DE9,

You would be forced to keep service parts in stock and become a certified apple shop is what I am guessing, or have to deal with the genius bar at an Apple store. Which I hate dealing with the genius bar......


I am going to have to disagree, it is a bad move I think period. Also trying to say Applecare is needed is just asinine to the consumer. It is saying oh don't have faith in our product since you can't change a simple battery, but here add $350 on top of the laptop and it will all be taken care of, yet you still have to go do a damn Apple Store to get it done.

I don't know why people keep thinking this. The situation is exactly the same as it is with the 17-inch that was the first to go nonremovable battery. the HD and RAM are user-replaceable. The most obvious evidence is that Apple tells you how to do it in the manual. I just checked the PDF manuals released for the new 15 and 13 inch, and they still contain the same whole chapter on how to replace your RAM and HD by yourself.

I am concerned about battery service for users who live nowhere near an Apple store or service facility. I guess Apple figured, "it's working OK for the iPhone, our trial run with the 17" is OK, let's go nonremovable across the line."

You know, non-replaceable batteries doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, and people were pitching a fit about that when they first came out. Maybe that is where Apple took their cue from?

To be fair the iPhone hasn't had any real competition. In fact that new Palm cell phone is the first competitor to actually put out a multi touch cell phone. So we will see how the consumers react once an actual comparable phone comes out.

This sounds ominous for me. My nearest Apple Store is in a whole different country, across the sea. Up here we have only licensed retailers. In practice, I expect that the ALR would ship it to the other country for me. I'll ask them next time I see them.

Are you not counting the Blackberry Storm? Or the G1 from T-Mobile with Google Android as it's OS? Which, I might point out, according to Apple's own stats Android is a fairly well supported OS to boot.

Apple has had competition for a little while, people still prefer Apple. Either it's a better product, or it has better marketing, who knows. But people don't seem to care all that much about the non-removable battery.

Granted, I can see where you're coming from. I think swapping out batteries can be pretty handy (and for anyone who wants me to prove the usefulness, no, I won't, I just find it useful, okay?) But despite the fact that you and I find it useful, it would seem the majority of people couldn't care less. So we have what we have now...

My hope is that they'll at least make it replaceable to those of us who don't mind opening the computer up. That way we can at least replace it when it dies...

Yes, and I looked at getting a G1 but it is not multi-touch and neither is the blackberry storm. Apple still has the only multi-touch phone on the market as far as I know.

Battery greenness?
 

TL, et al.,

Maybe "Greenness" is an issue?

Battery disposal isn't always done well by end-users.

eValuone.

Greenness wouldn't justify a change of this scope. I think the driver was that Apple decided battery runtime was a competitive advantage they could exploit. Since Apple doesn't like external extended-runtime batteries like you get on PC laptops, and since battery technology is not progressing, Apple probably decided it was worth trading off all the hardware required for removability, in exchange for space for more cells to increase battery runtime.

Dropped in at my dealer today. The position for those in countries without an Apple Store is that Apple Licensed Retailers are sending selected staff on a course to become authorised battery replacers. In this city, this won't be complete until the autumn, so if anyone here had just bought a new laptop with a duff battery, I guess they'd have to Fed-ex it to London.