There was a good discussion of this in today’s episode of Upgrade:
Upgrade #321: It’s the Hope That Kills You - Relay FM
To summarize their perspective: It’s not that Apple’s environmental claims aren’t true, but by including fewer things in the box, Apple is saving money. By making the box smaller, Apple is saving money. By selling plugs to people who need them, Apple is making money.
IF Apple had passed on some of that savings to the customer, or at least given people who need a charger get one for free when they order the iPhone, Apple would seem to less interested in profiting from this change.
However, as it is, Apple is “double dipping” (actually triple dipping):
- They’re getting the savings from the reduced packaging (and associated shipping costs, if they can fit 70% more on a pallet then they have to pay much less to ship the same amount of iPhones from China to the USA) and not including the power brick in the box
- They get to claim improved environmental impact
- They get to make money from people who need a power adapter
I agree completely. The stupid thing is that the amount of money that Apple is going to make from #3 is probably less than a rounding error, given the amounts of money they are earning overall.
Apple could so easily do the right thing for the environment and the customer by letting people get 1 free power brick at the time of ordering, and they would still be ahead because of the financial savings of the smaller boxes, etc.
Instead, Apple has made a decision which seems both petty and cheap by wanting to be able to eat their cake and have it too.
This is the same sort of thinking that makes them think they still deserve 30% of all App Store sales, but this is such a small (relatively) amount of money, I can’t believe they didn’t decide to say “And we’ve dropped the price of the phone $50”. Heck, even $25. But instead they said “Hey, we’re giving you less but it will cost the same. Because we care about the environment.”
Which obviously undercuts what is probably true that they do care about the environment and the cost savings associated with making this change. But they made it seem disingenuous in exchange for, as I say, a rounding error’s worth of profit.