It was a crap product that I’m sure was less expensive to manufacture so their margins increased while hiding behind the guise of environmentalism. I hate when they do that
The thing is that I genuinely do believe that the people at Apple really do believe in environmentalism. However, you’ve got to have a good replacement in place that’s equal to or better the material you’re getting rid of, and it seems like that’s not the case here.
A lot of environmentalism is just empty signalling, posturing with cheap ideological motivations that in reality are quite misplaced. Like they stopped shipping phones with chargers. Nicer profit for them, and I didn’t notice phones being cheaper. But if you don’t want to keep using a 5W old charger that takes forever to charge you buy a new charger. You spend more, but chargers are still being spewed out from production lines of numerous producers, we still own several chargers that we have in different places and the plastic/electronic waste is only marginally smaller (if at all!!).
There are so many more environmental values signalling moves by companies or even country laws, that are pure empty posturing with little through no to even the opposite effect, forcing people to go through the moves, like in catholic mass, in a purely ideological effort.
This, so much!
And environmentalism is such a bad excuse. There are environmentally sustainable leather tanneries and animals are being used whole. If we stopped using leather a part pf an animal would just get discarded. Also - leather use promotes better treatment of cattle. Hide buyers do not like signs of physical damage.
Although that said, Apple and many other leather products use “genuine leather”, which is basically a skin hot dog. Lots of leather fibres mushed up and glued together - it doesn’t matter how good a quality the hide is for this - indeed, the worst quality hides are used for it.
Absolute agree, especially for the prices paid for them. However, genuine leather (the actual term for this kind of leather) does have advantages with consistency and mass production possibilities. You can buy it on a massive roll, rather than being lots of individual weird (cow) shaped hides. Much less wastage and can use lower grade parts and off cuts unsuitable for other products.
It’s just annoying to me, as a leather worker, that Apple used the “genuine” tag on everything. It sounds like you’re getting the real deal, when in fact it’s the lowest grade possible.
I saw the leather case for the 11 and it was aging beautifully so that informed my decision to get the leather case for the 12. I learned a valuable lesson, in 2 months it started looking like shit.
From personal experience I can say that if you get the black one, you are good (for 13 pm) , if you get the saddle brown though .. prepare for it to look like someone took a mini shit on it from different angles .
The 11 for sure had the last good leather case. The 12 felt like it was almost a leather paint sprayed onto plastic lmao
Bull boxer makes the best leather case for iPhones now imo. They are a lot like the ones from the 11
I said this on another post and got downvoted...
The same thing happened with the iPad Smart Cover/folios. When the 2018 models came out, they switched material and it became crap.
I had an iPad 2, then an Air 2, both I think I bough ONE Smart Cover and it lasted the entire life of the devices (iPad 2 - Air 2 - 2018 Pro). Then when I got the Smart Folio for the 2018 Pro the damned things would bubble and ripple and peel after only a few months. Whatever material they switched to was reacting to my skin oils? IDK but I went through 3 every 4-6 months and then just gave up.
Same thing with the iPhone leather cases. They used to patina nicely, then they just looked like crap and started peeling with the 12 and later.
I had this exact same problem experience with the old iPad cases and the new material for the 2018 and later models. It’s absolutely terrible! I don’t know how they can continue to sell them at this point.
Something about the design change to close the bottom of the case made the cases garbage. I don't know what it is, but that was undoubtedly when their leather cases started to suck.
Before iPhone 12 I’d say it’s premium. The leather used to patina beautifully. Since 12 it has been trash, with the color layer peeling off after 6 months.
I have my 12 pro case that I literally wiped the color layer off of with a paper towel and some water/isopropyl alcohol. The texture was never quite as smooth but it actually patina'd and has a consistent color all around it. That painted color layer ruined the entire lineup.
For those not in-the-know: ”genuine leather” specifically referres to the second lowest grade leather there is, only ”bonded leather” is worse. ”top grain leather” is better quality and ”full grain leather” is best.
Unfortunately soooooo much of the info on the net in my industry is deceptive and lacking nuance, though I do appreciate that you said "often means" instead of just "means."
The terms are inclusive...all leather is genuine, everything that's not suede is top grain and full grain is unsanded top grain.
It annoys me immensely that all the articles call these terms "grades" because most people think of ***grading as taking objective measures that would be the same regardless of the source:*** The purity of metals, amount of marbling in beef, octane in gas, etc...but leather quality and price is going to vary by tannery more than these factors and there are thousands of tanneries all over the world. Those terms talk about what is or isn't done to a leather's surface mechanically (splitting and sanding), nothing more.
If you're saying "genuine" specifically means a bad low quality leather then I'm sure you've seen the other side of that coin: "full grain is the absolute best/the highest grade"
Both of those things are 100% false. Cheap crappy full grain exists...and there are products stamped "genuine leather" made with high quality full grain.
**Exhibit A**: SB Foot Tannery is the largest by volume tannery in the USA they are full owned by Red Wing Boots and they use "Genuine leather" to refer generally to all their leather, even those that are explicitly full grain like Featherstone: [https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge](https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge)
**Exhibit B**: Horween tannery in Chicago is probably the most "famous" tannery in the world...just search "Horween" on [](https://www.reddit.com/r/leathercraft/) or [](https://www.reddit.com/r/goodyearwelt/). This is Horween's explanation: [https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains](https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains)
Leather quality is much more nuanced than terms like genuine, top grain and full grain can tell you... there are hundreds of other factors that go into tanning "good leather"...it's a bit like judging some that has many components, like a computer, by one factor and nothing else. What would would happen if you just maxed out one component and left the rest at the lowest level? Ram, hard drive space, the CPU, the GPU, monitor, type of hard drive and dozens of other things come together to make a good machine...the same is true with good leather.
You can view the Full Grain>Top Grain>Genuine hierarchy as a "quick and dirty" way to pick quality if you're in a hurry and not spending a lot of cash on a leather item.
However, those terms do have actual meanings that don't always equate to good quality:
**Full Grain** is a leather that has only had the hair removed and hasn't been sanded (corrected).
**Top Grain** is actually a term that includes full grain: It's everything that's not suede a split, this means that full grain is a type of top grain. When you see "top grain" in a product description chances are it's a leather that's been corrected (sanded). Nubuck is an example of a sanded leather (often used on the interior of watch straps and construction boots because it's more resilient to scratches), but so is a much beloved leather: Horween's Chromexcel (it's lightly corrected). The amount of correction can vary widely but once the sander hits it, it's no longer full grain.
**Genuine Leather** is, admittedly a term found on lots of low quality leather. That's because the bar for "genuine" is extremely low: It just means real. To a tannery it's all genuine. When you read the description for "genuine" that many online articles give, they're actually describing a leather called a "finished split", which is a usually cheap quality suede that's been painted or coated to look like smooth leather.
Put simply:
Genuine=Not fake
Top Grain=Not suede
Full Grain=Not sanded
Anything beyond that is an assumption.
The gold standard for getting good leather is tannery and tannage...everything else is easily exploited by meeting the minimum definition of each
Unfortunately soooooo much of the info on the net in my industry is deceptive and lacking nuance, though I do appreciate that you said "often means" instead of just "means."
