Apple will replace the 95Whr battery in a Retina MacBook Pro for $200[4]. $30 more than Dell charges for a similar-capacity battery, but this does include labor and the MPB gets 7+ hours of life with it[5].
I do not believe your assertion of "exorbitant fees" is supportable.
[1] http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/precision-m4600/fs
[2] http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&l=...
[3] http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6400&re...
[4] http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/
[5] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/retina-macbook-pro-maxi...
* For one, choosing a "random laptop off of Dell's small business" is not the equivalent of a MBP.
* Second, your choice of power benchmark is ridiculous. FTA: "Before we mention the battery life of the Precision M4600, it's important to point out that our review unit came equipped with the Intel Core i7-2920XM Extreme Edition processor." And based on the source's graph[1] they are dead last by a significant amount. Are you sure you chose this "randomly?"
* Third, choosing a laptop slightly more comparable, hell, even if it's not as comparable, will yield significantly better battery life. The ThinkPad Edge [2] ranges from 7.4-5.7 hours; The T series can go up to 16 hours on a 9-cell battery [3] and the X series with up to 23 hours.
* As for price, Lenovo is near the same price range at around $179/9-cell battery.
The word "exorbitant" may not be completely qualified here, but the prices are neither decent nor cheap.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/Ucep7.png -- Don't want to take their bandwidth.
(Shortened lenovo links below since they were really big. No referral nonsense in there, I promise.)
This is a critical factor -- if the Apple battery is $200 (installed professionally) vs $170 (parts only), and lasts significantly longer, it becomes more interesting of a comparison. But only if it lasts longer.
Also, Apple displays cycles used in system info, while finding similar information in Windows is not as easy. I know Apple is willing to replace batteries that die before their advertised cycle count is up, but I haven't heard of that behavior being common with competition.
I'm not claiming that Apple is better, not at all. Heck, comparing laptops between brands is difficult anyway, considering that Apple owns the >$1000 market and it's competition does the majority of it's business in the <$1000 market. (Meaning that most of the >$1000 laptops we compare to Apple products aren't those brands' bread-and-butter big sellers, they're niche products).
And what if the SSD or memory is not large enough anymore for your needs? (Which often happens after a few years of use.) In most other laptops and non-Retina display MacBook Pro's one can replace them at market prices. Not so with the new retina display MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, etc.
A friend of mine recently asked a quote for upgrading memory in his (pre-aluminium) Mac Mini, it was over 200 Euro. The market value of the memory was 40 Euro.
Edit: I would like to add that I am a happy Mac user. But I think Apple is rapidly moving into the wrong direction with their changes to rapidly deprecate older models, either by making them non-upgradable or pretty randomly removing support for them in new operating system versions (both OS X and iOS).
I'd rather that Apple deprecates older models of hardware than insists on supporting them perpetually. I say this as a developer. If you make an app for 10.7 you will not have to worry about building a PowerPC version, about testing it on a 2005-vintage Mac Mini just because one of your customers might have one. It's not supported. Period.
I know several people that are perfectly happy with an older system, 10.4 or 10.5 vintage either out of necessity or out of indifference. It works for them and they see no urgent reason to upgrade.
How much garbage do you think there is in Windows to support devices that haven't even been manufactured in the last ten years? How much better would Windows be if they abandoned all that and focused on making it better? I think it would look a lot like Windows 8, actually. Faster all around.
> in older models you could easily replace the battery
numerous resources for your reading pleasure
While this change does not matter that much to most people here (I readily admit that I replace my laptop every one or two years, selling the old one), the average consumer uses a laptop much longer, especially when a laptop is a huge investment for them. Apple's latest designs drastically shorten the lifespan of laptops, unless you want to pay the exorbitant fees of having the battery replaced or adding memory.
It is bad for the environment (more laptops need to be produced), the consumer's pocketbook, and only serves Apple.