some rando said:
Yeah, let's pretend Macs have a shorter lifespan than even Windows PCs. Why backup that 2-4 years claim, when you can make it the premise for a bogus CO₂ footprint accusation?
“
Bogus”.
Not for your benefit, but for others viewing and/or commenting in this discussion, I’ma do something fun: compare
total CO₂e footprint consumption — (i.e., CO₂ mass) — after eleven years of use between two common models, as used by two classes of Mac users.
A) a single unibody 13-inch MBP, maintained and upgraded, and
B) the buying of a Silicon-equivalent 14-inch MBP every, let say, three years (AppleCare is three years).
All calculations in the table below [
1,
2] are derived from Apple’s own published literature data.
Apple, based on their published, “four-year life cycle”, assume consumers ditch a Mac after four years (or, if timing on those who buy new the moment AppleCare is expired, as many often do, it’s probably nearer to three years).
A reasonable, fair, side-by-side CO
₂e footprint comparison between what was, at the time, the entry 13-inch
unibody MacBook Pro of late 2011 (using Apple-supplied data); and its direct-descendant counterpart from the Silicon realm, the
14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro of 2021, also using Apple-supplied data (as the 13-inch offered by the M1’s time was, in effect, the unibody 2008 MacBook —
not Pro — of its moment).
Why the 2011 13-inch MBP?
1) It’s common;
2) It’s in the midst of the unibody models, from the most common line, the 13-inch form factor;
3) This is the
Early Intel Macs forum, where OCLP-patched Macs are commonplace;
4) I’m doing this work, including this post, on a late 2011 MBP I maintain personally (and it uses a pair of SSDs inside).
But “aw, who cares about carbon footprints and CO
₂e figures?” If you don’t, your kids will, and for damn good reason.
What’s I’m going to do is the following:
The unibody MBP’s CO
₂e numbers rely on Apple-supplied data (for a unit with a high-energy spinner HDD and ODD). As many unibody user-owners did (and have), spinners got replaced with SSDs. [Upgradeability was inherent to the unibody’s design!] (In several use-cases, an ODD also got replaced with a second SSD.) That said, the end-user CO2e for unibody MBP usage is based on the presence of spinners.
What I’m also going to do is
repeat the cycle of an end-user buying a 14-inch MBP with M1 Pro-equivalent device every
three years (“equivalent”, as it’ll likely be an M4, M7 or M21, whatever) — factoring their total CO
₂e footprint over the same span of time, using Apple’s data (Apple use a four-year span to calculate that published figure).
I’m going to extend both to,
exactly, eleven years. I could go much longer — like sixteen years, if starting with the MBP4,1.
NOTE: in neither case will CO₂e footprints for battery replacements come into play (as Apple don’t provide that data break-out), but it’s reasonable the CO₂e impact of any battery replacements will be comparable between the two models. And yes, realistically, the unibody owner will need to replace the battery, whereas the other will, in many cases, just dispose and buy new again, adding substantially to their CO₂e footprint mass, over time.
Table 1. CO₂e footprints, including usage over time, on two ways to use a product
(one, a single product, maintained, upgraded, and updated; the other, a disposable appliance):
MILESTONES
at 3, 6, 9 and 11 years, for total CO₂e masses | MacBookPro8,1
late 2011 13-inch i7 variant | MacBookPro18,3
late 2021 10-core CPU/16-core GPU variant |
Apple’s own CO₂e figures for
4-year lifetime of manufacturing plus end-user total power use (Apple calculate this, for i7, at 33% and Silicon, at 22% of the 4y total) | 360kg CO₂e
(241.2kg is manufacture-only;
118.8kg is 4yr CO₂e consumption) | 307kg CO₂e
(239.46kg is manufacture only;
67.54kg is 4yr CO₂e consumption) |
| At 3 years in, end-use power consumption included, not including (for Silicon) purchase of second, MBP18,3-equivalent at 3yr mark | 330.3kg CO₂e
241.2kg + 89.1 for 3yr consumption) | 290.12kg CO₂e
(239.46 + 50.66 for 3yr consumption) |
| At 3 years in, including (for Silicon) purchase of replacement MBP18,3-equivalent at 3yr mark (excluding 22% CO₂e footprint for use of second unit, to be consumed) | 330.3kg CO₂e | 495.81kg CO₂e
(290.12 + 239.46) |
| At 6 years in, end-use power consumption included, not including (for Silicon) purchase of third, MBP18,3-equivalent at 6yr mark | 419.4kg CO₂e