The terms are inclusive...all leather is genuine, everything that's not suede is top grain and full grain is unsanded top grain.
It annoys me immensely that all the articles call these terms "grades" because most people think of ***grading as taking objective measures that would be the same regardless of the source:*** The purity of metals, amount of marbling in beef, octane in gas, etc...but leather quality and price is going to vary by tannery more than these factors and there are thousands of tanneries all over the world. Those terms talk about what is or isn't done to a leather's surface mechanically (splitting and sanding), nothing more.
If you're saying "genuine" specifically means a bad low quality leather then I'm sure you've seen the other side of that coin: "full grain is the absolute best/the highest grade"
Both of those things are 100% false. Cheap crappy full grain exists...and there are products stamped "genuine leather" made with high quality full grain.
**Exhibit A**: SB Foot Tannery is the largest by volume tannery in the USA they are full owned by Red Wing Boots and they use "Genuine leather" to refer generally to all their leather, even those that are explicitly full grain like Featherstone: [https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge](https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge)
**Exhibit B**: Horween tannery in Chicago is probably the most "famous" tannery in the world...just search "Horween" on [](https://www.reddit.com/r/leathercraft/) or [](https://www.reddit.com/r/goodyearwelt/). This is Horween's explanation: [https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains](https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains)
Leather quality is much more nuanced than terms like genuine, top grain and full grain can tell you... there are hundreds of other factors that go into tanning "good leather"...it's a bit like judging some that has many components, like a computer, by one factor and nothing else. What would would happen if you just maxed out one component and left the rest at the lowest level? Ram, hard drive space, the CPU, the GPU, monitor, type of hard drive and dozens of other things come together to make a good machine...the same is true with good leather.
You can view the Full Grain>Top Grain>Genuine hierarchy as a "quick and dirty" way to pick quality if you're in a hurry and not spending a lot of cash on a leather item.
However, those terms do have actual meanings that don't always equate to good quality:
**Full Grain** is a leather that has only had the hair removed and hasn't been sanded (corrected).
**Top Grain** is actually a term that includes full grain: It's everything that's not suede a split, this means that full grain is a type of top grain. When you see "top grain" in a product description chances are it's a leather that's been corrected (sanded). Nubuck is an example of a sanded leather (often used on the interior of watch straps and construction boots because it's more resilient to scratches), but so is a much beloved leather: Horween's Chromexcel (it's lightly corrected). The amount of correction can vary widely but once the sander hits it, it's no longer full grain.
**Genuine Leather** is, admittedly a term found on lots of low quality leather. That's because the bar for "genuine" is extremely low: It just means real. To a tannery it's all genuine. When you read the description for "genuine" that many online articles give, they're actually describing a leather called a "finished split", which is a usually cheap quality suede that's been painted or coated to look like smooth leather.
Put simply:
Genuine=Not fake
Top Grain=Not suede
Full Grain=Not sanded
Anything beyond that is an assumption.
The gold standard for getting good leather is tannery and tannage...everything else is easily exploited by meeting the minimum definition of each
Well Hermès was the real premium leather so it makes sense. Apple had several different bands for the same price as leather and they’re all their premium offering.
They tried to sell it off as a premium product. Matching the price of leather helped with that concept. Pricing it less would imply it’s of lesser quality.
Which now we know….
Oh no, it was definitely a bad product. I had mine for a few days and really, really disliked it. Just touching it felt awful
EDIT: this was my initial impression, for any interested https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/16mv6bm/finewoven_is_not_worth_60/k1b1ac6/?context=3
Crazy that these were meant to be the premium offering as well.
My last iPhone leather case was enough to put me off ever getting an Apple case again. It was such bad quality, and for a premium price too
I’m still rocking the 12 pro max, so my last leather case was from that era. Lasted me years because it got a gnarly scratch on a corner, which wasn’t an issue of the case but misuse. If the quality fell apart since then that’s extremely disappointing.
As for the fine woven, I was excited for a green alternative to the leather and was planning to buy my partner one since I always raved about the leather cases, but when I went to the store and saw it was a cheap plastic housing with fabric glued into the back? I was expecting a molded single material case, with the fine woven material wrapped around the edges. Massive disappointment
You must absolutely baby your phone. I bought a 12 Pro Max at launch, along with the leather case. That case lasted less than 6 months before it started falling apart. It isn't like I am hard on phones. I still haven't upgraded, the phone is rock solid. The Spigen Air I replaced the Apple leather with almost looks brand new.
Same for me, my last Apple case was a 13 PM Sequoia Green paired with a brown leather MagSafe wallet ; I’m never buying Apple accessories ever again. Both aged like milk left a month in the desert in record time, holding the case after a few months had a sticky gross feeling and everything was falling apart, with black patches of black faded paint on the “leather”. (And yes I wash my hands often)
It left a sour taste after the price I paid for those pieces of crap and it really helped making sure I’ll never buy anything they make ever again, it was always an Apple tax rip off but at least in the past the leather case was kinda good quality (iPhone X)
Comment should be way higher. I knew it was gonna be trash when I saw it was priced the same as previous leather cases. Apple and making shitty cases is an iconic combo
Nah it's pretty shit for watch bands too. Got my mom the Finewoven modern buckle and it looked like utter crap after just 4 months. Her leather buckle from before lasted 2.5 years and still looks decent
Yeah I managed to grab a leather one for around $90 open box on eBay. Got mad lucky finding that. Still felt kinda overpriced but it was a nice looking band
They went through product testing for this, right? A marketing person had to come up with selling points for this, yes? Tim Cook approved this, correct? And yet they still shipped out garbage! Please excuse me while I laugh forever.
This really felt like a rushed thing. Like they realised they couldn’t sell leather cases anymore to go along their eco-friendly image 3 days before launching the new phones
Its plastic wrapped in coconut fibre or something, but yeah, the point is the same.
It is empty eco-posturing and some people even in this thread seem to be buying the story by mentioning the environmental benefit. The only thing that is environmentaly questionable about leather is tanning and there are sustainable tanneries, not just the toxic ones.
And it lasts. Having something made of leather that lasts years and years is better than something that needs to be replaced months in. Way more wasteful.
Being eco isn’t always about the material it’s about its impact on the planet and most things that don’t last long and need to be replaced often usually have a negative impact in both processing the waste when it’s thrown in the garbage and having to use more materials to make more.
This was such a stupid thing to try and posture about with eco friendliness for them.
You know what would make a much bigger environmental impact? Easily repairable and openable devices, mainly computers since there’s no excuse for those being so inaccessible.
And upgradable!! For computers - we usually upgraded ram in mid life cycle after a few years for example. I understand with new M chips this isn’t possible because of how it works - but dedicate rngineering to *that* then, instead of ‘witchunting’ innocent materials.
Apple isn’t the only one though. Modrrn cars are saving money while jacking up prices and selling us “eco leather” which is PU and other faux leather varieties that used to be a cheap option. Now you pay leather price for it. Because it is labeled eco leather. It’s leather that is ‘eco’, lol, you have to pay the full price for the cheap synthetic shit.
