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The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

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

#111

Post by simonh »

jhugg wrote: post #44
rayiner wrote: post #11

Out of warranty battery service on a Mac ranges from $130-200: https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=Unite... . I think that's a reasonable price considering Lenovo charges $140 for a 75-watt hour 68+ battery for the T450s: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/itemdetails/0C52862/460/D91DC49... . And for $130-200, they will replace your top-case (including keyboard and touchpad). I have had it done more than…

This comment needs to be at the top. Something is missing from the story.

I think this is the answer, the Apple Store rep made a mistake. From the comments on the page:

BLUESHIRTER MAY 5, 2014 AT 3:44 AM Sadly, the guy you spoke to was very wrong. There are 2 part numbers for the same part depending on why it is being replaced. If the top case is damaged, or failed out of warranty, it’s 399. If it is a failed (out of warranty) or consumed battery, it is as stated above, $199, and 24 hours to replace. For validating your AppleCare, drop the machine for repair, go home, call AppleCare, email a copy of your receipt/proof of purchase, by the time you pick up the repair, you are golden. This is done nearly daily at every store in the country.

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

#112

Post by Bud »

redidas wrote: post #32
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…

Personally, I'd rather have a few extra mm of thickness and batteries that are not glued to a keyboard. Efforts could be made to keep this tech more repairable.

"Efforts could be made"? Which passive-voice efforts do you mean, specifically? Apple has designed their battery to be made up of several curved units that take up all available airspace in the case, and those have to be secured in place somehow, so that they don't rattle around like cheap PCs. Screws are not a realistic solution here because of obvious strictures from the design. A simple one-piece replaceable battery design is simply no longer feasible in this form factor.

So if you think it'd be trivial to make this more repairable, you need to say precisely how.

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

#113

Post by n1000 »

ant6n wrote: post #57
matthewmacleod wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple do provide details on how to calibrate a battery correctly; it should be part of your general maintainance, though I'll bet barely anybody bothers in practice. See https://support.apple.com/kb/PH14087

"If your portable Mac has a built-in battery, you don’t need to calibrate the battery." Also, this 'calibration' is just charging and discharging. Which happens normally. Also, the mac doesn't go to sleep, it crashes, so I guess it doesn't get calibrated. Maybe I'm holding it wrong. ;)

It is about the battery controller learning how much charge the battery can still hold. Therefore it needs a completely empty battery and an uninterrupted full charge.

Also on the built-in batteries I found that it helps to get a more accurate battery estimate and improve the "battery health" rating.

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

#114

Post by glogla »

mbrock wrote: post #89
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?

I got tired of it and looked up the best Linux laptop available, which seemed to be the Dell XPS 13 developer edition, with a handful of contenders. The trackpad is laughably horrible. I wonder if anyone at Dell ever tried using it. Or maybe my fingers are weird or whatever, but I just cannot for the life of me make the goddamn cursor go where I want. I feel like I'm arthritic. And I haven't managed to get suspend to…

Which edition of XPS 13 was that? The silver one or the thin bezel one?

I was told that the new one is pretty good, but it doesn't sound like that. That's sad, because if Apple replaces rMBP with some new MacBook-like nonsense, there won't be any reasonable laptop at all.

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

#115

Post by eevilspock »

rayiner wrote: post #58
franze wrote: post #17

new (1 month old) macbook retina, 12 inch, el capitan http://replycam.com/i/Pasted_Image_28_10_15_17_10_1BE12B12.p... fully charged battery -> 4h max ... (running mostly chrome and keynote) not really the "all day battery life" they promised ( http://www.apple.com/macbook/design/ )

I don't know about the MB Retina, but I get more than the advertised 9 hours on my rMBP 15" running Word and Outlook. Your problem is probably Chrome + screen brightness. Recommended monitor brightness in an office setting is 100-150 cd/m^2. The MB gets up to 375 cd/m^2 for outside use, but inside it should be at like a 35% setting. Also, Chrome guzzles juice like there is no tomorrow--use Safari.

It would be nice if they added a per app power usage tracking feature like they have on iOS to isolate such culprits. But yes, Chrome is the worst in battery and CPU usage.

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

#116

Post by dejv »

Battery of my mid-2012 Mac Air died (12% capacity) after 550 cycles, they usually just swap the batteries for free, but I bought my computer while living abroad, so no luck.

After some thoughts, I just bought replacement battery, two custom screwdrivers and changed the batter by myself (+ upgraded the hard drive) in about 15 minutes. Replacement battery cost around 150 USD here in EU and it is very easy to do.

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

#117

Post by rasz_pl »

If you wanted easily serviceable battery you would buy business line DELL or HP, but you didnt. You wanted a powerful slim status symbol.

What a whining entitled brat :/ If there was no warning about battery degradation you can be sure he would be making blog posts about losing his work because laptop didnt last whole photo editing session.

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

#118

Post by Someone1234 »

Bud wrote: post #106
Daishiman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the T450s takes literally 5 seconds todo a battery swap and you can keep using the machine during the time. No downtime, no bureaucracy, just go to Amazon and wait 2 days for your battery arrive.

Yes, and because of that, the entire design of the case is compromised, it feels like it's flexing all the time in use, it's far less durable, it contains additional cheap plastic mechanical failure points and extra connectors for said easily-replaceable battery, and all this for a part which, in the normal lifetime of most well-built laptops (aka Macs), will never ever need to be replaced.

Nothing you said there has described any Thinkpad I've ever owned. Even after they got worse (post-IBM).

I've never seen the battery compartment be the source of physical issues. Typically it is the hinges on the LCD that give up or the case cracks in one of the four corners.

Mostly the case remains solid and the hardware within blows up.

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

#119

Post by eric_h »

franze wrote: post #17

new (1 month old) macbook retina, 12 inch, el capitan http://replycam.com/i/Pasted_Image_28_10_15_17_10_1BE12B12.p... fully charged battery -> 4h max ... (running mostly chrome and keynote) not really the "all day battery life" they promised ( http://www.apple.com/macbook/design/ )

That would be because you're using chrome, not Safari. I have the same machine and I get 8-10 hrs, easy (and I bought it the day it was released).

Chrome is terrible for batteries.

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

#120

Post by oconnore »

Bud wrote: post #106
Daishiman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the T450s takes literally 5 seconds todo a battery swap and you can keep using the machine during the time. No downtime, no bureaucracy, just go to Amazon and wait 2 days for your battery arrive.

Yes, and because of that, the entire design of the case is compromised, it feels like it's flexing all the time in use, it's far less durable, it contains additional cheap plastic mechanical failure points and extra connectors for said easily-replaceable battery, and all this for a part which, in the normal lifetime of most well-built laptops (aka Macs), will never ever need to be replaced.

> all this for a part which, in the normal lifetime of most well-built laptops (aka Macs), will never ever need to be replaced.

My laptops last 4-5 years. This battery failure was at 1.5 years. I just replaced mine after 2 years.

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