After reading up on this issue, it definitely seems like an underhanded move by apple to encourage apple-only batteries as replacement batteries. Of course, there are potential solutions to this battery recognition problem, but none of them are quick or pretty.
We are truly at a point in time where so many tools and software packages are available (even free ones) that anything is possible. The solution to this problem is quite laborious. A brief overview of the procedure would look something like this:
1. Take the apple specific chip and attempt to read it with TI-specific utilities
2. Attempt to dump the contents of the microcontoller's rom
3. If reading and dumping contents unsuccessful, decap chip and look for similarities in gate structure
4. analyze an apple-ti chip and normal TI chip by running the equivalent of a software diff. Find the specific oddball code, repackage the ROM and use it to re-flash off the shelf TI chips.
Of course, redistributing this code used on the apple-ti chip is greatly discouraged by me as this would be highly illegal and get you into legal trouble.
However, There is still an ace up the sleeve. It is defcon and blackhat week and there are folks out there wiser than I that have had great success in reverse engineering chips. Of course, you would need to pitch to someone to go after Ti's "secure B-to-B protocol" and explain the situation to them, but you may get lucky enough and convince someone.
I am honestly surprised Apple is going to these extents to gate-keep their battery supply line.
This is not going to look good for apple in upcoming anti-competitive litigation.
With this in mind, it is a good idea to spread this info far and wide to put pressure on the folks at apple.
At the end of the day, apple really does not want anyone to own any part of it's products except itself, from cradle to grave. This is extremely silly and partly why I avoid the apple ecosystem whenever possible. It is truly sad, as their upcoming apple XDR desktop display looks pretty sweet on paper. But that's where it'll stay for me: On paper. I'm not going to buy one because I'd rather have some uncalibrated, B+ panel, off-the-shelf monitor that I can fix and buy replacement ICs for rather then a monitor that uses apple proprietary chips that no one can source, not even digikey or mouser.
