Does it really matter if it’s “user serviceable” or does it just need to be “serviceable.” Because I think Apple meets that bar. I don’t really care that for all practical purposes my transmission isn’t serviceable by me personally, but that I can take it to the shop for an okay price.
Getting my iPhone battery replaced was a pretty painless experience compared to my old Nexus. Hell it was actually easier than my Samsung that had a user replaceable battery because by the time it needed replaced I couldn’t find a 1st party replacement battery!
EDIT - When looking up Watch service prices I missed that there was a cheaper $80 battery replacement vs the general out of warranty service price. But that's still 47% of the current street price (S3 is $170 from Amazon, Target, or Walmart).
Similarly, AirPods are $50 each for battery replacement, another $50 for the charging case, versus a list price of $200 and having gone on sale for $150. So if your batteries are shot in both AirPods and the case it's 75% of list price, or the entire full cost of buying them on sale. And this is a device where when brand new the tiny little batteries were barely good enough.
If my car's transmission blew and it was $10,000 to get it repaired, I'd be taking it to a scrapyard instead of a mechanic. Same goes for a 2-3 year old gadget if I'm expected to spend 75% of the replacement cost to get a battery replaced. I'm just going to say "I guess it's time for an upgrade" and see if someone on CraigsList will pay me for the old one, maybe just for spare parts depending on how bad the battery is.
If Apple really wants to extend the lifetime of their devices, they need to get the price down for replacing the disposable components, or make the disposable parts user replaceable again.
I'm not surprised, I just think Apple could do more to keep old devices in use if they were really concerned about it. Going 100% carbon neutral on your supply chain is great, but it's even better to just make and dispose of less stuff to begin with.
The economic incentives of selling gadgets less often obviously don't line up with making Apple more money, but neither do all of their other environmental initiatives. Some things they do because it's the right thing to do.
On the phones side I'm holding them to a high standard, knowing they already do a better job keeping phones useful compared to any of their competition. I don't think that's the case for laptops and other devices where there are serviceable alternatives though; I see a lot more old ThinkPads in use than I do old MacBooks. That's probably because an old laptop still gets OS updates, and other manufactures make more repairable laptops than Apple does. Apple's gadgets (laptops and everything else) eventually hit limited software support.
> The economic incentives of selling gadgets less often obviously don't line up with making Apple more money...
I disagree. Longevity is a big part of why I buy Apple products. Laptops that last 8-10+ years and the fact that they hold enough resale value that I can sell it used when I need to upgrade are massive selling points. Likewise the fact that I get 4-5 years of useful (supported) life out of the iPhone versus 2-3 for Android phones.
> I don't think that's the case for laptops and other devices where there are serviceable alternatives though; I see a lot more old ThinkPads in use than I do old MacBooks.
My MacBook is 8 years old and will likely be in use for at least a few more years. Pretty much every Mac I've owned has lasted for a decade or I've sold it while it was still running. As I said above, reliability is a big chunk of why I started buying Macs.
Apple's single standout reliability on MacBooks as far as I know is that keyboard issue.
YMMV I guess. My Mac longevity has been less impressive, MacBook Pro I got for college lasted 4 years and then went totally unbootable, and the Air replacing had its audio inputs/outputs die around 3 years. I dragged that one out for a while longer with bluetooth headphones and replaced it when the 2016 MBPs launched, which as you mentioned have keyboard problems. Otherwise still solid, so maybe this will be my first 8-year Mac.
My iPhone SE 2016 is >4 years though, so I'm doing above average on that one at least.
I would define serviceable as replaceable with reasonable cost or effort, with reasonable being closer to the price of the component than the whole device.
In other words: if the part is a battery that costs around $70, I should expect a change to be around 100-150max, not 500-600, where I’d consider upgrading to the next device.
Also it would be nice if certain components would be interchangeable in the way chargers are, though I understand that there’s higher customization for things in the device and this might not be feasible.
Getting my iPhone battery replaced was a pretty painless experience compared to my old Nexus. Hell it was actually easier than my Samsung that had a user replaceable battery because by the time it needed replaced I couldn’t find a 1st party replacement battery!