Besides the more obvious reasons, making the battery swappable would compromise other things like thickness, weight, waterproofing, and so on.
I used to carry a rugged android that could be operated underwater or in the presence of some explosive gasses. It was a bit heavier, but it was also the equivalent to normal device with a rugged case.
A company with the sophistication of industrial design like Apple could build a moderately more rugged device that would be very close to the existing iPhones.
The real and obvious reason for Apples decisions is that both high margin extended warranties and cases for iPhones probably generate more income than the Mac.
Apple may benefit from planned obsolescence but they can (and do) just stop updating the software to achieve the same end. I suspect that if they made two versions of the iPhone, one like now and another along the lines you suggest, the current design would sell much better.
So much true. I'm on iPhone 12 Pro right now but I am always tempted to play with my Moto 5g Plus. It is quite a bit thinner or at least feels like that and it feels so much better in my hand.
RAM requirements of OS and apps will increase every year, so it'll be obvious to stop supporting old phones because of lack of RAM, even if CPU and Disk are more than capable.
If you carry a phone based on which explosive gasses it can operate near, you are an extreme outlier when it comes to consumer behavior. Perhaps the things that are "real and obvious" to you.. aren't.
The famous example is people conflating Steve Jobs being an asshole with being successful.
And here, it's not even the case of all those weird nerds complaining about missing headphone jack. Go poll normies about screen sizes. Regular people complaining about phones being too large is pretty much a meme now.
(Engineering-wise, phones do get thermal advantage from the current form factor trends - thinner but larger -> more surface area. But I suspect it's more than compensated by the extra heat from the larger screen.)
Those are the revealed preferences of millions of customers. How many people did you poll?
You aren't calculating the effect of phone size correctly.
With respect to the warranty and accessory stuff, I spent several years in that part of the hardware business — a product like AppleCare has 70% margins at retail (minimum), and unbranded cases identical to Apple branded sell for 60-80% less at retail.
Am I wrong about Apple’s abilities to manufacture durable products with different design goals? Maybe, but I doubt it.
MacBook Pros are a great example, when transitioning to unibody design, the MacBook lost replaceable batteries and other components, in exchange for a more structurally rigid frame and a very marginal weight/thickness savings. What they did achieve is a higher margin design by focusing on production efficiency and an attempt to push higher service costs to the consumer. (Which partially failed with the defective keyboards) The engineers produced a product that met its design goals, with the exception of the garbage keyboard.
And I don't mind thickness. Thicker means better ergonomics in my experience, at least compared to today's oversized sheets of metal and glass. And I bet you put those in a case which adds 2-3mm thickness. Well, that sure paid off, did it?
And weight? I can't even come up with a scenario where I'd care about that. Make it weigh less than a pound and I'm okay with it.
Whether it's a watch or a phone, you don't want water or moisture inside. Simple as that. Watches do have the advantage that they can be built so that they're 100% filled with a lubricating fluid, making them more or less immune to outer pressure.
Disclaimer: prefer changeable batteries and don't own Apple devices.
You're right that water damage isn't covered but they're still pretty resistant:
> iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max have a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes).