Apple and the environment

On 4/24/06, Jolin M Warren <JolinWarrenoakandapple.org> wrote:
> I was glad to read yesterday of Apple's plans to extend its recycling
> programme in the US. However, I feel that Apple tends to fall short
> of its environmental responsibilities.

I'm curious here, do you feel that another major manufacturor
(anywhere of commercial goods) does a better job ?

I'm afraid I'm lamentably informed here, but this sounds like a rant
more than anything else. Yes, Apple makes decisions based on economics
and of course they talk it up when it makes an environmental impact,
are we to be shocked ?

Perhaps you are hoping that Apple will begin sending developers to
physically blockade the deforestation of Brazil or some other truly
altruistic act ?

Christopher Appell
European Market
FreeRecruiting.com
JobMart.com

On 23 Apr 2006, at 20:56 , Jolin M Warren wrote:
> when the computer is "off", why should it draw any power?!

When your TV is off, it draws power. When your "fill in name of
appliance here" is off, it draws power. Most everything you plug in
to the wall draws some power even when it is switched off. The Mac
mini draws something like 1W when off<1>, and hardly more when it is
'off' (4W?). This is enough power to pay attention to the soft-power
switch (either on the back or on an attached USB keyboard).

The G4 mini ran on 12 Watts WHILE IT WAS ON!
<http://www.home.earthlink.net/~silasb/macbat/>

Granted, it wasn't do anything, and I'm sure it would climb up to 20
or 30W when it was fully loaded. Still, that's a dim bulb.

I don't have a voltage meter to test the intel mini.

Apple's computer have always gotten by on significantly less power
than their PC brethren. 400 and 500 watt power supplies are common
in the PC world. The only exception I can find is the PowerMac G5
Quads, which routinely pull over 300 watts and have a 1000watt power
supply. Yes, One THOUSAND.

<1> Can't find the reference to that now. The PPC mini drew 6W when
off and 8 when 'off'.

And, while you can suppose that the move from CRT to LCD was
predicated on lass than Earth-friendly concerns, the fact is they
were the first to make the move, and it will save BILLIONS of watts
as CRTs draw huge amounts of power compared to flat panels.

--
"He sees the good in every one. No one would ever take him for a
clergyman." Lucy Honeychurch

On Apr 23, 2006, at 10:56 PM, Jolin M Warren wrote:

> I was glad to read yesterday of Apple's plans to extend its recycling
> programme in the US. However, I feel that Apple tends to fall short
> of its environmental responsibilities. Yes, it's good that Apple will
> be compliant with the European RoHS by 1 July. But if they weren't,
> overnight they would not be able to sell any products in Europe
......
> All of this background is to say that I feel Apple's efforts with
> respect to the environment[1] are half-hearted --

So, as I understand it, you have a "feeling" about a corporation,
based on your view of their practices, that they are driven primarily
by business decisions. And this is "bad"?
> certainly far from
> the worst in the industry, but primarily driven by business decisions
> with a small amount of genuine effort. And this brings me to Apple's
> recycling programme. Its extension to Macintosh computers is
> certainly welcome. And it is very good to see Apple will avoid
> exporting hazardous waste to countries without proper health and
> safety regulations. However, it raises the following questions in my
> mind:
>
> 1. Why can iPods and Macs only be recycled if you are buying a new
> one _at an Apple Store_? Surely if I have an old Mac, there can be no
> question that Apple manufactured and supplied it, so they should be
> responsible for recycling it. I should be able to take an old Mac
> back for recycling to an Apple Store regardless of whether or not I'm
> buying a new one, and regardless of where I might buy a new Mac.
>

I don't expect to take my decade old vacuum cleaner back to the store
I bought it at to have them get rid of it. Are you saying that you
can't find someplace to take an object that belongs to you, is your
property, that you are responsible for and have been since you bought
it? Perhaps you have no recycling outlets where you live? Then the
problem is much closer to home, neh?
> 2. Why is this recycling programme in the US only? I understand that
> it is impractical for Apple to set up programmes in every country in
> the world, but I would expect them to offer recycling at least in
> their major markets (not even Canada seems to be included).