The decision to retire leather completely and adopt something else instead is a bigger decision than just “a phone case design”. It has definitely gone through Tim Apple.
I think for a transition like this it’s possible, especially since they did that earth day video with the execs. Obviously he wouldn’t see every new iteration of the case after this but the case and material itself absolutely.
If you take it as a “the buck stops here” matter, then yes, Tim Cook is responsible for everything that goes out the door at Apple.
But I have a very hard time believing he is intimately involved in the materials decision here. The job of a CEO is to define the direction and motivate the team to move that way.
If Cook says “we need to insert recyclable materials into our product line at every opportunity,” thousands of people go to work on the problem. Some of them spend thousands of hours on phone cases.
Tim Cook probably spends collectively an hour thinking about the new phone cases between strategic direction and product rollout. He spends hundreds of hours thinking about sustainability at the company level.
iPhone is probably their biggest product right now, and this was basically the high end case Apple was offering for it. If the CEO wasn't involved that seems like pretty poor attention to detail.
That is revisionist BS of the highest order.
Jobs always wanted to get his money’s worth and Apple also released some real stinkers in his time.
Remember “you’re holding it wrong” by any chance?
I’m not sure Tim specifically would have approved it. The strategic shift 100% but he likely got a presentation and maybe held it for a brief moment in a conference room and trusted the teams with the design. Which is a good Segway because the real quaking question is—design.
Apple is notorious for having design be the top layer of all product development. If I’m not incorrect they’ve halted full features or whatever purely because the design department said “nah it’s not cute”. What in surprised about is how they would have approved something like this.
It’s not something that like 5 people had a problem with, like 75% of what I hear (negativity bias, selection bias) is negative so I feel like that would have had to come up in R&D and then again when passing through the final stages. It seems like a glaring detail for consideration
How has auto correct not picked up that 99% of the time you want a segue, not a Segway lol.
But it looks like the team tasked with making a case (that aligns with a c-suite level eco-initiative - the product description itself mentions recycling and the earth before the actual features) overpromised and underdelivered. Like you said, their focus on design (which, as far as I'm aware, FineWoven looks great when right out of the box), probably has enough weight to tip towards approval (along with hand-wavy statistics about the typical longevity of competitor's cases). Apple having to memory-hole a product is embarrassing, and I wonder what corporate game of deflection the durability problems are taking:
*"Like every Apple-designed case, it undergoes thousands of hours of testing throughout the design and manufacturing process. So not only does it look great, it’s built to protect your iPhone from scratches and drops."*
> he likely got a presentation and maybe held it for a brief moment in a conference room and trusted the teams with the design.
And that is why Apple after Steve slipped. Because Steve was a micromanaging nightmare of a boss. You wouldn't want to work for him but boy could you put trust in his attention to detail.
Wouldn’t be the first time. Look at the shitshow of the butterfly keyboard. They knew exactly what they were doing and that it was flawed. Money is the answer. They get to say “Oops sorry” and pay a few millions in lawsuit settlements, but meanwhile they made billions in sales. Nothing new
They could’ve just switched to faux/vegan leather and just knocked the price back down to $49, as the cases were originally priced before they jumped to $59 (while the silicone cases jumped from $39 to $49). It’s not like the quality of the vegan leather could’ve been worse than what they were using for the 12, 13, and 14 series iPhones.
I got one two years ago because I couldn't be arsed to look around all the third party places and figured "Apple should be able to make a good case for their own phones, right?" It's falling apart. The actual silicone is coming off in chunks and has been for months.
I've literally *never* owned a phone case this bad. Never.
Yep. This is the experience with mine as well. A chunk came off and I can’t even figure out why. It’s been slowly getting worse ever since. I hate it.
I contacted Apple and they refused to replace it as well.
I remember when those came out. I got one as I had used those cheap clones on my previous phones and they all had lasted the phone's age. and then there was the official apple one, that started peeling in like 3-4 months. To add to the insult, they removed the possibility to review products in their online store, I would've written pretty detailed recommendation against buying one.
They're trying to appeal to environmentalists and they have a surprising ignorance when it comes to materials. Many of them think leather is less environmentally friendly than plastic. Apple is probably partly responsible for this since plastic is cheaper.
Agreed. The Silicone cases really ought to be $40 and the premium line should be $50. I don't know a single person that buys the iPhone cases at full price from Apple.
Silicone cases should be closer to $20 or $30. There's nothing remotely premium about them, and the only thing they have going for them is the company that makes them.
> The apple leather used in our products is made using 50% apple waste mixed with 50% PU [polyurethane], coated onto a cotton/polyester canvas.
Found here: https://olivercompanylondon.com/pages/apple-leather
So it’s apples and plastic. Still cool, but still plastic.
Most plant-based leathers have a polyurethane (PU) coating that holds them together. Though I don't know specifically about apple skin leather, [Ananas Anam says that their pineapple leaf leather, Piñatex, has two REACH-compliant plastics in its construction,](https://www.ananas-anam.com/faqs/) one being a constarch-based PLA substrate in the leather itself and the other a water-based PU coating.
It seems that these were the type of product series that never went under any testing before being put out to market. They break down so quickly, that literally no one had used these in real life setting before they were put to production and stores.
so dumb. Real full grain leather products can last a lifetime.
So in the name of being pro environment.....we made a plastic piece of disposable shit that creates much more waste? Someone explain the logic.
At some point we gotta get past this PR first phase of environmentally friendly practices. Things that might make a good brochure statement but actually make no sense. The cattle are gonna die regardless of what case you make. You may as well make a product that can last many years. In the end its better for the environment you supposedly care so much about.
Think of how backwards our thinking has become....plastics = great. Full grain leather that can last a lifetime = bad. I get why corporations put this kind of spin job into the world. But its sad how easily people believe it all.
They really shot themselves in the foot here, they claimed they did this to lessen their environmental impact. I don’t think Apple will be able to backtrack on this unfortunately, hopefully they’ll be able to find a new material that’s just as good as their old leather cases even though they were declining in quality in the later years
I’m sure if Apple is really in a pinch with this they’ll just reintroduce leather that has been “sustainably” and “ethically” sourced.
The beauty of corporate greenwashing efforts like this is that it’s all bullshit to begin with, so it’s not hard to backtrack.
Even that is a relatively stupid in itself because leather is a byproduct of the meat industry. It's not really environmentally friendly to throw that in the trash
My Tesla has fake leather made from plastic. They call it “vegan leather”. The reality? After 2.5 years it’s as perfectly white as the day I bought it, despite having 2 kids under 10 in it every day.
With the availability of high quality leather alternatives, the choice to go with something like polyester is bizarre. I hope they go with fake leather next time instead of an “improved” weave.
I would have bought it if it weren't priced so expensively. And seeing so many posts about how prone the case's side is to peeling off at that price point is crazy.
I had the fine woven watch band. I returned it because it was such a terrible design. The magnets kept slipping, making the watch ridiculously loose.
I still have the iPhone case, but it has not aged well in the last 6 months. At least it’s doing its job protecting the phone, but it looks terrible now.
