The last iMac you'll ever need ?

[pastrychef]

In terms of "green" and "sustainability", I'm hoping Linux and/or Android on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV makes progress. There are lots of these devices that have reached Apple's EOL but can still be very useful. They have far more powerful CPUs than Raspberry Pis and people have done some amazing things with the Pis.

At some point, I'm going to try messing with this on my old Apple TV 4.

Now you can boot Linux on Apple devices with A7 through A11 series chips - Liliputing

Now you can boot Linux on Apple devices with A7 through A11 series chips

liliputing.com

 

[trs96]

If they were able to just "kill" them, they would not have had to spend money to buy Power Computing.

I agree that they had to do this to survive. The big lift Apple got from selling the G3 iMac starting in 1998 is what saved them from inevitable bankruptcy. After that Mac OS X and the iPod kept them in business until the iPhone in the latter 2000's became "the" product everyone wanted whether they'd bought a Mac before or not. Selling software licenses would have never kept Apple going longer term.

 

[c-o-pr]

The original article proposal and comments here are absurdly conservative. But it is the comment about retirement that hit me like an ice-pick in the forehead.

First the article begs the question that repurposing parts of PCs matters to anyone building PCs when the industry was invented from dirt up in one lifetime. The problem the industry has been intent on solving is how to sell one to everybody the first time. It just so happens that those of us who a very rich get to be sold many times as product spills over the landscape.

Second: The article premise is a concern for everything that is built. Not just PCs got here in the last 50 years: 9/10s of everything that constitutes civilization got here in the last 100. Making an iMac 4K display live on in perpetuity (or a Mini case endure as a flower box or space heater) is an effect that has little to do with the expression of change that drives the human production cycle.

Third, the human mind as a constructive organ has only been doing its thing for about 100,000 years. The world is now going into an human-induced extinction event unseen since an asteroid exploded the Yucatan 65 million years ago and ended the dinosaurs! We are also on the brink of self-induced nuclear annihilation.

Fourth, as we struggle to adapt the species to this incredible change, we stand on the cusp of directly wiring the brain into the PC. The nature of the wiring of the product into the nervous system is coming up for grabs. And this shouldn't be regarded as astonishing in light of the aforementioned change.

Finally, simplistic measures of consumption such as PC unit sales cost and lifetime are carefully created illusions. An iPhone and iPad and iMac are sold at similar price points even though the latter has 10x the materials of the former. Try to reconcile the fact that your devices are part of an earthly system of scraping the surface of an entire planet and converting it into coordinated garbage, with the bulk of the work being done by people on the other side of the world working in desperate conditions, against the nature of your own life as you know it. Most of this PC edifice is assembled by people who if you met them in their world you might seriously consider the experience as profound as an encounter space aliens.

The original article has such a narrow worldview all it can do is point to how sorely out of touch is its writer, and the surrounding voices all notable for their entitlement bias to access to luxury commodities befitting a certain class of consumption. The article has no insights on the systemic human predicament related to production cycles.

Are we going to adapt by converting old Bondi Blue iMacs into cat cozys? Doubtful, and it's already been tried.

Our saving grace is that the world is just enough bigger than we can imagine to allow us to continue to accept death and hope kids can adapt. How the human comedy will manifest is not going to explained through the narrow channel of repurposed iMac stands.

—Unless maybe I'm just wrong?

Note that everything that's ever been built is still out there somewhere. It's just being kept out of sight.

Certain turns of phrase perfectly typify the peculiar mind-set of a lost generation, whereby in the interest of being green and sustainable: "At some point, I'm going to try messing with Linux on my old Apple TV 4."

Lol! Omg...

I apologize in advance for beating this thread over the head but I think its needed to snap readers out of their Apple-induced torpor.

 

[pastrychef]

The original article proposal and comments here are absurdly conservative. But it is the comment about retirement that hit me like an ice-pick in the forehead.

First the article begs the question that repurposing parts of PCs matters to anyone building PCs when the industry was invented from dirt up in one lifetime. The problem the industry has been intent on solving is how to sell one to everybody the first time. It just so happens that those of us who a very rich get to be sold many times as product spills over the landscape.

Second: The article premise is a concern for everything that is built. Not just PCs got here in the last 50 years: 9/10s of everything that constitutes civilization got here in the last 100. Making an iMac 4K display live on in perpetuity (or a Mini case endure as a flower box or space heater) is an effect that has little to do with the expression of change that drives the human production cycle.

Third, the human mind as a constructive organ has only been doing its thing for about 100,000 years. The world is now going into an human-induced extinction event unseen since an asteroid exploded the Yucatan 65 million years ago and ended the dinosaurs! We are also on the brink of self-induced nuclear annihilation.

Fourth, as we struggle to adapt the species to this incredible change, we stand on the cusp of directly wiring the brain into the PC. The nature of the wiring of the product into the nervous system is coming up for grabs. And this shouldn't be regarded as astonishing in light of the aforementioned change.

Finally, simplistic measures of consumption such as PC unit sales cost and lifetime are carefully created illusions. An iPhone and iPad and iMac are sold at similar price points even though the latter has 10x the materials of the former. Try to reconcile the fact that your devices are part of an earthly system of scraping the surface of an entire planet and converting it into coordinated garbage, with the bulk of the work being done by people on the other side of the world working in desperate conditions, against the nature of your own life as you know it. Most of this PC edifice is assembled by people who if you met them in their world you might seriously consider the experience as profound as an encounter space aliens.

