This seems like a reasonable point, until you note that Apple explicitly forbids their manufacturers from selling genuine batteries to anyone. If the issue was simply that Apple didn't want their brand to be tarnished due to low quality third party batteries, they could do what Samsung does and provide public access to their manufacturers so anyone can buy genuine parts.

This is a legit complaint, but none else is. Apple makes better products for their customers by using glue and integrated batteries.

Right to repair should exist, but not at the expense of forcing design changes.

The glue does not make better products. For ages macbooks used a plastic bracket to hold the battery down but now they use glue thats insanely hard to remove. The Dell XPS is a great example of why this is not needed, the battery is still fixed in place with screws and a bracket and the ram is removable while the laptop is slightly thinner than a macbook pro.

The 15" MacBook Pro went from a 50 watt-hour removable battery to a 77.5 watt-hour plastic bracket battery to a 99.5 watt-hour glued in battery (in a thinner chassis). Dell is putting an 86 watt-hour battery in their current XPS 15.

You may not like what Apple is getting out of gluing in their fragile batteries but I certainly appreciate getting as much battery that can be crammed into the laptop using any means necessary in lieu of having an easier time swapping the battery once every three years (which Apple will do for me for basically the cost of a new battery).

I’ve dropped so many MacBooks and never had one break. I’m betting that super hard to remove glue has something to do with it.

It probably has more to do with the move to SSDs and their aluminum chassis. Other than physical destruction of the case and screen there is not much that can go wrong with a dropped laptop.

There is no reason to make that supply chain control mandatory. If I want to risk a third party battery on my phone that’s my business is it not? It’s my phone, it’s my third party battery.

I think the concern is less about “people with DIY skills making informed tradeoffs” and more about “sketchy repair places using poor quality or dangerous batteries”. Then somebody’s phone catches fire on a plane and becomes a PR trainwreck for the phone manufacturer.

I also support right to repair, but I think we should be realistic about the objections and concerns the opposition has.

We've had replaceable batteries for decades prior, and the only time there was a PR nightmare over phones catching fire was when Samsung itself supplied phones with faulty batteries that caught fire .

Otherwise i have never come across a story of this happening, so it seems lime a fantasy scenario thats just used as a talking point.

There have been a lot of stories about iphone chargers catching fire and it ends up being some $1 ali express charger. I still think a companies right to good PR is lower priority than right to repair.

Fun fact, a company has no right to good PR. You're welcome to champion an effort to put a "right to good PR" into law, while the rest of us champion right to repair.

Don't you think it would be better to, for instance, regulate dangerous components instead of preventing me from repairing the device that I own with parts I procure? Wouldn't the world be better off if all parts were good, instead of if companies had the right to look good at all times?

Sure. And while a company has no right to good PR, you currently also have no right to support from manufacturers when repairing products you own. As such, we are discussing new legislation for this ‘right to repair’ where (as with all new legislation) the wants of various parties are relevant because it affects the ability of that legislation to get passed.

You can argue that the wants of multi billion dollar corporations should be irrelevant, but the current political system nonetheless allows their option to carry weight.

> And while a company has no right to good PR, you currently also have no right to support from manufacturers when repairing products you own.

Which is why I'm advocating right to repair legislation, not right to good PR legislation.

With reference to GP: "I still think a companies right to good PR is lower priority than right to repair."

I find it really strange when individuals, against their own interests, advocate for the "rights" of a giant multi-trillion dollar company. Especially silly ones like Apple's right to look good. They can advocate for themselves. Let's look out for us, and let them look out for them. They've already paid lobbyists and lawyers to do so -- why do it for free?

I’m not arguing against R2R - I’m just saying that we should be realistic about the objections and opposition we will face.

I agree 100% with regard to most components but there needs to be a balance with regard to unregulated hazardous parts, such as li-ion batteries.

If your phone explodes in your hand because of something you did to the phone, then that's your problem. If you happen to be on an airliner at the time, however, your exploding phone is suddenly the problem of everyone else on the airliner and everyone the airliner will fall on if it crashes.

Similarly, if you're hiking in wildfire season and your phone explodes, that exploding phone is the problem of everyone in the surrounding area.

Further, not everyone who might want to use a third-party battery will have the know-how to appreciate these risks or appreciate that the civil liability from starting a wildfire will vastly exceed the amount of insurance coverage they could buy. The public needs some degree of protection against these kinds of risks because it's not reasonable to expect average people to understand the full implications of buying a cheaper battery.

It's not in the public interest to have widely-used consumer products randomly exploding, which is why people aren't generally allowed to do things like manufacture their own propane cylinders or gasoline cans. Large lithium batteries are similarly hazardous and should be treated similarly.

I think the ideal solution would be something along the lines of a right to repair combined with mandatory safety standards for lithium batteries. There wouldn't be as much of a safety issue if both OEM and 3rd party batteries were required to pass the same requirements and testing.

Weve had replaceable batteries on laptops and phones for decades, and that was fine somehow. Has either of these scenarios ever happened?

