Have gaskets really been forgotten for technical reasons or were they quietly smothered when the planned obsolescence benefits of potting entered the industry's consciousness?

When my kids' lunch container gaskets leak, I have to throw the lunchbox in the wash.

When my iPhone's leak, I'm out potentially $1500.

There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to.

Of course, if you let your kid reassemble either your power train or your $1500 iPhone without supervision, the results will be exactly as you describe, but also entirely your own damn fault.

> There are a dozen gaskets along your car's power train that will set you back multiple times that amount if they fail, yet they don't and you trust them not to.

For that reason, I maintain precisely zero of them myself.

Regardless of whether or not you do the repairs yourself, you reap the benefits of the design as some combination of longer life, lower repair bills, and higher resale value.

Apple's pricing for a battery replacement - which I've never needed, and I tend to keep my devices for about three years - is about the same as the price of a new battery from a third-party vendor, and it comes from installation. I've had to replace two screens, and Apple's price is the same as the mall kiosk - and it'll be first-party parts, maintain the warranty, and my fingerprint sensor will still work right.

Apple devices (both laptops and phones) have a dramatically higher resale value than others, so that bit of your argument baffles me.

I was talking about your car.

The reason why apple offers those services is because it has competition. If they figure out how to make third party repair intractable, you can expect a full reversion to the "screw you, buy a new device" state of affairs.

Nah, the modern silicone gaskets will hold waterproof to low pressure even with imperfect seal, and you can detect that with a cheap impedance sensor.

(Obviously telling the user that water proofing is compromised and that they need to retry attaching whatever they tried to attach or replace it.)