Apple's self-service repair is basically malicious compliance. To an extent, I appreciate that they even offer the possibility at all, but despite how good their hardware is, especially my M-series macbooks, I'm getting tired of their user hostility.

My ThinkPad T14, while not macbook quality, is decent enough, and everything is user serviceable, and parts are cheap. Just 7 captive phillips screws and it's open.

I'm also tired of my only choices being either a) enjoy the conveniences of the apple ecosystem and integration but have no ability to self-service my own hardware, or in the case of iOS, run my own software outside of the app store or b) try and hack together some equivalent "ecosystem" using Linux, Android, KDE connect, and various other homegrown scripts and apps but deal with an inferior laptop, inferior smartwatch, and inferior apps.

Consumers are getting screwed over, even those outside of the "ecosystem," by Apple's insistence on not allowing third parties to develop against their protocols (imagine a world where any smartwatch could match the functionality of the Apple watch on iOS, or anyone could create an AirDrop client on any operating system, etc.)