The spin, I feel, is that somehow being able to replace one's batteries is bad. Whereas having an iPhone with degraded performance and an expensive-to-replace battery is good.
You "bought a spare because you could" and "now it sits, waiting for you to recycle it", thus creating waste, but one can argue that anyone buying stuff they don't need creates waste, and that being able to replace one's phone battery isn't about saving the environment but saving one's hard-earned money.
Second, user-replaceable batteries don't come for free. They come with a series of trade-offs. Small increases in cost, space, even weight. If you plan to keep your phone for more than 2 years, user-replaceable will be more important to you than if you intend to replace every 2 years.
I remember when I switched to MacBook Pros from my Dell laptops. I had two flights a week that were about 5 hours each. I had to buy an extra laptop battery and charger so my Dell would last the entire flight. And sometimes I'd forget to charge both batteries and I'd be back to a dead laptop halfway through the flight.
Then I read the reviews of these new MBPs that lasted 7-8 hours instead of 5 hours, that used sealed batteries. I switched and my new MBP worked like a charm, easily lasting the entire flight every time. One big reason Apple made that advance was entirely because they abandoned removable batteries. They were able to fit more battery using a custom form factor that would have been super expensive to make removable. No one had done this as well before, because Apple was the first to implement good embedded battery conditioning software so they would last a couple years without needing replacement.
Sealed batteries aren't always better, but they typically are for most users and use cases.
Why speculate on a tech forum, when these things are easy to find out? Just look at the battery specs for both machines.
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/ is ~ 55 Watt/hr
A few random dells I looked up
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13/spd/xps-1...
60Watt/hr
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/alienware-13/spd...
76Watt/hr
Clearly, it seems to be the opposite. After using all kinds of laptops, the main benefits of Apple laptops AFAICT is that they don't come with pre-installed bullshit, they're easier to test because they only come in like 5 varieties, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands combinations that Windows has to deal with, and that OSX can be easier to use, for some users. I would recommend apple to any non-technical user for sure. I personally have never found apple hardware to be any different than other brands. I'm still using my Sony laptop from 2011 and its just as fast and rock-solid as the day I purchased it. As an aside, Microsoft doesn't usually cripple their popular software (Office, Visual studio, etc) so that it requires the latest OS, unlike Apple which forces you on the upgrade treadmill - sure, its free, but you also don't have a choice. YMMV ofcource.
OK, I’ll play. How thick are those laptops? How heavy are those laptops? How does their battery life compare?
And review this so you have some basic technical knowledge and understanding of history.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/2783/apple-s-2009-macbook-pro...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/2783/apple-s-2009-macbook-pro...
No, your claim was that making batteries non serviceable means you have more room for a larger battery. It doesn't seem to be the case now. You are welcome to point to an example from the year that you purchased your laptop.
I don't care about popping a lid off every three years; swappable batteries, to me, is nonsense. What makes me irate though is a) the fact that they're downright glued when they could be held in place by other, readily serviceable means†, and b) in 2013-2015 I could code/compile stuff and still have a sizable portion of the best-case battery life, while today the battery size is dwindling, compensated by enhanced power management to maintain the "10 hour" figure, but it falls apart under any load that does not involve browsing or watching some hardware-decoded video. We should be shooting for 20, 30, 40 hours of use on battery, not the current "good enough" status quo.
† Clips, double sided tape, whatever. If it's a problem to not use glue then it's a worthy engineering challenge to use some goo that comes off easily. The current glue situation is a lazy copout, it's Steve Jobs's "plywood on the back".
Agree with the rest of your comment.
[the XPSs is easier than MBP & Alienware, but you’re still disassembling things]
7 years later, Dell seems to have captured the same gains.
At present, Apple’s main battery life win is macOS.
But any repair shop could do that for you. You're not forced to go to a single vendor who can set arbitrary prices.
>At present, Apple’s main battery life win is macOS.
Yes, I would agree with that.
I was speaking more to the anti-repair/replace design from Apple (also others).
