Playing devil's advocate: Is there any possible reason Apple is gluing parts in instead of using screws in newer devices other than "greed"?
Inspired by the news of the new 13" MacBook Pro and Surface Book 3, I was thinking about just how much I hate not being able to replace the RAM, SSD or even battery in newer MacBook models. It seems like such an extreme decision and I wonder why.
The obvious answer is to make the devices less repairable thus forcing people to upgrade sooner.
But Apple isn't really dependent on devices breaking. Hardware is vastly improving every year and their customer base happily upgrades just for that. Also it could be argued that their most profitable product line – iPhones – have, despite all of that, some of the healthiest life cycles in the smartphone marketed with people happily using 5+ year old devices which still are supported in the latest releases of iOS. Few other devices hold their value in resale like Apple products, their sturdiness is quite remarkable and clearly factored into pricing and consumer decisions. They pride themselves with a reliable repair program and I have to imagine their repair geniuses (their term, not my sarcasm) don't like messing with glue.
So, all things considered, is there an argument for fucking gluing in batteries other than petty greed? Like, is it cheaper? That doesn't seem a motivation behind any other major design decision on their part. Is it it lighter? Easier to cool? Does it make for a slimmer chassis?
I tried searching the question but couldn't find anything (in fact, I wouldn't even know what terms to search for). Is there any good analysis or reasoned speculation? It somehow makes less sense the more I think of it and it would give me some head peace to at least know of some arguments for it other than Apple being assholes.
Apple puts a serious premium on ensuring that their products look and feel thin, sleek, and expensive. To that end, they shave every possible millimetre, which leaves no room for things like RAM sockets or removable batteries.
If you look at the inside of a recent MacBook Pro you'll see that both the battery and the RAM aren't arranged in the "single block" structure you'd expect. They're split into their component parts and then spread out to take the bare minimum of space when considering airflow, heat dissipation, physical volume, and electronic requirements.
Apple also have a long history of attacking users' right to repair, and of price gouging on commodity components, so I don't believe for a second that their decisions are solely in the service of product design - but product design is definitely part of it.
I think Apple values speed of initial assembly over repairability. I haven’t used apple’s repair program before, but don’t they generally replace instead of repair, even if they only charge the customer what the repair would cost? As for soldiered on board parts like ram and ssds, it adds complexity to make those replaceable. I am sure they could do so if they wanted to, but it does add complexity in the design and building process. If you watch jerryrigeverything’s video about the iPhone se teardown, he shows that Apple uses removable pull tabs unlike Samsung and others. That is not to say that Apple is great for repairability, but they are better than they could be.
I think it kinda makes sense to me up until you get to the battery. It's a part that typically needs replacement much faster than other parts and it should be somewhat cheaper than, say, a RAM or SSD upgrade. It would make so much sense to make it easily replaceable. Do they just throw any laptop with a bad battery into the garbage bin?
I googled how to replace the battery of the 2019 MBP. iFixit has a guide that has 66 steps! That does not include doing all those steps in reverse to put it back together. It basically turns a process that took 7 steps (10 minutes) on a 2012 MBP into an afternoon activity with more booby traps than an Aztec temple. It just seems inelegantly convoluted to a point where I can't imagine repair service still being viable.
I am totally pro repairability, but the 2012 MacBook Pro was like 0.95 inches thick, while 2019 one is only 0.59 inches that causes a lot of stuff having to be packed insanely tight I’m sure
It would make me so happy for Apple to announce that they're leaving the thinner-is-better-and-that's-that approach for their Pro models, re-introducing .3 inches for bigger batteries, better keyboards, better hardware and easier repairability.
I can appreciate their push for big-picture goals like thinner devices, but I don't think the extra thinness introduced over the past 5 years or so is having a significantly positive impact on portability. At the same time, they've sacrificed so much to continue the trend. I'd say there even would be a significant audience for, say, a "Max" line.
The answer is obvious: selling trumps convenience. And most people favor appearance above all else.
It's an easy question to answer; glue is cheap to produce, makes the device easy to assemble, requires less engineering, and because no additional hardware is required, takes up less space, allowing for thinner devices.
Basically it's a cheap dumb low-tech way to solve a bunch of engineering problems.
Edit: somehow I forgot about you also asking for why the other parts are permanently attached. While they aren't using glue, honestly, it's the exact same story. And in the case of mobile CPUs, they simply do not make mechanical sockets for them.
Apple would ask, and they would do it for a hefty fee.
You can make just about anything if you are willing to invest enough into it, but the fact of the matter is that Apple is not the only company Intel sells their chips to; every single mobile computer manufacturer is complacent in this decision.
Cheaper, quicker. I would say installing a battery using screws requires a bracket of some kind(extra injection molded part or metal sheet), holes in the body for the bolts or screws (extra drilling and tapping) + additional space in an already cramped layout. Also, some parts are sensitive to magnetic fields (mostly the compass) and some screws would therefore have to be made of a different material. They already use aluminium screws near the compass (in the iPhone 4/5c at least) which might add additional costs if the battery bracket happens to be near that.
