If Apple was also promising to keep the same process for the next 7 years I'd see a point to this, but this of course not the case.
Considering that it's been the same battery press going back at least as far as the iPhone 12, it's probably going to continue to be the same battery press for a long time. Especially now that they've definitely been using the same battery press across at least two methods of gluing in the battery (the adhesive with pull tabs, and the new adhesive that's released electrically).
Lots of my bike tools I have will take over a decade to get my money back on my stuff alone. But I get to do something I mostly enjoy. I can also help out friends/acquaintances when they need it. The same goes for this.
That's... a bit surprising. Maybe one or two I could see, like a truing stand or some one-off equally proprietary thing for one brand of part, but what else?
Edit: nvm, there seems to be plenty of Park Tools brand niche reamers and so on that are many hundreds of dollars. I would think they'd remain viable for much longer than a battery replacement press though, since you'd adapt it to a particular bike's repair needs with different bits.
- Bikes will last decades with good maintenance. An iPhone wont, even if the device hardware was somewhat kept alive most standard software functionalities will be lost.
- Bikes don't mandate fancy tools for regular maintenance. Regular people won't need your super pricey tools to replace brakes or tires. You can use them if you want to, but that's your hobby, not what the maker mandates.
You can enjoy nice tools, but that's orthogonal to the issue here IMHO.
Phone batteries need replacing every few years. The kind of maintenance that a bike used daily will need on that schedule is absolutely stuff that requires fancy tools.
That's my home's experience, if you listen to The Vergecast that's the hosts' experiences as well.
Let's assume a "no" for the sake of the discussion.
> How many times do you see yourself replacing the iPhone 16's battery ?
100s of times (for 100s of different phones, obviously), because otherwise you _would not be buying repair tools_!
The whole notion that you buy a set of high-tech tools and then use them only once or twice is the insanity that causes this whole discussion to even take place. These are tools intended for professional repair shops, not for consumers to repair their own phone.