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Comment by NotPractical | Hacker News Reader

Is the battery replaceable, though? The Surface Laptop 3 also had some repairable parts, but the big disappointment in my mind was the glued-in battery.[1] Batteries are consumable and are guaranteed to start wearing down within a few years, whereas the SSD, keyboard, monitor, etc. are likely to last a long time, so it was surprising that they advertised its repairability even with this significant omission.

I feel weird using my MacBook Pro, knowing it's essentially a ticking time bomb, with its slowly degrading battery that can't be replaced.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3+(...

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I worked in computer/phone repair and a bit of design,

You can see [1] that they are using multiple cells essentially taped together to make their "battery". This isn't uncommon, especially recently in smaller devices, as it lets them fit unusual shapes and other size issues, and saves space because you don't need a shell around them. The biggest (only?) issue is that you have a very delicate batteries taped together, if ripped/torn they may explode. To add to this, because they aren't riggedly attached, they are more prone to movement (and thus tearing). Their solution was to use adhesive across the bottom to make sure they are all firmly in place [0].

From a repair perspective this isn't great. It's not hard to remove if you have a heated plate, isopropyl, and patience, but not very user friendly. The best thing they could do to fix this would be to give the battery a rigid enclosure, but that will of course eat up valuable space, and I have no idea how that would affect the rest of their design. They could also use different tape that's easier to remove, but they may see the taped-together battery as something they don't want to be liable for people replacing (in case they tear it), so I really think the best solution is a rigid shell for the batteries.

tldr; This appears to mostly be a design limitation instead of a purposeful decision. I wish they'd change their design instead though....

[0] https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/FkZHQOAv2sPqKSBE.med...

[1] https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/VJBBLeHLWsRBQeIS.med...

Yes, of course it’s a design Limitation or, as I‘d call it, trade-off. A very few conspiracy theorists may belief it’s “planned obsolescence”. But a model that just places a larger premium on thinness than HN professes to do is far better at explaining this and a number of similar decisions by all sorts of companies.

It could be that apple places a greater premium on thinness and that position just so happens to have as a byproduct early obsolescence and better profits. But I don't see why that's any more plausible than what you call conspiracy theories.

Planned obsolescence is not a conspiracy - it's a business decision.

From the company with industry leading support periods, device lifetimes and second hand value retention. If their intention is to deprecate devices early, they're objectively doing an incredibly terrible job at it.

Durability and cost are usually polar opposites.

I suppose planned obsolescence is not the best term to describe it however engineers do certainly factor in product lifetime (as much as they can) into their designs.

I'm looking at my GF, she's on the couch, watching an online uni lecture and writing Markdown on my 7yo MacBook Pro. Original battery, updated from Mavericks all the way to Big Sur. Runs fine, a few hours of battery life. My dad has a 2014 Mac Mini, currently on Catalina, runs fine. My sister's BF also has MacBook Pro that he's been abusing for the last six years. His battery is almost dead, but the machine itself runs fine. My ex-GF is still rocking her iPad Mini (the first retina model) that she bought in 2014. She loves the thing and the thing loves her back.

If Apple is in the business of early or planned obsolescence, they're fucking terrible at it.

We have had countless corporate conspiracies for hundreds of years, from the Standard Oil collusion with railroads to remove competing oil companies, Automanufactureres conspiracy to remove streetcard, The Phoebus cartel limiting lightbulb longevity and FAANG anti-poaching agreement designed to depress developer salaries.

What the hell has to happen for you to realize corporations are not your friends and 'mah free market' becomes mafia without law enforcement.

None of that means that the battery design is planned obsolescence.

Hi. I’m an actual socialist. I think it’s also harmful to any cause limiting the power and harm of capitalism to treat all capitalists as if they have identical behavior and preferences. Apple is surely a giant corporation with several horrible business practices and undue power. But knowing how they behave is important. They’re often accused of tactics that their corporate peers engage, because the outcomes look similar. Planned obsolescence is one of the most common accusations. But they generally provide more support for device longevity in the spaces they compete.

