Imagine a car with a gas tank that shrinks over time, and whose top speed drops accordingly.

Imagine that some cars allow the gas tank to be changed by the user. But this one doesn't.

Imagine the company that makes the car never mentions the shrinkage or the gradual reduction in top speed, and has no program or system that allows you to fix this - beyond buying a newer car.

>Imagine the company that makes the car never mentions the shrinkage or the gradual reduction in top speed, and has no program or system that allows you to fix this - beyond buying a newer car. They'll replace the battery for you, or there are a ton of 3rd party places that'll do it.

Car producer must by law provide spare parts for 10 years. It should be per law that the battery is exchangeable.

Besides the fact that car/device analogies are always flawed, yours is approaching it from the wrong angle in the first place. The "tank" is the physical battery, and we "refill" it by recharging it. Apple wouldn't stop its users from recharging the phone, that would be insane.

To try to salvage your analogy, I'll put forth an anecdote. Last year I restored my deceased father's 1988 Bronco II. One of the issues it had was low fuel pressure, which I narrowed down to the in-tank fuel pump (the Bronco was over-engineered and had two pumps, one in the tank and one on the frame). It wasn't able to push fuel fast enough for the engine to run at top performance. Sound familiar? So I had two choices, replace it myself or take it to a shop, kind of like how you can attempt to replace your phone's battery if you know what you're doing, or take it to a repair shop and let a pro do it for a fee. I'm a competent shadetree mechanic, so I did it myself and saved a few hundred dollars, and it is back to normal operation again.

And yet, in this analogy, you can refill/recharge the tank/battery. And if your tank/battery becomes faulty, you can replace the tank/battery. Just like reality :-)