I thought Canada was pretty good about offering its citizens options
like this. Am I wrong?
>
> This leads me to suspect that the recycling programme is another pure
> business decision by Apple[2]. They've realised that people have
> become more environmentally conscious, and so will respond to the
> opportunity to recycle old computers. However, the only way to
> recycle is to give further business to Apple's own retail outlets.
> This both encourages people to upgrade their computers more
> frequently (the old one's no longer going to waste) and to buy these
> new Macs at Apple's own stores.
> ...........
>
> All of this is to say that I don't think Apple is taking its
> environmental responsibilities seriously. The primary reasons it
> makes improvements in its products' environmental impacts are for:
> a. business decisions -- i.e. to increase sales or profits;
> b. compliance with regulations in profitable target markets.

What would it take for you to feel better about what this company is
doing about recycling concerns? If they said they were doing
something, "but not for business reasons", this would make you feel
better? And you are surely not suggesting that they not comply with
regulations in their various target markets? They might very well
pull out of France due to the recent hoohah there about opening up
standards to all.

Thanks,
Craig

On Apr 23, 2006, at 10:56 PM, Jolin M Warren wrote:

> I was glad to read yesterday of Apple's plans to extend its recycling
> programme in the US. However, I feel that Apple tends to fall short
> of its environmental responsibilities.

IMHO, it is a bit odd to be basing an assessment of corporate
behavior on *perceived* intent. It is impossible to know the true
intent of any business decision in as much as we don't know what the
decision makers were thinking at the time. Moreover, right intent is
worthless if it doesn't produce right action. (We saw recently an
example of this in Google China, or at least just how complicated the
relationship between intent and action can be.) So, to debate what
Apple intended with its recycling program (a business decision?
environmental one? both?) is, IMHO, to miss the point. What really
matters is what they are doing. And what they are doing is providing
American consumers with an easy way to recycle their old Macs---a bit
belated, perhaps, but nevertheless a welcome step.

> However, I can't understand why there is still no switch on Macs
> so that I can switch them off completely -- when the computer is
> "off", why should it draw any power?!

I think environmentalists (and I count myself among them) should
focus on things that really matter. If you go to Apple's website,
you will find the actual environmental impact specs for every product:

http://www.apple.com/environment/resources/specs.html

Look at what is probably the highest power consuming product
(PowerMac G5), and you will see that in sleep it consumes 16W of
power, and 2W when off (standby). Replace *one* incandescent light
bulb in your house with an energy efficient fluorescent, and you have
saved more than enough electricity to leave that G5 in standby.
There are simply other more important things to worry about from an
environmental impact standpoint.

> Surely if I have an old Mac, there can be no
> question that Apple manufactured and supplied it, so they should be
> responsible for recycling it. I should be able to take an old Mac
> back for recycling to an Apple Store regardless of whether or not I'm
> buying a new one, and regardless of where I might buy a new Mac.

Surely, since the user owns the Mac or iPod, there can be no question
that the person bought it and got a lot of enjoyment/productivity out
of it, so the user is responsible for the environmental impact of his/
her consumption. So they should be responsible for recycling it. I
think it's high time we started expecting more from the consumer as
well.

I'm all for holding corporations environmentally responsible. But
why do the corporations have to foot the *entire* bill? It seems
perfectly reasonable for Apple to say if you buy direct from us, we
will use some of the extra margin we earn to pay to recycle your old
computer. Both the consumer and Apple are sharing in the cost of
recycling---Apple because of lower margins, and the consumer because
they will probably pay a higher price. By saying that Apple should
recycle a computer regardless of where the consumer buys a new Mac,
you are demanding that Apple provide a free service to every Mac
buyer that ever existed, completely absolving the consumer of paying
for the consequences of his/her consumption.

