• Get ready for snappy, overlapping dialogue and fast-paced walk and talks with Steve Jobs: The movie adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography will officially be penned by The West Wing and The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin, reports Slash Film. (This is virtually guaranteed to be less awful than the competing Jobs project starring Ashton Kutcher.)
• Sprint CEO Dan Hesse did his best Honey Badger impression during Sprint’s earnings call this morning. Despite shareholder concern about the large investment necessary to sell the iPhone and knowing that it won’t be profitable until 2015, Hesse isn’t worried. According to AllThingsD, he said, “We believe in the long term. And over time we will make more money on iPhone customers than we will on other customers.”
• You know how Apple and China Mobile have been in talks for years about offering the iPhone on China’s largest mobile carrier? Well,  those talks are continuing, according to the carrier’s new chairman, Xi Guohua. “China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” he said at a company meeting Wednesday, without offering any more specific details, Bloomberg reports.
• Greenpeace tries to get Apple’s attention on coal-powered server farms with protestors dressed as iPhones and a pod-like capsule that projected protest messages onto Apple’s Cupertino headquarters on Tuesday. Gizmodo has the (bizarre) pictures.
• Washington insiders may be miffed that Apple doesn’t follow standard D.C. practice in lining politicians’ pockets with donations, but the company isn’t a stranger to high-ranking officials. Here’s the latest proof: this photo, posted by Fortune, shows Apple CEO Tim Cook meeting with John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, on Tuesday.

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The move is said to be caused at least in part by Apple’s “green push,” according to the London Evening Standard. Apple has taken measures during the past few years to lessen the environmental impact of its products. Those measures include reduced packaging as well as changes in the types and number of components used in its products. While the measures have been seen as effective by organizations like Greenpeace, Apple still faces criticism from environmental organizations in supplier countries, most notably China.

The presence of halogens in electronics is a danger, because when products are incinerated at the end of life, the burning halogen can release dioxins and furans into the atmosphere, which have been shown in studies to be increasing in presence in soil, ground water and people. Dioxins and furans are thought to be carcinogenic in large-enough concentrations, and in fact a 2003 study said that there is no known “threshold below which dioxin will not cause cancer.” Sounds like getting rid of them is a wise move.

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Apple has been in talks with Chinese environmental groups since those organizations have been levying accusations of environmental abuses at the company’s supplier partners, which were collected in a report released in August. Ma Jun, a leading Chinese environmentalist, told the Wall Street Journal  Apple met with leaders of five environmental groups on Tuesday, and it represented “a major step forward” for Apple and the aims of the environmental organizations.

Another environmental group leader, Li Li of EnviroFriends, said though it’s a step in the right direction, the groups and Apple “haven’t reached a consensus” and still disagree on many specific things. For instance, while Apple has acknowledged 15 of the 22 suppliers identified in the August report are indeed Apple suppliers, it wouldn’t single out which ones. Apple has a history of not making its supplier information public, possibly in order to keep a tighter lid on potential supply chain leaks regarding upcoming products.

The lack of openness is a problem, Li Chunhua, secretary general of the Green Stone Environmental Action Network told the IDG News Service: “What Apple has been doing is positive, but we want them to be more open with their supply chain.” For environmental groups, transparency with regards to suppliers translates into greater accountability for their actions on Apple’s part.

One of Apple’s key suppliers for its unibody Mac enclosures, Catcher Technologies, had to shut down a factory in October when nearby residents complained of pungent odors. It’s likely the attention this received that helped prompt the meeting on Tuesday, and Apple’s decision to open investigations into 15 of its suppliers.

Apple maintains a supplier responsibility policy, which in part insists its partners “use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes,” and releases a report each year detailing the findings of audits it conducts to ensure the policy is being met. Complaints like those from this group of Chinese environmentalist organizations suggest it may need to do more to satisfy growing scrutiny.

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According to the report, the new $1 billion dollar data facility that Apple has built and is expected to start using this spring, is one of the worst offenders in the world when it comes to power consumption, both in terms of sheer volume of power required, and in how clean that energy is. The facility will use as much as 100 MW of electricity when it opens, according to Greenpeace, which is the same as around 80,000 homes in the U.S., or 250,000 in the E.U. That energy comes from a grid that uses less than five percent clean energy, with the rest coming from dirty sources that Greenpeace sees as most ecologically harmful and dangerous, like coal and nuclear.

