Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudosysgen | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com