Apple Is Using ‘the Environment’ to Manipulate You and Make More Money

This past October, Apple announced that all of their upcoming phones (the iPhone 12 lineup) would not include a wall charger or wired earbuds. The new phones would only include a USB-C to USB-A charging cable, which you would typically pair with a power brick in order to charge your phone.

What comes in one of your fancy new iPhone 12 boxes. Image credit: wccftech

You could technically just plug the cable into a laptop, your car’s USB port, a free USB port on your PlayStation 5, or any other device that has a female USB-A port. This way, you could get around the iPhone not coming with a wall charger. However, notice how I mentioned the charging cable that iPhone 12 lineup comes with is a USB-C to USB-A cable. If you plug that USB-A (big rectangle) end into your car’s USB port or your laptop, where do you plug the USB-C end? The iPhone 12 lineup, afterall, still carries over Apple’s long-standing Lightning port.

Thus, you need a power brick. Apple loves touting that this move is great for the environment because consumers already have tons of power bricks they can use to charge their phones. However, they’re manipulating you by nullifying the adapters you have. The new phones come with a new cable which can’t plug into your old adapter. Furthermore, the new phones charge quicker with the new adapter. Thus, you’ll likely want to buy a new adapter.

What came in an iPhone 11 box. Notice the included Power Adapter. Image credit: wccftech

For $19.00, you can buy a 20-watt USB-C Power adapter on Apple’s site. That doesn’t seem too expensive considering it might charge your phone faster than what you might be used to. However, the pain point arises when you consider how many people might buy this adapter. Considering the massive market share that Apple possesses, this $19 product is a gold mine for the company.

When I worked at Best Buy, I was able to use a pretty sweet employee discount. The discounted price of an item was 5% above the cost that Best Buy paid for it. There were exceptions to the discount such as Apple hardware. Best Buy barely made any money, if any, on hardware like Macbooks because they’d sell them at a loss to attract people to the stores. They’d then make money by selling them accessories like laptop cases and Microsoft Office subscriptions.

The discount did work on lots of accessories though, like the cases mentioned above. It also worked on power adapters that Best Buy provided under their own Insignia brand. These might be adapters that would retail for $20 or $30 USD, and cost Best Buy pennies to make — yes, actually less than a dollar in some cases. Thus, we as employees would be able to snag accessories like charging cables and adapters for a few dollars at most. I say this to prove to you that there is an incredibly high profit margin on that $19 20-watt charger that Apple is selling on their site. Even selling one of these adapters will likely allow Apple to pay an hour’s worth of wages for an Apple Store worker.

They need to make money somehow, right? Yeah, that’s absolutely true. However, Apple is being incredibly grimy in the way they’re doing it. Their phones now lack a $19 power brick and a $19 pair of EarPods that used to cost $0 because they were included for free. That’s about $40 more that you’ll have to pay if you actually need one of these products.

The charging brick they used to include with iPhone 11 Pro models was an 18-watt fast charger. Now, not only is there no included brick, but they’ve released a [tiny-bit] faster 20-watt charger that Apple fans will likely want to buy themselves. Why? It’s new.

Thus, if you purchased an iPhone 11, you received a 5-watt USB-A charger — one with the ‘old’ USB port. If you happened to buy one of the Pro variants of the iPhone 11, you received a charger with the ‘new’ USB port. The iPhone 12 was released alongside a faster charger than either of those, and that charger is one you have to buy. Now, say you buy that charger. That will likely be outdated soon, too, if the rumors about Apple pivoting to a portless phone are true. That would mean that you can only charge wirelessly. Even if the rumors are not true, Apple is making a strong wireless charging push with their expensive line of MagSafe products.

What a portless iPhone 13 might look like. Image credit: Marques Brownlee (MKBHD)

What they’re doing can objectively be considered good for the environment. Less chargers around equals less polution. However, what they’re doing is a marketing tactic disguised as a move that’s intended to be environmentally conscious, and that’s blatantly not true. If they truly cared about the environment, they’d get rid of the Lightning port and adopt USB-C like all of the other major smartphone players. Or, they’d include a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box, so that the cable they include can work with any brick you have. Right now, the included cable will only work with iPhone 11-era charging bricks. If you haven’t upgraded your phone recently, chances are you also haven’t upgraded to a USB-C charging brick.

So, as good for the environment as the ‘no charger’ move may seem, Apple is intentionally shoehorning you into either:

• Buying a new charging brick because the USB-C cable they provide does not work with your old brick that has a USB-A port.
• Buying a new charging brick because the 20-watt one they released alongside the iPhone 12 is faster than the 18-watt brick from last year.
• Buying expensive MagSafe charging accessories to get around this wired charging confusion.

You could say that the third point may be a bit of a reach. I can see that; however, there is too much evidence to say that what Apple is doing is not shady. Apple holds all the power right now by sticking with the Lightning port. Everyone that actually cares about the environment would agree that there would be less waste created if Apple adopted USB-C on the iPhone, matching everyone else. However, that’s somewhat of a catch-22 for the environment. Why? Well, assume, hypothetically, that Apple does adopt USB-C on the iPhone 13. They would have to provide a USB-C to USB-C cable instead of the Lighting to USB-C cable that came with the iPhone 12. If that happens, then there would be a large amount of waste generated because people wouldn’t use the older cables anymore.

Also, if they make the iPhone 13 portless, then people would be creating more waste by buying new wireless chargers and throwing away old charging cables they have no use for.

Overall, the lack of a charging brick on the iPhone 12 is not a move that Apple brought forward because it’s good for the environment. It’s because they know you’re going to have to buy new accessories, due to the ‘carrot-on-a-stick’ cable that comes in the box not being able to plug into older adapters.

If Apple truly cared about the environment, they would have adopted USB-C on their iPhones a long time ago. After all, they’ve already done so on their Macbooks and iPad Pros. However, they know you likely have multiple devices of theirs, and the more accessories they can sell you, the more money they make. It’s shady, and it’s a brilliant marketing move to just say ‘it’s good for the environment.’ They’re not wrong by saying that, but that’s absolutely not why they’re doing it.

Apple’s AirPods. Image credit: Target

I personally don’t think this should be allowed. It’s incredibly sleazy and actually hinders innovation. In my opinion, they’re making more environmental waste due to all the adapters (and soon to be wireless chargers) people will have to buy than they are by removing the charging brick. That’s not to mention the earbuds you don’t get for free anymore. If Apple chooses to adopt USB-C on future iPhones, you’ll either have to buy USB-C earbuds or wireless earbuds like the shiny, expensive AirPods they know you’ve heard of before. This is because all the earbuds they used to give you either plugged into one of the following: a lightning port or a headphone jack.