There's a difference between pursuing thinness in R&D and releasing a thin product that cannot be repaired in the field.

True story: the other day I was on a trip when my wife's Macbook Air started to rock back and forth on the surface it was sitting on. The battery had failed. It was still working, i.e. providing power, but it had started to bulge. (This turns out to be a known problem.) There was so much pressure that the keyboard and bottom case were visibly deformed. But it was impossible for me to open the case and get the battery out because I didn't have the right pentalobe screwdriver with me. Fortunately, we were able to find a Mac repair shop that was able to get the battery out before it caught fire or exploded. (But we were very lucky. We do a lot of traveling to places that lack this kind of infrastructure.)

What they were not able to do was recycle the battery because they didn't have a replacement, so they could not open an official repair ticket. So we had to take the bad battery, still fully charged despite being blown up like a balloon, with us on an airplane so we could take it home and dispose of it properly.

It's perfectly fine if Apple wants to offer products like this for people who want to trade off volume for field-repairability. What irks me is that Apple no longer offers any choice in this. My choices today are non-repariable, or Windows (or Linux, but that is not a viable option for my non-geek wife). Those are pretty sucky choices.

> So we had to take the bad battery, still fully charged despite being blown up like a balloon, with us on an airplane so we could take it home and dispose of it properly.

That was incredibly dangerous and put everyone on the airplane at risk. You didn't have to take it.

I am well aware of that, and it was not a decision I made lightly. FWIW, it was several days between removing the battery and the flight, and I monitored it closely to make sure it wasn't continuing to expand or throwing off any heat. But the alternative would have been to throw it in the trash, and that had risks of its own.

Throwing it out would have been preferable although almost every municipality has proper waste disposal facilities to take it.

I don't think you understand just how dangerous these things are in an airplane.

I'm a pilot. I understand it quite well.

I choose to believe you actually don't know the risks becaues the alternative is that you are a terrible human being.

It seems vastly more likely that you simply don't understand that you risked everyones lives.

If you really feel the need to think ill of me then I am not going to stand in your way, but please consider the possibility that I really do understand and that I took appropriate precautions. (You might even think to ask me about those before passing judgement.) Also, you should keep in mind that lithium batteries can catch fire with no warning signs at all, so just because your laptop battery hasn't swollen up is no guarantee that it is safe. Have you ever taken a laptop on a plane? Does that make you a terrible person who risked everyone's lives?

Lithium batteries contain safety systems that become compromised when the part is mechanically deformed. A damaged battery is significantly more dangerous than an undamaged one (although undamaged batteries aren't really safe either). As the Li-Ion batteries contain their own oxidizer a fire caused by one is extremely difficult to contain.

There are no FAA approved ways to transport damaged Lithium batteries that I'm aware of - but since your a pilot perhaps you could enlighten?

> Lithium batteries contain safety systems that become compromised when the part is mechanically deformed.

Reference?

> There are no FAA approved ways to transport damaged Lithium batteries that I'm aware of

Then you haven't done your homework. The official rules are here:

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&SID=bba5ad065...

And the version distilled for public consumption is here:

https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/hazmat_safety/more_inf...

There is no distinction made between damaged and undamaged batteries unless the battery has been recalled.

A user replaceable battery isn't free:

1. It restricts the size of the battery

Lithium polymer batteries can be molded and shaped to fill up all available space inside the case. A replaceable battery can't be shaped to nearly that degree. Making a battery user-replaceable means it must be smaller.

2. It doubles-up the case

There is no way you can legally sell a product with an unprotected Lithium battery, especially not one that is laptop-sized. It would be a massive safety hazard. You need an internal case for the computer and an entirely separate case for the battery. That takes up space and adds weight. It also further restricts your ability to shape the battery to fill the available space (meaning the battery must be smaller or the case must be larger).

--

There is no magic in battery technology. We aren't going to wake up one day and have computers as light as a piece of paper that last all day. It requires constant iteration and improvement. If everyone listened to naysayers it would greatly slow down the pace of innovation. I am absolutely certain there are still people out there angry about the removal of RS-232 serial ports or VGA ports on laptops. Probably a few still upset about removing floppy drives too.

Actually the MBA battery is quite easy to replace. I did my own replacement when I got home. The only real obstacle is the pentalobe screws, and I don't see any possible argument that those add value for the consumer.

> Pushing for a smaller laptop made possible the iPhone

When the iPhone came out, this was the 13" MB you'd get: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook-cor...

Compared to a whole slew of Ultrabooks, and other 13" laptops which were smaller. I'm not sure how you get that Apple's drive for smaller laptops made the iPhone possible (given that it's form factor, LG Pradas, etc., were also quite widely available at the same time) - I don't see the size innovation here that you seem to be.