You picked out the tongue in cheek part of my comment, but sure, people like thinner computers. Not sure what battery life has to do with that sense the overall lifetime of the batter is probably worse with everything packed in and the battery experiencing more heat.
Some other problems from their obsession with thin. Broken keyboards for multiple years. And that's moving from already bad chiclet keyboards into broken keyboards.
There was also a couple year period when ethernet ports were on the corners and it seemed everyone had their macbook dented right at the ethernet port. It could have been reinforced at that point along the edge, but they have to aggressively bevel those edges for the marketing glamour shots that make them look impossibly thin.
Oh, speaking of the beveled edges, the early airs and ipads were rounded so far toward the center that if you placed them on a table, and pressed near the edge with any force at all it would flip the far side of the device off the table. A real problem for an ipad which is a touchscreen and for anyone who touches their palms to their keyboard while typing.
Those are problems from making things minimally thin, or worse, making them appear thinner than they are. I don't expect them to actually make cars one inch shorter every year. I do expect them to have some weird obsession that they will tout as the best thing ever and min/max it to death.
