The Brazilian consumer protection organization Procon-SP has imposed on the company Apple a fine of 10.5 million Brazilian reals, which corresponds roughly to CZK 41.6 million. The main problem is that Apple does not supply iPhone charging adapters to the sockets, and in its opinion it should be a step to help the environment. Apple claims that this will save 3 million tons of CO2 per year. Proton-SP sees this as just a step towards reducing costs, which have not had any effect on phone prices. Users are forced to buy a charging adapter for several hundred crowns. Apple, on the other hand, claims that most users have a charger from past iPhones, so they only accumulate unnecessarily at home.
–
This could be true if the iPhone 12 was not one of the first phones with a USB-C / Lightning cable. So only former owners of the iPhone 11 or new iPads have such an adapter. Those with other iPhones have USB-A / Lightning cables, including a network adapter with a USB-A port. So the iPhone 12 is useless and a large number of users have to buy the adapter. And, as is customary with Apple, it’s not a completely cheap affair. Apple should also keep this fact secret in advertisements, and if it thought of the environment, according to the organization, it should definitely “boast” of it.
Another reason why, according to the organization, it is just a bluff and in fact no help for the environment is the absence of recycling programs. It’s hard to say here how it is in Brazil, but as far as I know, Apple, on the other hand, promotes its recycling steps a lot, buys old iPhones and has them processed by its new robot Daisy (unless they go for overhaul). So far, this is a small proportion of iPhones that get back to the manufacturer, but if a phone manufacturer talks about what happens to them at the end of their lives, it is paradoxically Apple.
But the fine was also aimed at other matters. Procon-SP then accuses Apple of promoting the waterproofness of the iPhones and meeting the IP68 standard, but does not want to accept drowned phones as a guarantee. So waterproofing is just a marketing pull on paper, but when it comes to solid and has to recognize the advertised feature of phones, they are suddenly “durable”.
While Apple ‘s actions here are quite controversial and this is far from the first time it has been fined for it (at the end of last year in Italy as well). The organization is bothered by the error rate of iOS updates (yes, there are sometimes errors), zero reactions from Apple, as a result of which Apple accuses the planned obsolescence of its products. Here, however, I would like to know which phone manufacturer according to Procon-SP provides its phones with better and longer-term SW support than Apple. It lasts for many years after the warranty expires (for example, you will also install the latest iOS 14 on the 2015 iPhone 6S).-
Prices of related products:
–
