The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop • Hacker News Board

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#71

Post by MBCook » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #62

stevesearer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. My older Macbook Pro basically has a dead battery and I'm thinking about just replacing the battery and swapping the hard drive for an ssd to give it some new life. That said, it is used primarily at the house so we just plug it in to watch some netflix and browse the web or pull up a recipe for dinner, so it isn't that big of an issue in the first place for my purposes.

A SSD and some ram upgrade can do wonders for an older machine (and price is pretty reasonable for both these days). You can even get kits that allow you to take out your 'superdrive' and install a second hard drive.

Yep. I'm still using a 2010 MBP. I maxed out the RAM a few years ago and it performed better. Now I've got an SSD in it and it feels like new. Almost nothing I do pushes it so I simply have no good reason to replace it. If I hadn't put the SSD in I would have replaced it two+ years ago because it felt slow.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#72

Post by mbenjaminsmith » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

I went through something similar with Apple not that long ago. I had a retina MBP that had a faulty keyboard. Half of the home row stopped working, starting with a single key in that row. It was some type of physical failure.

I thought the computer was still in warranty but after talking to half a dozen people at Apple they told me it was 3 years out of warranty. Then they told me they'd have to replace about half the computer which would, not surprisingly, cost me 50% of what I paid for it.

I complained politely for about 45 minutes, talking to a few more people and then they reactivated my warranty and asked me to take it in to a shop. I got it back in about a week and was happy to see that they had also replaced my battery, which for about a year had given the same warning as in the article.

While I was happy about that, and it made me like Apple more, the reality is my computer is a business expense and in the big picture not a really large one. Also, computers are still developing fast enough that they're not practically a long term purchase. People talk about wanting to service computer themselves but that's a very small percentage of the overall market.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#73

Post by ant6n » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #10

Just as a side-note (IANAL), in the EU, retailers can't refuse to fix something just because it's past their warranty period. If you can establish that the product has broke under reasonable use then you can argue that the product wasn't fit for purpose when you bought it, and therefore it is still the retailer's responsibility to repair it, replace it or give you a partial refund. I did this with Apple when my logic…

Similar laws apply in Quebec.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#74

Post by DavidAdams » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #10

Just as a side-note (IANAL), in the EU, retailers can't refuse to fix something just because it's past their warranty period. If you can establish that the product has broke under reasonable use then you can argue that the product wasn't fit for purpose when you bought it, and therefore it is still the retailer's responsibility to repair it, replace it or give you a partial refund. I did this with Apple when my logic…

That would partially explain why an Apple laptop in Europe routinely costs $500+ more than in the US.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#75

Post by gambiting » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

That is completely not my experience. Not at all. I had to replace the battery on my 2013 MacBook Air. The battery cost 99 British pounds(~$150) in the Apple Store, that included the work. I made an appointment using their app in the morning for an afternoon service, walked in, they took the laptop, I waited 20 minutes, they came back, I paid 99 pounds, got out. Easy, pain free, cheap.

Yes, you read that right - cheap. When I wanted to replace the battery on my Dell XPS 13(2010 model?) Dell wanted 220 pounds for the battery, which was absolutely nuts(oh and the delivery would take 3 weeks). Ended up buying a fake one from China for 1/4 of the price.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#76

Post by giarc » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

jhrrsn wrote: post #25

Over the course of my professional life with laptops, I've used Apple, Alienware, Dell and Lenovo machines. I can safely say that the three-day turnaround in an actual bricks & mortar store offered by Apple is far and away the best service I've ever received (the worst being a two-week wait that didn't resolve the issue!). Regarding the business-level support, I think it's fair enough for the store to deliver a basel…

I agree with your assessment of brick and motar store. Having it done in store saves so much time.

5-10 years ago I had a laptop with some screen issues. I took it back to the retailer where I purchased it and they sent it for repair. I was without my laptop for 8 weeks for a simple swab of a screen.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#77

Post by giarc » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

thearn4 wrote: post #3

I'm curious what other people's perspectives are on the (what appears to me anyway) dominance of Macbooks among developers these days. Is it the convenience of a Unix-y machine with decent drivers, or something else?

Xcode.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#78

Post by Daishiman » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

sugarcube wrote: post #50

I don't quite understand the rage. Doesn't the service agreement comment on the time it might take? I remember from Dell there were different kinds of packages you could buy. Because I bought some business laptop once, they actually dispatched a technician to my office and fixed the problem on the spot. If you need that kind of service level, you simply have to pay for it.

The rage is that for many lines of work (like mine), 4 days of computer downtime is absolute unacceptable.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#79

Post by matthewmacleod » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

somewheres wrote: post #38

ant6n wrote: post #2

On my macbook pro, the battery is a bit worn down and it hard-crashes when the Battery is at around 5%. You'd think that Apple would be able to write an OS that detects this new low for the battery and adjust the meter correctly and hibernate the computer, so you it doesn't cause you to accidentally loose work. But I guess AAPL can't afford those kind of development costs; or maybe improving the pixels on some transi…

I'd rather see a hard crash and know for sure that the battery is too empty to perform work. Stupid battery warning meters are a lie, and a waste of valuable power. If you have enough power to show me that you don't have power, I know your battery meter is full of shit. It means the board can still operate, and is probably performing a small subset of tasks without my awareness, in a low power mode. Maybe the acceler…

Stupid battery warning meters are a lie, and a waste of valuable power.

No, they're not. Knowing the charge of a battery accurately is essential to managing the performance of a lithium battery; they're pretty sensitive to this stuff.

If you have enough power to show me that you don't have power, I know your battery meter is full of shit. It means the board can still operate, and is probably performing a small subset of tasks without my awareness, in a low power mode.

See above. Power management systems never let a battery completely discharge; this would destroy a lithium battery. There will always be a small amount of reserve power available for managing battery life.

The greatest sin of all, though. The hands-down WORST crime committed, is when the hardware IS PLUGGED INTO A POWER SOURCE, BUT REFUSES TO POWER ON BECAUSE "THE BATTERY NEEDS TO CHARGE FIRST."

Again, this is down to the sensitivity of lithium batteries. If the charge of the battery falls below the minimum safe level, the device will charge it before allowing you to take power. There are a couple of reasons – it's important to make sure the battery doesn't fall into deep discharge, and to ensure that device power isn't immediately cut off (=hard crash) if the user subsequently disconnects the power before the device charges to acceptable levels.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#80

Post by rayiner » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

andrelaszlo wrote: post #26

dchuk wrote: post #4

Isn't this sort of a cake-and-eat-it-too situation? If you want a slim, lightweight laptop that still performs at a high level, you can't expect the old pop out batteries with the little switch we grew up with on laptops. While $400 is expensive to replace a battery, it's obviously not as simple as just popping a new one in, which is the compromise one has to make if they want a Macbook Pro. If you want easily swappa…

Is this a trade-off that most buyers are aware of? I'm not sure it's as simple as "shaving off a couple of millimeters", but if that's the case I know I would personally trade those millimeters for better serviceability, especially the day I realize I need a new battery. I was thinking about switching to a Macbook Pro, but for me this is just another argument to go with something else. Can't deny that the hardware is…

Apple tends to use the space savings to stuff in class-leading batteries.

I have a T450s at work. The stock battery is only 46 watt-hours, versus 75 on the similarly-sized 13" rMBP. The 15" rMBP has a 100 watt-hour battery, which you can get on a T550s only if you buy the extended battery that sticks out half an inch from the bottom.