They just don’t provide products full of modular junk. They mostly try not to serve the junk market altogether. And sure, that skews their prices higher, and limits what you can do after buying the device. But they’re serving mostly mid-high end markets who would rather pay more than repair or replace. People who voluntarily accept the limitations they place on their devices.

A better criticism of their place in the market is how they distort “externalities”. Manufacturing labor costs and treatment, mining impact. The places they are renowned for outplaying every competitor.

That’s where their abuse lies. They don’t care if you swap out a battery, they just don’t care if you can either. They care about offering consumer-luxury products no one else can. If you follow that money, it’s their supply chain who hurts, not their clientele.

Apple literally was caught using software upgrades to make older devices perform worse.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

But this about more than just Apple. It is about corporates in general. I don't think a "corporates are evil" mantra explains everything - or even anything useful.

Product Designers are humans, CEOs are humans, all the employees are humans.(Unless ... Aliens ... :-) ) Some humans are better at whatever task than others, but all are operating under their motivational influences.

Get enough people together under one banner, someone will do something poor under that banner's name.

> Apple literally was caught using software upgrades to make older devices perform worse.

...which if you bothered to read even the article you linked, you'd know had to do with ensuring that battery voltage wouldn't drop low enough for the device to randomly shut itself off, a result which itself became a problem due to the actual longevity of their devices.

You can certainly argue that they should have communicated this with their customers, though I'd argue that the vast majority would not notice nor care, while a lot more people would certainly notice their devices randomly shutting off.

Another case of a lie--or misunderstanding due to reposting clickbait without engaging critical thinking--circumnavigating the globe at internet speed while the truth is still putting on its pants.

More interesting is to look at what Google did for Nexus Phones with the same issue.

>If you're among those affected, your phone will randomly shut down and completely die, even though your battery indicator might have said you had plenty of juice left. It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger

https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/nexus-6p-battery-random...

Instead of fixing the issue, Google's solution was to tell you to buy a new phone.

To paraphrase the original GP: "corporations can't be trusted"

My point was that Apple is a corporation and so deserves the same suspicion as all the rest.

You've just added another data point to "corporations can't be trusted". Yep, Google is a corporation and can't be trusted either.

Sorry, but there is quite a bit of difference between "we don't like the way you explained your fix for the issue" and "screw you, buy a new phone".

I think you and I are making different points rather than arguing over one.

You seem to be saying Apple is better than [insert other corporation here] in some way. I see that as irrelevant.

I am saying that corporations - in the larger picture - can't be trusted.

Apple, and in this case Google, behaving poorly reflects that.

We certainly see things very differently if you think "screw you" and "here, let me fix your out of warranty phone" are even remotely the same thing.

The fact Apple lost the court case suggests it ultimately wasn't "here, let me fix your out of warranty phone".

No, it was the fact that Apple fixed people's out of warranty phone so that it wouldn't suddenly go dead that suggests they fixed it.

Google, on the other hand, lost it's court case after refusing to fix a known defect that had Nexus phones die while reporting they had more than a 50% charge remaining, and staying dead until you connected them to a charger.

>Nexus 6P owners eligible for up to $400 from Huawei and Google in class action settlement

https://www.androidcentral.com/nexus-6p-owners-eligible-400-...

Reading articles isn't a problem.

Apples approach to "assuming everyone's device behaves the same way" (quotes because I don't honestly think any qualified engineer would make that assumption.) was wrong.

Some people use their phones less. My father doesn't turn his phone ON unless he wants to make a call.(Frustrating though that is...)

This makes a difference to battery performance as they don't just age out sitting in a box but through use as well. But here's Apple's take: https://www.apple.com/au/batteries/why-lithium-ion/

" For instance, you might use 75 per cent of your battery’s capacity one day, then recharge it fully overnight. If you use 25 per cent the next day, you will have discharged a total of 100 per cent, and the two days will add up to one charge cycle. It could take several days to complete a cycle. The capacity of any type of battery will diminish after a certain amount of recharging. "

Some people used their phone a lot and had batteries replaced - either through Apple or not.

