit News
Usually the only thing people can point to for Apple not being as green as they’d like is the repairability of the products. I’m willing to bet that whatever additional waste that is created by that is more than offset by having devices that last longer. Devices that require fewer repairs and have good software support allows either you, or whoever gets your old devices, to keep using the same device for longer. Every device has a lifecycle, making it as long as possible is the best way to avoid environmental impacts.
There's really very very little reason for all the Macs at least to not have M.2 slots besides letting Apple save pennies on SSD controller costs and convincing users to spring for overpriced upgrades. Even the iPad could probably use an M.2 SSD! The Surface Pros do!
I would agree if you change "any" to "most". Here are some examples of "any" manufacturers that are willing to do more:
- For tablets and phones: https://www.shift.eco/en/impact/
- For laptops: https://frame.work/sustainability
- For phones: https://www.fairphone.com/en/story/
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This dissonance in tone vs real motive is really painful to people who care about nuance and truth and moral good, because it means they muddy the waters of what is right and wrong and confuse us.
(yes this annoys me)
"Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chain and life cycle of every product."
And Apple's "Green" talk is just theater (well, just like everybody elses in tech, fashion, cars, etc).
Their whole business lies in making and selling more stuff, and getting people to replace them often with shiny new ones.
* https://twitter.com/nobi/status/1787888454849966295
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntjkwIXWtrc
They crushed paint, a piano, toys, and much much more.
All in the name of a convenient marketing ploy around "thinness." Seems anti-reuse to me.
A 13" iPad Pro with keyboard is $1650. And you can't even get the nanotexture glass below 1TB; so that + keyboard is approaching $2300.
Who is buying this?
iPad Pro gives me:
- amazing SSH terminal
- ability to download content from streaming services to long-haul flights
- a decent size screen for watching TV in bed (my bedroom has a layout that prevents me from placing TV anywhere)
- a good steam/xcloud client
- when latency is too high for SSH, I have RPi I connect with USB-C to iPad and shows up as Ethernet adapter powered from iPad.
- a few games to play on the iPad itself when away
- I have a thunderbolt dock that my main PC is connected to, I can switch to my iPad. That with Stage Manager gives essentially focus-mode mac.
- nice screen (quality and size) to read things (not books, eInk is king there)
- nice screen to look at recipes while I cook
You might notice that none of these tasks require a powerful CPU, and you will be right. I got iPad Pro because of screen size and thunderbolt. Might switch to the new one because the camera is finally in the right place.
If I could run IntelliJ on iPad, even in remote mode - I wouldn't even think about buying a laptop.
A secondary use-case is watching movies while traveling. I did my taxes on there too - Google sheets, scanning receipts from the camera into the Files app, all work well. I plugged in a monitor for that.
The one thing I’m not doing on there is coding. I only do that on my work laptop. If I had personal programming projects, I’d surely be using a laptop that lets me run my own code as my personal computer.
The price for the new Pro sure is high, but I’m tempted. The phone’s 120Hz OLED has spoiled me. Surely they sell more of the cheaper models, but they might as well make a halo device to rake in as much margin as they can from people who are willing to pay for the best.
I think touch computers had enormous potential that has mostly been permanently squandered by making them into entertainment devices for users — not owners, and certainly not operators. The product barely even really belongs to you from that perspective.
This is something that Stallman and the Free Software movement got absolutely bang-on: proprietary software seeks to control its users and prevent them from truly owning and operating their computers. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important free computing is, and how much more important it will become in the future if we don’t secure our access to it.
That being said, I’m getting an iPad Air now that they offer 13”.
I had one from 2020, use it all the time over my phone, and I’m upgrading to this one. 512GB though - shame I can’t get the glass :(
I ultimately ended up selling it in lieu of a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini, as I really missed having a local dev environment.
However, laptops at my current employer are more locked down, so I can't SSH and VNC into them like I could before, even through Tailscale.
Given that I will still travel a lot with them and like to work on non-work things during flights without carrying two laptops, I decided to get the OLED 11" iPad Pro with the Keyboard that I can use to remote into my laptop at home.
