Manufacturers are slowly pushing toward making those replacements impossible.

Just people in my family have replaced camera lenses, body, LCD, and battery. Just imagine how much waste it was if they couldn't repair those issue and had to buy a new device.

Same goes with other devices. Just a simple upgrade on old Macbook Pros gave them at least 5 extra years of life. That's now nearly impossible with new Macbook Pros.

My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically replaceable, but the specs that this laptop shipped with are going to be the specs that it dies with.

When the battery goes, I'll have to either risk destroying the machine or pay way too much to Apple to do the job for me. At that point I'll probably just switch to a brand with a more reasonable user-servicing model, assuming those still exist.

I'm guessing it's a lost cause, their ideas aligned with mine for a short window and then they decided to turn it into a gadget rather than a user serviceable computer.

The last MacBook Pro that was hard to take apart and put together again was sold in 2008. I have one from 2007 and it was pretty easy to replace the (non-defective but slow) HDD with an SSD. That’s, as I said, a MacBook Pro that still had the hard to replace HDD. The newer ones make the process much easier.

I’m very annoyed that the battery in newer MacBook Pros isn’t user replaceable. It’s not that the battery is hard to access and replace – certainly no harder than the HDD. I’m guessing there is some sort of legal requirement – probably? Maybe batteries have to be sold with a hard shell, the MacBook Pro battery doesn’t have that in order to save space. Since they can’t sell it on its own (only as part of the device) they can’t make it user-replaceable.

At least it’s priced appropriately (relatively): The replacement will cost you €180 (parts and work), that’s not all that much more compared to the old user-replaceable batteries which cost €140.

But yeah, except for the battery the MacBook Pros are very accessible.

User upgradeable storage is a very niche feature.

Pretty sure my next laptop won’t be from Apple unless the prices for upgrades come way down, or drives/memory can be replaced. Paying 3-4000 euro for a new laptop with limited lifetime is not an option.

I don’t believe any of that is true of Apples current lineup.

Apple are making an attempt to turn generic computers into disposable appliances with moves like these. I would never accept a compromise like that with a computer that I owned.

My rationale is as follows: If I pay £1800 for one of those machines, I expect to be able to repair common problems easily. That's a lot of money sitting in one component waiting to fail and considering the warranty is a year (or 3 if you are extorted for even more cash by Apple for their expensive AppleCare service).

First it was the batteries - now no longer replaceable by mere mortals, then the SSDs were brought in with proprietary interfaces, now the RAM is soldered on the board.

In the average 5 year life span of a computer, I have found that you will need to replace the battery between 1-2 times, the memory will need to be upgraded at least once and the disk will need to be upgraded. These are observations but rational ones.

I'm now sitting on a Lenovo T61 which is 5 years old. EVERY component in this machine can be replaced for literally nothing and very rapidly.

Sorry but stuff like this is just pandering to consumerism if it is disposable by design.

The design is retarded.

EDIT: It appears the battery is GLUED in so that's not replaceable any more either, even with the aid of a screwdriver.

You could replace the battery, RAM, hard drive, optical drive and maybe even CPU (I haven't tried that last one) yourself, with just a screwdriver.

Honestly I'd like an SSD and RAM upgrade but it's not that big of a deal. It costs money, too, and there's a bunch of stuff that doesn't improve with it like the CPU and battery which are key. And secondarily, any improvements to formfactor, screen, webcam, keyboard etc, although that's not as significant nowadays.

I'd rather just sell it for a few hundred bucks now that I'm 6y in, and get a replacement machine with twice the battery and a much better CPU. I think even without resale value $1200 or so machine cost me like $16 a month and I think I use it about 300 hours a month, or about 5 cent per hour. It's quite negligible part of my hourly/monthly wage. With resale value it's probably even 25-30% less, maybe 3.5 cents per hour.

If I were to have spent money on upgrades, it'd be a bit cheaper than a full replacement - resale value, but at best it'd get me to 2 or 2.5 cents per hour. But I'd miss out on improved CPU, battery etc.

Not being able to upgrade parts isn't that big of a deal to me. Back in the day it was, as within 2-3 years I felt I saw noticeable better experiences on the market with new parts. But today I'm quite fine purchasing an experience and having it last the next 5-6 years, before I upgrade. At which point I want a full upgrade, rather than only a few parts.

People should also care about not being able to replace their batteries. Even if the rest of the hardware remains useful after 2, 3 or even 4 years, a battery is a consumable. It gets used up. In the article, it says the original Macbook Air was rated for 300 charges. That's not a lot, and since you can't replace it, you're going to find yourself buying a new laptop in 2 or 3 years even if the rest of the hardware would have lasted 5 or 6 years. And your old laptop won't be recycled either, because they decided to glue everything together.

My personal laptop is 2 years old and I can't imagine needing to replace it in the next 12 months. The one I had before this was 6 years old when I replaced it, and even then I didn't need to. Although that was back in the days when MacBooks were easy to upgrade

I love my rMBP, but I know it won't last as long as it could have if I could upgrade it.

I think most of this comes not from planned obsolescence, but from a ridiculous drive for thinness. Apple is obsessed with thin.