What’s in your Apple gear?
Under the shiny skin, there’s more to your Mac, iPad, and iPhone than meets the eye
So what exactly is inside our Macs, iPhones, and iPads that makes them work? Our experts grab a toolbox, an atlas, and a periodic table to find out.
Apple has always been as concerned about the insides of its products as the outsides. Telling his biographer, Walter Isaacson, how his adoptive father taught him woodwork, Steve Jobs recalled that he’d use good timber even on the back of a cabinet: “For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
It would be a stretch to claim this high standard was met by the rushed design of the first Macintosh, although the signatures of its engineers were embossed on the inside of the case — a touch that would have been appreciated only by users who dismantled the first computer made for the kind of users who didn’t dismantle computers.
Today’s Macs, iPhones, and iPads mostly aren’t made to come apart easily, but their functionality would be impossible without the elegant efficiency of their internals. So just what is inside your Apple gear, and where did it come from? Let’s grab a toolbox, an atlas, and a periodic table, and we’ll find out.
It’s been said, not without justification, that the folks in Cupertino can be a little secretive. Even so, there are three good ways to find out about what they put in their products. First, those little videos in which Jony Ive explains manufacturing techniques in his undershirt. Second, websites where experts like IHS Markit, TechInsights and iFixit disassemble or “tear down” electronic goods. And third, Apple’s own Supplier and Environmental Responsibility Progress Reports, recognized as
the most transparent and detailed in Silicon Valley.
To start from the outside, the biggest components in Apple’s range are the Macs’ aluminium cases and glass–fronted LCD screens. iPhone and iPad displays use Gorilla Glass, which was invented by Corning, a Kentucky glassmaker, after Steve Jobs enquired about a toughened front for the iPhone. Gorilla Glass would be expensive for Macs’ bigger screens, which aren’t designed to be touched or as likely to be dropped; they have regular glass. Apple doesn’t say who makes the glass for iPads, but says it’s now “manufactured primarily with clean energy”, cutting emissions from production for the 12.9–inch iPad Pro by 73 per cent compared to the original model of that size. (Corning has invested heavily in renewable energy, as it happens.)
That leaves the glass backs of the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max. Lisa Jackson, VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, announced last autumn that these were made using 32 per cent “bio-based plastics” — a term that covers non-fossil materials made from virgin plant sources, food waste, or recycled plastic bottles.
Aluminium
Anodized aluminium is a material that’s been closely associated with Apple since the early 2000s, when the PowerBook, Power Mac and then iMac switched from plastics. Attractive, lightweight and rigid, it’s also a great heat conductor, making it ideal for a slim computer chassis. Anodization thickens the metal’s natural oxidized outer layer into a durable, non–corroding finish with controllable texture and color, giving silver, gold, and space–gray Macs, along with all six colors of the iPhone XR’s aluminium frame (the XS uses steel).
The catch? Although aluminium is the third most–plentiful element on the surface of the Earth — after oxygen and, as luck would have it, silicon — it’s so chemically reactive that it’s never found pure. Instead,
Last year’s MacBook Air and Mac mini were made with 100 per cent recycled aluminium
for every tonne of aluminium used in manufacturing, four tonnes of bauxite, a sedimentary rock found in locations including China and India, must be mined, heated, and electrolyzed, using large amounts of energy. By its own calculations, aluminium production accounts for a quarter of Apple’s total carbon emissions. It’s not cheap, either. So the company made a point of announcing, at the launch of last year’s redesigned MacBook Air and Mac mini, that these machines would be made with 100 per cent recycled aluminium, including waste shavings from its own production lines. That’s not as groundbreaking as it might sound: about 75 per cent of all aluminium ever made is still in use thanks to recycling. But only about a third of the aluminium in new products has been recycled, because we use more of the metal than in the past. By creating even more desirable aluminium products, there’s a sense in which Apple is, well, not helping. It’s better, though, than making computers out of something less sustainable, like fossil–based plastics. Plastics Talking of fossil–based plastics, when you crack open an iMac you can’t miss the large black speaker enclosures (seen on the far left and right on page 34) and fan surround. According to Apple’s Environmental Report on the Retina 5K iMac, these
components are made with 60 per cent post-consumer recycled material, while comparable parts in iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks also have significant recycled or bioplastic content.
With minor exceptions in countries where alternatives are awaiting approval, all Apple products are now free from PVC (polyvinyl chloride), a widely used synthetic polymer. PVC isn’t sustainable, being made from petroleum, and presents environmental and health hazards; when burned, whether accidentally in landfill fires or in waste incinerators, it seems to contribute to the emission of dioxins, a highly toxic pollutant, although evidence is mixed.
In general, there’s probably less plastic in Apple devices than you think: while the 27–inch iMac uses 281g (just over half–a–pound), you’ll find only 16g in a 12–inch MacBook — about a 30th as much as in the 2009 polycarbonate model. That doesn’t include the charging cable and adapter, however. Due to the requirements of flexibility and electrical insulation, this type of component has historically contained some of the most damaging substances, including brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Entering the environment as waste, these have been found to accumulate in the body, with possible neurological and endocrinedisrupting effects.