Apple data center choices led to it receiving the lowest clean energy index of all companies rated, with just a 6.7 percent rating. Yahoo topped the list with 55.9 percent clean energy, while Google and Amazon also ranked highly with 36.4 and 26.8 percent, respectively. Apple at least received a higher score in the categories of transparency and mitigation strategy, however, beating out other companies near the bottom like Facebook and Twitter.

Greenpeace acknowledges that in many ways cloud computing can save energy (like by replacing physical disc-based purchases with digital downloads, as Katie mentioned yesterday), but it also advises that focusing on efficiency runs the risk of ignoring the impact of clean vs. dirty energy, which is still a crucial component missing from the tech sector’s sustainability efforts.

Accounting for the energy impact of IT is tricky, as Greenpeace points out in its report, so making too much of these numbers at first blush probably isn’t advisable. Apple also actually hasn’t even started using its N.C. data center, so it’s entirely possible that the estimated energy picture Greenpeace used won’t accurately reflect the in-use figures. But the point is well made that cloud computing’s impact needs to be taken into account when we consider the footprint of tech companies, especially as it moves towards becoming the dominant computing model.

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Once per quarter, international environmental advocacy agency Greenpeace releases its Guide to Greener Electronics, which ranks gadget and computer makers on their efforts to be more ecologically minded. Last time around, Apple had managed only a ninth place finish in October of last year. For this inaugural 2010 survey, it jumps four spots to fifth overall.

Apple’s score didn’t increase that much, going from 4.9 to 5.1, but some of its competitors did very poorly over the period covered by the rankings, according to Greenpeace’s analysis. What Apple did manage to do was to actually act in a way that was much more environmentally friendly than previous attempts, despite actually moving backwards in its attempts to educate the public about its ecological efforts.

According to Greenpeace’s detailed evaluation, the redesign of the environmental information portion of Apple’s website actually provides less information than before, which counts against it according to the rating criteria the organization has established:

Apple loses a point for providing even less information (on its updated web-pages) about its supply chain communications than before. This criterion evaluates disclosure of information flow in the supply chain. Apple also loses a point for minimal information about its future toxic chemical phase-out plans, reducing its communication on this subject on its updated web-pages.

In terms of practical steps taken to lessen the impact of its actual products on the environment, though, Apple did very well:

Apple does best on the toxic chemicals criteria, where it scores most of its points. It scores substantially less on waste and energy. In this evaluation, Apple wins and loses some points on toxic chemicals, but gains on energy. All Apple products are now free of PVC and BFRs, with the exception of PVC-free power cords in countries where their safety certification process is still ongoing.

The four companies ahead of Apple on the ratings scale are Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Philips. That means that Apple is second among computer makers overall. Nintendo, Microsoft and Lenovo occupy the three bottom spots on the chart, with Microsoft slipping this year for a failure to support strong chemicals legislation. Apple is the only company to have earned four stars in Greenpeace’s new supplemental ratings chart regarding the elimination of harmful chemicals.

Every time these rankings are released, people tend to take issue with Greenpeace’s methods and motivations, and generally naysay the value of the guide. It may be true that Greenpeace has a very clear political aim, but I really don’t think provoking some sense of accountability in consumer-facing electronics companies is really a bad thing, even if you disagree with the methodology involved.

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Just released this morning, the new Ustream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes link) actually allows you to stream live video from your video-capable iPhone 3GS to the web, something which the recently released Qik app couldn’t (and still can’t) boast. It’s the first app to offer live streaming from Apple’s handset, and it even allows you to do so over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections.

In order to use the app, you’ll need to sign up for a free Ustream account if you don’t already have one. Ustream will prompt you to do so, and then allow you to register right within the app, without having to even pop out to Safari to complete the process.

As with any Ustream video, your live stream will be automatically recorded and stored on your Ustream account for later viewing. You can also notify your friends via Twitter that you’re starting a stream, and take advantage of Ustream’s built-in chat and Social Stream features to interact with viewers watching your video in real-time while you shoot. Obviously not something you can do while recording yourself, unless you are so intimately familiar with your iPhone that you can type when the screen isn’t facing you.

