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Comment by exergy | Hacker News Reader

How about arguing for the environmental cost of our throwaway culture?

Airpods have a MUCH higher environmental impact than ordinary earphones. A lot of tech is crammed into these things, all of which uses energy, resources, distilled water and so on to produce.

I have a pair of Shure earphones that have "just worked" for going onto three years now. I had to change NOTHING on them, and they've never complained. I've worn them for 2+ hours Every. Single. Day. during that time period.

People are reporting rubbish battery lives on the Apple subreddit already, with several of them desperately hoping for new ones so they can mindlessly continue upgrading without stopping to consider where that tech ends up.

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> I have a pair of Shure earphones that have "just worked" for going onto three years now. I had to change NOTHING on them, and they've never complained. I've worn them for 2+ hours Every. Single. Day. during that time period.

And I have a pair of Airpods that have "just worked" for I guess about two and a half years now. I've had to change NOTHING on them, and they've never complained. I've worn them for 2+ hours (almost) Every. Single. Day. during that time period.

> People are reporting rubbish battery lives on the Apple subreddit already

People are going to report a litany of problems with every new product. There is zero reason to believe that battery life on these new AirPods should be, outside of defective devices, any less than the previous model.

Let's come back to this thread in two more years and continue this chat. Are you in good faith arguing that airpods and quality earphones will last the same amount of time and have the same environmental impact? It's one thing to have wanton disregard for the environment and say "Fuck climate change, convenience rulez", but a whole another thing to try to convince yourself that there IS no difference between the two choices.

Also, to preempt any exhortations of slippery slope fallacies, I'd say every person deserves a good laptop that they take care of, and a smartphone that they try to get to last as long as possible. That's where we draw the line. Every gadget beyond that should cause a serious examination of how necessary it is in one's life, and whether it is a want or a need. Airpods would fail catastrophically for almost everyone in such a sytem.

How many monitors do people deserve? Is anyone allowed to have a car? What about food processors? Are wifi routers okay, I mean wired ethernet worked just fine for decades.

Seriously. At least be consistent. If you're living off your own land, growing your own tomatoes and dreadlocks, and own zero technology, I'd understand and probably agree with you as you rant about the selfish decadence of humanity over the fire pit.

But these comments here are basically the height of virtue signaling and weird oneupmanship. The fact that they are posting on HN about it on their high-tech device is hilarious.

For example, they brag about their save-the-world low-fi headphones without realizing the irony of also owning the high-tech landfilling gadget they plug them into.

Why does the conversation always devolve into "go live in a cave"? Surely you must agree that there is a spectrum of possibilities, and the further along it one can be the better? Eating mostly vegetarian food, driving as little as possible, owning as little tech as possible, having as few children as one can. These would have seemed to me to be relatively uncontroversial opinions.

The implications of all these comments seems to be that it's perfectly OK to buy Airpods every two to three years for decades to come, because there are other avenues in which we are also fucking the environment.

Two monitors, unless you're working at a NASA control center. No cars for journeys under five miles, unless you have disabilities. Food processors and wifi routers are OK, because they both are closer to BIFL compared to airpods. Wired ethernet IS better if you've got a desktop.

Anything else?

i would wager that your argument is a rounding error compared to laptops, phones, and tvs... are airpods less environmentally friendly than regular headphones? sure, but let’s tackle things that actually matter before nitpicking. my airpods are devices that i’ve had longer than many of my other electronics purchases, and they’re certainly a quality of life improvement

Fair enough, but I'm already trying to tackle the other things: travelling by train when possible, /r/nocar, biking everywhere, making my phones and laptops last as long as I can, no children, eating mostly vegetarian (not that difficult when you're Indian).

The environmental Argument is interesting as I am thinking about getting AirPods precisely because Im sick of throwing away my regular in Ears because the headphone jacks keep breaking when I carry them crumbled in my jeans. (I hate having them tangle around while not in use). As an earlier poster pointed out: It all depends on your use case and preferences.

Shure, and many other good companies, make earphones with removable cables. These MMCX cables can be bought relatively cheaply (decent ones on Amazon france seem to be about EUR 15 onwards). Even better, the ones that come with the earphones are burly as fuck, and as I said, mine have lasted three years with no damage or loose soldering to report.

I did a review of Shure in ear monitors. They sent me their entire product lineup, though I only reviewed two of their products. The highest priced monitor had a cable break 2 years later, with only minimal use in that period. They had/have outstanding customer support for this class of monitor, and replaced it for free. Cable broke 6 months later. They would have replaced that too, but I didn't pay for the monitors, and felt like it was right to push it. These are the type of in ear monitors musicians use on stage during performances, and easily run of $1k. They sounded fantastic, but they were as reliable as Apple's $30 corded airbuds.

Don't know what to tell you, except my experience didn't match yours. The only special thing I do to care for them is to fold them in figure-of-eights so that there isn't much stress on the cables when stowed. They've gotten caught in doorknobs etc. during my time of owning them, but still going strong.

Following the same line of argument, why are we even discussing this stuff on the internet, using devices that consume electricity, going through servers that likely consume tons of power... when we could all meet in a field and talk?

Honestly, this sort of attitude is why I just struggle to trust any “green” activism, despite fundamentally being a leftie. You are happy to live in a cave, fine, do that; but myself, I like my tech and I want to keep going forward.

What is your brilliant solution then? It's rather simple. There are billions of us on the planet. You cannot have them all live the standard American lifestyle full of chromecasts and Apple Homepods and use-and-dispose Airpods.

The best that I can think of is minimizing my impact. This heavily involves minimal tech.

We had the same arguments for decades, and we are still here. Whenever we hit a snag, like oil or food running out, we think of solutions, like changing energy sources to renewables or improving agricultural efficiency. Progress is made by unreasonable people.

As I said, you're free to do as you please, and I'm free to say that I'll do differently.

Good luck with the Shures continuing to last. I absolutely love my Shures, but I’ve gone through ~4 pairs in the last 12 years, and I don’t think I’m particularly hard on them. It’s a bit better now that they have replaceable cables, but even after that change, I’ve had at least one socket fail on them on the earbud side.

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