In 2014, Greenpeace reported Apple was “the only company that has eliminated the use of PVC and BFRs in all PC components, including external cables”, although Apple’s current published claims aren’t quite so comprehensive. Some analysts blame the avoidance of PVC for the premature fraying of certain Apple cables, so you can’t please everyone. Packaging Plastics also turn up in packaging, which is particularly wasteful since it’s made to be thrown away. For Apple, addressing this is a win–win, because not only is plastic packaging bad for the planet, it also tends to be a bit naff. While the iPod touch’s brittle polycarbonate bubble acts as its own miniature display case, there’s something more satisfying about the cushioned sigh of the iPhone’s coated cardboard.
In fact, the boxes from which we lovingly extract our fruit–adorned products are now made mostly of paper. It’s a long–term trend that still leaves room for improvement: for the new MacBook Air, the
designers removed 87 per cent of the plastic used to pack the previous model. Like the pages of Mac|Life, the paper is made from wood pulp that’s all either recycled or sourced from responsibly managed forests. In fact, sustainable forestry projects supported by Apple itself, in the US and China, now produce more virgin fibre alone than Apple uses.
The weight and volume of packaging has also decreased over the years: 35 per cent and 53 per cent less by volume, respectively, for the 21.5–inch 4K iMac than for 1998’s original (plastic) 15–inch machine. This not only uses less material, but reduces the emissions from transport. Apple’s penchant for a slick unboxing experience, however, still produces some choices of questionable efficiency, such as the Watch’s foot–long multi– compartment sarcophagus. Minerals If its paper wrapping is one of your Apple purchase’s most benign ingredients, the metals and minerals deep inside it fall at the other end of the ethical scale. It’s in the nature of solid–state systems, in which the work is done at molecular, atomic and subatomic levels, to demand substances with specific properties. You can make a cogwheel from steel or aluminium and it’ll do the job, but try getting a capacitor to work without tantalum. For a combination of geographic, political, and economic reasons, “technology-critical elements” are mined in parts of the world where there is concern over unhealthy conditions, child labour, and the possibility of the profits funding armed factions. At the centre of concerns about “conflict minerals” is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rich in natural resources but politically unstable. Its mines range from large mechanized operations owned by foreign corporations down to artisanal and small–scale mining (ASM), particularly associated with coltan (columbite–tantalites), the main source of tantalum, and cobalt, used in lithium–ion (Li–ion) batteries. Along with cobalt, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold — known as 3TG — are found in all Apple computers and feature heavily in the company’s Supplier and Environmental Responsibility Progress Reports. Ethics When it comes to workers’ rights and ethics, organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have twigged that the word “iPhone” in an otherwise dry press release about far–away places gets a lot more media attention, making Cupertino a scapegoat for Silicon Valley’s sourcing.
Meanwhile, workers’ rights organizations, including China Labour Watch and Students &
“One day we’d like to be able to build new products with just recycled materials”
Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (Sacom), have focused their attention on Apple’s contractors to question working practices in electronics factories.
Apple adheres to its own strict Supplier Code of Conduct in an effort to raise standards for workers across the entire supply chain — to find out more, go to bit.ly/appsuppresp. The Code of Conduct imposes rigorous conditions on suppliers, checking that they abide by worker protection rules stronger than local laws. But, like other firms, Apple’s had trouble sourcing mined materials that can be reliably traced back to ethical producers. In 2017, Amnesty International’s Time to Recharge report singled out Apple for working to improve traceability and accountability in the cobalt supply chain. The report mentions one other manufacturer’s concession that there’s a risk of suppliers falsifying certificates of origin. As of 31 December 2018, Apple reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that “100 per cent of identified [3TG] smelters and refiners in its supply chain participated in an independent third–party conflict minerals audit” and it had fired five subcontractors who declined to do so.
Although Cupertino is realistic about the amount of work still to do to clean up the tech industry, it’s also idealistic about the future. “It sounds crazy,” admitted 2017’s Environmental Responsibility Report, “but we’re moving toward a closed-loop supply chain. One day we’d like to be able to build new products with just recycled materials, including your old products.” That would eliminate the need for new mining. Apple eco boss, Lisa Jackson, confessed that this amounts to “announcing a goal before we’ve completely figured out how to do it”.
Recycling is so complicated to achieve in practice that progress has been slow. Apple’s second–gen recycling robot, Daisy, can disassemble nine types of iPhone, recovering parts that contain high– quality materials for recycling. And its 2018 environmental report talks about investment in new tech to recover rare earth elements from magnets in devices. Clearly more can be done, though. Apple doesn’t mention other devices being in Daisy’s repertoire – yet. But if Jackson’s ambitions are realized, it could mean that one day your Mac will be made out of Macs.