All of your recorded videos can be shared via the app to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but people wanting to tune in live will have to go to Ustream.tv. If you’re not within range of a data network when you want to make a recording, Ustream Live Broadcaster lets you record now and upload later, when you do find a reliable 3G or Wi-Fi connection.

Other features include the ability to start a yes/no poll, support for portrait and landscape recording, audio muting, video title editing, video resolution selection, viewer count and the ability to broadcast your phone’s GPS recording while streaming. It’s a very full-featured app, and one that I’m honestly surprised made it through the review process.

I think this app being released indicates a relaxation of some of Apple’s strictures regarding the streaming of live video, and possible the streaming of all video over a 3G connection. I expect an updated version of Qik with similar abilities to follow soon, and possibly a host of other apps that have been waiting at the gates for Apple to give the green light.

Interestingly, the app description says that both the 3GS and the 3G models are supported, although the sole purpose of the app is to broadcast live video as its recorded, which last time I checked wasn’t available on a standard, non-jailbroken iPhone 3G. Any users out there who have a 3G, get downloading (the app is free) and help us solve this mystery.

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While the company, to date, has largely focused on reporting the environmental impact of its manufacturing processes, the updated site also examines Apple products over their entire life cycle, including consumer usage. In conjunction with the site launch, Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek reports on Apple’s effort to change the “terms of debate” over the environment.

For Apple, that debate has often been with Greenpeace. The environmental organization’s periodic reports on the green efforts of technology companies have often graded Apple poorly. In the BusinessWeek article, Steve Jobs was his usual candid and caustic self, saying that “I thought Greenpeace was being very unfair with us at the beginning, and that they were using us to get visibility.” While that may be true (I think it is), more objectively, one of the many problems with the methodology Greenpeace uses in its reports is that it takes into account future commitments as well as actions in the present.

Another issue Apple has with some green rankings is the exclusive focus on the operations of a company, often without even taking into account the environmental impact of the products. Jobs likened this to “asking a cigarette company how green their office is.” To that end, Apple is coming clean on its true carbon footprint, and it’s a big one.

For Apple, that’s 10.2 million tons of carbon emissions annually, more than half the the company’s total output. In contrast, HP and Dell, both far larger companies in terms of manufacturing and numbers of products sold, report smaller emissions totals. For HP, that’s 8.4 million tons annually, while Dell reports a seemingly miraculous 471,000 tons. Of course, neither company counts the emissions totals of products in the hands of consumers, and that is a big deal. Apple’s decision to report those totals “could completely change how companies are evaluated,” according to Alexandra McPherson of the environmental group Clean Production Action.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Greenpeace will give Apple credit where credit is due. After all, how much publicity can Greenpeace get from badgering a beleaguered company like Dell?

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Greenpeace released the 12th edition of its Guide to Greener Electronics today (PDF), with Apple falling somewhere between tangerine and burnt orange. For those who take the rating seriously, Apple scored 4.7 out of 10, unchanged from last time, though the company slipped from 10th to 11th place in the ranking of 18 companies.

The guide is based on three “demands” (their word) by Greenpeace: eliminating toxic substances, e-waste recycling and energy usage. Those demands are then broken down into four sub-demands, which are ranked: bad, partially bad, partially good, and good. Overall, Apple scores mostly in the middle, but with several bad grades.

The single, wholly positive ranking Apple receives is for the timeline on phasing out nasty PVCs and BFRs from manufacturing. As Apple and the Environment notes, “Printed circuit boards, electrical components, mechanical parts, and internal cables are BFR-free and PVC-free.” However, Greenpeace even takes issue with that claim because Apple has “unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free.”

Greenpeace criticizes Apple strongly on e-waste recycling, while at the same time noting the company has extended coverage of its recycling program to Asia, and that Apple has set a goal of a 50 percent recycling rate by 2010. The main problem, according to Greenpeace, is a matter of disclosure on the part of Apple. On the issue of energy, Apple again scores poorly. First, because the company does not report on GHG (greenhouse gasses) emissions, Apple fails. Second, because the company does not report on renewable energy usage, Apple fails.

If you don’t see a pattern here, what it comes down to is that Greenpeace grades companies on words as much as action. Apple is a secretive company by nature. Considering how confrontational Greenpeace has been with Apple in the past, it’s hardly a surprise that Apple makes no effort to meet the “demands” of Greenpeace.

