by Jason Snell
Making battery replacements easier
Nick Heer, linking to a Jeff Johnson post about Apple’s onerous policies regarding replacing a MacBook battery, points out the fundamental truth of mobile devices:
…batteries eventually need replacing on all devices. They are a consumable good with a finite — though not always predictable — lifespan, most often shorter than the actual lifetime usability of the product. The only reason I do not use my AirPods any more is because the battery in each bud lasts less than twenty minutes; everything else is functional. If there is any repair which should be straightforward and doable without replacing unrelated components or the entire device, it is the battery.
There are a lot of trade-offs when it comes to the design of mobile devices, but making it easy to replace a device’s battery should always be a high priority.