Skip to main content

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. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Fake Resume

Inspired by the over aggrandized bio of Joseph Rakofsky I want to write my own. If you don't know who he is; Joseph Rakofsky is a lawyer who earned a mistrial for a criminal client due to his (alleged) incompetence as reported on the Washington Post . There has been quite a few commentaries on his "Streisand-house" approach of suing all the bloggers and even the Washington Post and American Bar Association for reporting his (alleged) ineptitude. ("Streisand-house" is what happened to Barbara Streisand who wanted to have a picture of her mansion removed from the internet and she sued to have it removed. Unfortunately suing requires the filing of public documents with a picture of her house. The lawsuit had the direct opposite effect it intended. Everybody now could see legally, since it was a public document, a picture of her house.) But all that internet gossip aside I'm most impressed by his resume. Here is a quote from the website: Prior t...
1 comment
Read more

What Medieval Economics can teach us about tariffs.

As a teen, I used to play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) with my friends. This started an interest in the medieval period that led to me taking a medieval history class in college just to understand the period more. Over the years I've also read great books like " Dungeon, Fire and Sword " about the crusades (I recommend the book) and yet with all that knowledge it wasn't until recently that it occurred to me I had a completely wrong understanding of economics in the Medieval Period. "Viking helmets, sword and footwear" by eltpics is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 In my D&D games, players who are adventures battling monsters and creatures would need equipment and on the trips to town, they'd get resupplied with their adventuring necessities. I'd run these moments referencing my imagination of what it must have been and fantasy books I'd read. There be an inn with a raucous bar, a gruffly black-smith, if a city also a weapon and armor sm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Building my own home.

I've decided. I want to build my own home. There is something special about building your own things. I built a desk for my tiny room when I first moved to L.A. My room was so small that I had to sit on the bed to use the computer so I build a high desk so I could sit on the bed and work on the computer. My roommate Trentity helped me cut the ply-wood to the right side. I still have that desk. It now sits on the living room covered by a cloth hiding the surplus of costume parts my current roommate Sean uses in his creations. Learning to build and fix things continue. And the feeling of satisfaction from fixing even small things is great. So a few years ago I heard on the NPR program the Story about a couple of educators that moved to a tent in their back-yard so they could rent their house and afford to send their kids to college. They had a special type of tent called a yurt and cooked and showered in an RV they had parked next to it. I thought I could do that. Housing in Lo...
2 comments
Read more