If you could just walk into an Apple store and buy the original, Apple-endorsed battery at a fair price there would be no reason to go with third-party (and potentially unsafe) batteries.
I'm a bit curious how you came to that conclusion the price was "fair". Did you compare it to the prices of others providing the service?
In other words, if I were to do this elsewhere, I would need to buy the battery, ship it, and pay someone (or perform the task myself) to do the replacement. The $199 price seemed entirely reasonable, especially as this was in California at the time.
I think the price seems "outrageous" only if you ignore the costs of labor, shipping and taxes.
Those alternatives?
I would love to be able to pay Apple just for the battery and do it myself, but I don’t know many people that want to learn how (even though it’s very simple).
This is where I get torn about how angry I should be...
I feel like Right to Repair laws should (exist in the US in the first place...) require that wear items be made available on their own. Not as an expensive assembly, not requiring authorized repairs when out of warranty, and not being DRMed. I think that certain classes of items should always be considered wear items- batteries, for instance.
However, at a certain point regulation (in the US at least) tends to either be SO broad or specific as to become regulatory capture for the incumbents or basically toothless.
On the other hand here, Apple is giving users a viable, quality option at what could be deemed a reasonable price.
To be clear, I’m not patting them on the back- I’m sure lawsuits forced their hand, they’re still making money, and they’re protecting their brand.
I guess the point I’m trying to get across is that it sucks that my options are battery of unknown origin which can have literal catastrophic implications or paying a non-inconsequential amount of money to repair a piece of equipment that is likely important to one’s daily life.
Of course, the manufacturer could design them to not be replaceable. But it's not a requirement that structural elements are nonreplaceable.
You want a laptop with a replaceable battery, I want one that's as thin as possible while still doing the job. Good thing you can buy a ThinkPad and I can buy a MacBook!
How is it environmentally friendly to have to glue in a consumable part?
How is it safe that you can't just remove it when it's damaged?
Adding to those regulations is exactly what I'm suggesting.
Although the repairing quality of Apple Store has gone downhill in recent years, the attention and care they used to put though during repair are no longer there.
I was told they assess the extent of damage and charge based on that, but the whole top assembly is changed in any case (glued). For example, if they believe the keyboard was in good condition, you won't get charged for it (and hence the baseline $200).
In the United States, there are hundreds and hundreds of Apple authorized repair stores that have access to genuine Apple batteries. But this is not always true in other places, which leads to the HN echo chamber of "evil Apple is forcing obsolescence to sell more computers!"
I had a MacBook Air done at one of these this party authorized repair shops last year, and it cost the same as getting it done from Apple, itself: $129.