The real question here is why Greenpeace focuses so much on Apple. Both Dell and HP sell far more computers than Apple. Both have dropped in ranking, according to the latest guide, and both now score lower than Apple. Does this mean we will see protestors at the headquarters of HP? Will there be advertising campaigns about a “yellow” Dell? If Greenpeace followed its own guide, that’s what should happen.

However, the difference between Apple and every company in the guide is brand. Apple is easily the most popular brand. By focusing on Apple negatively, Greenpeace can theoretically threaten Apple’s brand popularity. Further, any changes Apple makes because of pressure from Greenpeace could then be leveraged against companies that actually pollute more than Apple. Finally, attacking the most popular company raises awareness of Greenpeace itself, not that the environmental organization would ever be so self-serving.

Keep going green, Apple, but keep going without Greenpeace.

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Available today, the iPhone 3G can be purchased on the cheap for just $99. The new iPhone 3G S is available for pre-order via the online Apple Store in four varieties: 16GB in black or white for $199 and 32GB in black or white for $299. Apple has promised that if you pre-order today, it will be shipped directly to you and you will receive it on June 19.

This is the first iPhone model to be available via the online Apple Store web site for pre-order. If you choose to pre-order your iPhone, you can select your rate plan options via Apple’s web site, or log in and see your existing rate plan if you are a current iPhone user. Existing iPhone customers should expect an $18 activation fee and $18 upgrade fee. Then, users can choose to have their iPhone available for pickup at a local Apple Store or shipped directly to their door.

Though I purchased my iPhone 3G on launch day last year, according to AT&T’s records, I will have to wait until early December before I can qualify to upgrade to this iPhone at the advertised rate of $299 for the 32GB. This is different from last year, when Apple and AT&T allowed original iPhone owners to upgrade immediately without requiring owners to pay the higher price. Even though AT&T calls this an “early upgrade,” if you fall within this category, expect the 16GB iPhone to cost $399 and the 32GB iPhone to cost $499.

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Consumers may be perceiving Apple as a more ecologically friendly company than they actually are, according to a new report by marketing research firm TDG.

Results of a survey of randomly selected participants found that roughly 30% believed Apple was the most environmentally friendly tech brand, with Dell and HP the next most popular choices, at 21% and 15% respectively.  The results are somewhat baffling, since Apple does not do nearly as much as some other companies to paint themselves as a so-called “green” company.

Survey participants were also just plain wrong about Apple.  While it has recently improved its standings in Greenpeace’s “Guide to Green Electronics,” it still falls behind Dell and HP based on the environmental organization’s comprehensive ranking system.  In the inaugural study in August of 2006, Jobs’ baby scored a paltry 2.7 out of a possible 10.  September 2008′s results saw Apple’s score climb to 4.1, which is still behind LG, Toshiba, Dell and HP.  Apple was listed as having improved in some categories, but still isn’t quite up to snuff on energy management and recycling.

So how does Apple get to be the greenest without actually getting the best scores or engineering their image through huge green-specific ad campaigns?  According to the author of the TDG study, Michael Greeson:

Chalk it up to effective marketing and the brand’s aura of simplicity in both design and usage.  In today’s market, aesthetics in branding and design matter when it comes to portraying a pro-environment message. Independent of whether Apple’s products and services are actually environmentally friendly, consumers perceive them as such. While other CE vendors may have to invest a fortune to improve their green image, Apple doesn’t seem to have this problem.

In other words, Apple’s branding seems to be subtly, inherently green.  It’s true that consumers tend to to cluster environmental responsibility with contemporary, clean, simple brands.  Apple is perhaps the best example in computer electronics, but Ikea demonstrates the same effect in the home furnishing sector.

When marketing trend analysts, and even some environmentalists, are forecasting an end to the effectiveness of green marketing, Apple may represent the green company of the future.  Commercials with voiceovers about carbon emission reduction are beginning to fall on deaf ears, but a company that appears casually environmental seems to strike a chord with those resistant to the in-your-face approach.  So how best to capitalize on this consumer misconception?  Bottom line is that Apple should just continue doing what they do, offering more services like iPod battery disposal and reducing their ecological footprint, but without showing off.  It’s the “Meh” approach to green marketing, and it sure seems to beat wrapping everything in bamboo.

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