And some human within Apple signed off on a solution to effectively make everyones older phone worse.

What else could they have done? Well, from my original NPR link: "Starting in 2018, iPhone users have been able to better control an iPhone's battery life and check on the health of the battery, along with allowing users to turn off iPhone battery throttling"

Make no mistake, Apple acted poorly. But they do better now. Whether that is because they were caught or not, we will never know.

I like many of the things Apple does. I have a lot of respect for their trailblazing. Screens seemed stuck in 1920x1080 hell until Apple unplugged screen development again.

But they are a corporation like any other and can't be trusted.

The throttling of the cpu was tied directly to the health of the battery [1], not simply by the device you were using.

There is plenty of things to be critical of Apple and any corporation for and you don't need to spread misinformation in order to do so. You can even be critical about how they approached this, but your original claim that you doubled down on is simply false.

[1] https://twitter.com/_inside/status/942817814531969024

Your twitter link didn't shed much light for me on this particular issue but:

With yourself and a coincidental comment making such reasonable corrections I investigated further.

Posted below for posterity, not necessarily you.

The reddit post that started it all: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7inu45/psa_iphone_s...

Finally, from the horses mouth:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

"iOS 11.3 and later improve this performance management feature"

and

"iPhone 8 and later use a more advanced hardware and software ..[snip].. As a result, the impacts of performance management may be less noticeable on iPhone 8 and later."

My conclusion: It is true that Apple was only targeting phones with dodgy(to a degree of approximation) batteries.

OTOH, Apple does a better job now. Both in execution and communication.

Whether Apple would have reached this achievement without batterygate is unknowable.

My apologies for spreading misinformation, thank you for your patience.

> Apple literally was caught using software upgrades to make older devices perform worse

You've literally just proved the point the parent comment was making.

The same outcome is not always equal to the same behaviour. The devices throttled themselves because worn batteries could not handle the sudden power spike needed by the CPU. You can very easily verify this by turning off the software fix on an affected phone—start pushing it and it literally just shuts off.

Apple still behaved deplorably here: as soon as this software kludge was triggered, it should have popped up a warning saying "hey your battery is no good, go get it replaced. Your phone will perform way slower in the meantime".

They undoubtedly sold more iPhones by not doing so. But they didn't slow down perfectly functional old phones, they slowed down phones which were effectively faulty.

I don't think I proved the parents case at all. I was supporting the idea that corporations can't be trusted.

Apple was held up as some kind of paragon exception to this. It isn't.

1. slowing devices without telling anyone what they were doing.

2. assuming all their older devices were in the same state or had the same use cases. Replaced your phone battery recently? Who cares, you go slow anyway.

The combination of 1+2 combined with a loyal fanbase (or trapped in the ecosystem depending on your views) does seem awfully suspicious regarding manipulated obsolescence and worth investigation.

The article linked has Apple losing a court case in this regard.

So the point still stands, don't trust corporations, including Apple.

If you want to say that Apple is better than other corporations. Well that is a different point. You still can't trust them.

> assuming all their older devices were in the same state or had the same use cases. Replaced your phone battery recently? Who cares, you go slow anyway

Sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually not the case.

The whole reason this was initially discovered was because someone on reddit ran Geekbench before and after a battery replacement and got a huge performance increase. Not telling users is inexcusable, but phones where the battery was fully functional continued to run at full speed regardless of age.

> You still can't trust them

On this point I 100% agree!

With yourself and a coincidental comment making such reasonable corrections I investigated further.

Posted below for posterity, not necessarily you.

The reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7inu45/psa_iphone_s...

Finally, from the horses mouth:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

"iOS 11.3 and later improve this performance management feature"

and

"iPhone 8 and later use a more advanced hardware and software ..[snip].. As a result, the impacts of performance management may be less noticeable on iPhone 8 and later."

My conclusion: It is true that Apple was only targeting phones with dodgy(to a degree of approximation) batteries.

OTOH, Apple does a better job now. Both in execution and communication.

Whether Apple would have reached this achievement without batterygate is unknowable.

