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Apple be like Yoda. Be green.


Dear Apple,

Why should you reconsider your green registry pull out.

I know that innovation and the “wants of the customers” are business pressures that are hard to ignore. They want it faster, lighter, cheaper. And you so want to satisfy all that. The designers want it sleeker, cooler, svelte. 

Now is not the time to pick short term over long term. While it may seem that having products that aren’t easy to repair, recycle and take apart is what people want, like Henry Ford said:

“If I’d asked people what they wanted. They would have asked for faster horses.”

It’s easy to forget the big picture. Apple had its start catering to that tinkering vision and recently providing a mesh of engineering and design unparalleled in the world. It’s not design alone. It’s not engineering alone. It’s that alchemical combination that when it’s right it’s magical. The computer, the tool, melts away and the crafters of words, images, music, presentations, code, see only their craft, their art, their imagination take shape. The tool becomes the instrument, not the thing, not the obstacle. 

Let’s remember the big picture. We play in a world that needs good environmental player. It wants faster, lighter, cheaper. It needs quality, vision and the guts to say no to the vagaries of fads and set your own flag. By pulling out of the green registry, you send a message. You establish a vision. A vision of corporate weakness. Be strong. Put the future ahead. Put the long vision, the long game ahead. Everybody loves the tales of that old mac that sticks around because of it’s fantastic use; the need to upgrade from a desire for better things, not from planned obsolescence. Preserve a vision of care for the environment. Design is most impressive when it meets the challenges of that vision. Designs is better when the slave to vision. When vision is the slave to design you just have fashion. 

-David Acevedo. 
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