Devil's Advocate I know, but would people recycle things if they could repair things themselves?
I mean, let's figure you have two possibilities:
1 You have to take it to Apple and have it replaced. In which case Apple will try to salvage (recycle) whatever they can.
2 You buy a new sub-component, take the old sub-component out, and salvage (recycle) the old sub-component yourself.
In all honesty, what is the percentage of people who would actually complete the salvage (recycle) step of option 2? I think it's, at least reasonable, to suspect that the percentage is not terribly high.
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I think Apple is doing "greenwashing". If they were serious they would make their devices repairable and upgradeable.