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I think that this is because non-replaceable batteries in laptops and non-replaceable radios in lights are not directly analogous.

For one thing (I assume) you could get the battery replaced/fixed at an Apple store if you needed; the real issue is doing it yourself. Retrofitting new radios into old bulbs seems less likely to be a service that will be offered.

Additionally, the lifespan of the computer is 20 years less than the lifespan of the bulb. With the computer, if you had to get a new one when the battery ran out, in most cases it wouldn't be too much of a tragedy since you would be looking forward to a bigger better machine anyway. For the bulb, though, the wifi component could be obsoleted within a few years, while the actual light source has the capacity to run for another 20. So for each object, the ratio of when one part fails to when the user would want to replace it anyway is quite different.

Plus the non-replaceable batteries have the theoretical up-sides of leading to better build quality and industrial design, which is less apparently true of the bulb.




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