I also draw heavily during deep dives and workshops; so much so, that I always have a Pencil with me in my fanny pack, which I carry with me everywhere. Given this, I also got me a Pencil Pro to replace it.
Can someone please make it so that if you turn the "Pencil" upside down it acts as an eraser, like a real pencil would?
Even though I tend to like Apple gear: if there is such a patent in the way I'm sure they'll add this once the patent expires, and call it a revolutionary development.
Dead Comment
To me this is an example of skeuomorphism that forces an older experience into the digital one.
This is muscle memory that's built into every person who's taught to write. You should reuse that muscle memory if you can to make writing flow easier.
Sure if you were teaching people to write exclusively on these devices then coming up with something new would make sense but since we all go back and forth using the real world method makes the most sense.
It makes intuitive sense regardless of existing tool - write on one end, reverse to erase.
Dead Comment
These devices have been absolute workflow game changers for the artists in my life, but for coders, it's like a toy and nothing more. They're handcuffed from doing any creative work with it.
It's incredible how powerful these devices are, but so much potential only usable for watching youtube.
This comment comes across as being from someone who has never paid attention to Apple’s business tactics. No offence.
Maybe I’m on the opposite end and too cynical, but I don’t think we know a) whether Apple will practice malicious compliance in a way that makes the ruling meaningless or b) whether they will comply at all.
And if they do comply in any way, we don’t know how long they will keep it that way before clawing back little by little or simply ending that compliance.
I will be interested to see what this looks like in person and if it makes it to consumer televisions. I personally find OLED bright enough for indoor use, but a lot of people complain about the reduced brightness on OLED TVs and monitors.
Particularly compared to OLED on TV's.
Like this is crazy that the pencil is thicker.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2024/05/apple-unveils-...
It's a feature, not a bug. Just like the iPhones, it doesn't sit flat on a table so that people can't grind dirt into it and scratch up the back and complain on the internet about how it scratches all the time.
So that iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard is close to Macbook.
The ipad 2 would lie flat on the table. I don't understand the fetish for a camera bump. It makes the phones suck too. You need a case of some sort to make them lie flat. They could just make the batteries bigger and keep the whole thing flat.
Elderly folks let out a collective groan since swapping a simple UI for an additional .5" of screen space seems like a poor tradeoff.
I never had a device with the solid-state home buttons (like the iPhone 7 and 8), but I assume these were not an option due to cost.
The biggest problem is that swipe up depends on orientation of the app and that's not always clear, particularly if playing video. The app might be orientation locked in landscape even though you're viewing it in landscape.
And of course there's Face ID, which I personally hate. I know others like it but the false negative rate is horrendous. Plus they increase "security" by having a really lot limit on failed attempts before you have to enter your passcode anyway. And since attempts can be passive, you can hit the limit pretty often. Touch ID is just better in almost every way.
Plus Face ID is an accessibility nightmare as anyone who is vision impaired can tell you. The distance the device needs to be for Face ID to work is not the distance yo use the device at.
Every Apple device should have the option of Touch ID on the power button just like the iPad Air does. It's also why I own the iPad Air specifically.
What on Earth are you referring to?
This is why most carmakers are moving towards touchscreens now as well.
If you want to keep prices roughly comparable to previous SKUs in the midst of trade and supply chain kerfuffles, there has to be cost cutting somewhere.
if 3nm chip manufacturing receives so much interest -- why not a fraction of that investment in engineering more durable, lasting, and cheap physical components too.
years later Apple might be the company doing "radical innovation", being "uncompromising when it comes to UX" and add a physical button and charge a premium for it
Because you can't use them without taking your eyes off the road.
Apple has been building the same home button for a decade. It's a simple, familiar interface. iPads cost hundreds of dollars. Engineering the cost of a button out of it at this point is pure greed.
The 10th-generation iPad (first released in 2022) is now the cheapest model you can buy new from Apple.
I'm still not buying it though.