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fenderbass146

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2009
1,478
2,647
Northwest Indiana
News (in German):


Press release (English)


The EU is mandating consumer changeable batteries in 2027, banning glued batteries and other shenanigans.

I don’t think Apple is going to make special MacBook Airs and iPhones for Europe so in 2027 they will probably have changeable batteries again globally!
Government overstep all over the place...
 

erikkfi

macrumors 68000
May 19, 2017
1,726
8,097
If any of you read the article, everything you’re talking about doesn’t apply.
If you read the article, you'd know it's unclear.

The article refers to "portable batteries in appliances," which.. I don't know what that means, I'm afraid. I'm sure it'll be defined in the legislation. Elsewhere in this article and others there are references to "rechargeable industrial batteries with a capacity above 2kWh" and arguments that it would "apply to all types of batteries sold in the EU." I suspect that someone will have to actually go into the legislative text to see whether this would apply to any Apple products and, if so, to which.
 

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
9,362
12,612
2027, you say? Then by 2030 the EU is all going to be scratching their head wondering why e-waste has spiked.

Right goals, wrong approach. If you want to reduce e-waste, increase the cost of creating e-waste. This is just increasing the cost of creating products but keeping e-waste free.
 
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Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
9,362
12,612
If any of you read the article, everything you’re talking about doesn’t apply.
The article, at least the English language one, doesn't say squat. I'm assuming you read the article, so let me ask: One of the bullet items says that the law requires "A due diligence policy for all economic operators, except for SMEs".

  • Due diligence in regards to what?
  • What is an economic operator?
  • What's an SME?
What it does say is that they need to eventually publish what they agreed to "Following the final vote in plenary, the Council will now have to formally endorse the text before its publication in the EU Official Journal shortly after". It hasn't been published yet.

Every EU regulation seems to go through this-- there's a little happy note that gets published when a new regulation passes committee, but I cannot, for the life of me, find the text that was agreed upon. There's a link to an agenda with links to content that I'm sure I could comb through if I had the time, but when I have in the past, I find the end document also assumes you've been following every discussion to date and understand current law.

Note: thanks @klasma for finding a link with information in it.
 

chown33

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 9, 2009
11,003
8,900
A sea of green
Actually I'm wondering why they don't just make the stems as a screw on.
I'm not sure about every model, but the Airpods Pro in 2019 had more than just a battery in the stem. According to the iFixit teardown, Step 12, there's a battery, antenna, microphones, and a "mysterious black rectangle" speculated to be a sensor.


Either all those non-battery components would need to be moved elsewhere without losing any performance (e.g. antenna sensitivity), or they'd also need to be replaced with each new stem. The latter would be an expensive proposition.
 
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one more

macrumors 603
Aug 6, 2015
5,159
6,577
Earth
Also a problem with having someone else replace the battery is the down time. You will be without your iPhone for more than an hour, day or even a week.

You should also add to that downtime erasing and then restoring a device, which can add some extra hours on top of that. If we could easily replace the battery ourselves, as in a watch or car key, it would be so much simpler and would save quite a bit of time!
 

kpluck

macrumors regular
Oct 8, 2018
157
507
Sacramento
I guess apple has no choice but being green now…not just gaslighting their customers 🙂
Actually, they do. They could finally say "enough is enough" to the EU and stop selling products with batteries in their member countries. With the built-in demand for their products, they could rely on 3rd parties to buy their phones and sell them in the affected territories on the grey/black market.

Don't get me wrong, I know Apple would never do this but it sure would be interesting if they did. If they don't, they are basically telling the EU that they can dictate the design of all Apple products going forward.

-kp
 

Longplays

Suspended
May 30, 2023
1,308
1,158
You should also add to that downtime erasing and then restoring a device, which can add some extra hours on top of that. If we could easily replace the battery ourselves, as in a watch or car key, it would be so much simpler and would save quite a bit of time!
I had an employee not be able to avail of the $29 Apple battery half a decade ago because the Apple Service Center made it so inconvenient to replace.

I love Apple's industrial design but I can live with the ugliness of user replaceable batteries.

But I'd likely lengthen my replacement cycle from 2 years to 4 years. Only replacing when the SoC is too slow or cannot use the newer 3rd party apps.
 

Xand&Roby

macrumors 6502a
Jun 13, 2020
534
486
What I always find interesting is counting the number of slaves who want to be slaves not out of necessity, but out of attitude, as the only perspective of life.
There is someone who tells a company 'hey, you have to make your products user repairable and replaceable batteries', but it is full of slaves ready to defend their slave owner, instead of asking 'sorry, why don't we have user repairable products and replaceable batteries, and it has to be a third party to impose it?'.
They are ready to lace at the third subject.
When you say slaves by attitude.
 

Longplays

Suspended
May 30, 2023
1,308
1,158
On the upside of batteries not being able to be replaced... it forced a very aggressive annual iPhone chip refresh cycle.

