I disagree. You can call this "moving the goalposts" if you want, but I don't think it is. You seem to be basically be claiming that something is only "mainta

I disagree. You can call this "moving the goalposts" if you want, but I don't think it is. You seem to be basically be claiming that something is only "maintainable" if you can easily disassemble it down to the smallest component; I'm not arguing for that at all. If there's an actual engineering reason to reduce maintainability (e.g. it improves performance), that's a worthwhile consideration. What I'm talking about is when a product is made intentionally non-maintainable, or maintainable only by people with service tools which are non-obtainable, solely because it increases profits. There's no good reason for this. Now, for your battery example, I don't think that even applies. From what I've read and heard, most "non-replaceable" batteries are actually completely replaceable, it's just not so easy to do and requires a bit of skill. "Maintainable by a service technician with some common hand tools and half a brain" does not equal "non maintainable". I've seen tons of videos on YouTube showing non-professionals how to take apart their phones and replace those "non-maintainable" batteries. It's not like the things are epoxied in there. And you're right, you can save a bit of space by going that route; it's an engineering trade-off. My example of something that's deliberately designed to not be maintainable (by the end-user or someone not employed by or affiliated with the manufacturer) would be a car that requires regular service, but where it can't be done without connecting a laptop to the car and using an extremely expensive software program to really do nothing more than tell the car the oil has been changed. This makes it impossible for the customer to do the service himself, or have an independent mechanic do it unless that mechanic is willing to shell out the money needed for that tool.