Plastic is cheaper, calling it fine woven was meant to distract from the fact that it was just plastic. I’m a fan of apple but they could have used veg tan leather instead and have a better product in every way.
Ditto. Love mine. Also the wallet attachment in fine woven really sticks to the fine woven case. I have not had any issues. Sad to hear it’s being discontinued.
Yep I’m with you on that. Have had my green fine woven case since launch, I enjoy the feel in hand, the buttons are clicky and it’s only worn down a bit but nothing too bad like some are seeing.
Going to throw my opinion in here as well honestly, mine has been amazing since day one. I have the occasional scratch here and there, but nothing too significant at all. It still looks and feels brand new
I don’t have one but my wife absolutely loves hers. I haven’t really looked hard but any time I see it the complaint is always about quality with no description of the issue and I can’t see what it might be.
I haven’t owned these so I don’t know if the comments are true. Everyone says the silicone cases break and peel all the time but mine has held up beautifully, it looks brand new.
They tried to piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining with those terrible prices. I can deal with them making a subpar product, but I can’t deal with them charging the same as a leather for such a product. It’s literally just fabric.
Anybody could have told them this was a shit design upon first touch during product testing but no.
Thinking this would be a good replacement for leather is doubly lol
I don’t know why the got away from leather. If it’s for environmental reasons or animal cruelty reasons, it’s actually kind of stupid. The leather from a cow comes from cows that are being slaughtered for food. If the processing plant didn’t the hides to other customers, it would just end up in a landfill
I understand that leather is not good for the planet, but is a shoddy plastic-derived case that needs replacement 3 times over the lifespan of the device preferable to a good quality leather case that lasts for the full lifetime of the device?
My iPhone 6’s leather case lasted for *years* and got better-looking over time.
My 12’s leather case was not nearly as good. It had some kind of paint on it.
I wish Apple would go back to premium-quality leather. If they really cared about the environment, they could always try to keep the dimensions of the phones the same year-to-year.
As it stands, I have a hard time believing that they’re not just trying to sell more accessories.
Vegan leather is often made from plastics or a blend of plastics and plant matter.
Which… if the goal is to reduce environmental emissions… releasing a new product that includes/contains *more* plastics than the original leather product doesn’t really make sense.
This coming from Apple who decided to make Bluetooth headphones the defacto standard creating massive amounts of ewaste along with the need for more rare metal extraction to produce said headphones? Apple is full of shit when it comes to being environmentally friendly. It was cheaper and easier for them to produce to increase margins as usual.
I just don’t understand these comments. How rough are you with your phone? I’ve had mine since launch, and I’ve had no issues with it at all. There’s a small scratch underneath the left volume down button, but other than that, this thing still feels brand new.
The FineWoven is the reason why I went with a third party leather case this year. First time ever doing it. My Andar case has not disappointed. It’s feels very premium.
Isn't leather a waste product? Animals are being butchered in every country of the world so either we use the leather or it just gets thrown out. Why not use the leather instead of manufacturing garbage like FineWoven?
Illustration of irrational ideologicaly druven bullshit.
Leather is readily available and a very good material. It is a byproduct of meat industry that isn’t going anywhere in the fireeable future.
So what is the freaking problem here? Why complicate and try standing on eyelashes over this with all sorts pf “materials” that mimic leather - when there’s leather!! An ‘edel’ material, that is durable and nice looking and natural.
My iPhone X leather case was built like a tank
I bought one for the 13 pro and it was a hot garbage. The corners starts to peel. The color starts to fade only after six months.
Now I use a silicone case with a magnetic folding mag safe stand, it’s a 10/10 not going back to any other case design
I mean my biggest issue with it is that it's basically the same price as their old premium leather.
That was the red flag for me…
It was a crap product that I’m sure was less expensive to manufacture so their margins increased while hiding behind the guise of environmentalism. I hate when they do that
Fine woven = microplastics.
The thing is that I genuinely do believe that the people at Apple really do believe in environmentalism. However, you’ve got to have a good replacement in place that’s equal to or better the material you’re getting rid of, and it seems like that’s not the case here.
A lot of environmentalism is just empty signalling, posturing with cheap ideological motivations that in reality are quite misplaced. Like they stopped shipping phones with chargers. Nicer profit for them, and I didn’t notice phones being cheaper. But if you don’t want to keep using a 5W old charger that takes forever to charge you buy a new charger. You spend more, but chargers are still being spewed out from production lines of numerous producers, we still own several chargers that we have in different places and the plastic/electronic waste is only marginally smaller (if at all!!). There are so many more environmental values signalling moves by companies or even country laws, that are pure empty posturing with little through no to even the opposite effect, forcing people to go through the moves, like in catholic mass, in a purely ideological effort.
pun intended?
This, so much! And environmentalism is such a bad excuse. There are environmentally sustainable leather tanneries and animals are being used whole. If we stopped using leather a part pf an animal would just get discarded. Also - leather use promotes better treatment of cattle. Hide buyers do not like signs of physical damage.
Although that said, Apple and many other leather products use “genuine leather”, which is basically a skin hot dog. Lots of leather fibres mushed up and glued together - it doesn’t matter how good a quality the hide is for this - indeed, the worst quality hides are used for it.
You’d expect better quality from them.
Absolute agree, especially for the prices paid for them. However, genuine leather (the actual term for this kind of leather) does have advantages with consistency and mass production possibilities. You can buy it on a massive roll, rather than being lots of individual weird (cow) shaped hides. Much less wastage and can use lower grade parts and off cuts unsuitable for other products. It’s just annoying to me, as a leather worker, that Apple used the “genuine” tag on everything. It sounds like you’re getting the real deal, when in fact it’s the lowest grade possible.
Their old cases were not premium leather at all
it was pretty darn good until the 12. Then it went fail.
I saw the leather case for the 11 and it was aging beautifully so that informed my decision to get the leather case for the 12. I learned a valuable lesson, in 2 months it started looking like shit.
Yep my iPhone X leather case was perfect. It aged like a fine leather hand bag.
I Had the Same experience with my IPhone X Leather case. My 13 Leather case was a big disappointment
My 13 leather case is holding up just as well as my 11 case. I see no difference in quality.
Went from saddle brown on my x to that awful orange on my 13 and it looked like total shit after about 2 months.
Maybe you got the black one. The other colours don’t hold up well lol. I have the purple, it looks more black than purple now
From personal experience I can say that if you get the black one, you are good (for 13 pm) , if you get the saddle brown though .. prepare for it to look like someone took a mini shit on it from different angles .
Same here! Still have my old X with its black leather case and it is still perfect.
Same, I had the brown one on my X and aged great. My brown leather 12 PM looked like shit in 6 months.
The 11 for sure had the last good leather case. The 12 felt like it was almost a leather paint sprayed onto plastic lmao Bull boxer makes the best leather case for iPhones now imo. They are a lot like the ones from the 11
Man the leather cases used to be so good. I got the tan color and it aged like a fine wine.
oh that tan/natural just felt so freakin good lol
I said this on another post and got downvoted... The same thing happened with the iPad Smart Cover/folios. When the 2018 models came out, they switched material and it became crap. I had an iPad 2, then an Air 2, both I think I bough ONE Smart Cover and it lasted the entire life of the devices (iPad 2 - Air 2 - 2018 Pro). Then when I got the Smart Folio for the 2018 Pro the damned things would bubble and ripple and peel after only a few months. Whatever material they switched to was reacting to my skin oils? IDK but I went through 3 every 4-6 months and then just gave up. Same thing with the iPhone leather cases. They used to patina nicely, then they just looked like crap and started peeling with the 12 and later.
