Car technology -- for good or ill?

On Saturday En left to go to the store.She came back around two minutes later. The car's battery was flat. I could've jump-started it, but honestly this wasn't from leaving the lights on or anything like that; it would strand her at her destination. It was just dead, barely making a click.I went off and got a new one and installed it. Of course the car started just fine now.The next say I was talking to my brother about cars... he'd recently got himself a BMW as well so he's been hanging out in various forums online. I mentioned this to him. The old battery was a bit over a year old too."Oh when you put in a new battery, you have to register it with the computer."?It's a battery. WTH?Firing up some searches yielded the answer: it turns out BMW is quite smart about charging the battery. When a battery is new it charges it less aggressively, same with lower-rated batteries. As the battery ages, the computer starts putting more and more current through the battery to charge it. This winds up maximizing the battery's life.Smart.But to "register" it with the computer requires stuff the typical home mechanic doesn't have. Swapping a battery isn't as easy as just taking out the old and bolting in the new. This is just plain annoying to not have a user-serviceable wear item. This is even more annoying that if you replace it without telling the computer about it, the car winds up cooking the new battery prematurely.Sucky. Now I have to buy an interface so I can reprogram the computer from my laptop; it's still cheaper than taking it to the dealer for them to do it.Good or bad? Hard to tell in this case.This is a 2004 model too... Hard to imaging what the current models do. This is the creepy path of getting to a point with no user serviceable parts inside of a vehicle.I think I'll chalk it up to smart, but poorly implemented.