When Apple's iPhone 18 Pro Max arrived this fall carrying a battery larger than any of its predecessors, it quietly collided with a regulatory boundary most consumers never see — international aviation rules that treat high-capacity lithium cells as dangerous goods. Rather than shrink the battery or delay the launch, Apple devised a procedure to drain each device to a lower charge state before it leaves the warehouse, reclassifying it for transport purposes. It is a pragmatic answer to an old tension: the human appetite for longer-lasting devices outpacing the slower, safety-minded world of sh