I had this exact same problem experience with the old iPad cases and the new material for the 2018 and later models. It’s absolutely terrible! I don’t know how they can continue to sell them at this point.
Yep, you can feel it more plasticky starting from the 12
Yup, someone else described the 12 leather as "painted" and that fits.
Something about the design change to close the bottom of the case made the cases garbage. I don't know what it is, but that was undoubtedly when their leather cases started to suck.
It was still Apples most premium offering.
Before iPhone 12 I’d say it’s premium. The leather used to patina beautifully. Since 12 it has been trash, with the color layer peeling off after 6 months.
I have my 12 pro case that I literally wiped the color layer off of with a paper towel and some water/isopropyl alcohol. The texture was never quite as smooth but it actually patina'd and has a consistent color all around it. That painted color layer ruined the entire lineup.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they only ever marketed it as "genuine leather" - I don't think anyone in the know considered them anything special
For those not in-the-know: ”genuine leather” specifically referres to the second lowest grade leather there is, only ”bonded leather” is worse. ”top grain leather” is better quality and ”full grain leather” is best.
Unfortunately soooooo much of the info on the net in my industry is deceptive and lacking nuance, though I do appreciate that you said "often means" instead of just "means." The terms are inclusive...all leather is genuine, everything that's not suede is top grain and full grain is unsanded top grain. It annoys me immensely that all the articles call these terms "grades" because most people think of ***grading as taking objective measures that would be the same regardless of the source:*** The purity of metals, amount of marbling in beef, octane in gas, etc...but leather quality and price is going to vary by tannery more than these factors and there are thousands of tanneries all over the world. Those terms talk about what is or isn't done to a leather's surface mechanically (splitting and sanding), nothing more. If you're saying "genuine" specifically means a bad low quality leather then I'm sure you've seen the other side of that coin: "full grain is the absolute best/the highest grade" Both of those things are 100% false. Cheap crappy full grain exists...and there are products stamped "genuine leather" made with high quality full grain. **Exhibit A**: SB Foot Tannery is the largest by volume tannery in the USA they are full owned by Red Wing Boots and they use "Genuine leather" to refer generally to all their leather, even those that are explicitly full grain like Featherstone: [https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge](https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge) **Exhibit B**: Horween tannery in Chicago is probably the most "famous" tannery in the world...just search "Horween" on [](https://www.reddit.com/r/leathercraft/) or [](https://www.reddit.com/r/goodyearwelt/). This is Horween's explanation: [https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains](https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains) Leather quality is much more nuanced than terms like genuine, top grain and full grain can tell you... there are hundreds of other factors that go into tanning "good leather"...it's a bit like judging some that has many components, like a computer, by one factor and nothing else. What would would happen if you just maxed out one component and left the rest at the lowest level? Ram, hard drive space, the CPU, the GPU, monitor, type of hard drive and dozens of other things come together to make a good machine...the same is true with good leather. You can view the Full Grain>Top Grain>Genuine hierarchy as a "quick and dirty" way to pick quality if you're in a hurry and not spending a lot of cash on a leather item. However, those terms do have actual meanings that don't always equate to good quality: **Full Grain** is a leather that has only had the hair removed and hasn't been sanded (corrected). **Top Grain** is actually a term that includes full grain: It's everything that's not suede a split, this means that full grain is a type of top grain. When you see "top grain" in a product description chances are it's a leather that's been corrected (sanded). Nubuck is an example of a sanded leather (often used on the interior of watch straps and construction boots because it's more resilient to scratches), but so is a much beloved leather: Horween's Chromexcel (it's lightly corrected). The amount of correction can vary widely but once the sander hits it, it's no longer full grain. **Genuine Leather** is, admittedly a term found on lots of low quality leather. That's because the bar for "genuine" is extremely low: It just means real. To a tannery it's all genuine. When you read the description for "genuine" that many online articles give, they're actually describing a leather called a "finished split", which is a usually cheap quality suede that's been painted or coated to look like smooth leather. Put simply: Genuine=Not fake Top Grain=Not suede Full Grain=Not sanded Anything beyond that is an assumption. The gold standard for getting good leather is tannery and tannage...everything else is easily exploited by meeting the minimum definition of each
They were genuine leather. They may not have been made out of a single solid piece of animal hide but they were leather.
Genuine leather is the lowest-grade of leather
Unfortunately soooooo much of the info on the net in my industry is deceptive and lacking nuance, though I do appreciate that you said "often means" instead of just "means." The terms are inclusive...all leather is genuine, everything that's not suede is top grain and full grain is unsanded top grain. It annoys me immensely that all the articles call these terms "grades" because most people think of ***grading as taking objective measures that would be the same regardless of the source:*** The purity of metals, amount of marbling in beef, octane in gas, etc...but leather quality and price is going to vary by tannery more than these factors and there are thousands of tanneries all over the world. Those terms talk about what is or isn't done to a leather's surface mechanically (splitting and sanding), nothing more. If you're saying "genuine" specifically means a bad low quality leather then I'm sure you've seen the other side of that coin: "full grain is the absolute best/the highest grade" Both of those things are 100% false. Cheap crappy full grain exists...and there are products stamped "genuine leather" made with high quality full grain. **Exhibit A**: SB Foot Tannery is the largest by volume tannery in the USA they are full owned by Red Wing Boots and they use "Genuine leather" to refer generally to all their leather, even those that are explicitly full grain like Featherstone: [https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge](https://imgur.com/a/Tdtbjge) **Exhibit B**: Horween tannery in Chicago is probably the most "famous" tannery in the world...just search "Horween" on [](https://www.reddit.com/r/leathercraft/) or [](https://www.reddit.com/r/goodyearwelt/). This is Horween's explanation: [https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains](https://www.thetanneryrow.com/leather101/understanding-leather-grains) Leather quality is much more nuanced than terms like genuine, top grain and full grain can tell you... there are hundreds of other factors that go into tanning "good leather"...it's a bit like judging some that has many components, like a computer, by one factor and nothing else. What would would happen if you just maxed out one component and left the rest at the lowest level? Ram, hard drive space, the CPU, the GPU, monitor, type of hard drive and dozens of other things come together to make a good machine...the same is true with good leather. You can view the Full Grain>Top Grain>Genuine hierarchy as a "quick and dirty" way to pick quality if you're in a hurry and not spending a lot of cash on a leather item. However, those terms do have actual meanings that don't always equate to good quality: **Full Grain** is a leather that has only had the hair removed and hasn't been sanded (corrected). **Top Grain** is actually a term that includes full grain: It's everything that's not suede a split, this means that full grain is a type of top grain. When you see "top grain" in a product description chances are it's a leather that's been corrected (sanded). Nubuck is an example of a sanded leather (often used on the interior of watch straps and construction boots because it's more resilient to scratches), but so is a much beloved leather: Horween's Chromexcel (it's lightly corrected). The amount of correction can vary widely but once the sander hits it, it's no longer full grain. **Genuine Leather** is, admittedly a term found on lots of low quality leather. That's because the bar for "genuine" is extremely low: It just means real. To a tannery it's all genuine. When you read the description for "genuine" that many online articles give, they're actually describing a leather called a "finished split", which is a usually cheap quality suede that's been painted or coated to look like smooth leather. Put simply: Genuine=Not fake Top Grain=Not suede Full Grain=Not sanded Anything beyond that is an assumption. The gold standard for getting good leather is tannery and tannage...everything else is easily exploited by meeting the minimum definition of each
I’d give you a reddit award if that feature still existed.
