>...I regularly update components in my systems each year including RAM, GPU, SSDs, WiFi...

Then go for it - you have choices, and no one is forcing you to buy a Mac.

I personally got shit to do and have no interest in replacing all of that at that type of frequency.

You might not but someone else will thereby preventing your computer from becoming e-waste. The only way your non upgradeable computer won't become e-waste is if you commit to using it for as long as an upgradeable computer would be used for. Lets say 10 years. Will you commit to not contributing to ewaste by using your non upgradeable computer for the next 10 years?

I buy Apple computers precisely because I want a machine I can use for that long. I used my last Macbook Air for 11 years without having to replace anything, so was less wasteful than a person swapping out components every year. Its screen is toast so it's a headless server now.

> Past Performance Is No Indicator of Future Performance

Just because Apple computers before last a long time doesn't mean it will be the same with their current computers.

Although my personal bet is that the 2016-2019 MBP will degrade faster than the 2020 M1 Macs.

Desktop systems last even longer than laptops. Except, of course, Apple's desktop systems because they'll stop letting you upgrade the OS.

If everyone were like you then I would have no qualms about Apple's anti environmentalism. Personally I upgraded a garbage 2011 MBP from an unusable state with a SSD (came with HDD)and ram extending it's life. I find it ridiculous that I can upgrade an ancient MBP's ram to more than comes with the current base spec.

Each of my MBPs has been used for at least a decade (though not by me after ~6 years with most), so, sure, I'll commit to that since it's already happened with all the others.

I gave my son the 2012 MacBook Pro when I purchased the M1 MBP this year. He uses it for everything now.

I have tried giving older Macs to other family members, that didn't work out so well. So there are limits.

In general, used Macs have crazy high resale value, and if they work out ok, no problem with that. Both ends of the transaction receive value from the exchange.

I am in the process of clearing out quite a bit of e-waste, but we are talking fried PowerPC Macs and some iPhone 4 devices that I cant get working again. I have noticed that the Macs tend to be physically smaller than thier counterparts from the same era in my collection; that might suggest less e-waste overall, but of course the variation is all over the place.

The oldest operational x86 machines in my setup are two tower Mac Pros, a 2007 one and anither from 2009. These are somewhat upgradeable: you can use SSDs instead of rotating rust (duh), max out the RAM (easy), put in newer GPUs (drivers and BIOS permitting), or max out the CPUs (you need a moderately weird tool to get at the heat sink screws).

The fate of our electronics is indeed worthy of concern, but I don't see that Apple approach leading necessarily to more trash.

(oh yes: I am typing this on an ipad 4. I'd love to keep using it for another 14 months, it will then be ten years old. but it's getting a bit unreasonable. Works for hacker news though)

What do you do with your old components?

My assumption your approach is far more wasteful at a cost of getting top notch performance. Nothing about the bleeding edge is ecological.

I recycle them at best buy or hand them down to a family member (often the case, except SSDs as those are usually dead). Far from perfect, I'm sure some of it makes it to a landfill. But probably better than nothing.

Just to clarify though I don't replace all those components every year, it usually ends up being one or maybe two things a year. But if I do one component a year my system can end up lasting indefinitely.

So is anything in your system for example 10 years old? MacBook can easily last 10 years for the right person. Just because I replace mine often doesn't mean people who buy it from me will.

Yes all the components last well over 10 years except maybe an SSD because I work with a lot of data. Like I said, I usually hand them down to family.

If you can get by on a decade old machine all the more power to you. Professionally I cannot.

My “desktop” of the last 8 1/2 is an MBP. Perfectly usable, does mail and web and zoom and a couple more things perfectly well. Only 8GB of ram, but Safari seems to become faster and require less resources with each update (Firefox …. Less so)

It still received the most recent OS updates.

Battery life is not as good at 8yrs - but still has a few hours of juice in it.

Overlooking the butterfly keyboard fiasco, Apple makes robust long lived hardware, and software to support it.

It’s market does not include the 3% “piecemeal” upgraders. But I suspect in “amount of time component is use” metrics it handily beats the wintel world (and the Android world)