Apple switching to LED lit screensThe snip below is taken from a release on Apple from the Yahoo board this evening which discussed Apple's concern for the environment and steps they are taking to make the company more green.
If the LEDs referred to use gallium, then a whole new market for gallium will open up in a hurry, since Apple's computers and ipods and perhaps their iphones, though they weren't mentioned, have generated quite some momentum. And what Apple does is carefully watched by the others in the field, since Apple is a trendsetter.
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Steven Jobs vowed that Apple would phase out its use of the worst chemicals in its manufacturing process and in Apple products. He said that brominated fire retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) would be eliminated by 2008 (beating out the other PC vendors' announced schedules).
Equally important, Jobs announced the beginning of a transition to new type of display screen in the MacBooks that would eliminate both arsenic and mercury. Apple, he said, is on track to introduce displays using arsenic-free glass in 2007.
As for the mercury, the company will begin the transition toward using LED backlighting for Apple's LCD screens. Today most LCD screens are lit with a type of fluorescent bulb (called cold cathode fluorescent (CCFL) backlights) that contains mercury. LED bulbs don't contain mercury, and also provide a more even light. iPods already use LED backlit display, and Apple plans to switch to LEDS in notebooks as quickly as the manufacturing process transition allows. The agressive transition schedule would put Apple ahead of others like Dell and HP, among the first PC manufacturers to start talking green.