Are you certain it's a "stupid mistake?" They said that exact phrase when Apple dropped floppy drives from the first iMacs back in 1998.
In this instance, uncased, unprotected Li-Poly batteries are dangerous in the wrong hands. Just as, for a similar reason, you cannot user-replace the explosive airbags in the dashboard of your car for safety reasons, Apple has elected to make these batteries non-user replaceable.
In addition, by doing the replacement themselves, they control disposal, getting them greenie points from the environmental wackos that have been beating up on them recently despite the fact that Apple had the best environmental practices in the industry. This fact helped tip the entire MacBook Pro line over into the Epeat Gold rating.
It’s a paradigm shift is all I’m saying.
Speaking of the floppy drive thing, who decided a laptop w/o a CD/DVD was a good idea (The really small Mac laptop)? New ideas are tried, and either they work or they don’t.
I’m not going to get all peevish over it, as long as I can continue to use the really old (286 CPU) machines that drive my test equipment at work. I still use 1.44 MB floppies every day. I need to keep backwards-compatible stuff, while the consumer computer market seems to be on this headlong rush into God knows where.
Ok let's go back in time.... Yeah I would contend that WAS a stupid mistake even with the floppy being a dying technology then. When I bought my Dell Dimension in 2003 it didn't come with a floppy drive. I purchased an aftermarket floppy drive and STILL use it fairly regularly.
As for Apple discontinuing floppy drives, to me that is like Apple giving the finger to the people who, at the time a floppy was part of their daily routine, and Apple is saying, "We are going to tell you a floppy is no longer relevant. Get used to it..." To me that is an arrogant mother f'ing company I never want to have any part of.