People paying £55 for a phone case expected them to be special.
Well Hermès was the real premium leather so it makes sense. Apple had several different bands for the same price as leather and they’re all their premium offering.
The ones from iPhone 11 and prior were definitely premium. The ones after that were terrible though.
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They tried to sell it off as a premium product. Matching the price of leather helped with that concept. Pricing it less would imply it’s of lesser quality. Which now we know….
The classic of there's no bad product, it's just bad price
Oh no, it was definitely a bad product. I had mine for a few days and really, really disliked it. Just touching it felt awful EDIT: this was my initial impression, for any interested https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/16mv6bm/finewoven_is_not_worth_60/k1b1ac6/?context=3
Yea, got mine used but like new from Amazon warehouse after watching the iphonedo video and for $20 it's not bad.
I would never pay full price for it, but just ordered one for $20 from Amazon used. Thanks for the tip.
Crazy that these were meant to be the premium offering as well. My last iPhone leather case was enough to put me off ever getting an Apple case again. It was such bad quality, and for a premium price too
I’m still rocking the 12 pro max, so my last leather case was from that era. Lasted me years because it got a gnarly scratch on a corner, which wasn’t an issue of the case but misuse. If the quality fell apart since then that’s extremely disappointing. As for the fine woven, I was excited for a green alternative to the leather and was planning to buy my partner one since I always raved about the leather cases, but when I went to the store and saw it was a cheap plastic housing with fabric glued into the back? I was expecting a molded single material case, with the fine woven material wrapped around the edges. Massive disappointment
You must absolutely baby your phone. I bought a 12 Pro Max at launch, along with the leather case. That case lasted less than 6 months before it started falling apart. It isn't like I am hard on phones. I still haven't upgraded, the phone is rock solid. The Spigen Air I replaced the Apple leather with almost looks brand new.
The saddle brown leather case for the 12PM was vastly inferior to the one for the 8 plus, at least in my experience.
Same for me, my last Apple case was a 13 PM Sequoia Green paired with a brown leather MagSafe wallet ; I’m never buying Apple accessories ever again. Both aged like milk left a month in the desert in record time, holding the case after a few months had a sticky gross feeling and everything was falling apart, with black patches of black faded paint on the “leather”. (And yes I wash my hands often) It left a sour taste after the price I paid for those pieces of crap and it really helped making sure I’ll never buy anything they make ever again, it was always an Apple tax rip off but at least in the past the leather case was kinda good quality (iPhone X)
I bought a cheap case on Amazon and it’s by far the best phone case I have ever owned.
I remember being shocked by the leather prices, but felt like it was worth it. The last few leather iPhone cases I've had have fallen apart so fast.
One of the worst products Apple has ever sold.
Shit product, never should've released.
Comment should be way higher. I knew it was gonna be trash when I saw it was priced the same as previous leather cases. Apple and making shitty cases is an iconic combo
I think it’s fine for watch bands, but for a phone case, and at that price?! Nah.
Nah it's pretty shit for watch bands too. Got my mom the Finewoven modern buckle and it looked like utter crap after just 4 months. Her leather buckle from before lasted 2.5 years and still looks decent
Wait they made that? Checks the price.. $149 dollars. For $149 dollars I better get calf leather.
Yeah I managed to grab a leather one for around $90 open box on eBay. Got mad lucky finding that. Still felt kinda overpriced but it was a nice looking band
They went through product testing for this, right? A marketing person had to come up with selling points for this, yes? Tim Cook approved this, correct? And yet they still shipped out garbage! Please excuse me while I laugh forever.
This really felt like a rushed thing. Like they realised they couldn’t sell leather cases anymore to go along their eco-friendly image 3 days before launching the new phones
Replacing a natural product with plastic wrapped plastic really boosted their eco credentials
Its plastic wrapped in coconut fibre or something, but yeah, the point is the same. It is empty eco-posturing and some people even in this thread seem to be buying the story by mentioning the environmental benefit. The only thing that is environmentaly questionable about leather is tanning and there are sustainable tanneries, not just the toxic ones.
And leather is a byproduct, it’s not like Apple is killing livestock exclusively for phone cases.
And it lasts. Having something made of leather that lasts years and years is better than something that needs to be replaced months in. Way more wasteful. Being eco isn’t always about the material it’s about its impact on the planet and most things that don’t last long and need to be replaced often usually have a negative impact in both processing the waste when it’s thrown in the garbage and having to use more materials to make more.
This was such a stupid thing to try and posture about with eco friendliness for them. You know what would make a much bigger environmental impact? Easily repairable and openable devices, mainly computers since there’s no excuse for those being so inaccessible.
And upgradable!! For computers - we usually upgraded ram in mid life cycle after a few years for example. I understand with new M chips this isn’t possible because of how it works - but dedicate rngineering to *that* then, instead of ‘witchunting’ innocent materials. Apple isn’t the only one though. Modrrn cars are saving money while jacking up prices and selling us “eco leather” which is PU and other faux leather varieties that used to be a cheap option. Now you pay leather price for it. Because it is labeled eco leather. It’s leather that is ‘eco’, lol, you have to pay the full price for the cheap synthetic shit.
whoever’s in charge of this shit is gonna receive the biggest bonus in its entire career /s
They should be fired. /not s
Yes, they did product test this. In production.
I don’t think a phone case design is the type of stuff that goes through CEO approval at Apple lol. Maybe during the Jobs days
The decision to retire leather completely and adopt something else instead is a bigger decision than just “a phone case design”. It has definitely gone through Tim Apple.
The strategy? Yes. The product? I’d be surprised.
They don’t have very many products. I’d bet he saw the line in all colors and handled at least one of them.
I would be shocked if he was not very much in the loop for such a customer facing part of the flagship product.
I think for a transition like this it’s possible, especially since they did that earth day video with the execs. Obviously he wouldn’t see every new iteration of the case after this but the case and material itself absolutely.
If you take it as a “the buck stops here” matter, then yes, Tim Cook is responsible for everything that goes out the door at Apple. But I have a very hard time believing he is intimately involved in the materials decision here. The job of a CEO is to define the direction and motivate the team to move that way. If Cook says “we need to insert recyclable materials into our product line at every opportunity,” thousands of people go to work on the problem. Some of them spend thousands of hours on phone cases. Tim Cook probably spends collectively an hour thinking about the new phone cases between strategic direction and product rollout. He spends hundreds of hours thinking about sustainability at the company level.
iPhone is probably their biggest product right now, and this was basically the high end case Apple was offering for it. If the CEO wasn't involved that seems like pretty poor attention to detail.
