[Rev-O]

Apparently in the past hour my MacBook Pro battery decided to swell up and begin popping out of the bottom. I think it has lost the will to live, and now I am haunted by a thousand questions.
Was I not nurturing enough? Was I too strict? Didn't my battery know how much I loved it? Is it still covered by Applecare?
Okay, so that was only 4 questions, and I really only care about the last one!

Anyways, it's a 17" 2.33GHz C2D, which means I got it late 2006, so it should still be covered by Applecare. Whew. By the way, is there anyway to tell the exact date of manufacture of my MBP?

[the Battle Cat]

Rev-O, on April 2nd 2009, 04:00 PM, said:

By the way, is there anyway to tell the exact date of manufacture of my MBP?

Sure, just ask the batter... oh... sorry. Maybe you could ask the battery's spouse. My condolences to you both in your time of sorrow.

[Rev-O]

So, after a trip to the local Apple Store with my MBP and it's bloated battery, I was told that I had a choice of waiting 4 days for the next genius appointment or buying a new battery because batteries, even swollen ones that would have cooked my MBP had I not caught it right away, were not covered under Applecare.
So I bought a new battery. A hundred and whatever bucks.
Drove home, called Applecare, and they're sending me a new battery for free. So now I get to drive back to the Apple Store to return my purchased replacement battery. What a hassle.
Makes me feel better about the two high volume obscenity laden tirades I had in that Apple store about Apple's four year legacy of swollen batteries on supposedly high end computers and the relative value of a warranty that does not cover potentially computer damaging issues. Now, before everyone vilifies me, I did mention to the group of Apple store employees that I was yelling at that I did not consider this to be their fault. Not that this assuaged my outrage, but at least I did not hold them personally accountable, and, while my vociferous rage did nothing to improve the situation, it was fairly cathartic.
But I'm getting a fresh battery. I will not verbally abuse the store employees any further when I return my battery tonight. Promise.

The folks on the phone were a very polite (and I was very polite with them, what with the store people taking the brunt of my rage), as has always been my experience with Apple's phone support.

Anyways, not sure what to think about batteries not being covered under Applecare. I kinda see the point, but a battery that potentially could cook the entire laptop not being covered under warranty? Really? Does Apple want to encourage me to leave the battery in my MBP until it bursts and destroys my MBP so I can get a new shiny one? Sigh. Seriously, makes me dwell on my XBox 360 troubles. I still have faith that Apple tries to have more of a consumer conscience than Microsoft for the most part.

[teflon]

Whoever it was that served you in the Apple store is an idiot. Batteries, and all other things you get/buy alongside the computer itself are covered with AppleCare. Should you get the extended AppleCare, to 3 years, that means that everything from the mighty mouse to Airport base stations to the battery is covered for 3 years.

For the battery to be elligible for replacement it either needs to have an uncharacteristic loss of performance (something like 30 mins performance from only 50 cycles, whilst it should take 300 cycles to get to that stage), or physical deformities like you had.

So yeah, that guy you had was a tool, but only because thats what he was told to say (-ish). Only a Genius can sign off on an AppleCare based replacement, so you would have had to wait for the Genius appointment in order to get a replacement battery whatever the case. People on the phone ask.

So you should have called up AppleCare first, at which point they would have said "well send you a new battery", and you could have asked if you could go and pick one up in the store, got a case number for you to take along with you and got a new battery (I think you can do this). Or booked a Genius appointment online to make sure that someone can see you.

To find the age of your machine, get up "about this mac" click on "Build 10.x.x" twice, which is right below Mac OS X, to get it to change to show your serial number, then stick it into one of the many Serial Number readers on the internet.

[Rev-O]

teflon, on April 3rd 2009, 05:35 AM, said:

Whoever it was that served you in the Apple store is an idiot. Batteries, and all other things you get/buy alongside the computer itself are covered with AppleCare. Should you get the extended AppleCare, to 3 years, that means that everything from the mighty mouse to Airport base stations to the battery is covered for 3 years.

For the battery to be elligible for replacement it either needs to have an uncharacteristic loss of performance (something like 30 mins performance from only 50 cycles, whilst it should take 300 cycles to get to that stage), or physical deformities like you had.

So yeah, that guy you had was a tool, but only because thats what he was told to say (-ish). Only a Genius can sign off on an AppleCare based replacement, so you would have had to wait for the Genius appointment in order to get a replacement battery whatever the case. People on the phone ask.

So you should have called up AppleCare first, at which point they would have said "well send you a new battery", and you could have asked if you could go and pick one up in the store, got a case number for you to take along with you and got a new battery (I think you can do this). Or booked a Genius appointment online to make sure that someone can see you.

To find the age of your machine, get up "about this mac" click on "Build 10.x.x" twice, which is right below Mac OS X, to get it to change to show your serial number, then stick it into one of the many Serial Number readers on the internet.

Thanks about the serial number search! The folks on the phone essentially said the same thing about the store employee being a tool. I figured (wrongly) with a half dozenish Apple stores in the Denver metro area the genius bar wouldn't be swamped for days and I thought it was going to be an easy battery exchange. I also figured (wrongly) that the phone support people would send me to the Applestore to have a genius look at it. I still think waiting four days for a genius to look at my MBP so they can do a quick battery swap is a bit sill, but whatever. All's well that ends well.

Battery was pretty creepy. Popped open a half inch on one corner in about an hour. If that happened in one of the new 17" MBP without the user servicable battery, that could be a bad thing.

[Kaoro]

Rev-O, on April 3rd 2009, 06:48 AM, said:

Battery was pretty creepy. Popped open a half inch on one corner in about an hour. If that happened in one of the new 17" MBP without the user servicable battery, that could be a bad thing.

That is insane. I wonder if this is a precursor to one of those battery explosions that got some coverage not too long ago.

[Greg Gant]

I've heard from my brother that the swollen batteries can leak battery acid or goo or some crap and he's had a few people come in angry. He'll direct them to the genius bar but some people continue using even when it starts to swell up. The way he described it sounds like they'll swell up and break then leak, as opposed to actually exploding.


I just had an Apple support run-in, my iPhone mute button popped off so I visited the Apple store my bro works in. They basically just handed me a new iPhone. I can't argue with that.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

Well, the swelling is likely due to overheating, which taken to an extreme will result in a fire or explosion. But even without that, the contents are pretty toxic, so you don't want them leaking all over because the swelling has burst the seals.

My MBP just died earlier this week - looks like the 8600M problem, so this is my first big repair as well. It's gone smoothly as well, except that they need to order the new board, so it's taking a little while. Wouldn't be a huge deal if all my work wasn't set up on the laptop - working on my PC is slowing me down a lot more than I'd like!