If you’re not in warranty, they don’t do anything to force you to go to them. The only difference is that going to Apple is easy, due to their retail stores.
It has been getting difficult with TSA, though.
I'm still enjoying my 3-year-old non-iPhone, and intend to keep using it until it stops working entirely, whereas my spouse with an iPhone was already voicing suspicion before this announcement that Apple was intentionally slowing their old iPhone through updates, just to provoke an upgrade. With the announcement, I can't fault the reasoning.
How much of the used market for iPhones are devices that had been traded in (because slowed by Apple due to old battery), refurbished by the mobile phone company (probably just to replace the battery and reset it to factory settings), and then resold to people whose older model refurbished iPhone now needs yet another new battery? That generates an additional sale of an entire old iPhone, whereas other phones would only generate a sale of a replacement battery at that time.
I think you would probably have to look at what mobile phone customers are actually using, right now.
The used market for iPhones on Craigslist is actual users. The market is very strong, and so is the resale value of iPhones. There is one (1) explanation for this: iPhones hold their value better because they are more useful for a longer time.
As an aside, iPhones also remain able to run the latest version of iOS for roughly TWICE as long as Android phones.
There is no competition, here.
That iPhones retain their value over time is a testament to the fact that Apple has not been slowing down old iPhones to make you upgrade (this conspiracy theory predates iOS 10.2.1 by many years).
Have you examined the reasons why iPhone owners sell their older iPhones, and why people buy refurbished used iPhones?
Not at all. It's a testament that there is a market for old iPhones, that is all. People are possibly buying used iPhones despite them being slowed down.
> Apple actually has an incentive to create the longest lasting iPhone because the economics of the iPhone Upgrade Plan and every carrier upgrade plan depends on it.
Then why don't they? <5 years for an electronic device that hasn't seen any significant upgrades in later models is absurdly short.
Just as we can use the price of iOS zero-day exploits in the black market as a proxy for how secure iOS has become over the years, we can also look at the resale market for iPhones.
That is not true, nor has it ever been for phones or cars. People buy each for all kinds of reasons: status symbols, ideals, etc. iPhones demonstrably do not retain their value as demonstrated by this battery fiasco.
After-Market value != quality
The spinsters are deliberately confusing "lifespan" with "resale value".
I realize I'm responding to someone arguing in bad faith. But lifespan directly influences the resale value.
The iPhone is a well-made phone which would have greater lifespan if the batteries were replaceable.
As it is, users who bought an older iPhone now have to pay middle-men to replace the battery or face degraded performance.
iPhone users buy iPhones because they wanted the best in class functionality, if they wanted to save money they'd buy a phone with a replaceable battery.
Also we've had this debate for years already when Apple went to unibody Macbooks. The reliability and battery life only increased because of the better structural integrity and increased room for battery cells.
The issue is not creating waste, but wasting one's money on middle-men for replacing one's phone batteries.
>I know every TV remote I've owned with a battery door eventually ends up with a rubber band around it, and I think that's pretty much a universal experience.
You're relating a supposedly personal story to make your spin claims more relatable. Maybe you're like the people in late-night TV commercials who seemingly can't open a can of tomatoes without massive bleeding? ;)
Well I could say I'm spending that money on having a nicer phone that's sealed and seamless, rather than wasting it.
It's quite obvious that it's a waste of money to pay middle-men to perform basic service on it for stuff a user can do at home with any other phone.
i would wager that their post was trying to highlight that.
That would be odd! Which is why that's not what I said.
I said that the received benefit in return for having to pay for the batter to be replaced was 'a nicer phone'. I like the single form of the iPhone.
Your original reply was you got a "nicer phone that's sealed and seamless". Apple innovated the smartphone_without_user_replaceable_battery. So I am asking you, would you not prefer to have the choice of having a similar smartphone (with pretty much all the benefits of the iPhone) but then _with_ a user replaceable battery?
You know what the beauty of such a device is? We wouldn't need this silly discussion. You'd just buy a new battery from Apple and be done with it. But for some magic reason, Apple is doing it different again.