Over the years there’ve been reports from various end users that Apple’s packaging of service parts is preposterously and unnecessarily large for the product inside. Of particular note was the recall of the latest form-factor USB power adapter for iPhone. The first version had a defect that could cause dangerous failure, and anyone who’d bought one was urged to send it back for a replacement. Replacements were sent in boxes that could fit dozens of the adapters.
Of course, this is an extreme example. That service part was just so tiny, and mailing labels can only be made so small, that smaller packaging may not have been feasible at the time. There’s also the issue of using packaging that already exists in a recall situation for the sake of speed. Some time after an initial burst of bloggers’ discontent, and in the midst of Greenpeace’s attack on Apple, the packaging was revised to be something much more reasonable.
Of course, a 27-inch display will be shipped in a very large, very sturdy box. But small top cases for early MacBooks used to ship in boxes much larger than necessary. We kept those boxes, and reused them to ship orders taken on smalldog.com and to create a homemade solution to laptop storage in our service departments. Recently, though, these boxes were made much, much smaller, reducing Apple’s shipping costs and allowing more stuff to fit on the hundreds of FedEx airplanes delivering service parts around the world. The same thing is happening with the latest-generation equipment. The current MacBook Air logic board comes in a very thin, small box; older MacBook logic boards now come in very durable corrugated plastic boxes that can be reused indefinitely.
With each new generation of Apple product, the service part packaging gets smaller and smaller, while the actual part sizes remain more or less the same. This is a trend that is mirrored with Apple finished goods like new laptops. Six years ago, iBooks shipped in boxes almost big enough for a dorm room mini-fridge; MacBooks now come in very smart, completely recyclable, very compact packaging. There’s a ways to go, but Apple is clearly taking their packaging seriously as both a driver of increased customer delight and decreased per-unit carbon emissions and disposal complications.