My father works in a machine shop and when he gave my daughter a $20 disposable watch he also gave a tool that he made so we could open the back, against the intent, and replace the battery.

Stop with the contemptuous tone, Matt Baume. It doesn’t make your targets look bad. It makes you look bad.

Remember, "planned obsolescence" is a feature, not a bug...

"Corporations are people, too, my friend." - Mitt Romney

A lot of tech manufacturers love to put "warranty void if removed" stickers over access screws even though this practice has been deemed unlawful. Just the other day I was working on a machine and the PCI-E extender the video card was using had one on it. This is just a $5 part which houses cables in a plastic enclosure, but nope... don't open it they say! Def scammy.
But right to repair is gaining traction. As designers have made procuts thinner and sleaker, engineers have resorted to soldering formerly replaceable components such as the cpu, ram, and hard disk directly onto the pcb. We recently saw a reversal of this from Microsoft after taking a lot of criticism over the Surface having soldered components, they reversed course (although for some reason the ram is still soldered and pretty much proprietary form-factor so good luck getting extra anyway womp womp)

"I was able to safely replace the battery in my Prius a few years ago"

A Stranger writer owns a car? Talk about burying the lede.