... which offers naive customers 10 percent discount incentive on the purchase of a new iPod in case they forget their old one may still have value 2nd hand exceeding that

Me, recycle a Mac? Never! Not because I'm anti-environment, but because re-use is way better than recycling whenever something can still have a viable purpose / looks good on my shelf.

The Sierra Club guys picked on the wrong company to harass for low recycling of their old computers, if you ask me. How many 5, 10, 20 year old PC's are there still being coveted by geeks? There's a fair few Macs!

Some people don't want to deal with it, I suppose. I don't think anyone would trade a functioning iPod, but if there is something in the iPod that still works (screen, drive, circuit board), it may still be worth more than the trade-in value. If it's just a dead battery, then that can be replaced for under $50.

The fact that they would take back non-Apple machines on trade-up is nice.

The three Rs, starting with the best:

Reduce - get computers that serve longer (Macs) and buy fewer!

Reuse - an older Mac can be perfect for someone with limited needs. Freecycle.org or eBay will hook you up!

Recycle - at least keep it out of our landfills and water. A lot of those materials can be useful again!

"All equipment received by the program will be recycled domestically and no hazardous material is shipped overseas, Apple said."

Excellent. Apple is moving from doing "OK" with the environment to being quite responsible. AND neatly solving the problem of how to get rid of that old Dell.

10.4.7 hmm, I don't expect any improvements with this that I will notice. After 5 years of OSX it looks like they have got rid of most bugs and each update no longer seems to break printer and scanner drivers

What are they going to offer with Leopard, why should I upgrade? Unless I buy an Intel Mac, I doubt Leopard will have anything for me. For Intel, we might just see a Windows environment to allow windows applications to run without re-booting, but to do so would raise the risks of developers just not bothering to write anything for OSX anymore.

It's too bad that they couldn't offer the option of simply handing over the equipment to be recycled while you're at the Apple retail store. It might be easier for some than to scrounge around for box, pack the stuff, then drive to FedEx. But this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Let's see... I've got a 286, an old Pentium, a K6 Aptiva, Mac SE, Classic, Classic II, Color Classic, LC 475, Duo 230, Duo 280, 5500/250, and iBook/466 lying around. How many Macs would I have to buy before they're all gone??

"Just" 3 to see off those old pc's. The rest should be either sold separately or as bundles on ebay or the like ... you should at least make a little money from the experience.


As for what Leopard will have in store ... Resolution Independence bring it on!

I don't think this is applicable anymore. After all, look at the latest Mac models. All the ones that even approach affordability now use integrated graphics, which can't be replaced and which are going to cause the computers to become obsolete even faster than usual. With new graphics technologies coming out, users will be forced to buy a new computer to handle them. Then, add in the lack of expansion in most of Apple's machines since the original iMac came out. The MacBook is probably the only laptop on the market that doesn't have a card slot of some sort in it. Now you may not think that's a problem, but look at all the machines that didn't come with USB 2.0 way after it came out. Only two years later, those machines didn't even work well with the iPod anymore! And of course, to get a card slot, you'd have to pay $2000 for a MBP...

So in summary, while it may once have been true that Macs had longer lifespans than their PC counterparts, I don't think this is the case anymore unless you buy the very most expensive models. If anything, Apple seems to design things so that you'll have to replace the computer more often, to make them money. And if you complain about this to Mac fans, they usually reply with something like "Well, I replace my computer every year / every week / every five minutes! If you can't afford that, then you're a loser!"

Apple and Microsoft are designing their operating systems to scale back should the graphics not be up to spec. So far, most of it is fluff anyway. As yet, one does not need a 3D card to surf the web or perform office tasks

I have an iPod mini that I attach to the work computer through the front USB 1.1 jack. It's not that bad, IMO. It takes longer to do a full charge than it would to do a full track refill.

I hope 10.4.7 fixes the iSync issues with the Motorola v557 phone.

You'll notice several changes in CUPS 1.2