Retina MacBook Pro nukes Apple's green credentials The tightly packed new Apple MacBook Pro prevents the laptop from meeting requirements laid down by eco-friendly technology catalogue EPEAT. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) announced on Monday that the shiny Retina-display lap warmer is "difficult to disassemble for upgrades, repairs, and recycling …
The usual "value" argument about Macs is that while it does cost a bit more to buy, you can also sell it on for more money than a same-vintage PC - and you come out even or ahead of the PC buyer while getting to use Apple hardware. Meanwhile, the older sold-on Mac, especially with some well-thought, cheap hardware upgrades, will be much more useful than those nasty crashing Windows PCs of the same age...
There is some truth to this - I recently bought a four year old, 2007-model Mac Mini (first Core 2 Duo) for about 200 euros, about 40% the original price, and the little thing is almost ridiculously fast after replacing the 80 GB, 4200 rpm hard drive with a 128 GB SSD for about 80 euros (of course, you could do this upgrade with similarly pleasing results with most any PC of the same vintage, but the point is the "greenness" of extending the useful life of old hardware).
If you can't do this any more in the future, it is wasteful for the environment but also for the wallet of the Apple buyer: the value of used Macs is going to plummet - you definitely won't get 40% of your money back in 2016 if you spend 2500 euros on a Retina Macbook Pro today - at least if you can't replace the dead battery, add more memory, or swap a bigger SSD to the old Retina.
You fail to mention that the CEO of EPEAT has publicly admitted that details of the standard have failed to keep pace with developing technologies and are in desperate need of revision. I'm no corporate apologist, but given that, it seems to me that you (and the "hippies") are blaming the victim.
Do you consider yourselves journalists? Do you research the content of the stories you publish, or just mindlessly regurgitate the equally derivative regurgitations of others? Increasingly, what passes for journalism in the 21st century resembles the premise of the movie "Centipede."
Simple solution, once the old one is removed ensure it is discharged to 0 volts (use resistor) then dismantle with gloves and goggles and remove the copper sheet.
This can then be placed in a CuSO4 bath with a copper wire as the collector, and the copper salvaged for resale.
Turns out that a typical "pouch" 4000mAh cell has about half its weight or more of high quality copper, which can then be sold to scrap merchants as "electrolytically recovered"
Watch out, the electrolyte in these things is somewhat hazardous but if you do this outside it isn't a problem.
Even better, use solar energy to power your electroplating unit and avoid paying for electricity to run it.
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