Tag Archives: Newton

Sustainability in Consumer Electronics

SONY EX 7

Apple Logo
Apple, Blackberry, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Motorola, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and other consumer electronics companies can be less unsustainable than their competitors and less unsustainable tomorrow than they are today. However, given:

  1. The state of the art in manufacturing,Blackberry
  2. Electronics are made with designs that are supplanted before they wear out, and
  3. Recycling consumer electronics is expensive and releases toxins,

the consumer electronics industry can not, almost by definition,  be “Sustainable.” For what they need to do, click beneath the fold.

Continue reading →

Apple, Cool but What Happens Next?

Farshad Manjoo, “10 Lessons from the Coolest Company, Anywhere,” in Fast Company, offers some interesting history and observations on Apple. He writes:

The one-time underdog from Cupertino is the biggest music company in the world and soon may rule the market for e-books as well. What’s next? Farming? Toothbrushes? Fixing the airline industry?

As much as I respect Steve Jobs, I don’t see him changing farming or fixing the government, as is suggested in the Fast Company article. The cool iPhone / iPad apps that identify trees and constellations can not tap a maple tree, milk a cow, slaughter and butcher a cow, hog, or chicken. The iPhone can’t even scramble eggs or make a cup of coffee.

Apple makes mistakes, as the “Death Grip” on the iPhone 4 proves. And they are on and overloading the AT&T network; maybe they should switch to another carrier.  Be that as it may, as Manjoo says:

Right now, it seems as if Apple could do all that and more. The company’s surge over the past few years has resembled a space-shuttle launch — a series of rapid, tightly choreographed explosions that leave everyone dumbfounded and smiling. The whole thing has happened so quickly, and seemed so natural, that there has been little opportunity to understand what we have been witnessing.

Continue reading →