> Why is it not the same issue?

Because the design choices are pretty easily argued to have been made for reasons other than reducing user access, but have the side effect of reducing user access. Both size/weight constraints and case integrity drive you to the same sort of thing.

To be clear, I think it's fine to call out a company for planned obsolescence, and I think it's fine to call them out for emphasizing size, etc. over user serviceability. I just don't think it's useful to pretend they are the same thing.

They don’t prevent users from replacing the battery. I’ve done it myself.

For many devices the devices themselves are glued making the process of just opening the case interesting and then require near complete disassembly to remove the battery.

So what? That doesn’t prevent changing the batteries. I have done it myself, and Apple will do it too, as in fact do many third parties.

At minimum when a device opens up and swapping the battery takes 10 seconds near everyone does it themselves. As difficulty increases the propensity of users able to afford to do so trends towards zero. Imagine if a battery costs $200 and requires $100 in labor. If the cost at purchase is 400 and the value at end of warranty is $200 zero people will ever make use of this service and every device becomes trash after the battery wears out.

Artificially inflating cost of parts can trivially be used to enforce planned obsolescence.

> Artificially inflating cost of parts can trivially be used to enforce planned obsolescence.

It could, but nobody has presented any evidence that Apple is doing this, and their business strategy is openly stated to involve increasing the lifetime of their devices, so that they can deliver services to more users, so this is just innuendo.

> nobody has presented any evidence that Apple is doing this

Simply compare the cost of official Apple service and corrsponding third-party service.

That is not evidence of anything. There are many reasons that third party service is cheaper that have nothing to do with some conspiracy by Apple.

AFAIK the price difference is so huge that no reasonable explanation (except the "conspiracy", i.e., greed) is possible.

I’d be curious to see your statistics on the price differences. Do you have a link?

Here are some reasonable explanations for how third parties cut costs without resort to a conspiracy:

1. Less warranty on repairs.

2. Lower cost substitute parts.

3. Lower quality control,

4. Less training for staff.

5. Lower profit margins, leading to unsustainable businesses.