My apologies for spreading misinformation, thank you for your patience.

Edit:snipped some bits for conciseness.

They didn't perform worse. It was a trade off between cpu performance and battery performance. They choose longer battery life over raw cpu performance. I think that's a valid tradeoff to make for a device that should last through the day on a single battery charge.

Worse is subjective, I accept.

Battery life vs speed vs reliability. Different people cut it different ways.

I think the issue was that everyone got the one solution without Apple telling them. So for a lot of people, it was perceived as worse.

Huh? The battery on every MacBook is replaceable

> Apple offers a battery replacement service for all MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro notebooks with built-in batteries.

https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/

A glued in battery on any laptop/tablet/phone is awful. My sister replaced her battery on her 2011 MacBook Air and used it just fine for a decade. Didn’t need to replace any of the other parts.

The glue in a Macbook for the battery is wholly unnecessary when it can be pointed out that the argument for glue (waterproofing) doesn't even apply in their laptop space.

It's meant to make end user replacement of the battery as difficult as possible.

I’m confused. Why would water proofing be less applicable to a (or their) laptop products?

Keyboard and chassis isn't waterproof on Macbooks, thus, the common argument for glued in batteries on other Apple devices (iPhone) in that it aides with waterproofing is rendered moot when it comes to Macbooks.

> Do you use your laptop in the rain ?

No but I use it next to glasses of water?

> Do you use your phone in the rain ?

When I have to. I walk my dog in a rainy city.

Edit: do you use your desktop in the rain? Maybe I’m missing a use case I don’t understand. Because so far we’ve ruled out any water-tolerance cases I can think of.

Water resistance =/= waterproofing.

Also, the keyboard and chassis in a Macbook are neither water resistant or waterproof.

> Water resistance =/= waterproofing.

I know that but don’t understand the point of distinguishing here. Waterproofing a battery achieves water resistance. In either case the claim was that it isn’t applicable for their portables.

> Also, the keyboard and chassis in a Macbook are neither water resistant or waterproof.

I’m still not understanding how this distinction matters. You claimed waterproofing wasn’t applicable to these devices. How does saying it’s not done well enough support that? Are you just arguing to argue?

Tell me why, in any circumstance, waterproofing a battery is where you'd stop.

You still need to waterproof the circuitry, the connectors, the components like the screen.

The original point was thus:

The argument for making a battery non-user-serviceable and glued into the device (as it is on the iPhones) was to retain waterproofing/water resistance.

THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO MACBOOKS YET THE BATTERIES ARE STILL GLUED IN.

Okay I think I better understand your point but I think it’s just a logic error.

If I understand, you’re saying the inconsistency of waterproofing one part and not waterproofing others suggests insincerity of the stated waterproofing motivation for the battery.

There are two (related) things wrong with that reasoning:

1. It assumes that any kind of water protection must be holistic to be sincere. This rules out any notion of prioritized iteration. It’s like saying (sorry, car metaphor incoming) seatbelts aren’t a real safety measure because other parts of the car haven’t been revised for the same kinds of risks seatbelts prevent or mitigate.

2. The batteries we’re talking about are substantially more fire prone when exposed to water than the rest of the device. That alone justifies prioritizing water safety measures for the battery ahead of any other component.

I would bet you good money it was driven by some sort of rel test (drop, vibration, etc.). Glue can be a lifesaver when the design isn't passing. No manufacturing engineer will want to add an adhesive step to the assembly just to make things more difficult for end users.

2014/2015 MBP - The battery rattles around inside if not glued in place. Sometimes it is needed.

> It's meant to make end user replacement of the battery as difficult as possible.

Any difficulty they add is additional difficulty for the thousands of Apple employees they hire to replace the batteries, so they definitely don't add it just to make it harder.

Don't they charge for replacing it?

They do, but they could probably charge the same and pocket more without all the glue.

I've replaced the batteries in a handful of iPhones over the years and it's never been particularly awkward. The glue is just enough to hold the battery firmly in place, it's never been a significant obstacle to replacement. I don't know about the laptops.

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