The wildlife scenario is particularly fantastical - people have campfires, they carry gas stoves, torches, guns, drones, cameras (with replaceable batteries!), candles, bikes, and hundreds of other things far more dangerous.

Just another point -> "Anyone in the UK can start a car repair business without needing a certain level of experience or expertise. This is completely legal"

In most places you can repair your own car, buy parts, change breaks, Pour any liquid you want into the petrol tank, or the motor oil compartment. Imagine how dangerous that is!

And people sit here making up contrived scenarios "what if you repair your iphone battery, and then eat the old iphone battery! While on a plane! With a gas leak! With kids nearby!"

In 2016, Samsung's Galaxy S7 phone was the subject of a world-wide ban from aircraft (and eventual product recall) after battery defects caused at least one S7 to catch fire while on an airliner[0].

This is far from the only incident of li-ion batteries exploding on aircraft; indeed the FAA estimated that li-ion batteries exploded at a rate of once every ten days on US-controlled aircraft in 2017[1].

Terrestrial lithium battery fires are at least as frequent[2] and have been far more destructive[3]. Given that litihum battery fires have burned down houses, it's only a matter of luck whether one eventually starts a wildfire or not.

Given the established risks of even OEM lithium batteries, making it easier for the public to use lithium batteries of dubious origin and quality is not prudent.

With specific regard to wildfires, I take it you don't live in an area where wildfires are a serious risk. Open flames and other sources of ignition, including cigarettes, vehicles, and camp stoves are banned in wildlands during fire season. If cell phones exploded more regularly, they would, by necessity, be added to the list of prohibited items.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37570100

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/whats-behind-...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-07/lithium-batteries-in-...

[3] https://loudounnow.com/2020/08/23/faulty-lithium-ion-battery...

You've demonstrated that this is a significant issue, but to impose any restrictions on the user you should be trying to demonstrate that unreplaceable OEM batteries are significantly safer, you are proving the opposite! Your example is of a major OEM screwup does not help your case!

For decades batteries were replaceable, and now they are not. If it were true that OEM are more responsible with batteries, then we should have seen a massive decline in lithium battery caused fires. We seem to be observing the opposite?

Maybe rigid replaceable batteries, lile the ones found in cameras, are actually safer and better protected!

Secondly if this is a genuine safety solution, then it should deal with laptops, cameras, electric bikes, drones and other devices that have much larger batteries and which are user-replaceable, and where they have to be.

Thirdly, an unreplaceable battery turns a durable good into a throw-away device. Then it becomes e-waste and might kill more people through lead poisoning than it ever could from a minor fire.

> Samsung's Galaxy S7 phone was the subject of a world-wide ban from aircraft

No, it wasn't. That was Galaxy Note 7, which was a different phone.

(I still own and use a S7, btw.)

That couldn't be further from the point.

What if the corner repair store does it? It's still the user's problem, but this time it's just because they went to a non-Apple store/non-Apple certified store. If the battery is defective, that becomes Apple's problem when it swells, starts smoking, or has 50% capacity within a year.

> but this time it's just because they went to a non-Apple store/non-Apple certified store. If the battery is defective, that becomes Apple's problem when it swells, starts smoking, or has 50% capacity within a year.

The user chose to go to a non-Apple certified store. After that, there is no warranty and Apple is no longer responsible.

Except we don't live in Fantasy World.

Here in the Real World, Apple is responsible and would be held responsible and would suffer reputation damage if a device exploded, regardless of details that might be reported later about whether a substandard part or non-Apple repair caused it.

Apple must prove any damage happened because of the third party battery or its installation. I know you're probably assuming the battery is bad or explodes, but the nuance is important as the manufacturer warranty and their obligation to sell working devices is not abrogated by repairing it yourself.

My right to be able to swap out batteries on devices is more important than Apple's reputation.

Even genuine batteries fail, if your device can't cope (eg shutdown) with batteries with low current/voltage then it's defective.

Then it's a case of testing the battery is providing the right current/voltage and continuing.

iPhones at least can cope with defective batteries, by throttling the processor, so presumably other companies can do the same and just not try to hide it from users.

Can't they control the quality of external or replaceable batteries in exactly the same way?

> Come on, it doesn’t take much effort to think of the benefits of controlling the quality of batteries that are put in the devices.

Nobody's barring Apple / John Deere to provide the replacement parts.

You don't have to solder and glue batteries to control what gets put in the device. Supply chain control has zero to do with this practice.

> Supply chain control has zero to do with this practice.

This is a completely separate issue—I don’t know Apple’s rationale for this practice.

The issue we’re talking about is whether there are reasons to do it at all, and I still think there are obvious benefits for customers to making it difficult to put defective or dangerous batteries in their devices.

(Just to reiterate, as a technical consumer I’d prefer to be able to swap batteries myself. But I get the tradeoffs that Apple is making, and whether they make sense or not for a given company is a complicated decision that I don’t feel qualified to judge.)