(241.2kg + (89.1 * 2)),
where “2” is two, 3yr usage consumption cycles), or 6yrs | 580.24kg CO₂e
(290.12kg * 2) |
| At 6 years, including (for Silicon) purchase of third unit (excl. 22% CO₂e footprint for use of third unit, to be consumed) | 419.4kg CO₂e | 819.7kg CO₂e
((290.12kg * 2) + 239.46) |
| At 9 years in, end-use power consumption included, not including (for Silicon) purchase of fourth, MBP18,3-equivalent at 9yr mark | 508.5kg CO₂e
(241.2kg + 89.1 * 3))
where “3” is three, 3-yr usage consumption cycles, or 9yrs | 870.36kg CO₂e
(290.12kg * 3) |
| At 9 years, including (for Silicon) purchase of fourth unit (excl. 22% CO₂e footprint for use of fourth unit, to be consumed) | 508.5kg CO₂e | 1109.82kg CO₂e
((290.12kg * 3) + 239.46) |
| At 11 years, all consumption inclusive | 568.197kg CO₂e
(241.2kg + (89.1 * 3.67))
where “3.67” is three-and-two thirds 3yr usage, or 11yrs | 1143.76kg CO₂e
((290.12kg * 3) + (50.66 * 0.67))
where 290.12 is unit lifetime CO2e after 3yrs, and 50.66 is 3yr CO₂e consumption, stood alone, to calculate energy-only for final two years, or 0.67) |
CO₂e footprint total share after 11 years,
relative to higher-CO₂e footprint sum | 49.7% | 100% |
“Common-sense” (hee-hee-guffaw) reactions might include, “But wait, manufacturing gets less CO
₂e-intensive over time!” and even, “No one uses the same hardware willingly for that long!”
On both, that reaction is incorrect. In fact, with exception to a spike with the retina MBPs (with an, inexplicably, nearly
100 per cent larger CO
₂e footprint
before the product hit consumer hands), CO
₂e footprint figures for pre-consumer preparation has been fairly flat.
Also, to put to pasture: “This isn’t a fair comparison!”
No, it
is — when considering why consumers these days buy a new Mac laptop every 3–4 years. And no, “faster” and “cooler” generally are convenient externalities obscuring the core motivator for
needing to, as the product itself is immanently more delicate and fragile than ever, and Apple’s support grows shorter (and stingier). Worse, there is no upgrading for the latter, so good luck with using your current Silicon Mac laptop as a daily driver (or even secondary driver) for the next eleven years.
It’s a fair comparison predicated on how two classes of Mac users consume Mac products.
It drives home why there’s an active EIM forum at all — with many regulars running Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma on their Early Intel Macs (and who report doing their everyday work quite well).
Regulars also recognize how efficiency, over time,
when being realistic (that is: a real, lifetime analysis of factoring resource extraction, labour, milling, assembly, packaging, transport, merchandising, and having the hecking thing shipped home or to work, in addition to lifetime energy use), means a robustly built unit with the ability to replace and upgrade parts (in a post-Moore world) occupies a far smaller carbon footprint over time, whereas benefits to “buying new” every 2–4yrs isn’t the great leap forward it may have been some 20 or 30 years ago.
Moreover — and this is a crucial consideration — Apple’s own supplied literature describes “recycling” energy consumption as energy consumed in
collecting (and, ostensibly,
re-selling) e-waste to another party. Apple’s literature does not factor raw CO
₂e footprint impact in, the post-Apple part(ies) separating the e-waste and returning those e-waste materials to raw, (re-)useful form — as these carbon costs are, in Apple’s eye, beyond their remit and, thus, beyond the scope of their product lifetime analysis. It’s disingenuous accountability. (Apple only make note of how e-waste gets collected locally, i.e., within nation. That’s it. Slow clap.)
noise annoys said:
Looks like I'm a B S repellent. 😂
I’ll let slide how you’re new around MR forums, so you wouldn’t have a way to know my username is short for
Big Spam Magnet.
nobody knows you're a dog on the internet said:
Good luck saving the planet by running old Intel Macs, which have literally 10× the energy consumption of ARM-based SoCs.
You, the consumer, consume twice as much CO
₂e with their footprint, over time, when you buy whole new hardware every 2–4 years. The table above spells that out.
And with that, I invite others to use the same methodology with other comparable lines of Mac products.
As for me, I rest my case.
