What computer do you have?

[Tiberius]

What you mean by opening it and disconnecting a delicate ribbon-cable clearly labelled "WARNING: DO NOT REMOVE BATTERY"? Oh, and that's if you happen to have a triwing screwdriver handy. And where are you going to buy a new battery from? You can't - you have to go to Apple and they won't sell you the battery, they'll sell you the battery replacement service. And when you do that they won't even give your old battery to keep as a spare either.

Nice moving the goalposts there. You asked if you could "replace the most common bits that wear out". I linked to a tutorial from ifixit.com, which as you are probably aware, is a highly recommended site for making repairs to various pieces of tech. So, regardless of what the sticker says (it's a sticker, not a ribbon cable, that has that message on it), you can remove the battery and replace it.

As to where you buy a new battery from, have you ever heard of Amazon?

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?...ok+battery

Your argument that you can make it thinner is nonsense (laptops do not need to be as thin as tablets either). A laptop battery simply attaches to a cut-out region of the base, providing its own covering - therefore it does not need to be substantially thicker.

The mechanism that allows the battery to be easily removed, and also holds the battery in place, is bulkier than a battery which is built into the laptop. That should just be obvious.

You say that laptops do not need to be as thin as tablets, and that's your opinion. Apple isn't selling its products to you, it's selling them to a wider audience. People seem to like thinner laptops. That has been a trend across all personal laptops for years.

How about spill-resistant keyboards? This has been a standard feature of Lenovo laptops for ages. Dell, HP, Toshiba, ASUS, just about any brand you can think of has them now. Except Apple. I can't tell you how many times I spill shit on my PC keyboard - at least once or twice a year - that's why I keep a spare handy at all times. In fact at the moment this keyboard has a sticky F7 key (which is irrelevant since how often do you need to press it?)

This is veering into a debate about which laptops are better / have more features. I'm not interested in debating that because ultimately people decide based on personal preferences. I'm only interested in correcting misinformation.

Not only that, but Apple refuses to fix water damage under the statutory warranty which is illegal, because the company are total cunts that don't want to repair their products or honour Australian consumer law. In fact, they even diagnose products that have never had water damage as having it simply because when they opened it a marker was displaced.

So sue them, or have the Australian government sue them. This has nothing to do with their laptops being user-serviceable.

Apple products are deliberately designed to fail

I disagree, and unless you have actual evidence to back that statement up, you are just making stuff up.

Why hasn't my 8 year old laptop failed yet, if it's designed to fail? Hmm? Literally every other laptop I've had has failed in some way after 1 or 2 years of general use. I carried my MacBook to lectures and back for 3 years, it's been shipped around the world, I've probably dropped it a few times by accident. Still works. Yes, I know this is all anecdotal, but at least it's better than just pulling "facts" out my ass and pretending that Apple purposefully sells shitty laptops.

they refuse to sell replacement parts - including batteries.

Yet as you admitted, they sell a service to replace the batteries, so it's not like non-technical people are left with no option. If you don't like that, don't buy a MacBook. If you're OK with taking the back of the laptop off (which is designed to come off, by the way) and replacing the battery yourself, you're fine.