I don't think even the most hardcore Apple superfans are buying the "reducing waste" argument. They have the right to make their products more expensive, and that's fine. People are going to keep buying them regardless.
Depends how you look at it. If I consider the amount of cables/charges/earpods we have as family this is logical move. We don’t upgrade all the devices every year but it still adds up. Most of them are just throwaway.
While people do have a million chargers lying around from over the years, almost none of them will work with the new iPhone. The average Apple enthusiast will still end up buying one or more separately.
The phone doesn’t care about the brick. It only cares about one end of the cable. All your old USB-A <-> lightning cables still work with their USB-A bricks.
It is my understanding that what you describe is not how charging works nowadays. For example, the new 15W MagSafe charger doesn't work at 15W if you plug it into any old brick. A particular charging profile (voltage and current) must be negotiated between and supported by both the charger and the device.
Every single brick I have had on an android phone for the last 10 years work on the iphone. The last 5 years of phones my family has got have come with usb C bricks too.
I’m fairly in the fan camp. It seems like both an eco play and a profit play. I don’t care about the latter. In fact, I should probably support it because for DECADES businesses have been refusing to do the necessary eco work because it was too costly. Apple have found a way to tick both the boxes. I should buy shares.
They didn't make the products more expensive, though. The iPhone 12 Pro series got cheaper (for the equivalent storage). They also made the charger and cable in question cheaper, for the small minority of users who actually need those items.
I have heard a lot of speculation that the move to remove the charger was motivated by Apple's desire to sell more chargers, but I suspect that they could care less about moving chargers.
I believe it is profit motivated, but the real reason is the massive savings they will get on logistics by fitting almost 50% more iPhones in a shipping container by removing the charger.
If they pass some of that savings onto the consumer, it seems like it's win-win.
The same thing happened with iPods back in the day. The first couple generations came in these fat cubic boxes with cables, headphones, an installation CD, a printed manual, and a charging brick. The 3rd gen was probably peak packaging as it also game with plastic adapter inserts for licensed 30-pin adapter products and both FireWire and USB cables. The 5th gen iPod came in a much flatter box, probably a third the height of the old ones. That meant an freight container or UPS truck could carry three times more iPods. The iPod mini vs nano was very similar in terms of packaging savings.
Besides the better shipping efficiency it's also worth considering the real estate. Retailers, including Apple's own stores, have finite storage space for products. The new iPhones come in multiple colors for each model. Shrinking the packaging dimensions means a wider selection can be kept in stock in the same space as a narrower selection of the previous model.
Regardless, at the scale of Apple selling iPhones a small decrease in weight and/or better packing efficiency can mean huge CO2 savings. A gallon of diesel producers about 20 pounds of CO2. Doubling the iPhone/mile because of smaller packages halves the CO2/iPhone production.
Let's keep in mind that these products are largely going to be delivered directly to the customer. Perhaps the issue is less about how many iPhones you can fit into a shipping container, and more about how much it costs to ship an iPhone by USPS/UPS/FedEx.
> but the real reason is the massive savings they will get on logistics
When positing causes, I suggest you learn how to do back-of-the-envelope calculations in your head. A container can hold a lot of iPhones. The cost of transport is trivial in comparison to the value, so the profitability delta is very small. I.e. I think you are making up stuff.
An ISO container can hold a lot of iPhones. You might notice however shipping terminals don't have a lot retail shoppers.
There's in fact a whole chain of facilities that handle supplies to retail outlets. Every gallon of diesel fuel burned to get things from those shipping terminals to a retailer emits about 20 pounds of CO2. Increasing the number of things per vehicle reduces each thing's CO2 contribution. It also decreases the shipping cost of each thing as it goes through that chain of supply.
The shipping for each iPhone might be a small portion of its retail price but it needs to be paid up front and in aggregate. So millions of dollars in shipping costs getting even a 30% savings is still millions of dollars in savings.
Besides the retail cost of goods is unrelated to the BOM and transaction costs. It's what the market will bear. Savings in BOM costs or transport just go into the retailer or manufacturer's pocket as profit.
Yeah sure, the price of logistics is probably tiny compared to the BOM of an individual phone, but at the scale Apple is operating on, make no mistake this is saving them a huge amount of money.
And it's not just logistics - it's storage space in warehouses, and probably a number of other things which are made substantially more efficient by fitting the same amount of units in a lot less space.
Now you are replying with a double-down on your original thesis “but the real reason is the massive savings they will get on logistics”?
Sure, add all the logistics costs in your head using some heuristic (security is a big component you are missing). Now compare that number to the profit of selling an extra charger, or the BOM price of a charger.
HN is a community of thinkers and you will be judged by your responses to criticism. Learn from your mistakes, or back up your opinions with some numbers and calculations so we can learn from you.
With all due respect your responses are incredibly condescending. I believe my point stands. If you disagree, I suggest that you propose a concrete model which would refute my thesis. I don’t know who you are to speak for the “HN community”.
Touché. I apologise, you are correct. You are still avoiding answering my criticism of your original thesis.
Edit: I’ll append the approximations at the base of my heuristic:
* I only care about marginal $deltas when comparing
* an extra shipping container costs $10000
* one cubic metre holds 1000 one litre boxes
* a charger costs Apple $5
* total marginal $delta shipping costs are less than 10 times the delta in shipping costs
* Apple use 20 foot containers
Although on second thought, they must use planes otherwise inventory in transit would be astronomical, but I still believe that marginal savings from not producing a charger dominates (by over 10x) the savings from smaller packaging.
They ship by plane, and I believe it's constrained by weight, not volume. I.e. iPhone 12 Pro weighs 189 grams, packaging + cable approx 50 grams more. And USB-C 20W brick is 62 grams.
I.e. adding power brick would increase shipping weight and cost by 25%.
They also moved OLED to the regular phone and added 5g. Without internal information its impossible to know what cost what. I doubt the brick and airpods cost anything more than $4.
I once joined a gym that had a high startup cost and a high monthly rate but was close to work. Despite these high prices they wanted to nickel and dime. I quit.
The iPhone 12/128gb is $879. I might not mind paying that but if you’re asking me to be less wasteful at that price point, offer me a free charger if I need it.
I had the same opinion back in the day about paying for ethernet in a 5 star hotel when the wingate offered it for free.
I worked at a high-end gym/spa like that once. They tracked their secondary spend very closely. Staff were trained to upsell at any turn, from personal training (why don't you buy the 3 month package ma'am?) to drinks (we have this brand new smoothie and protein bar, have you tried it?).