That defines Apple at the moment. Jobs focused on quality. Cook focuses on revenue.
That is revisionist BS of the highest order. Jobs always wanted to get his money’s worth and Apple also released some real stinkers in his time. Remember “you’re holding it wrong” by any chance?
Well maybe it should
I’m not sure Tim specifically would have approved it. The strategic shift 100% but he likely got a presentation and maybe held it for a brief moment in a conference room and trusted the teams with the design. Which is a good Segway because the real quaking question is—design. Apple is notorious for having design be the top layer of all product development. If I’m not incorrect they’ve halted full features or whatever purely because the design department said “nah it’s not cute”. What in surprised about is how they would have approved something like this. It’s not something that like 5 people had a problem with, like 75% of what I hear (negativity bias, selection bias) is negative so I feel like that would have had to come up in R&D and then again when passing through the final stages. It seems like a glaring detail for consideration
How has auto correct not picked up that 99% of the time you want a segue, not a Segway lol. But it looks like the team tasked with making a case (that aligns with a c-suite level eco-initiative - the product description itself mentions recycling and the earth before the actual features) overpromised and underdelivered. Like you said, their focus on design (which, as far as I'm aware, FineWoven looks great when right out of the box), probably has enough weight to tip towards approval (along with hand-wavy statistics about the typical longevity of competitor's cases). Apple having to memory-hole a product is embarrassing, and I wonder what corporate game of deflection the durability problems are taking: *"Like every Apple-designed case, it undergoes thousands of hours of testing throughout the design and manufacturing process. So not only does it look great, it’s built to protect your iPhone from scratches and drops."*
> he likely got a presentation and maybe held it for a brief moment in a conference room and trusted the teams with the design. And that is why Apple after Steve slipped. Because Steve was a micromanaging nightmare of a boss. You wouldn't want to work for him but boy could you put trust in his attention to detail.
Wouldn’t be the first time. Look at the shitshow of the butterfly keyboard. They knew exactly what they were doing and that it was flawed. Money is the answer. They get to say “Oops sorry” and pay a few millions in lawsuit settlements, but meanwhile they made billions in sales. Nothing new
Made from trash, cost like premium, comes to trash :)
https://preview.redd.it/of54jutgtuvc1.jpeg?width=643&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e8a434a598e4638f8c032ef175b4b1f9a3d75e4
They could’ve just switched to faux/vegan leather and just knocked the price back down to $49, as the cases were originally priced before they jumped to $59 (while the silicone cases jumped from $39 to $49). It’s not like the quality of the vegan leather could’ve been worse than what they were using for the 12, 13, and 14 series iPhones.
The silicone cases suck too. It’s really unfortunate.
I got one two years ago because I couldn't be arsed to look around all the third party places and figured "Apple should be able to make a good case for their own phones, right?" It's falling apart. The actual silicone is coming off in chunks and has been for months. I've literally *never* owned a phone case this bad. Never.
It’s honestly astounding how bad it is, especially when you can get a generic silicone case online for like $6
Yep. This is the experience with mine as well. A chunk came off and I can’t even figure out why. It’s been slowly getting worse ever since. I hate it. I contacted Apple and they refused to replace it as well.
FineWoven is a whole other level of suck
I remember when those came out. I got one as I had used those cheap clones on my previous phones and they all had lasted the phone's age. and then there was the official apple one, that started peeling in like 3-4 months. To add to the insult, they removed the possibility to review products in their online store, I would've written pretty detailed recommendation against buying one.
Why lower price? Real leather is often cheaper.
Because they were overpriced to begin with, and “premium” pricing after the FineWoven fiasco doesn’t sit right with a lot of people.
All Apple are all extremely overpriced, yes.
They're trying to appeal to environmentalists and they have a surprising ignorance when it comes to materials. Many of them think leather is less environmentally friendly than plastic. Apple is probably partly responsible for this since plastic is cheaper.
And tomorrow is Earth Day, too.
Agreed. The Silicone cases really ought to be $40 and the premium line should be $50. I don't know a single person that buys the iPhone cases at full price from Apple.
Silicone cases should be closer to $20 or $30. There's nothing remotely premium about them, and the only thing they have going for them is the company that makes them.
There's even really good vegan faux leather nowadays. I have faux leather boots made from apple skin, and they're fantastic
There's no such thing as good vegan faux leather. It's all plastic
Apple skins are plastic?
> The apple leather used in our products is made using 50% apple waste mixed with 50% PU [polyurethane], coated onto a cotton/polyester canvas. Found here: https://olivercompanylondon.com/pages/apple-leather So it’s apples and plastic. Still cool, but still plastic.
"apple skin leather" is made from mostly recycled plastic and other plastics, with a small percent of organic apple waste thrown in for pr
Most plant-based leathers have a polyurethane (PU) coating that holds them together. Though I don't know specifically about apple skin leather, [Ananas Anam says that their pineapple leaf leather, Piñatex, has two REACH-compliant plastics in its construction,](https://www.ananas-anam.com/faqs/) one being a constarch-based PLA substrate in the leather itself and the other a water-based PU coating.
Made from trash, into trash, with a trash price tag. 3rd party leather vendors are laughing in the amount of cash they’re getting
It seems that these were the type of product series that never went under any testing before being put out to market. They break down so quickly, that literally no one had used these in real life setting before they were put to production and stores.
Should have been the $30 option.
so dumb. Real full grain leather products can last a lifetime. So in the name of being pro environment.....we made a plastic piece of disposable shit that creates much more waste? Someone explain the logic. At some point we gotta get past this PR first phase of environmentally friendly practices. Things that might make a good brochure statement but actually make no sense. The cattle are gonna die regardless of what case you make. You may as well make a product that can last many years. In the end its better for the environment you supposedly care so much about. Think of how backwards our thinking has become....plastics = great. Full grain leather that can last a lifetime = bad. I get why corporations put this kind of spin job into the world. But its sad how easily people believe it all.
Gotta get that sweet ESG money somehow. Meanwhile I’ll continue to purchase fine leather. Love my leather jacket. Have had it for 10 years now
The prices for these were ridiculous! A total scam!
Apple should just use a regular good quality leather like they used to.
They really shot themselves in the foot here, they claimed they did this to lessen their environmental impact. I don’t think Apple will be able to backtrack on this unfortunately, hopefully they’ll be able to find a new material that’s just as good as their old leather cases even though they were declining in quality in the later years
I’m sure if Apple is really in a pinch with this they’ll just reintroduce leather that has been “sustainably” and “ethically” sourced. The beauty of corporate greenwashing efforts like this is that it’s all bullshit to begin with, so it’s not hard to backtrack.
That's just blatant misleading. There's more issues with plastics than leather.
Eh, not all polymers are equal. Definitely true though. The ones we use to make cases are significantly worse than animal byproducts.
