Peel this Apple to See if it is Green to the Core

Even the very British Economist gives Steve Jobs biblical hero cover treatment for his latest revelation, while the GreenerComputing asks whether Apple’s iPad is green enough to be a “game-changer for the planet”. Green Pages points out that Apple has filed three new clean energy and energy efficiency patents, creating a new wave of speculation about the gadget company’s eco-friendly direction.

“HEROES and heroics” is one of the central themes of the current season at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, which prides itself on showcasing contemporary artists who challenge conventional ways of doing things. On January 27th the centre played host to one of the heroes of the computing industry: Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, who launched the company’s latest creation, the iPad. Mr Jobs also has a reputation for showcasing the unconventional. He did not disappoint.

The iPad, which looks like an oversized Apple iPhone and boasts a colour screen measuring almost ten inches (25cm), promises to change the landscape of the computing world. It is just half an inch thick and weighs 1.5lb (680 grams). “It’s so much more intimate than a laptop, and so much more capable than a smartphone,” Mr Jobs said of the device, which will be available in late March.

The new iPad has important limitations, which critics were quick to point out. It does not have a camera or a phone and users cannot run multiple applications on it at the same time. But Apple should be able to correct such flaws in due course. Together with a host of other touch-screen “tablet” computers that are expected to reach shops over the next year or so, the iPad looks set to revolutionise the way in which digital media are consumed in homes, schools and offices.

The flood of devices is likely to have a profound impact on parts of the media business that are already being turned upside-down by the internet. The move from print to digital has not been easy for newspaper or magazine publishers. Readers have proved reluctant to pay for content on the web. Companies are unwilling to pay as much for online advertisements as for paper ones—hardly surprising, given the amount of space on offer. The iPad will probably accelerate the shift away from printed matter towards digital content, which could worsen the industry’s pain in the short term. Yet publishers hope that tablets will turn out to be the 21st-century equivalent of the printed page, offering them compelling new ways to present their content and to charge for it. “This is really a chance for publishers to seize on a second life,” says Phil Asmundson of Deloitte, a consultancy.

It does not come as a surprise, then, that Apple has already attracted some blue-chip media brands to the iPad’s platform. During his presentation Mr Jobs revealed that the company had struck deals with leading publishers such as Penguin and Simon & Schuster. They will provide books for the iPad, to be found and paid for in Apple’s new iBooks online store. More agreements ought to be signed before the first iPads are shipped in March. Users will also be able to download applications that give them access to electronic versions of newspapers such as the New York Times, which presented an iPad app at the launch.

Source: www.economist.com

By Matthew Wheeland in GreenerComputing (27 January 2010):

The day that gadget-lovers have been waiting for with bated breath for months if not years has finally arrived.

Today, just after 10 AM, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad — something along the lines of a blown-up version of the iPhone. Weighing 1.5 pounds, just half an inch thick, and 11 inches tall, the iPad aims to be the Next Huge Thing for technology, capable of playing music, watching movies, reading books and running all the other tens of thousands of apps available in the Apple’s application store.

At the event, Steve Jobs and various Apple execs and partners showed off the iPad’s specs, including a new iBooks e-reader application and associated bookstore, a new version of Apple’s iWork office suite specifically for the iPad, and prices run from $499 for a 16-gigabyte model with no 3G internet, and run up to $829 for a 64-gigabyte model with 3G internet.

But what we really care about is, is it green?

At the start of the event, Jobs ran down the green creds of the gizmo: In keeping with Apple’s environmental policies, the device is free of all kinds of nasty chemicals. It is arsenic-free, mercury-free, BFR-free, PVC-free, and, according to this slide, taken by the good folks (and great livebloggers) at Engadget, “highly recyclable.”

Jobs also stated that the iPad can get 10 hours of battery life — an impressive feat if it’s true. (For comparison’s sake, my brand-new MacBook Pro supposedly gets 7 hours of battery life and in reality gets around 4, unless I turn the display to near-dark and stick to processor-light tasks.)

The vagaries of its “highly recyclable” claim notwithstanding, those are all great green attributes, and another example of how Apple is leading the way with green computing.

But all that notwithstanding, I fail to see how this is really a game-changer for the planet.

First and foremost, the production of electronics has a huge environmental impact. Precious and rare metals to build the gadgets, global supply chains to bring those materials to manufacturers (and bring those gadgets to market), and the energy used during their lifetime are the beginning of the problem.

There is also the huge problem of end-of-life management for these gadgets. Electronics recycling is at best a nascent market — as we write about all the time on GreenerComputing, and which we find in our annual State of Green Business report. At worst, we’re throwing away far more gadgets than we should be, and neither manufacturers, retailers or governments have yet put in place a good way to collect even a fraction of what’s discarded.

But the biggest problem to my way of thinking is that the tablet will just be an addition, not a replacement.

Look at the “netbook” market for cheap laptops that are designed to surf the net well — they’re often highly energy efficient, and that’s a good thing, but the vast majority of netbook owners use them as a supplement to their full-sized and full-spec laptops or desktops (and their phones, e-readers, what have you), thereby multiplying the impacts per user.

I stand by this assessment. In a nutshell, the iPad is a nifty little gadget, I’m sure it will do wonders for how people engage with technology, and hopefully will give a boost to the flagging newspaper- and book-publishing industries, but it is still another resource-intensive gadget that will be an add-on rather than a replacement.

Source: www.greenercomputing.com

A Greener Apple?

According to the Green Pages three new patents filed by Apple indicate the company is getting into the clean energy business.

This month, Apple filed three new clean energy and energy efficiency patents, creating a new wave of speculation about the eco-friendly direction of the gadget behemoth.

1. The first is a software patent that enables Apple devices to “register their power usage and communicate” using HomePlug Alliance, a set of universal standards showcased at this year’s CES. The system would allow users to schedule and monitor the charging of all their “smart devices,” ensuring that charging happens during off-peak hours and that devices are not overcharged, a problem which the Department of Energy estimates could be wasting as much as 10 percent of a home’s typical electricity usage.

2. According to Engadget, Apple also appears to be working on a proprietary “smart plug” that could internally perform a conversion from AC to DC (no more bulky white bricks) and regulate the flow of electricity to match the device, eliminating wear and tear on batteries by over-charging.

3. In 2008, Apple applied for the first of its solar gadget patents, solar-augmented glass that could be integrated into any device with a screen — iPhones, Macbooks, etc.

Apple has now filed for a second solar-augmentation patent in which the entire device is covered by solar cells. The solar cells are networked to allow power to continue flowing to the device even if one’s hand obstructs some of the cells. When the battery is fully charged, the user can change a setting that puts the solar cells in a “second operational state” and if the battery gets low, switch to the solar cells as the primary source (which one assumes would reduce the performance and brightness of the device).

It appears that Apple may lead the pack once again, this time in terms of product-integrated solar power and smart charging for personal electronics devices.

Source: www.thegreenpages.com.au