You're seriously living in an urban bubble if you think either an Apple store or a certified repair center will be readily available and convienent for everybody. Let me remind you, the alternative is Apple sends me a new battery in the mail and I insert it into my phone myself.
Zero downtime or travel.
The last time I got a battery replacement for an Apple product was a few months ago, when I was living in Seattle a mere 30 minutes away from the University Village Apple store. From the time of my first phonecall to schedule the appointment to me walking out of the store with a new battery, three and a half weeks elapsed. I had to go to the store three times, the first time they merely "confirmed" what I had already told them on the phone and said they'd need to order the battery and it would take a week. What a fucking disaster, why didn't they order it when I called? Why did they give me an appointment when they knew they couldn't help me that day? Imagine if I was living an hour or two out of town, that would have been three afternoons of my short live wasted. Unacceptable.
It's shit. Unmitigated shit. With my old thinkpad I had new batteries mailed to me and it took mere seconds for me to swap them. I am never buying another computer from these shitheads. People who continue to support Apple have either gotten lucky, or they're nuts.