Though I will say, one way in which Apple could improve the current
program is to allow consumers the option to bring in their old Macs
to an Apple Store for recycling for a reasonable fee (to cover a
fraction of the cost of recycling) without the purchase of a new
Mac. This is what they effectively do in some other countries.

> 2. Why is this recycling programme in the US only? I understand that
> it is impractical for Apple to set up programmes in every country in
> the world, but I would expect them to offer recycling at least in
> their major markets (not even Canada seems to be included).

You need to do just a little bit more homework on Apple's site:

http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/nationalservices/us.html

You will find that the US, Canada, Japan, Scandinavian, Benelux,
Germany, Austria and Taiwan all have take-back programs. All make it
pretty painless (and often free or nearly so) for the consumer to do
the right thing. Between US, Canada, Japan, the participating EU
countries and Taiwan, that must cover a big majority of Apple's
global sales.

(Notably, the UK, France and Italy among others in the EU, do not
have a national program for recycling IT waste, and hence Apple's
lack of a take-back program in those countries. But since the EU
countries have all declared the intent to implement the WEEE and
provide national programs for IT waste recycling, it's not surprising
that Apple has no incentive to start its own parallel recycling
program in those countries.)

> However, the only way to recycle is to give further business to
> Apple's own retail outlets.

This simply is not true. Most municipalities in the US and elsewhere
now have programs where you can drop off computers and electronics
for recycling at a nominal fee, if you are willing to make the effort.

Tomoharu Nishino

On Apr 24, 2006, at 10:15, Google Kreme wrote:
> And, while you can suppose that the move from CRT to LCD was
> predicated on lass than Earth-friendly concerns, the fact is they
> were the first to make the move, and it will save BILLIONS of watts
> as CRTs draw huge amounts of power compared to flat panels.

I was looking at monitors a couple of months back, and was surprised
to discover that the gap isn't quite so big as it's often made out to
be, especially on modern equipment. There's a big gap, to be sure,
but I'm not sure I would qualify it as huge, and it gets smaller as
size goes up. Putting numbers to it, it appears that CRTs draw about
50% to 200% more power than LCDs of equivalent size. Like I said,
big, but folks tend to make it sound like LCDs only draw a few watts,
and that's definitely not the case. Here are a few numbers to ponder
(carefully note use of max versus typical - both aren't always given):

Apple Studio Display 17" CRT: 120w max, 2amp, 410.4 BTU/h heat
Apple Display 17" LCD: 40w max

Apple Studio Display 21" CRT: 180w max, 3amp, 615.6 BTU/h heat
Apple Cinema Display 20" LCD: 60w max

Current Dell 17" CRT: 70w typical, 90w max
Current ViewSonic 17" LCD: 30w typical

IBM 22" CRT: <130w typical
ViewSonic 23" LCD: 80w typical

Heat output is something to consider, too. Unfortunately, only Apple
seems to provide a measure of this, and only on old CRTs. However, my
subjective feeling just from hold-hand-over-heat-source tests is that
LCDs' power supplies (whether internal or external) put out just as
much heat as any modern CRT. This implies that CRTs are more
efficient, which seems wrong, but again, it's highly unscientific. In
any case, in places like here in Phoenix, where the AC regularly
battles summer temperatures well into the triple digits, heat output
is an important consideration, and one that I'm not entirely sure
that LCD wins.

Having said all that, though, I look forward to replacing my multiple
3D-giant monitors with multiple 2D-giant monitors :-).


Regards,
Bob
--
Robert E. Williams, Jr.
President and Master Spinner
TriVectus, LC - Specialists in high-return web solutions
E-mail: <bobtrivectus.com> Phone: (602) 357-3296 x111
Web site: <http://www.trivectus.com/>

At 19:56 04/23/06 -0700, Jolin M Warren wrote:
>So this was a business decision, not an environmental one.

