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My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

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Re: My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

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Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing 0.1% is usually the most painful and the time it takes to update sucks. I love my mac but it has a long way until it improves this. Ideally I should be able to swap the SSD and have it working 100% (besides a few software that fingerprints your machine for licensing reasons and it's another pain) in a couple of minutes, or have the machine replicated 100% (with no update process or whatsoever afterwards -…

I’m getting closer and closer filling that 0.1% every time I get a new macbook. But you are correct. The tiny differences are annoying. Fortunately they are almost always automatable to fix via a shell script. It’s been genuinely worth the effort to make these 4-5 scripts.

Me too. I used to use Linux before and anytime I'd move to a new computer I'd decide whether I should swap the hardware or do

df to list devices, then: dd if=/dev/a of=/dev/b

if I decided to migrate to the new storage device.

Either way, I could do it in about 3min and go do something else. When I was back, everything would be ready.

And back in the FileVault 1 days, I discovered [almost the hard way] that my machine wasn't backing up properly because I was not logging out my user account (and you had to). Since this experience, I'm always suspicious of Apple's approach to backing up data (and data resilience - admittedly due to some other factors involving weird interactions between iPhoto and Flickr).

Re: My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

#212

My desktop caught fire once. I pulled the plug and the fire went out. Turns out the graphics card burst into flames. That had never happened to me before in 40 years of desktops. I had a fair amount of smoke damage that needed cleaning up. Now it sits on a piece of sheet steel instead of the wood floor. Edit: I usually assemble my desktop cases from mail order parts. This desktop happened to have a metal case rather…

I had this happen once too. Was upgrading my machine. Swapped out the case, the motherboard, upgraded the fans and upgraded the CPU heatsink. Plugged it in and all 4 3TB WD Green drives were on fire within seconds and my PSU was smoking. After getting it under control, none of the hard drives nor the SSD would power on any more, my PSU was shot, my motherboard had scorchmarks, and one of the new fans no longer worked…

I never skimp on PSU, a bad PSU can cause all kinds of annoying and hard to diagnose instability.

Also fire, which isn't something I was worried too much about before, but will be now.

Re: My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

#214

I'm sitting here typing this response on a 2016 MBP (the first gen with the butterfly keyboard and touchbar). Due to some thermal issues, I unscrewed the cover to blow the dust out and discovered my batteries are all swelling. Yikes. I wonder if there's a follow-on recall in a year or so for this generation. I bought a battery replace kit from ifixit so I might kick the can down the road for a bit longer, time will t…

I think the swollen batteries are quite common in the MacBook Pros. Seems to be plenty of reports on the net. Typically people seem to notice this when the trackpad or keyboard starts acting funny. Not sure if Apple even considers that as a defect or if it is just the way some of the batteries are expected to behave when they get old.

They told us that it’s caused by running it off of the charger exclusively 24/7 instead of using it like a loptop with full drain and charge cycles. 4 of our 2015 models swelled out of 4

Re: My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen once too. Was upgrading my machine. Swapped out the case, the motherboard, upgraded the fans and upgraded the CPU heatsink. Plugged it in and all 4 3TB WD Green drives were on fire within seconds and my PSU was smoking. After getting it under control, none of the hard drives nor the SSD would power on any more, my PSU was shot, my motherboard had scorchmarks, and one of the new fans no longer worked…

I never skimp on PSU, a bad PSU can cause all kinds of annoying and hard to diagnose instability. Also fire, which isn't something I was worried too much about before, but will be now.

Definitely learned my lesson. My two machines now have expensive, highly-rated PSUs that I clean out several times a year. Saving $40-60 isn't worth the potential fire.

Re: My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

#216

This started to happen to mine at work too. Luckily I got it down to IT before it started on fire. They took the hard drive out. Opening the case released pressure on the swelling battery. As soon as it was open the battery started swelling faster. The case could never have been closed again. The whole enclosure bent like a soda can. I should have figured out earlier what was going on. The first sign was the computer…

>the 2018 one I have right now since they can't be opened with a screwdriver and the internal SSD is soldered. I'm going a little offtopic, but I cannot believe this. I haven't owned a Mac since having a 2010 MBP (which I loved dearly for 6 years), but I cannot imagine owning a laptop that doesn't allow me to switch the internal drive. It was annoying enough with all of the screws on the 2010 model. I'm sure there is…

They can be opened with a pentalobe screwdriver.

The 2018 MBPs also have a T2 security chip now, which intermediates all access to the drive. It has internal unremovable encryption keys which are paired with the drive, so even if you could move the drive to another machine, the data on it would be useless anyway.

Your data should never be held on the internal drive for more than a few seconds really. With a decent MDM solution, restoring the standard settings and applications should take no more than a few minutes. As such, in modern times, there should be no real use-case for moving the drive - just set up a new machine instead, more like the Chromebook way of thinking.

Re: My MacBook Pro exploded and burst into flames

#217
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the GPU on the 2012's will randomly fail with no other fix than to disable the discrete GPU via firmware hacks.

I'm here w/ my Mid 2012 MBP that's maxed out w/ everything--no problems ever.

Isn't anecdotal evidence wonderful?
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