Technical quibble here. The batteries are glued to the case, not soldered to anything. The power cables still use connectors and can be easily popped off.
At this point I’m thinking the 2012 I own could be the last laptop I bother buying. Its performant enough for being a day to day computer with an ssd and 16gb ram, and these days if I need more horsepower for one job I’m better off using a server. Plus the parts are so cheap on ebay and you can do most repairs with a phillips head screwdriver.
They solder components to save space and increase the reliability and power efficiency of the connections. Apple doesn’t care about self repair, but they aren’t using solder instead of connectors as part of a scheme to actively thwart it.
(ii) Does Apple solder certain components primarily because it makes repair more difficult?
Even if the answer to (i) is yes, the answer to (ii) can be no.
Most unpluggable components in most laptops are never intentionally unplugged over the lifetime of the device. Connectors take up space, can come unplugged accidentally, and degrade signal quality. Those are the reasons for soldering components in a modern laptop.
I would argue that they aren't anti right-to-repair. They are against poor quality repairs.
The issue is if you let individuals and 3rd party stores do repairs, there is no way to validate that they are doing it in a reliable/quality fashion. This is especially problematic when phones are getting more and more resilient to various environments (Like the addition of IP68)
When a customer has a repair done poorly and issues come up, they come to Apple for support.
Rossmann went on a drunken, paranoid rant about how the macbook webcam has secret hardware to spy on him. He took the video down after widespread ridicule.
Apple intentionally solders all the components together to prevent self repair. Even the battery is soldered to the system.
https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/12/2019-13-macbook-pro-teardown/