Apple Stepping Up Environmental Friendliness with New Halogen-Free Cables
The London Evening Standard reports (via GigaOM) that Apple is requiring cable supplier Volex to spend up to $6 million retooling its production lines to eliminate halogens from the power and USB cables used in the company's products. The move will make the cables less toxic to the environment upon disposal.
Apple is the biggest customer of Volex, 23%-owned by billionaire financier Nat Rothschild, which makes the power cables and USB leads used in everything from laptops to iPhones and iPads.
But the US firm is on a drive to move its products towards halogen-free power cables, which are less harmful to the environment when disposed of.
The start-up costs in designing and making the new cables will cost it up to $6 million in the current financial year, Volex said today, although, stripping out these one-off costs, profits will be in line with market expectation.
Apple has in the past received criticism from environmental advocacy groups such as Greenpeace, but the company has been performing better in recent surveys as it has continued to shift to more environmentally-friendly alternatives and has become more open about its efforts on the environmental front.
In 2009, the company launched an expanded environmental footprint section of its website to help provide information on its impact and progress in the area.
Popular Stories
Barclays analyst Tom O'Malley and his colleagues recently traveled to Asia to meet with various electronics manufacturers and suppliers. In a research note this week, outlining key takeaways from the trip, the analysts said they have "confirmed" that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is slated to launch towards the end of the first quarter next year. In line with previo...
Apple released the AirTag in April 2021, so it is now three over and a half years old. While the AirTag has not received any hardware updates since then, a new version of the item tracking accessory is rumored to be in development.
Below, we recap rumors about a second-generation AirTag.
Timing
Apple is aiming to release a new AirTag in mid-2025, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman....
While the Logitech MX Master 3 is a terrific mouse for the Mac, reports claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook prefers that mouse over the Magic Mouse are false.
The Wall Street Journal last month published an interview with Cook, in which he said he uses every Apple product every day. Soon after, The Verge's Wes Davis attempted to replicate using every Apple product in a single day. During that...
Apple today released iOS 18.1.1 and iPadOS 18.1.1, minor updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems that debuted earlier in September. iOS 18.1.1 and iPadOS 18.1.1 come three weeks after the launch of iOS 18.1.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Apple has also released iOS 17.7.2 for...
AT&T has begun displaying "Turbo" in the iPhone carrier label for customers subscribed to its premium network prioritization service, according to reports on Reddit. The new indicator seems to have started appearing after users updated to iOS 18.1.1, but that could be just coincidence.
Image credit: Reddit user No_Highlight7476
The Turbo feature provides enhanced network performance through ...
In a research note with Hong Kong-based investment bank Haitong today, obtained by MacRumors, Apple analyst Jeff Pu said he agrees with a recent rumor claiming that the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" will be around 6mm thick.
"We agreed with the recent chatter of an 6mm thickness ultra-slim design of the iPhone 17 Slim model," he wrote.
If that measurement proves to be accurate, there would be ...
The iOS 18.1.1, iPadOS 18.1.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 updates that Apple released today address JavaScriptCore and WebKit vulnerabilities that Apple says have been actively exploited on some devices.
With the JavaScriptCore vulnerability, processing maliciously crafted web content could lead to arbitrary code execution. The WebKit vulnerability had the same issue with maliciously crafted...