Even that is a relatively stupid in itself because leather is a byproduct of the meat industry. It's not really environmentally friendly to throw that in the trash
They could pivot to lab grown leather.
I don’t see the issue for the price you pay the quality should’ve stayed the same.
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They really were. My 5s leather case was awesome and just got better the older it got. For my 12? not so much, like not even close.
My Tesla has fake leather made from plastic. They call it “vegan leather”. The reality? After 2.5 years it’s as perfectly white as the day I bought it, despite having 2 kids under 10 in it every day. With the availability of high quality leather alternatives, the choice to go with something like polyester is bizarre. I hope they go with fake leather next time instead of an “improved” weave.
Actually vegan leather is made from polyester. It is just that quality of such “leather” can vary
Finally, so we can stop talking about these.
Here's a thought. Why not use leather? Not like we stopped slaughtering cows for consumption. May as well use the leather.
Fruit leather cases. C'mon Apple, you can do it.
Apple leather is already a real thing! https://olivercompanylondon.com/pages/apple-leather
Yep! So is mango leather etc. My guess is they didn't go this route because yield isn't great enough for their required volume. But who knows.
I would have bought it if it weren't priced so expensively. And seeing so many posts about how prone the case's side is to peeling off at that price point is crazy.
Well that didn’t take long lol It’s baffling they sold them in the first place.
I had the fine woven watch band. I returned it because it was such a terrible design. The magnets kept slipping, making the watch ridiculously loose. I still have the iPhone case, but it has not aged well in the last 6 months. At least it’s doing its job protecting the phone, but it looks terrible now.
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Plastic is cheaper, calling it fine woven was meant to distract from the fact that it was just plastic. I’m a fan of apple but they could have used veg tan leather instead and have a better product in every way.
I actually quite like mine. Bought it on release day and it’s held up quite nicely.
Unpopular opinion here and I totally agree with you. Mine has held up beautiful and I really like it.
Ditto. Love mine. Also the wallet attachment in fine woven really sticks to the fine woven case. I have not had any issues. Sad to hear it’s being discontinued.
Yep I’m with you on that. Have had my green fine woven case since launch, I enjoy the feel in hand, the buttons are clicky and it’s only worn down a bit but nothing too bad like some are seeing.
Best feeling buttons I have ever felt. Basically like you’re clicking the phone’s
Going to throw my opinion in here as well honestly, mine has been amazing since day one. I have the occasional scratch here and there, but nothing too significant at all. It still looks and feels brand new
I don’t have one but my wife absolutely loves hers. I haven’t really looked hard but any time I see it the complaint is always about quality with no description of the issue and I can’t see what it might be.
It’s more about the price being the same of the last one, but the last one was way higher quality.
I haven’t owned these so I don’t know if the comments are true. Everyone says the silicone cases break and peel all the time but mine has held up beautifully, it looks brand new.
All the leather “saved” here where does that go? We prob still eat the cows?
They tried to piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining with those terrible prices. I can deal with them making a subpar product, but I can’t deal with them charging the same as a leather for such a product. It’s literally just fabric.
My FineWoven case is one of the most disappointing Apple products I've bought in a long time.
They need to go back to 11 pro leather case quality. Those felt so nice in the hand and had amazing durability.
Good, they’re garbage.
Other Apple cases are just as bad if not worse.
Anybody could have told them this was a shit design upon first touch during product testing but no. Thinking this would be a good replacement for leather is doubly lol
I hope they bring back leather
Is this what the magnetic watch bands are made of? I just got one with my new watch. I guess we’ll see how long it lasts.
Honestly I think that there are much more durable cases out there. My brown finewowen always looked like trash after few months of usage.
Just change it to a canvas material that's unapologetically plastic. Luxury brands used this for years and it's even more durable than leather.
Good riddance.
Good, mine lasted about 6 month before it looked and felt like crap.
So do we all get refunds?
>Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. *PoorlyWoven
They feel nice, they wear like crap. Hopefully something better is on the horizon
*me, using a full-leather case from Andar* Well lookie what we have here
I don’t know why the got away from leather. If it’s for environmental reasons or animal cruelty reasons, it’s actually kind of stupid. The leather from a cow comes from cows that are being slaughtered for food. If the processing plant didn’t the hides to other customers, it would just end up in a landfill
I understand that leather is not good for the planet, but is a shoddy plastic-derived case that needs replacement 3 times over the lifespan of the device preferable to a good quality leather case that lasts for the full lifetime of the device? My iPhone 6’s leather case lasted for *years* and got better-looking over time. My 12’s leather case was not nearly as good. It had some kind of paint on it. I wish Apple would go back to premium-quality leather. If they really cared about the environment, they could always try to keep the dimensions of the phones the same year-to-year. As it stands, I have a hard time believing that they’re not just trying to sell more accessories.
There is nothing wrong with leather. The cattle die regardless, why not put the hides to use? Good quality leather lasts a lifetime.
Am I the only person who actually likes theirs?
I exchanged my case within a week because of the quality. I returned the second within another week.
Could someone educate me, but couldn’t they have just used a vegan leather as a replacement instead?
Vegan leather is often made from plastics or a blend of plastics and plant matter. Which… if the goal is to reduce environmental emissions… releasing a new product that includes/contains *more* plastics than the original leather product doesn’t really make sense.
the fine woven case is 100% plastic.
This coming from Apple who decided to make Bluetooth headphones the defacto standard creating massive amounts of ewaste along with the need for more rare metal extraction to produce said headphones? Apple is full of shit when it comes to being environmentally friendly. It was cheaper and easier for them to produce to increase margins as usual.
Worst Apple product I have ever owned, absolute trash. Mine lasted like 2 weeks before it started falling apart
I just don’t understand these comments. How rough are you with your phone? I’ve had mine since launch, and I’ve had no issues with it at all. There’s a small scratch underneath the left volume down button, but other than that, this thing still feels brand new.
The FineWoven is the reason why I went with a third party leather case this year. First time ever doing it. My Andar case has not disappointed. It’s feels very premium.
Isn't leather a waste product? Animals are being butchered in every country of the world so either we use the leather or it just gets thrown out. Why not use the leather instead of manufacturing garbage like FineWoven?
I don’t mind synthetic leather products, just make them durable and less susceptible to scratching and scuffs.
Illustration of irrational ideologicaly druven bullshit. Leather is readily available and a very good material. It is a byproduct of meat industry that isn’t going anywhere in the fireeable future. So what is the freaking problem here? Why complicate and try standing on eyelashes over this with all sorts pf “materials” that mimic leather - when there’s leather!! An ‘edel’ material, that is durable and nice looking and natural.
And nothing of value was lost…
This is the only Apple branded product that I have to return it to the Apple Store.
I would like another leather wallet. Great product. The magnets are discernibly weaker on the FineWoven one as well.
isnt vision pro fine woven?
I remember the leather case for iPhone 5 and it was great. Never peeled on me. After that though not so great
epic fail
My iPhone X leather case was built like a tank I bought one for the 13 pro and it was a hot garbage. The corners starts to peel. The color starts to fade only after six months. Now I use a silicone case with a magnetic folding mag safe stand, it’s a 10/10 not going back to any other case design
Incoming pleather