The fact that you can't lift the lid without it starting up also creates the problem of not knowing how much charge is left in the battery. In earlier MacBooks, the charging cable had an LED light to let you know when it was fully charged. Also, there was a subtly flashing light in the hinge to let you know the laptop was on. Without knowing that my work laptop had been set up by the predecessor user to boot up every Sunday morning at 9, my battery totally ran down while I was on medical leave. Charming.

I've been using Macs since 1985, and I think Apple often makes really dumb user-unfriendly decisions (monocolored file and folder icons, for example). But shh, we're not allowed to be critical!