Comment by frankjr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frankjr | Hacker News Reader

Battery replacements were a lot of fun even before Silicon came along. A few years ago my battery started to expand in my Intel MacBook. I went to an authorized repair shop here in Czechia (to this day there are no official Apple Stores here) and expected to pay something unreasonable (because AppleCare+ is not a thing in Czechia even though I can buy it just fine when ordering via Amazon DE) and because it's Apple.

To my surprise the technician inspected the laptop and said that the keyboard was damaged (a few keys were wonky, remember the butterfly keyboards?) and that there was an official repair program for that. It turns out that the battery, keyboard, and trackpad is a single repair item. If you want to replace one, you have to replace all three. So instead of a battery replacement, I got a keyboard replacement which just happened to include a new battery and a new trackpad. At the beginning of last year the battery started to expand again and I went to an unofficial repair shop instead. They replaced just the battery for ~$150.

Consider yourself lucky!

During the "stain gate" incident where the anti-glow coating came off by itself ruining the display, I went to the authorized repair shop to get the free replacement.

Apple rejected my repair because the screen has a small cosmetic dent at the corner. The free replacement replaces the whole screen unit, but no, that minor dent precludes my laptop...

Was the stain gate the one where you could remove the coating with lots of vinegar and scrubbing?

Just FYI : In this instance I think you mean "Swell" rather than "Swallow"

Swell/Swollen means to increase in size

Swallow means either a small bird or what you do with a drink.

Haha, thank you. I had actually changed it to "expand" before I noticed your comments because it sounded weird but I couldn't remember the correct word.

Yup, some of the keys on my 2016 MacBook Pro started not working reliably and thankfully Apple had their extended warranty program for that and they replaced the entire top cover (keyboard, trackpad, aluminum housing) + battery. This was about 5 years after buying it. It was pretty nice because I had like 1200 cycles on the battery or something crazy like that!

My personal record is two battery replacements (AppleCare, both due to capacity being below spec given the number of charge cycles*) and two logic board replacements (GPU failure, first under AppleCare and then out-of-warranty due to a recall) on one MacBook Pro (2011, 17").

* Incidentally, I've received at least half a dozen battery replacements under AppleCare over the years for this reason, going back to the original Titanium PowerBook G4. As far as I can tell, leaving a (Power/Mac)Book plugged in, closed, and running most of the time kills batteries in a warranty-preserving fashion.

My laptop is plugged in most of the time and I use a menu bar app called "Al Dente" that sets the max charge at a certain value (I set 80%). I'm hoping this will help with battery longevity, however I have no real idea if it will. My iPhone it will cap charging at 80% sometimes until the morning to help prevent the battery being at 100% for too long, so I figured 80% was a good number for the MacBook as well.

Lots of glue involved, but it was relatively "easy" to replace the battery in a 2019 Macbook Pro. I would take a swappable battery with a thicker case in an heartbeat though.

*swell

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