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Comment by iainmerrick | Hacker News Reader

Good list! There are a couple in here that I really wish Apple would stop doing, though:

Molded plastic packaging

4-color, double-walled, matte boxes + HD foam inserts

Apple packaging looks pretty but it’s a pain. It’s so tightly packed it can be very hard to open, and all that plastic seems massively wasteful. I’ll admit it is kind of fun peeling off those perfectly-positioned plastic wrappers on absolutely everything, but that again seems very wasteful, and you can’t re-pack it in the same way.

I love products with simple but cleverly-designed cardboard packaging and recyclable or compostable filling. Apple doesn’t do that, but they should.

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I'd be interested to know what products you're seeing those on? UK market at least all recent MacBooks, iPads and iPhones I've opened have used paper-based trays instead of the old plastic. Even the screen protector has been a thin paper layer.

Even the cables in the box have a paper rings to hold them in shape, and everything has tabs to allow for easily removing from the boxes.

The exterior brown shipping boxes also have clever mechanisms which "raise" the retail box gently out when opening the flaps.

Good question — I forgot the article is from a few years back and things have changed a little. Their packaging is not as wasteful as before but still not great.

I bought an m2 laptop a few months back, and a Pencil recently.

Both boxes are double-walled and double-nested. I find them very hard to open, and they’re close to indestructible which makes them very annoying to break down for recycling. The boxes are glued rather than folded.

The insert trays do seem to be some kind of paper composite now rather than plastic, that’s good. The Pencil one is glued in place, that’s bad. (I still have the box because it’s so annoying to recycle! I guess it’s small enough that I could just toss it in without breaking it down.)

Absolutely every component has a little individual wrapping. Again, they do seem to be mostly paper now (though with some plastic I think) which is an improvement.

Ya that seemed like an usual, or at least very dated or niche anecdote. I'm not even sure that I remember opening a macbook that had similar packaging, but then I also don't live everywhere or buy any other apple products

I unbox a Mac of some sort every 6 months or so, for work.

It's very roughly 4-5 years since Apple stopped using moulded plastic trays in the cardboard boxes, but they do deserve special criticism for them as they were the only company to tightly glue the tray to the box.

Seems plausible, I would have bought my most recent ones within that period, then previously 2013.

They've gotten better with the more recent iPhones. I think since the 12, it's just in a slim box with a single insert.

As noted above, I recently bought a new Apple Pencil, which came in:

Double-walled outer box with one end glued shut

Double-walled inner box solidly glued together

Pencil in a molded paper(?) tray glued into the inner box (on top of a supporting frame of cheaper cardboard)

Instruction manual in its own slim double-walled box

The outer box is still fairly small, but it’s super dense packaging!

I think the Pencil itself had a paper-y protective wrapping too.

The whole outer box was also wrapped in plastic, if I remember right (rather than just a sticker holding it closed).

Framework laptop has the best eco-friendly smart packaging I've seen.

And the Fairphone

This list is from 2014, Apple have massively scaled back injection moulded packaging and foam inserts. I suspect due to the negative environmental feedback they received.

> I really wish Apple would stop doing, though: Molded plastic packaging

Last year needed a new laptop, iPad, iPhone, and a whole load of accessories (from work switch) - none of them had plastic packaging.

An iPhone SE I bought 2 months ago (Nov'21) had the slick white molded plastic packaging, 4-color glossy box, etc.

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