No surprise here. However, note that it is still a public good that Apple
is promoting environmentally friendly processes and products. We don't have
to give Apple any particular credit to note that the overall system --
regulated capitalism -- is working well in this case.

Free-market evangelists usually ignore the obvious fact that capitalism
works best with careful regulation. We often forget that Karl Marx was an
astute critic of capitalism as it was practiced in his day -- just about
totally unregulated -- and accurately documented some rather horrible
results. Of course, the solution he proposed was totally, absurdly
unworkable and even that was twisted beyond belief by those who claimed to
be his followers. The real progress has been made in a totally different
way, by regulating capitalism. And this is one of the ways such regulation
has worked: not only is Apple behaving better environmentally, it is
promoting that behavior in ways which will help to bring the public along.

>Over the years, Apple has certainly reduced the amount of power
>consumed by Macs when they're in the "sleep" or "off". And this is
>one of their claims that seems more genuine to me -- I can't see why
>it would be particularly advantageous to Apple from a business
>perspective (although they might have got it for free as component
>suppliers improved their products).

I don't know all the details, but I believe that they would lose a lot of
US federal government business if they failed to comply with the Energy
Star requirements. I don't know if federal business is important enough to
Apple to make this much difference, but it has influenced the design of
many components. The "environment" page at apple.com says that all Apple
computers and displays meet the Energy Star requirements, so for whatever
reason they are taking it seriously.

At 10:15 04/24/06 -0700, Google Kreme wrote:
>When your "fill in name of appliance here" is off, it draws power.

If you said "fill in name of electronic appliance", I'd agree. Neither my
toaster nor my vacuum cleaner nor my juicer draws even a tenth of a watt
when off. Even my refrigerator uses 0W when the compressor stops, although
that's seldom (refrigerators today are designed so that the compressor runs
most of the time).

But once we're down to a watt per appliance, there's bigger fish in the
sea, at least for now. My house has a couple of night lights at 4W each,
though I've started changing them out for LED night lights. I have all
compact fluorescent lighting, but that's still 13W to 27W per light. My
refrigerator, though a recent model, probably still uses more energy than
all my lighting and all other appliances except the computers and the water
heater. My old Gateway used 90W active and 65W idle, but my newer (!) HP
uses 130W either way. ;-) ... of course neither is labeled in a way that I
could determine those figures until I had them at home where I could put a
watt meter on them. And heating water remains a pig, as does house cooling
-- and heating, even in Florida.

>400 and 500 watt power supplies are common
>in the PC world. The only exception I can find is the PowerMac G5
>Quads, which routinely pull over 300 watts and have a 1000watt power
>supply. Yes, One THOUSAND.

Plate ratings on power supplies are totally irrelevant to how much energy
the computer ACTUALLY uses. It's the capacity of the power supply, and the
power supply is designed to power the box adequately even if you load it up
with a full quota of high-power cards.

Repeat: the nameplate on a computer is useless in determining the actual
energy use.

This is different from most appliances, where the nameplate rating is the
actual power while in use. However, even this can be difficult to apply
with appliances such as refrigerators which turn themselves on and off.

At 10:23 04/24/06 -0700, Craig Turner wrote:
>Are you saying that you can't find someplace to take an object that
>belongs to you, is your property, that you are responsible for and have
>been since you bought it?

Yes, that's exactly what we are saying. Recycling electronics on your own,
safely, is very difficult. Electronics in general, and computers in
particular, contain large amounts of heavy metals and other stuff that,
while not as immediately dangerous as arsenic or PCBs etc, is quite
difficult to make safe in the long run. It's very costly for local
communities to provide safe and adequate recycling programs for electronics
(including not only computers but also TVs, audio equipment, etc). Those
which do, generally have to act as collectors and pass the material on to
others. In my town, though I have fairly comprehensive pickup, I have to
take electronic items directly to a collection center or wait for an annual
pickup day -- and this is largely because electronic items must be handled
separately.