Think of the screen as well; it's glued in simply because it's quick and it requires no screws. To get the same adhesive force (so you don't get bits of the screen that lift up or are pulled down too far) you'd probably need at least a screw in every corner + depending on the size, 3-5 inbetween (per side). This would pretty much just triple installation time. Also, what would you screw them into? The screen would then also need a support bracket that's higher up than the backside of the screen so it can slot into something, which again takes up space.
Note that if they use screws, they are tiny; Apple does not want to compromise the form/look of their products for things like screws. I'd assume they think consumers should not see that kind of thing.
idk that it's even necessarily greed about users repairing their own machines as it is about instilling a desire to buy beefier hardware from the get-go. For example, when I was looking at work laptop options, I'd already committed to a Mac, but wasn't sure which line. It was pretty clear that power-wise I could do my job on either the Air or the Pro line laptops. But I was faced with the reality that if in a few years my air felt sluggish I couldn't pop in more RAM or storage and I'd have to upgrade. But if I went with the pricier and beefier Pro line, that sluggishness wouldn't catch up to me for a few more years. My logic being that I'd get more mileage without an upgrade out of the Pro than I would the Air.
Apple basically upsold me to a Pro line without a salesman or a pitch. But then again work was paying for the laptop, so my only concern was convincing the powers that be that this was a good decision, not parting with a couple hundred extra dollars out of my pocket.
If I had to guess, I'd say because the vast majority of their users probably don't have any need for that. If something like 90% of your users never need to upgrade their RAM or replace their battery, why go to the expense of making them upgradable and replaceable when you get the advantages that Greg mentions above without doing that. For users that do need those things, they have their super-high-end MacPro. They used to make RAM upgradable on iMacs, and for the iMacPro they didn't, so I'd bet that means there weren't enough users using the feature to justify its cost and hassle.
Honestly, this is probably more important than most people account for. To us it seems easy to replace a stick of ram or an HDD/SSD, but if you ask the average person they will respond with fear. This is especially true if you are being responsible and telling people how fragile the parts are - that they can accidentally snap an important connector or that a static shock (which they consider in effect to be uncontrollable magic) can break their thousand dollar machines. And if that's your average customer, isn't making all these tiny screws and connectors actually going to be more wasteful than if they simply didn't use them?
It's true, the vast majority of users don't need to replace RAM, HDs or SSDs.
But batteries? A pretty good sized chunk of users replace batteries when it's easy. At best you get a year of frequent use before lifespan starts dropping off significantly. Apple knows this, there's even a robust 3rd party market for replacement batteries. A market Apple doesn't control. Even if they did control it, they already know how much money there is in people upgrading the entire device every two years, which happens to be about as long as you'll make it with most laptop batteries before you have to start plugging in all the time.
If we were talking about smartphones it would be a different conversation... a removable battery makes water, dust and shock resistance a lot harder, adds millimeters of depth and introduces all sorts of engineering challenges.
But a laptop? There is no justification for that besides greed.
I dunno, battery replacement isn't exactly uncommon with laptops, and is something that even non-tech-inclined people would look into. I've done it for my parents and grandparents' laptops in the past, and know other people who have gone to places like UbreakIfix to have them swapped when they're not inclined to do so themselves.
We've got a long way to go before a battery replacement, even with the amount of work required on these newest Macs, is more expensive than replacing the machine entirely. Especially with all the economic mess going on right now (and, guessing that it won't be an overnight recovery either), more people are going to be interested in repair of products than ever before, especially something as expensive as a nice laptop.
You're not wrong, but Apple has the numbers on how many of their users do replacements and how frequently, and I've got to believe that they've weighed that against the other factors mentioned in this discussion and decided it was worth it not to make the batteries consumer replaceable. Just because it's inconvenient doesn't mean it's malicious or greedy. Replaceable parts cause other problems like increased wear and tear, more points of failure, grooves and seams where dust and other junk can get in, etc. FWIW, Microsoft has done the same thing with their Surface line of computers. It seems like there are benefits, so if the question is, "is there any possible reason... other than 'greed'?" the answer is a resounding "YES!"
It doesn't matter if Apple decided to make all of their laptops more modular. Even if they did, the newer laptops won't accept replacement parts for many essential components unless Apple reprograms the entire system.
The way the newer laptops with T2 security chips work is that many of the components, including essential ones like the TouchID sensor and SSD, are paired with the motherboard at the factory and cannot be replaced unless you have the correct software. Of course, only Apple has this software.
So unfortunately, even if Apple stopped soldering components directly onto the motherboard, they'd still be non-replaceable.
They say it's in the name of security, which I'm sure is partly true, but I'm sure they don't mind the extra profits that it brings in.