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

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

#231

Post by giarc » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 12:57 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #224

giarc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that the actual work takes a few hours, but the wait to get the machine actually serviced was 3 days. That is totally store dependent and very clear in the article.

What isn't clear is why he needs to part with his machine for 3 days. Why can't they schedule they swap, and have him come in and wait?

>Now it turns out that it doesn’t actually take 3 days, its just the line is really long and it does apparently take several hours per machine.

For one they can't predict when they are going to get around to your machine. There may be 100 repair orders in front of yours, might take 1 day, might take 2. They can't possibly set up a system where they send you an alert to say "You are next in line, please bring in your laptop." That would cause incredible delay when that person doesn't show up and you have a tech repair guy waiting for a machine.

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

#232

Post by PhantomGremlin » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 1:29 AM UTC

somewheres wrote: post #132

aaronmiler wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Open up your battery menu, it will say Chrome is using significant energy. I've never not seen it there

Gee, maybe it's because you have a million tabs open, and all of them are websites with shitty, wasteful javascript begging the CPU for useless operations to update every single tracking pixel and cookie, with up-to-the-minute anaylitics, attached to sessions that are years old, on how your eyes move over their ad banners, so that a genetic machine learning algorithm can determine which ads are most likely to convert…

You are being downvoted, I assume for your "over the top" tone, but your overall message is very good. User behavior is the largest determinant of battery life.

I run Firefox with NoScript, and my battery usage is always very very good. An additional benefit is that I see few ads, since they invariably rely on third-party javascript.

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

#233

Post by ac29 » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 2:52 AM UTC

brentvatne wrote: post #177

A couple of weeks ago I dropped off my well-used, out of warranty, never on AppleCare early-2012 macbook pro to get the keyboard replaced. It turned out that this repair would also, by necessity, replace the battery (it is part of the "top case"). ~$380USD, I was happy to pay that considering that my battery was shot and several of my keys no longer worked at all. A few days later I went to pick it up and they told m…

>I tested it out and bam, kernel panic within seconds of booting into the OS. Same thing on reboot. So they replaced the logic board again, same problem.

>Apple's in-store repair, in my experience at least, is fantastic.

This reeks of cognitive dissonance. Their repair is "fantastic" yet their repair technicians were incapable of turning on the laptop to see if it was even capable of booting. Then, they did the exact same thing again, eventually giving up and replacing the product? You lucked out that their repair department was so incompetent, or their product was so defective that you got a free upgrade to a newer model. Doesnt sound like a ringing endorsement of anything except customer service.

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

#234

Post by ac29 » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 3:19 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #227

jo909 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my Lenovo Thinkpad has a hardware problem, a technician comes to my home or office to repair it.

For free?

Onsite service is generally a paid add on at the time of purchase. I'ts not uncommon for businesses to pay the extra cost. I've had fantastic I have no idea if Apple offers this sort of service, but if they do, I'm sure it isn't cheap. 3 day, in store, in (limited) warranty repairs isn't the same class of service.

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

#235

Post by KiDD » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 3:46 AM UTC

This is a couple years old...

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

#236

Post by jakejake » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 4:07 AM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #56

jakejake wrote: post #18

There's a trade off to having a laptop that seemingly defies the capabilities of the day - they have to glue parts and remove coverings. Apple has been shedding ports & user-serviceable parts in laptops for years to get them thinner and lighter. Almost every complaint in the article has a counterpoint. Bought AppleCare but didn't register it. Complains about the Genius Bar repair time - try finding somebody to even s…

Disclaimer: I currently own both Apple laptop (MBP13) and Lenovo laptop (T430s). When my previous Thinkpad T400 needed servicing - a line of bad pixels developed on the display - the display was replaced by the next business day, for free (under warranty). The kicker is, that I didn't buy the NBD service and I didn't need to prove anything about the date of purchase or something - I forgot to bring my proof of purcha…

Proximity to a particular repair shop is obviously a factor, that's fair.

Where I'm at I can be at an Apple store talking to a tech within 30 minutes. For a major problem, I can be walking out of the store with a brand new laptop within an hour. Apple does all the same stuff with your registration, as long as you bother to register it, unlike the author.

Getting a PC fixed, on the other hand, it's pretty much going to the retail store where you bought it (which has a tech team that's barely qualified to install anti-virus software) or calling up the company and finding some mom-n-pop repair shop that services their warranty repairs.

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

#237

Post by patio11 » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

Albright wrote: post #219

patio11 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got some good natured ribbing from friends for being the last Rails developer on Windows Vista, which Bingo Card Creator was built on. Went to Windows 7 with a VM for doing work on Ubuntu. Eventually switched to Mac last year. My reasons: + The iPad was my gateway drug to the iPhone. The iPhone was my gateway drug to the Apple ecosystem. All of the "relearn an OS" cruft I was expecting to hit was greatly, greatly s…

Welcome to the fold - though I don't particularly like that you explicitly and repeatedly cite social pressure as a factor of your switch. Teasing someone about their platform of choice strikes me as immature and ultimately irrelevant. Having spent so much time on the Windows side of things, is there some aspect of that ecosystem that you find yourself missing even after the year or so you've been on a Mac?

Every time I've even considered getting the Windows PC out it has been the direct result of a game on Steam which had no Mac version. None has overcome activation energy.

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

#238

Post by brentvatne » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 5:57 AM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #233

brentvatne wrote: post #177

A couple of weeks ago I dropped off my well-used, out of warranty, never on AppleCare early-2012 macbook pro to get the keyboard replaced. It turned out that this repair would also, by necessity, replace the battery (it is part of the "top case"). ~$380USD, I was happy to pay that considering that my battery was shot and several of my keys no longer worked at all. A few days later I went to pick it up and they told m…

>I tested it out and bam, kernel panic within seconds of booting into the OS. Same thing on reboot. So they replaced the logic board again, same problem. >Apple's in-store repair, in my experience at least, is fantastic. This reeks of cognitive dissonance. Their repair is "fantastic" yet their repair technicians were incapable of turning on the laptop to see if it was even capable of booting. Then, they did the exact…

Great point, I suppose I was just judging it entirely on the end result.

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

#239

Post by garrettgrimsley » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 6:18 AM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #153

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.

T450S is a totally different machine. Use the X1 for your example.

The X1 battery replacement is still an order of magnitude easier. With the laptop that the author had trouble with you aren't removing the battery, you're swapping the motherboard into a new chassis, which happens to have a battery glued to it.

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

#240

Post by rasz_pl » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #222

rasz_pl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not difficult to service .. by a service person. It is simply not user serviceable.

Except that even that's not true. You can service it yourself for pretty cheap by getting a kit from iFixIt. It's just that you need a Torx screwdriver (which comes in the kit). It's absolutely user-serviceable if you have the right tools.

Absolutely NOT. You will hear same thing about iphone battery replacement - just get iFixit kit and diy. What happens is people dont know how to work with glue and try to pry it open ripping 0201 parts off the boards edge.