CRTs contain large amounts of lead -- another excellent reason for them to
go away. Probably the programs to force manufacturers to eat their own dog
food has had a salutary effect on the move toward LCD monitors.

Yet another problem is that unregulated recycling has led to electronic
components being shipped to third world countries for disassembly and
"recycling" under unsafe conditions. That's especially true when local
communities have to send the recyclable materials through several levels of
contractors. Making it the manufacturers' responsibility means they have to
be accountable for these unsafe practices. I don't see it on Apple's web
site, but some electronics companies are now promoting that they practice
not only recycling but safe recycling.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 4/23/06 10:56 PM, "Jolin M Warren" <JolinWarrenOakAndApple.org> wrote:

> However, I can't understand why
> there is still no switch on Macs so that I can switch them off
> completely -- when the computer is "off", why should it draw any
> power?!

To maintain clocks & settings for things like timed booting. There's a
battery on the motherboard to keep them but batteries wear out (thus
creating more nasty waste). Those old machines with hard switches (though
how do you know they didn't still draw some power unless you hooked up
something like a voltmeter?) would start acting pretty weird when their
motherboard batteries died. Same thing with not-so-old ones. So instead of
drawing power from a battery that'll wear out, computers draw a little
power, when they can, from the AC.

At 10:34 AM -0700 4/25/06, Bob Williams wrote:
>Apple Studio Display 17" CRT: 120w max, 2amp, 410.4 BTU/h heat
>
>Heat output is something to consider, too. Unfortunately, only Apple
>seems to provide a measure of this, and only on old CRTs.

        Heat is energy. Welcome to the metric system. According to Google

120 watts = 409.456996 BTU / hour

        The BTU/hour numbers are the same as the Watt values.



--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

At 10:34 04/25/06 -0700, cheshirenekomac.com wrote:
>Surely, since the user owns the Mac or iPod, there can be no question
>that the person bought it and got a lot of enjoyment/productivity out
>of it, so the user is responsible for the environmental impact of his/
>her consumption. So they should be responsible for recycling it. I
>think it's high time we started expecting more from the consumer as
>well.

One trouble is that we can expect more from the consumer, but we won't get
it from even a majority without a lot of education and social pressure.
Even then, we won't get 100%. If it costs $25 to recycle an old Mac, then
either the cost is built in to the purchase, or the community assumes some
of the cost, or some of them end up in roadside ditches. Which do you find
preferable?

>I'm all for holding corporations environmentally responsible. But
>why do the corporations have to foot the *entire* bill?

The point isn't to make them "foot the bill", but to force them to build
the entire life cycle cost into the original purchase cost. The consumer
will certainly foot the bill (if any -- see below), which you can be sure
WILL be included in the purchase price; the manufacturer is simply required
to provide the mechanism for recycling. As I mentioned in my previous
contribution, recycling computers is complex and is not something an
individual or a community is equipped to do.

Another important part of the requirements is to tell the manufacturers to
design products that are cheap and easy to recycle. Better design makes a
huge difference in the cost and difficulty of recycling. In fact, in many
cases the manufacturers end up reducing the total cost. There's an up-front
investment, which makes it uncompetitive for one company to embark on this
route alone, thus the need for regulations to level the playing field. But
once done, it's a win-win situation: the manufacturer gets back raw
materials for less than the cost of mining them -- there's still a good bit
of gold in computers, and that's not the only material recycled -- and a
lot less material has to be discarded or processed in more expensive ways.

>It seems
>perfectly reasonable for Apple to say if you buy direct from us, we
>will use some of the extra margin we earn to pay to recycle your old
>computer.

It makes sense for Apple to say "if you buy from us, we'll include the
end-of-life costs in your original purchase". That this is not entirely the
paradigm of the current provisions is beside the point: the goal is to
include complete life costs in the purchase.