Imagine if we're still stuck on 14nm nearly decade after its 1st launch because we all replaced our last tablet/phone 8 years later & laptop/desktop a decade later.

Where will the R&D funding come from?

That essentially what occurred with the Mac Pro for the last decade.
 

BigMcGuire

Cancelled
Jan 10, 2012
9,832
14,032
What I always find interesting is counting the number of slaves who want to be slaves not out of necessity, but out of attitude, as the only perspective of life.
There is someone who tells a company 'hey, you have to make your products user repairable and replaceable batteries', but it is full of slaves ready to defend their slave owner, instead of asking 'sorry, why don't we have user repairable products and replaceable batteries, and it has to be a third party to impose it?'.
They are ready to lace at the third subject.
When you say slaves by attitude.
Interesting way of looking at it.

I'm technically inclined or so I think. I used to help people upgrade the storage and batteries on their iPods. I even replaced some batteries on the iPhone 4s.

But after the 6, I stopped doing that. It just got too difficult with the way they were sealing phones. I could probably do it, but the risk of failure was pretty high - a risk I wasn't willing to take.

Fast forward to today's phones? Yeah, no... my wife and I have had several phones destroyed by Apple Geniuses themselves when attempting to replace the battery (6s+) or get a screen replacement (13 PM).

People wanted super thin water proof premium material devices and that's what they got. (I have fond memories of my Note 3's plastic tear off back and the phone was very thin but the OEM battery lost 50% capacity in half a year and the 3rd party ones didn't do much better...).

I've seen so many old iPhones at colleges that if it were easy and convenient, these phones could last quite a bit longer with a battery change.
 

Xand&Roby

macrumors 6502a
Jun 13, 2020
534
486
Interesting way of looking at it.

I'm technically inclined or so I think. I used to help people upgrade the storage and batteries on their iPods. I even replaced some batteries on the iPhone 4s.

But after the 6, I stopped doing that. It just got too difficult with the way they were sealing phones. I could probably do it, but the risk of failure was pretty high - a risk I wasn't willing to take.

Fast forward to today's phones? Yeah, no... my wife and I have had several phones destroyed by Apple Geniuses themselves when attempting to replace the battery (6s+) or get a screen replacement (13 PM).

People wanted super thin water proof premium material devices and that's what they got. (I have fond memories of my Note 3's plastic tear off back and the phone was very thin but the OEM battery lost 50% capacity in half a year and the 3rd party ones didn't do much better...).

I've seen so many old iPhones at colleges that if it were easy and convenient, these phones could last quite a bit longer with a battery change.

I've always recovered iPhone, Mac, iPad, whenever possible even accessories or Apple Watch.
I too stopped in the replacement of the batteries to the waterproof iPhones, but only because the owner, informed thoroughly by me about it, agreed it was better to avoid, because to an iPhone that is not worth 40$ I would risk without problem to remove the IP67 gasket: better a working phone, but delicate, than a solid but not working phone.
On the issue of premium materials in my opinion we are teased: Apple abuses too much aluminum, a very delicate material, which ages badly and leads the user to replace the product.
When not using aluminum it uses steel: enormously heavy, it retains its characteristics better over time than aluminum, but not much more.
Years ago they were testing LiquidMetal: gone.
Titanium? Almost gone.
The ceramics? Practically disappeared.
I repeat, it seems to me they are making fun of us.
 

erikkfi

macrumors 68000
May 19, 2017
1,726
8,097
More runaround 😵‍💫:

  1. ‘appliance’ means any electrical or electronic equipment, as defined in Article 3(1), point (a), of Directive 2012/19/EU, which is fully or partly powered by a battery or is capable of being so

I went and looked that up (source):

(a) 'electrical and electronic equipment or 'EEE' means equipment which is dependent on electric currents or electromagnetic fields in order to work properly and equipment for the generation, transfer and measurement of such currents and fields and designed for use with a voltage rating not exceeding 1 000 volts for alternating current and 1 500 volts for direct current;

So in sum, it seems that that guy who said iF YoU BoThErEd To ReAd ThE ArtiCLe YOu wOulD SeE iT doEsNT aPplY to ApPLE sTuFf was wrong. The only thing that makes me question that conclusion is that you'd think this would be front-page news if it were true.
 

mihighil

macrumors member
Sep 2, 2022
89
221
Actually, they do. They could finally say "enough is enough" to the EU and stop selling products with batteries in their member countries. With the built-in demand for their products, they could rely on 3rd parties to buy their phones and sell them in the affected territories on the grey/black market.

Don't get me wrong, I know Apple would never do this but it sure would be interesting if they did. If they don't, they are basically telling the EU that they can dictate the design of all Apple products going forward.

-kp
Yeah irreparable devices are a "design choice". Im sure they can over engineer a phone with superb water resistance and a removable battery.
 
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