The original article has such a narrow worldview all it can do is point to how sorely out of touch is its writer, and the surrounding voices all notable for their entitlement bias to access to luxury commodities befitting a certain class of consumption. The article has no insights on the systemic human predicament related to production cycles.

Are we going to adapt by converting old Bondi Blue iMacs into cat cozys? Doubtful, and it's already been tried.

Our saving grace is that the world is just enough bigger than we can imagine to allow us to continue to accept death and hope kids can adapt. How the human comedy will manifest is not going to explained through the narrow channel of repurposed iMac stands.

—Unless maybe I'm just wrong?

Note that everything that's ever been built is still out there somewhere. It's just being kept out of sight.

Certain turns of phrase perfectly typify the peculiar mind-set of a lost generation, whereby in the interest of being green and sustainable: "At some point, I'm going to try messing with Linux on my old Apple TV 4."

Lol! Omg...

I apologize in advance for beating this thread over the head but I think its needed to snap readers out of their Apple-induced torpor.

The human population doubled in about 50 years. It's unsustainable. If you really want to save the earth, stop breeding. Meanwhile, I'll play with Linux on my Apple TV 4.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I apologize in advance for beating this thread over the head but I think its needed to snap readers out of their Apple-induced torpor.

Forgive me - everyone is entitled their opinion - but what is wrong with simply discussing the possibility of recycling or remanufacturing an Apple product? No need to insult people reading this thread.

I often buy Apple "refurbished" kit. It helps me and it helps Apple. But perhaps I am lost to "torpor".

 

[D.Houch]

View attachment 560542
Let’s imagine this 2021 iMac in 2026 when it has inevitably begun to reach the end of its competitive life. Apple could welcome back these products at scale—not for destructive disassembly for material recovery but for remanufacture. It could refinish and reuse major components like the aluminum stand, enclosure, and glass of the screen rather than recycling these back to raw materials. It could update key performance components (e.g., processors and memory chips) to take advantage of technological advancements. It might even look at new manufacturing techniques to modify and improve existing components.

Let’s imagine this keeps happening. It’s 2031 and the iMac has been remanufactured for a second time. Reborn again as the next version of “iMac Generations”: three generations in the making since 2021, regenerated from the best of Apple’s old products, updated with new colors, and upgraded with its latest technologies.

Excerpt from an article by Matthew Cockerill

https://www.fastcompany.com/90634913/the-last-imac-youll-ever-need-why-we-must-think-beyond-the-endless-product-cycles-to-reduce-e-waste

The 24" 2021 iMac has a 4.5K display that looks really sharp. Should last way longer than five years. If only Apple would let you simply swap out the tiny logic board to upgrade to the newest M series chip, you wouldn't have to pay for a new, more expensive iMac model. This would help Apple to be a company that doesn't just talk about being eco-friendly to one that really does something about it.

It would be much better if paranoids at Apple allowed their customers to upgrade their own wares... period!

 

[D.Houch]

The human population doubled in about 50 years. It's unsustainable. If you really want to save the earth, stop breeding. Meanwhile, I'll play with Linux on my Apple TV 4.

Are you offering to start the trend? Those who are so worried about population and "human planet damage" should maybe think of deleting themselves in order to make way for the restoration of the planet?
Hey... just sayin'....................

 

[pastrychef]

Are you offering to start the trend? Those who are so worried about population and "human planet damage" should maybe think of deleting themselves in order to make way for the restoration of the planet?
Hey... just sayin'....................

Me? I'm not worried about jack. I'm telling the fool what he should be worried about.

Maybe you should mind your own business or at least read the entire thread. Just sayin'...

 

[c-o-pr]

It would be much better if paranoids at Apple allowed their customers to upgrade their own wares... period!

There's a misunderstanding that upgrades are being disallowed, when other explanations are reasonable.

Today's modularity is at the edge of the case, not inside it.

If you've ever taken apart any kind of PC you will have found that at best there's about 5 years of compatibility after which it's regarded as archaic.

Intel has gone through 4 generations of socket and chipsets in the last 5 years.

Just 40 years ago, the personal computer as we know it today had not yet occurred at all, ever, in the entire 4 billion years of Earth. And the devices you purchase today are literally—not hyperbolically but literally—millions of times more powerful than the first mac.

20 years ago HDTV was 720p and still delivered in 50lb glass tubes. VHS recorders were readily available at Circuit City and Good Guys. A couple years later the Lord of the Rings Directors Extended Editions were being released on the ultra high-tech format of DVD, which now isn't included in PCs at all because the medium is too small and slow to be useful. The iPhone would be released a years after that. A fantastic service called Youtube that can stream 320px VHS quality had not yet been created, but would later attract the attention of Google. which at the time was offering limited access to a cool new web service called Gmail.

Ok, so right now full VR is on the immediate horizon, brain implants are under development. AI requiring TFLOPS co-processors just became all the rage, and Nvidia had decided to punt on top-end gaming GPU production and switch to AI accelerators because that's the growth market.

So to me the idea of the importance of old Mac cases in 2033 seems silly. Like if only we could stuff iPhone guts into old VCR cases to reuse the copper in the power-supplies?

 

[D.Houch]

Me? I'm not worried about jack. I'm telling the fool what he should be worried about.

Maybe you should mind your own business or at least read the entire thread. Just sayin'...

Wow... easily offended much? That's the potentially bad thing about forums and texts... there are no facial expressions, no voice inflections, etc... so one doesn't always know exactly where one is coming from.

Sarcasm and ribbing apparently didn't make it's way to you on this particular occasion!

Maybe you didn't notice the "tongue out" emoji? ( ? )