Filed under: iPod Family
Freecycle meets iPod
Meet Matthew Smith. One day he decided to use a magnetic holder to hold his iPod in his car. Bad move. The magnet warped his hard drive, rendering it inoperable. So Smith turned to Freecycle, the Internet-based sharing community that prefers to gift unused items rather than to toss them into landfill.
The freecyclers responded so enthusiastically that not only did he have enough parts to fix his own iPod, but also to repair and build a few more units. Which he gave away. So more people began to donate broken iPods to him, which he now fixes up and offers back out to his community. What a marvelous way to be socially responsible, environmentally conscious and spread the iPod love! TUAW salutes Matthew Smith.
[via PowerPage]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roberto said 12:57PM on 2-07-2007
Apple recycles your iPod too, and gives you a 10% discount towards the purchase of another iPod.
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Fred said 12:50PM on 2-07-2007
Hippies
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Troy McClure SF said 12:55PM on 2-07-2007
I guess you get what you pay for, but I wouldn't really trust someone with a piece of computer equipment if he didn't know that magnets were bad for hard drives.
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Jacqui said 1:24PM on 2-07-2007
Aaaaand again, if you're going to jack an image from another site (Ars Technica's iPod nano review), it would be greatly appreciated if you would credit the source!
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Phosphor said 1:29PM on 2-07-2007
FreeCycle's a great idea, but it kind of bugs me that they are so completely tied to using YahooGroups for member interaction. I find the requirements for signing up to YahooGroups a little intrusive...thus, no participation.
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George said 4:18PM on 2-07-2007
the magnet warped his hard drive? How big of a magnet did he use?
Did he keep using a bigger one because the stainless back wouldn't hold? And finally found one that would "attach" itself to the magnets already inside the hard drive?
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Donald Burr said 4:28PM on 2-07-2007
What's with the criticism, people? I think this is a darn fine idea, and is truly a form of "recycling" - turning a pile of dead old parts into working units. Of course, this is not a new idea -- there are groups out there who take old computer equipment, salvage and recombine bits and parts into working computers that they donate to schools and churches and whatnot. But still, kudos to the guy who decided to do this with iPods and freecycle.
When Apple "recycles" your iPod, in all likelihood, they just take it and ship it off to China or Vietnam or some other third world country, where it sits there and poisons the water supply of some poor village. (no i do NOT work for nor do I support Greenpeace)
And as far as yahoo groups is concerned, I don't really see a problem. They may not be Google, but they still (IMHO) have a pretty decent privacy/information sharing policy. Certainly there are far worse places out there. (are you a MySpace user? Congratulations, Big Media [i.e. Rupert Murdoch] now owns you.)
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ryan said 10:27PM on 2-08-2007
oooo looks like someone cycled all over his ipod nano
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Galley said 9:52AM on 2-08-2007
He must've used a FBI labratory degausser to warp his hard drive.
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ben said 6:51PM on 2-08-2007
The Apple recycling program uses individually tested and working parts from the iPods in refurbished units. Whats left over is safely disposed of.
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