In any case, if you just want to pay for recycling without tying the
recycling to any purchase, HP will take your old PC -- any PC -- and
recycle it for $21 plus shipping.
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/recycle/ecoupon.html

>By saying that Apple should
>recycle a computer regardless of where the consumer buys a new Mac,
>you are demanding that Apple provide a free service to every Mac
>buyer that ever existed, completely absolving the consumer of paying
>for the consequences of his/her consumption.

No, we're asking that Apple include the end-of-life costs in the original
purchase. I seem to be repeating myself. The consumer WILL pay, as part of
the purchase price. Unless as I discussed above the recycling turns out to
be a net negative cost, in which case most likely the company's
stockholders will keep the profit.

At 10:34 04/25/06 -0700, Bob Williams wrote:
>I was looking at monitors a couple of months back, and was surprised
>to discover that the gap isn't quite so big as it's often made out to
>be, especially on modern equipment.

Very true. Many of us developed our mindsets 15 or so years ago, when a 13"
color monitor was likely to use 150W, even 200W or more. My modern 19"
Samsung CRT monitor uses 70W.

>Heat output is something to consider, too. Unfortunately, only Apple
>seems to provide a measure of this, and only on old CRTs.

On the contrary, you just listed the heat output of all those monitors.
Essentially all the electrical energy input is converted to heat in the
room -- a few photons escape out the window, but for practical purposes,
the energy entering = the heat produced. 70W (power) for 1 second (time) is
70 joules (energy), and basically all becomes heat. Some of the energy is
initially converted to radiation (light), but when it's absorbed by an
object in the room, it's converted to heat also. Your subjective sense of
more heat from the LCD most likely results from the heat output being
concentrated in a smaller space.

The preceding is the long way of stating that the first law of
thermodynamics ("energy is conserved") applies.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 4/25/06 at 10:34 AM, bobtrivectus.com (Bob Williams) wrote:

>Apple Studio Display 17" CRT: 120w max, 2amp, 410.4 BTU/h heat Apple
>Display 17" LCD: 40w max

>Heat output is something to consider, too. Unfortunately, only Apple
>seems to provide a measure of this, and only on old CRTs.

It is worth noting that 410 BTU/Hour is 120W. That is essentially all of the power consumed by a CRT shows up as heat. Given this, there really is little need to specify both a power consumption number and a heat output. In fact, I very much suspect Apple did not measure the heat output of their older CRTs. Instead, I expect they simply converted the measured power consumption into BTU/hr and listed that as the heat output.

Bill Rowe wrote:
> On 4/25/06 at 10:34 AM, bobtrivectus.com (Bob Williams) wrote:
>
>> Apple Studio Display 17" CRT: 120w max, 2amp, 410.4 BTU/h heat
>> Apple Display 17" LCD: 40w max
>
>> Heat output is something to consider, too. Unfortunately, only
>> Apple seems to provide a measure of this, and only on old CRTs.
>
> It is worth noting that 410 BTU/Hour is 120W. That is essentially all
> of the power consumed by a CRT shows up as heat. Given this, there
> really is little need to specify both a power consumption number and
> a heat output. In fact, I very much suspect Apple did not measure the
> heat output of their older CRTs. Instead, I expect they simply
> converted the measured power consumption into BTU/hr and listed that
> as the heat output.
>

"120w max, 2amp" is not the day to day power. It's the maximum it will
draw, typically at power on or wake from sleep. This is a complicated
subject but marketing and consumer reporting like simple neat answers.
The real answer requires measuring the power draw over a day or few or
more. That's hard to do reliably in a way that can be compared. At least
for the typical consumer. It requires a definition of typical use which
requires definitions of settings like sleep times, power off times,
typical usage if the cpu is set to a variable setting depending on load
and on and on and on. It would be great to come up with a yellow sticker
like on the inside of the fridge in the store but computer and display
use is a lot more variable than the usage of most fridges in most homes.

There are several under $100 power meters out these days. I've
considered getting one to see how well they work. But this is a hard
subject as I said. No one has even talked about power factors or UPS
systems or dozens of other little issues which can make the simple
answers very misleading.

