Work gave me a MacBook computer, the box experience is positive until you need to crush it for recycling (not to take a lot of space in the bin). All the corners are glued together super strongly, the inside mold just doesn't crush, there are boxes just to hold paper booklets... I'm surely a minority but Dell packaging is more delightful when you consider this (and surely the single material - cardboard - is easier to recycle too).
The resell value of Apple products is higher than anything else I'm aware of with the exception of GPUs when they spike because crypto mining, AI, etc.
For example, the two generations old Mac Book Pro M1 I'm typing this on was purchased for roughly $1800 three years ago. A search of sold eBay auctions shows this configuration having sold for $1200 today, roughly 67% of the original purchase price. When I've done searches in the past comparing similar generation and original purchase price iPhone devices vs Android devices resell value was something like 30% higher.
I'm not familiar enough with the Dell product line to do a comparison search but I'm pretty sure this is significantly better than a three year old Dell, especially with the lower end models essentially being disposable. The lowest-end Macbook Air of this vintage is selling for 60% of the original purchase price.
Everyone I know keeps Apple packaging for resell when they upgrade which is the "reduce and reuse" portion of the "three Rs" reduce, reuse, recycle from the 90s. iPhone boxes also make excellent electronics project boxes and I use them routinely for ESP based projects, etc because they are so sturdy. Of course I still have all of the original packaging for this Macbook Pro for when I finally resell to offset my next upgrade.
Of course eventually the packaging will need to be recycled at some point down the line but generally speaking Apple devices tend to take much longer to end up as e-waste which is a far bigger issue than paper-based packaging.
Of course that's only a good thing if you're buying new. You can get a great deal on used thinkpads that have been treated very well and are in very good condition, as large organizations buy them and then they end up as cheap surplus.
> Of course that's only a good thing if you're buying new.
Not sure I follow, isn't this a good thing whether you're reselling or buying used? Macbooks like most of these things experience the largest drop for the new purchaser with even second-hand selling doing better on a percentage basis.
> You can get a great deal on used thinkpads that have been treated very well and are in very good condition, as large organizations buy them and then they end up as cheap surplus.
+1. When I buy x86_64 machines off-lease enterprise managed SFFs, laptops, servers, etc are IMO the way to go for this kind of hardware.
A great deal for the person buying used, abysmal resell value for the large orgs dumping these things in bulk to surplus resellers. Not that they care anyway, leasing depreciating hardware combined with the bulk discounts from HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc and often tax advantages make this a win-win-win for all involved.
If someone offered me a free Thinkpad or macbook I'd take the Thinkpad. Standard PC architecture so I can boot anything, cheap, work well, trackpoint, repairable, parts available. Oh and lets not forget the hacker community behind them is amazing: https://www.xyte.ch/t700-crowdfunding/
Platform preference is totally fair but I'm at an age/stage where I shudder at having to deal with hardware at all. Maybe I've been lucky but I've never had Apple hardware fail with even my 2013 Intel Macbook Pro still going strong (and dual-booting Linux). I actually bought this Macbook Pro as an almost impulse purchase after dealing with yet another hardware issue with my $3500 Framework which I purchased as a kit. That was more-or-less the last time I dealt with hardware and it just ended up being extremely frustrating to the point of drastically impacting my productivity.
Builds, doing repairs, upgrades, etc used to be fun but my life and career has gotten so complex I just can't be bothered with it at this point.
Sadly it hasn't been fun for a while but I completely understand the advantages for people who aren't as tired and grumpy as I am.
What you really care about here is not resale value but "depreciation" curves.
Traditional PCs kind of depreciate like cars: you get a massive hit at the beginning, but then relatively slow depreciation there on out. Which makes buying second hand a better choice.
Macs depreciate kind of like buildings, slow at first, then it falls off a cliff (around when Apple drops support in the latest OSes), but then slow depreciation again.
The box certainly resists crushing, although it is also, presumably, designed to resist crushing to protect its contents.
The current Apple packaging is 100% recyclable though. There is no plastic. The box is closed with adhesive paper tabs, everything inside is paper, the cable wrap is paper. You can open the box and remove the device and cables and chuck the rest in your bin directly.
I think for most people, the occasional uncrushable box is not a big deal. Where I am, where we open these things all the time, it’s kind of a hassle. But then again we have a machine for crushing boxes.
It’s a little precious, but Apple packaging is hardly “bad.”
I love the visual design of Apple packaging, and I do also keep the boxes. Although mainly for possible resale in the future, or at least that's what I tell myself.
