Whether you approach the issue from a perspective of environmental concern or personal choice, it always made sense for Apple to unbundle the phone and the charger (and the headphones too, for that matter). In any case, it's a fascinating reminder of a controversy that's been largely forgotten in the US and the UK. Will it be the first of an avalanche of such cases? Will Apple be forced to make changes in what it sells? Or will the company, as usual, end up doing pretty much what it likes? I know what I expect. The long-term consequences of the ruling remain uncertain.
Presumably the lawyers are all over that kind of detail. The judge ruled the situation a tie sale, which Insider glosses as a customer having to buy two of a company's products in order for one of them to work–yet, as Apple itself pointed out, the iPhone and cable it sold would have worked perfectly well with compatible plugs supplied by any number of third-party manufacturers. I'm no expert on Brazilian law, but the legal arguments as reported do seem a little tenuous. Apple could find that money by cutting back on Craig Federighi's hairspray budget, but it will be wary of the size of the bill if it starts having to do the same thing for everyone. And this week (as reported by Insider) the company has been instructed to pay one specific Brazilian consumer the equivalent of $1,081 for selling him an iPhone with no charger. But the Brazilian government was less inclined to let the matter drop, claiming the practice was abusive and fining the company $2m in March 2021.
Apple macbook charger box android#
It's fair to say this argument was not universally well received at the time, but in most parts of the world it was eventually accepted as just one of those things predictably a number of Android manufacturers took the opportunity to do exactly the same thing and cut their own costs while as usual letting Apple take the PR flak. (But not a lower price tag, note–unless we start to speculate that the price would have gone up if the charger hadn't been removed, which as far as I know even Apple hasn't tried to claim.) The idea was that most people already had chargers at home, and that most bundled chargers were ending up in landfill. You'd still get the cable, but the wall charger would be absent, resulting in a slimmer box and lower manufacturing and delivery costs for the company. That was the year when Apple decided, citing environmental impact, to stop bundling power chargers with new iPhones. A blast from the past this week, with a reminder from Brazil of a controversy that rocked the Apple world–or nudged it slightly, at any rate–back in 2020.
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