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Comment by spullara | Hacker News Reader

To make the computer smaller and lighter.

Permanently glued batteries are not any smaller and they are no lighter than strapped batteries with easily removed adhesives. It's a move to prevent repair.

This conspiracy theory doesn't even make any sense. Guess who has to replace these batteries? Apple. Why would they make it harder for themselves without a good reason.

The idea is that due to the special repair it will be costly enough to the point where you will opt for buying a new laptop.

It's $200 for a 2015 MacBook Pro for Apple to replace the battery. An aftermarket battery costs around $50 but it's tricky to install.

> The idea is that due to the special repair it will be costly enough

But Apple has to replace the batteries and pay for it under their warranties, not you.

Warranty only goes for 1-3 years. Where the rate of failure for batteries is very low. After that, you're stuck with high repair costs or buying a new device that falls under warranty again. It's a racket and people keep falling for it.

Maybe it's different in some parts of the world, but at least in the US, the scenario described by the parent will not be covered by the warranty, and you will have to pay for it:

> It's $200 for a 2015 MacBook Pro for Apple to replace the battery.

>But Apple has to replace the batteries and pay for it under their warranties, not you.

Apple operate the 1 year MacBook warranty policy across the world with only specific countries that they abide by the law of 3 years warranty. However if you dont mention it, as in UK, they will still charge you for it.

Batteries won't wear out in a year, and battery wear from normal use is not always covered by warranty. You're going to be paying for it in 90% of cases.

Apple wants to perform the repairs so they can charge a premium. If batteries were easy to replace, consumers would do it themselves.

IIRC iOS even detects if a battery has been replaced regardless of whether it’s an authentic first-party battery and warns the user; Apple technicians use a tool to prevent these warnings for first-party repairs.

What if I want to go to an independent repair shop to change my battery? Or even do it myself.

Apple will do it for you.

So this isn't an argument against repair - it may be an argument against repair by third parties if you want to suggest that? But then again why would Apple make a job that they have to do harder? Doesn't pass a common-sense test.

Because it gets harder for the opposition at a faster rate. The opposition is end user repair. But you know this, it is a common strategy, this is why you out skill your opponent.

There are widely reported cases of people taking their iPhones to the Genius Bar only to have someone swap their philips head screws for pentalobe screws.

Passes common sense.

Exactly, Apple is killing third party repairs, so they can demand for 10k USD from you as in the OP.

> so they can demand for 10k USD from you as in the OP

I think you and others in this thread are fundamentally confused - the OP has paid nothing - the cost is Apple’s.

Even if in this case Apple paid the costs, very often it's on the customer to pay for out of warranty repairs.

Apple choses which price to charge for a battery replacement. Their profit margin is whatever they choose unless other people are replacing it too.

But they also have to do the repairs. When they make it harder they increase their costs.

But they also dissuade people from doing it themselves. So a $50 battery becomes a $200 battery.

Disagree.

You can see for yourself:

Glued https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/noPvQ2CLs1jptX2p.med...

Removal battery https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/btDJQp5CYXdILTOO.med...

You get better battery performance, with higher CPU performance, better graphics, etc. etc. and save 8oz. in weight and nearly half the width.

Moore's law has tradeoffs. I think you can make the conclusion yourself with the facts.

EDIT: For the record - it financially benefits Apple to have an unremovable battery, but that doesn't mean its the only motivation.

This is hilarious. You're actually comparing two different computers.

A pull tab does not weigh 8oz more than a dab of glue. I don't get why someone would try to argue as much.

> You're actually comparing two different computers.

Huh? One is the previous MBPro with a removable battery and the other is the latest version MBPro with a glued battery.

> A pull tab does not weigh 8oz more than a dab of glue. I don't get why someone would try to argue as much.

I didn't say that. I said the form factor for a glued in battery doesn't it allow it to be setup as a removable battery configuration.

Gotta love the armchair hardware engineers in here.

You can use the exact same form factors for glued and removal batteries. They're all just prisms or a bunch of prisms. And yes it's ridiculous to compare two different generations of MBPro.

You can definitely mount those batteries in a removable fashion in any case.

None of that is true. The battery cells are the rectangular black pouches. They can be glued in, placed in with a ribbon cable, put inside a plastic outer casing, or any other variation; but the batteries themselves are exactly the same form and function.

Given the hard metal body construction with screw fasteners, there's no reason for gluing the battery packs themselves.

> but the batteries themselves are exactly the same form and function.

They are exactly not the same form:

https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/vlCsffdOoZSTCyJy.med...

https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/btDJQp5CYXdILTOO.med...

One is a big brick and the other is a set of 4 pouches carefully laid out to let connectors route to various parts of the motherboard. That is precisely NOT the exact same form.

Look at how intricate the battery replacement is for the newest MBPro:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Touch+Bar+2...

There are various terminals that weave in and out of the batteries. That simply is not possible to maintain the same weight and thickness by just carving out one big removal brick as in the previous generation of the MBPro.

These battery cells have the same physical structure. They can be shaped however is needed, whether it's one big block or several little ones connected by wires.

The same capacity requires roughly the same weight and thickness, although several smaller cells will mean more packaging material and less collective capacity, but obviously allows for more flexible placement within the chassis.

