Please cite plenty of examples.
Lets start with the big one: Batteries. It would be neither difficult nor detrimental to make them removable. At the very least they don't need to use such strong adhesives to keep them in place. In many recent MacBooks you have to use toluene to get them out without creasing them which can make them prone to explosive failure. It would actually be much safer and environmentally friendly to not glue these in place. Less chemicals (glue and solvents), less risk to technicians and customers, less risk of damaging expensive, dangerous and potentially toxic items.
More glue: Apple glues glass to the front of LCD panels routinely in all iMacs and MacBooks of the last ten years or so. Plus all iPhones and some iPads. The glass is there to protect the screen from dirt and damage but if the glass gets cracked or chipped, you have to replace the whole expensive unit. Sometimes hundreds of dollars/pounds to fix £0 worth of glass. In the case of MacBooks, you typically have to replace the entire lid along with it. Because more glue.
It looks like they've finally relented with the keyboards on the newest MacBook Pros but all the previous unibody MacBooks have keyboards riveted into the top case. Thats an expensive piece of laser cut, aircraft grade aluminium that has to be replaced any time someone spills on their keyboard.
Additionally they've made the charging cable separate from the power brick at long last but they could clearly have done so 20+ years ago and saved a lot of expensive, plastic-encased transformers from landfill just because of frayed rubber.
ng often uses all the same screws throughout a device. Sony only uses one or two different ones in Playstations. Apple uses numerous screws of different types and sizes. Most iPhones have three different screw heads and half a dozen or more different lengths. These are frequently not made precisely enough to discern by measuring in my experience so they could clearly be much more uniform without compromising anything. Its just added complication and labour requirement to every job. Car manufacturers have an excuse for this. If cars are too easy to take apart, people will steal your engine from the street. Its not really a problem with devices that can be swiped whole with one hand.
There was a MacBook Pro or two circa 2010 I think where the LVDS display cable was a reversible connector that could fit in the socket either way up but if you put it in upside down, it would burn out a component on the motherboard within a minute or so. And that in turn would burn out the display assembly. That was a genius move.
Can you think of a good reason beyond naked profiteering that Apple couldn't manage to install a micro SD card slot in the iPhone and iPad? I can't.
Every MacBook Pro since the first one has had one or more cables that connect to the logic board in silly places that are awkward to route cleanly, get stuck underneath other components, too short, too long, are needlessly fragile etc. None of that is necessary with a bit more thought into the designs. Or just the choices of cables.
The more recent MacBooks have these odd clips holding the bottom cases on. They require some force to undo and would be highly off-putting to an amateur. The original Mac Mini made a truly disconcerting noise when you cracked it open with a couple of sharpened putty knives. Those were custom (and very expensive) tools that AASPs had to order from Apple's parts system. Unless you made your own by visiting B&Q and using a grindstone. If memory serves they expensive. I think we shaved the zero off the end with our home made versions. Sounds almost as if they went really far out of their way to make those difficult to repair doesn't it?
The aluminium Mac Minis require a tool to yank the logic board out of the case. That one can be done with some stiff wire but its sort of like removing a single DIN car stereo from the dashboard.
Logic boards in Power Mac G5s. What a pain those were. Compared the the G3 and G4 which were genuinely easy. Even once you took everything else out they were still awkward. Huge and very little room to manoeuvre. Even worse to get back in. Thank goodness they were so well made. I don't think I ever saw more than a couple of those actually fail. The Power supplies weren't fun either. Those could easily have been built to just slide out after undoing 4 or 5 screws. You were supposed to remove the heatsinks, there was a plate on top with several screws in it at awkward angles, the cables were horrible to deal with. Just a PITA.
This'll do for now. I'm sure theres many, many more.
When you've worked on enough of these devices, its impossible to conclude that Apple spends much time designing them to be easier to repair. Its equally apparent they have spent time deliberately making them more difficult.