As an example the Prius and other hybrids apparently measure much better
than normal cars on government mileage tests due to the nature of the
tests. Does this mean they aren't better for the environment. No. Just
that they may not be as better as the simple mileage numbers would indicate.

Life is never as simple as we wish it would be.

On 25 Apr 2006, at 11:34 , Edward Reid wrote:
> If you said "fill in name of electronic appliance", I'd agree.
> Neither my
> toaster nor my vacuum cleaner nor my juicer draws even a tenth of a
> watt
> when off.

That may or may not be. I think you might be surprised though, if
you test with a volt meter, just what does and does not draw power
and how much.

I suspect your juicer, at least, draws 4W or so when off. Especially
if it is a model with a PCB baord and soft switches as opposed to one
with a mechanical on/off switch.

> Even my refrigerator uses 0W when the compressor stops,

I find that highly unlikely as it has to have power for the
thermostats, unless you have a very old unit with mechanical
thermostats.

--
In England 100 miles is a long distance. In the US 100 years is a
long time

On Apr 25, 2006, at 23:03, Johann Beda wrote:
>> Apple Studio Display 17" CRT: 120w max, 2amp, 410.4 BTU/h heat
>>
>> Heat output is something to consider, too. Unfortunately, only Apple
>> seems to provide a measure of this, and only on old CRTs.
>
> Heat is energy. Welcome to the metric system.
>
> 120 watts = 409.456996 BTU / hour

Of course heat is energy (although of note, BTU is not an SI unit).
In this context, however, nothing says that the BTU number was simply
an equivalent of the watts number. In particular, I read it as
residual heat, which is to say, BTU/h = energy_in - energy_consumed.
This really is the only thing that makes sense, since any energy
consumed by the monitor but not actually used will be dissipated as
heat, and there's little reason to express total energy consumption
in a unit pretty much reserved for the context of heating.
Unfortunately, it appears that Apple did somehow think that
expressing total consumption in a heating unit made sense, since
that's what they did. If only I'd bother to do a quick conversion....

(It's possible that they did express residual heat, but given that
it's an essentially perfect conversion--even a purpose-built heater
isn't that efficient--and we know that at least _some_ wattage must
be used for actual display purposes and for things like the power
light, this seems very unlikely.)

Regards,
Bob

[Folks, as interesting as this discussion is, I think it's starting to stray pretty far from the original topic, so let's try to wind this down... -Joe]

On 4/27/06 at 12:01 PM, bobtrivectus.com (Bob Williams) wrote:

>Of course heat is energy (although of note, BTU is not an SI unit).
>In this context, however, nothing says that the BTU number was
>simply an equivalent of the watts number. In particular, I read it
>as residual heat, which is to say, BTU/h = energy_in -
>energy_consumed.

Your equation above would be correct if it read as follows:

BTU/h = energy_in/h = energy_consumed/h

All of the energy in is consumed. While there is a very tiny fraction of this energy that is not converted to heat (the portion emitted as light that you see), that fraction is so tiny that it would take an very, very precise measurement to see the heat output/h was not quite the energy consumed/h.

[And with that, let's wrap up this thread. Sorry, everyone--I know there's a great deal of enthusiasm for getting all these heat issues sorted out, but we're now much too far from the topic of Apple recycling computers. -Joe]

On Apr 27, 2006, at 5:02 AM, <tidbits-talktidbits.com> wrote:
> > Even my refrigerator uses 0W when the compressor stops,
        -----------------------------------

        Unfortunately, not true. To prevent sweating because of surface
condensation on the outside of the box, odd as it may seem,
refrigerators for the past 30 or so years have had 6 or 8 or more
resistance heaters embedded under the surface of the box here and
there. If you feel around you will be surprised to feel warm spots on
the outside of that presumably cold box.

        John A. Moody, EE
>
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