There’s been a running joke for years that Apple builds its devices to last just long enough to satisfy a warranty or a two-year contract before they inevitably start running into issues, forcing the user to upgrade.
As the proud owner of a working iPhone 3GS and 2011 MacBook Air, I can attest that not every Apple device breaks after two or three years, but that doesn’t mean that Apple expects you to hold on to your devices for much longer.
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In an FAQ published on the company’s website this week, Apple addresses several questions about its relationship with the environment, a topic which Tim Cook and the other executives are very passionate about.
The second question posed in the FAQ is: “How does Apple conduct its Product Greenhouse Gas Life Cycle Assessment?” This portion of the is what caught the eye of several publications around the web on Friday:
“To model customer use, we measure the power consumed by a product while it is running in a simulated scenario. Daily usage patterns are specific to each product and are a mixture of actual and modeled customer use data. Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices.”
There are a couple of interesting takeaways here. First, Apple expects the average user to spend three years with an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch and four years with a Mac or an
It’s probably not worth reading too much into this section, but it’s certainly interesting to see Apple acknowledge a lifespan for its products.
