San Francisco plans to ban officials from buying Apple Macs


Recommended Posts

San Francisco plans to ban officials from buying Apple Macs

City officials in San Francisco plan to block local government agencies from buying new Apple Macintosh computers.

The move follows the firm's decision to pull out of a green certification scheme designed to identify which electronic devices pose the least risk to the environment.

CIO Journal reported the ban was designed to encourage Apple to reconsider.

It noted local officials spent $45,579 (?29,365) on Apple equipment in 2010.

The sum is a fraction of the firm's $65bn net sales the same year, but the fact that its Cupertino headquarters is about 70km away from San Francisco (43 miles) and many of its staff live in the city have helped the act gain attention.

San Francisco's chief information officer told the BBC that his decision was in line with a long running policy to opt for equipment listed on the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) registry.

"San Francisco has reached out to Apple and is hopeful that a solution to this challenge can be found in the future," said Jon Walton.

But a statement from Apple suggested it had no plans to reverse its decision.

"Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government," a spokeswoman said.

"We also lead the industry by reporting each product's greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials."

Pull-out

The organisers of EPEAT announced last week that Apple was withdrawing its products from the registry and would no longer submit new devices to receive ratings.

"We regret that Apple will no longer be registering its products in EPEAT," the organisers said. "We hope that they will decide to do so again at some point in future."

The news prompted speculation that government bodies, schools and some businesses would bar purchases of Apple computers as a result.

US government rules dictate that 95% of all electronics bought by official agencies must fall under EPEAT's scheme. iPads and iPhones do not fall under the system's remit.

Apple has not explained why it abandoned the standard which it helped create in 2006.

However, an article by Infoworld - highlighted on EPEAT's site - links the move to manufacturing techniques used to make the latest version of the firm's MacBook Pro, which features a 5.1 million pixel high-definition display.

In order to include the new screen while minimising the laptop's thickness Apple made it harder to disassemble the computer causing it to be difficult for even experts to upgrade or recycle the device.

The move would have made it unlikely that the machine would have qualified for EPEAT's highest rating.

One Wall Street analyst suggested that the firm had acted in its long-term interests.

"Apple has a long history of being a cutting-edge design company and some of these processes involve state of the art components and manufacturing techniques," Colin Gillis, senior technology analyst at BGC Partners, told the BBC.

"Its entire credo is to be pushing the envelope forward, and in our opinion it's better to lose some sales rather than risk not having any at all."

Sarah Rotman Epps, a San Francisco-based analyst at Forrester Research, also played down the news.

"I don't think Apple - or the world - should read too much into this," she said.

"California also recently banned the sale of foie gras - a decision not all consumers or businesses would agree with. Just because the city of San Francisco isn't buying Macs doesn't mean that other municipalities, businesses or consumers will follow suit."

Source: BBC News

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Its entire credo is to be pushing the envelope forward, and in our opinion it's better to lose some sales rather than risk not having any at all."

Yeah, because the envelope is the only thing Apple is good at. Good for them, then....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all I don't agree with Apple's decision to pull out of EPEAT at all. Banning officials from being able to buy a perfectly legal product however is just insane. Never mind how they'll ever be able to enforce this and whether this will hold up in court. Is the city of San Francisco going to post their own Gestapo in front of Apple Stores and third-party resellers? Will they randomly raid officials' homes, follow them around and threaten them? Also, what's stopping family members who don't work for the city to buy Apple products? Gimme a break.

EDIT: Sorry missed the word "agencies". I could already see it happening though. :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Banning officials from being able to buy a perfectly legal product however is just insane.

:facepalm:

City officials in San Francisco plan to block local government agencies from buying new Apple Macintosh computers.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all I don't agree with Apple's decision to pull out of EPEAT at all. Banning officials from being able to buy a perfectly legal product however is just insane. Never mind how they'll ever be able to enforce this and whether this will hold up in court. Is the city of San Francisco going to post their own Gestapo in front of Apple Stores and third-party resellers? Will they randomly raid officials' homes, follow them around and threaten them? Also, what's stopping family members who don't work for the city to buy Apple products? Gimme a break.

Buying Apple product is not a problem; buying them with the city's money is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

agencies

Sorry, I totally missed that word!

If San Francisco will ban their own agencies from buying new Macs I'm totally fine with that. (Y) I'm very much against a major company like Apple sending a "We don't really care about the environment" message into the world. Although at this point it's only their MacBook Pro with Retina screen that doesn't follow suit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didn't know trolls get to wear red nowadays. I guess that's "pushing the envelope" forward too, eh?

Do you just go thread to thread calling people trolls? Doesn't that just make you a troll troll?

Edit: On a side note, I think its hilarious that the gayest city in the US is abandoning the gayest pc manufacturer. I've always thought it was a match made in metro.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shocking, one would think San Fran & a mac would go together like Adam & Steve...or John & Mike, or .....

macs - you can look cool @ Starbucks & impress your neighbors - but if you want to get some work done - get a ThinkPad running 7.

Oh wait - I forgot you can run Windows 7 on a mac... uhhh I have to leave now - running up to the apple store.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shocking, one would think San Fran & a mac would go together like Adam & Steve...or John & Mike, or .....

macs - you can look cool @ Starbucks & impress your neighbors - but if you want to get some work done - get a ThinkPad running 7.

Oh wait - I forgot you can run Windows 7 on a mac... uhhh I have to leave now - running up to the apple store.

You really want to mess with Macheads, theme Win7 to look just like OSX, that'll really mess em up

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You really want to mess with Macheads, theme Win7 to look just like OSX, that'll really mess em up

That's what you think, but the actual message you're getting across is: iWannabe Machead. Which is even worse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I had no intention to "troll" the thread. I just tried to state a fact: Apple is good at making the envelop, the rest of its "awesome" gadgets' hardware is just glued pieces of commodities made by others.

Prove me wrong, please

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I had no intention to "troll" the thread. I just tried to state a fact: Apple is good at making the envelop, the rest of its "awesome" gadgets' hardware is just glued pieces of commodities made by others.

It's naive to think Apple isn't involved in the production of said products. The company isn't just using off the shelf parts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well there's no ban, and as stated above, it's Agencies, not Officials..

The "ban" is that it no longer meets the requirements.. That's hardly a ban.. Apple made the choice to stop being certified for a specific environmental standard, and as such, they no longer meet the requirements to be purchased by some governments.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are they gonna switch to cheap ass hp pos?? And waste more money replacing those all the time and being not as green?? Yah that makes sense.. /s

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.