It had 50+ absolutely tiny screws, requiring a 000 Phillips head, probably about the size of the little ones in iPhone 6s, but all about 2mm long.

Can confirm. I ended up bringing a car to the dealer to replace a certain light bulb because it was not possible for me to put my man-sized hand through the metal hole to reach the bulb area. Fortunately, the dealer did it for free.

But that's apparently not the case here:

> If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, replace the top case

> If you can’t retrieve the rest of the strip, forcefully remove the battery by jamming a pry tool under it.

This is what other people do when those strips break. This is a service manual, not a binding contract. You can choose to service your device differently if you feel inclined to do so.

The solution was a slightly more expensive $15 piece of metal and $700 in labor.

If you look at how new appliances are made with difficult to replace electronics which ought to be trivially replaceable for cheap if you weren't getting bent over by the manufacturer you might begin to notice a pattern.

Manufacturers are saving their pennies at the expense of hardware that fails outside of warranty and makes them $100 bills for their trouble of doing a bad job in the first place.

Their is little reason to build to last when bad work pays dividends in the long run.

The Tesla story for those who didn't catch it originally.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a...

Heck we still live in a world where some cars with interference engines use timing belts instead of chains. Repair that 20 belt wrong and you will indeed need a whole engine, and that assumes your got to it before it broke and ruined your engine for you.

Apple isn't going to recommend you forcefully remove a LiPo, but you're free to do so if you want to do that instead.

Get a short in a wiring harness? The service manual for your car will almost certainly recommend replacing the entire harness which is a very labor intensive and expensive procedure. Will mechanics do this? Depends on which shop you're at and who is paying.

If there are multiple ways to solve a problem, an official service manual will typically list the safest and most repeatable solution. Rarely do they list any alternatives to this.

Apple has the resources to fix this. They choose to actively neglect it, since they have a very successful side-business dedicated to replacing your iDevices at-cost.

In that case should they provided detailed instructions on removal where that risks destroying the engine or at least the heads?

If I was following the shop manual and I broke a head bolt off in my engine block I would take it to a machine shop, but I wouldn’t expect the auto maker to provide instructions to remove a broken head bolt.

Automakers have been known to replace entire engines for recalls involving only one part of the engine, when they have concerns about one of the above factors.