Today is a big day on the gadget sites, new Apple MacBooks - the cool thing (I think) is Apple showed videos of how their new laptops are made from carving them out of sheets of aluminum - how things are made (and why) is becoming more important and the lead story once everything else was commodified in the industry. There's great coverage on Engadget and Gizmodo.
Update: Wow, the video about the "making of" is incredible!
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Oct 14, 2008 10:50 AM
Computers, Gadgets |
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Gareth Branwyn, Chris Connors (guest author), Collin Cunningham, Marc de Vinck, Peter Horvath (intern), Kip Kay, Goli Mohammadi, John Park, Sean Ragan, Becky Stern, Phillip Torrone
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So, coworkers were watching the video at scoffing at the "waste" produced by the manufacturing process, mentioned how Greenpeace has (rightly, to my knowledge) been on Apple's case for a while about their poor environmental record.
I can't shake the feeling, though (having seen a few episodes of How It's Made ;)) that the traditional process of milling aluminum for laptop parts is probably at least as wasteful as the unibody process. Are there any makers out there who can clarify this for me? Would there be a big difference in the waste metal produced by Apple's new unibody process versus the multi-part process they were using before?
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The aluminum is not wasted, it's recycled. Aluminum is extremely easy to recycle and almost all of it is. It's a part of the metallurgic processes to use only part of the raw material. Aluminum cans are made from discs punched into a sheet of metal .. The remains are melted to make more sheet and more cans. I guess the same happens here. Some more electricity is needed for this, though, but not more mining or otherwise.
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I was excited about this computer upgrade... until apple downgraded by removing firewire ports from the macbook.
Support for legacy products is environmentally friendly, because it doesn't force replacement of already working products.
Boo apple for another crippled product.
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vivi: Thanks! That's about what I figured (I recall hearing that aluminum is one of the few recyclable materials that pays for itself without figuring in recycling subsidies), but it's nice to have that confirmed by someone else. =)
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@boo. if you need the firewire option then you get the new macbook pro, it comes whit firewire 800
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