However, none of this requires gluing the battery to the system. That was the topic here. Why would you think using glue instead of just letting the back plate hold the batteries in place makes such a big difference?

> roughly the same weight and thickness

Are we looking at the same picture? They are 100% not the same thickness. They certainly could have the same mass, but thats precisely my point - if you want an easily removable battery you sacrifice other features (thickness for example).

> although several smaller cells will mean more packaging material and less collective capacity

Are you saying batteries didn't get more efficient (more capacity by size) over a 10 year timespan? Now I think you're just gaslighting me...

> However, none of this requires gluing the battery to the system.

I guess you didn't look at the link that shows the 1,282 step process required to even get to the point where the glue is removed.

> That was the topic here.

It wasn't. The glue is a red herring. The topic is about the ability to easily remove the battery - the glue being the part that you thought was impossible to do. That's not what makes it hard to provide a removable battery - it's the design of the overall hardware system. The hardware engineers (one of my good friends is an Apple hardware engineer btw) explicitly chose to design the batteries in such a way that trades off thickness and weight of the hardware with an easily removable battery.

You misunderstood their comment. Batteries of the same capacity at the same chemistry require the same thickness. So glue vs tabs has no impact on thickness. You don't need to change battery geometry for it to be removable.

It also doesn't take 1282 steps to get to the point you have to remove the battery. It takes 11 steps, most of which are just unplugging connectors. The 20 other steps are related to removing the adhesive, so unplugging and protecting stuff you wouldn't otherwise need to.

> "The glue is a red herring."

No, it's the entire point.

Nobody is asking to go back to the older "easily removable" designs with dedicated battery compartments. The problem isn't the design of the batteries being multiple smaller cells spread around but rather that they are glued to the chassis. This makes them harder to remove than if they weren't.

To be extremely clear, take a 2021 Macbook and just don't glue the batteries inside to the casing. That's it, that's all there is to it.

I'd prefer a system that was a bit more durable and also put the consumables in a place where they were easily accessed.

we've reached the point where all advantages to devices being smaller and lighter are diminished returns.

If you care about maintainability, you're just not the market Macbooks are optimized for.

While most brand-new laptops have unfortunately dropped externally removable batteries altogether, you can still find plenty that have internal user-replaceable ones.

At home I have a work-provided Dell Latitude, a Thinkpad T470 my SO uses and my own Thinkpad T490. Very happy with all of them 'cept mine has a shitty screen that I'm going to replace at some point.

I refuse to accept that as an answer as to why the battery is glued in. It's just laziness by apple, there's is literally zero reason to use glue to hold the battery, and it means that if you want to ever replace it yourself you end up looking at a 50-steps long guide on ifixit where one of them is pouring solvent behind the battery - it's insane. Just have a system of tabs holding the battery packs in place, glue is not needed.

No, it's not laziness. Nothing about the internal design of the Mac is due to "laziness". Apple has clearly decided that the battery is better held in place by adhesive than by a "system of tabs". This could easily be for durability or safety reasons. It's a big, big problem if a battery gets damaged.

If your argument is that the replacement process has too many steps, this argument fails: you'd save at most one step (out of your claimed 50) if the adhesive were not there. Because the battery is not terribly accessible.

>>If your argument is that the replacement process has too many steps, this argument fails: you'd save at most one step (out of your claimed 50) if the adhesive were not there.

Thank you for making an assumption on my behalf, but that's actually not my argument - I do have an issue with the fact that replacing the battery requires pouring solvent behind the case, as the guide clearly warns you that if you mess this up you will damage other components and the screen. That's an unacceptable process for a battery replacement, I don't mind the disassembly of everything else to get to there. I will repeat myself - there is absolutely no reason to use glue in a case as tight as that of a modern MacBook.

> Apple has clearly decided that the battery is better held in place by adhesive ...

They decided to glue the battery down. You may assume that each decision by Apple seeks an optimum, so you concluded this decision was for the best. But better for whom -- Apple or the consumer?

Note also, that when I replace a battery that's been glued in, there are many more steps than for devices that aren't so glued down. Possibly because the people who designed it were thinking about repair and replacement scenarios.

Glue is not protective. The only purpose of glue is to prevent the battery from moving around, which tabs and straps do perfectly well. The battery is protected by the metal casing and nothing else, glue or no glue.

This could easily be done for profit, as well!

Apple batteries are glued for two reasons:

  - The aluminium laptop case is part of the battery.  In the old days there was a plastic case/shell around the battery cells. Now the laptop case is that shell.

  - It allows them to make the laptops thinner. When you are talking about the need to save millimeters here and there in order to have a very thin total design then you need to remove screws, tabs and stuff that pads up space.

Planned obsolescence and user hostility, got it.

It's probably being done for ease of manufacturing. The bots can handle glue better than tabs and straps. Also, they can put batteries in every dead space available in the machine to maximize system battery life. I agree it's ridiculous you need to use a solvent, carefully, in order to remove the batteries. I suppose this is the state of the art for now?

My 2015 Air has an easily replaceable battery. It's needed replacement once and only requires a screwdriver. That's good design. Gluing a battery in is only "good design" if you want to make it as difficult as possible for people to repair their own machines.

Heck, I still have MBPs that had hot swappable batteries. That was even better design.

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