It seems Apple may be on the brink of yet another iPhone redesign. Not, this time, because of any fault or because of any user demand but because the European Union (that's my continent, folks) is considering a directive that would force phones to have an easily removable battery.
This, to me, is taking legislation too far. I can see a lot of arguments in its favour of course. You can replace batteries easily if it's redesigned, carry a spare around (using the location services demolishes battery life all too quickly I find, even after the firmware upgrade the other week), if it went wrong you could buy another. There are all sorts of reasons that this is a good idea.
The thing is, there are no reasons I can think of that should concern the legislators. Yes, it needs to be green and we should be working towards a more ecological iPhone the whole time - but hang on, that's probably Apple's view already. And one thing they're certainly not doing is allowing the use of disposable batteries, so that's one no-no eliminated before they've even considered a change.
No, to me this is something that should be offered by Apple and I hope it is - but offered as a benefit to people who buy their products, not as a sop to a legislator. If I buy something that's difficult to service independently then that's actually my decision, not something the EU should be dictating to me about. (I could bore you with accounts of the occasions on which I've lost time by dropping my old Sony Ericsson phone only to have the back drop off and the battery fall out, sometimes in the middle of downloading e-mails, so there are reasons for sealing the battery in as well).
According to Cnet the idea isn't yet law but it may become so. I'm all for educating the customers about the issues but I hope this sort of design issue never becomes a matter for the legislators.