I do absolutely hate opening iPhone boxes though, where a sort of vacuum builds up inside as you're trying to jiggle the bottom part out of the top. Maybe I'm opening them wrong (are you supposed to squeeze the lid somewhere or something?), but I do not find that part satisfying at all.
Maybe they could add some invisible air holes in the top somewhere. Just enough to make the separation go exactly the right speed.
In my experience the vacuum holds the bottom half immovably in place, and I have to pry it out. It looks nice in that gif but in practice I think they need to test a little more. Perhaps it’s a humidity thing?
It wouldn’t surprise me if humidity were a piece of it–here in the US northeast I’ve always found the iPhone boxes to be aggravatingly sticky. I wind up jiggling it all around and prying at it with my fingernails.
It’s no longer the case, but for a long time my iPhones were pretty bad about reconnecting to the cell network when emerging from the NYC subway, which always struck me as a little bit of evidence of its California roots–given the polish of the device overall, it surely would never have been so janky in that situation if a majority of their employees experienced it each day on their way to work!
I think Apple or Qualcomm must have done something about that exact use case in one of the last updates: It’s been a while since I’ve had to do that. My iPhone now finds the network in the station pretty consistently.
I wouldn’t even be surprised if they did something like using the accelerometer as an input to the baseband for triggering a quick network scan after a rapid deceleration when on a train without signal.
Or maybe newer networks are just more predictable for phones to reconnect to quickly without draining the battery?
I have long found this annoying, but it seems like this has improved with the latest box.
I don’t know, but I imagine there is some effort into balancing staying-closed and falling-open within the constraints of the machinery used to produce and assemble these things. Seems like it’s something likely to be somewhat variable.
Apple boxes open really well without visible air holes, imo. In fact, it's a little mysterious how well it opens given the in-box vacuum, especially compared to other boxes.
“Tiffany has one thing in stock that you cannot buy of him for as much money as you may offer; he will only give it to you. And that is one of his boxes.”
— The New York Evening Sun, 1899
Receiving or buying an Apple product comes in a box that is a gift to you. Carefully conceived, expertly crafted, and simply elegant.
I actually don’t like that part of the design at all. It always feels kind of awkward, having to shake the box until the lower part drops onto my desk quite unceremoniously.
But I suppose it helps keep the box closed after removing the tamper-proof tags without any paper latches that other boxes have which rip off very easily and then make the box useless.
You ever see those ASMR videos where one thing perfectly fits in to another? Some people don't care about that at all but some find it calming and reassuring.
That's what an Apple box feels like when you remove the lid. It fits so perfectly a natural vacuum seal will hold it together.
OK. I'm going to have to say something that many of you may already be thinking: unboxing an apple product is a bit like undressing a lover for the first time. Is it a coincidence that so many of their packaging materials have a skin-like quality (to achieve which they apply a varnish layer towards the end of their printing process)? Or that the vacuum cohesion effect as you pull that box apart feels like cloth upon skin?
The purchase moment of the act of product consumption is quite likely more satisfying than the ownership that follows.
> unboxing an apple product is a bit like undressing a lover for the first time.
We have very different experiences opening Apple products. Getting the box open is a bit annoying because of the vacuum and the everything is wrapped in that thin white material that's annoyingly stretchy.
I take put my products as quickly as I can and get rid of the packaging.
> unboxing an apple product is a bit like undressing a lover for the first time
When I got an Apple product for work it felt more like I would imagine a prostitute feels when undressing a John. I wouldn't do it unless I had bills to pay, I felt dirty and just wanted it to be over.
Now I make sure to ask what choices I have early in the process.
I remember my first Apple product. I was happy to give them all of my personal information.
Psychology is insane. And I'm still offended that the packaging/initial presentation was 10x better than the actual phone. The actual phone(2018) felt like I went into a time machine 5 years prior, less features, buggy, slow. Within 1-2 weeks I felt cheated.
I wonder how many people can wake up from the illusion.
Everyone knows about the importance of first impressions. The effect is spoiled somewhat when you order online and have to first open the outer carton, still quite nice but brown and more utilitarian.
> the iPod was actually the first product that truly saw packaging elevated to the same importance as the product itself.
This is an absurd claim; vinyl LP records are just one counter-example. Some collectors will actually buy the vinyl disc from one source and then get a sleeve in near-mint condition from somewhere else. Does anyone buy used Apple packaging by itself?
