alt Hacker NewsBut they still make repairs very difficult in case of accidental damage, random failure, or inevitably battery wear.
Glued batteries, soldered storage, keyboards and screens that absolutely aren't designed to be swapped out in the event of damage. There's still an element of planned obsolescence even if reliability/quality generally seems better than the competition.
For an end user the “very difficult” repair process is to go to an Apple Store and either get it repaired under warranty or pay a parts and labor fee for it. It’s not actually planned obsolescence so much as tighter control over the supply chain of device parts.