MacBook Pro Batteries Swelling and Failing 388
JohnnyCakes writes "MacBook Pro batteries are apparently swelling, then failing. MacFixIt has some grotesque pictures of their own swollen MBP battery, which looks like it has suffered an internal explosion. Apple is replacing batteries on a case-by-case basis, but hasn't yet admitted any wide-scale issues."
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Full Story (Score:4, Informative)
As we noted last week, our an in-house MacBook Pro (1.83 GHz) has a battery that has begun to swell noticeably. The system has always had some quirks with battery operation, but recently has begun to randomly shut down, or refuse to operate from the battery alone -- requiring connection to AC power.
In mild cases, batteries swell but remain functional. In these cases, keyboard and/or trackpad functionality is sometimes affected by the rising of internal components.
In severe cases, the swelling is visually striking, and users are eventually left with non-functioning batteries.
In most cases, Apple is replacing these defective batteries on an individual basis. The company has yet to disclose a manufacturing defect affecting any range of serial numbers or date-based production runs.
Anecdotal evidence (including our own in-house experience) suggests that the problem primarily affects MacBook Pros that were shipped early on in the production cycle -- our MacBook Pro was shipped in February.
A MacFixIt reader corroborates:
"Talking to a friend at a Apple Store in NJ, he has had a few people return with battery issues and from the dates strongly suggests its a error that started late Feb to late March, since all the computers coming back fall into that timeframe."
If your MacBook Pro's battery is swelling, please let us know.
Running Rosetta applications causes heat spikes Any processor/hard drive intensive operation -- including running applications in Rosetta -- can result in tactile heat spikes from the MacBook Pro.
As described by MacFixit reader Mark:
"I've been a happy owner of a MacBook Pro for about 3 months now. In my opinion, it is a laptop in all senses of the word. However, I have noticed a very high sensitivity to the type and intensity of workloads the processors are running in regards to heat. If you are on battery power, the time remaining indicator is an excellent predictor of how hot the 'Book is going to get. If you are running Microsoft Word, your 'Book is going to get very hot. If OpenBase (used with Chronos products) is re-indexing, or Adobe software is running, the 'Book gets hot. Most Rosetta-dependent apps knock 30 min to an hour off of the battery time, even if they are not in the foreground. If you want a cool 'Book, kill all Rosetta-dependent apps unless you need them. The heat drops, the battery lasts 3+ hours, and you have a laptop again."
Meanwhile, some users report receiving replacements for abnormally hot units.
MacFixIt reader Del writes:
"I have a 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro with the 7200 rpm hard drive and 1.5 GB ram. It has been running hot ever since it arrived in April. After downloading from VersionTracker and installing the 'CoreDuoTemp' application version 0.9 which monitors an Intel Mac's internal temperature, I was getting temperature readings as high as 162 degrees Fahrenheit.
"After speaking with tech support, on May 31, I took the unit to the Apple store for repairs. I have been notified that they are replacing the mother board and the temperature sensors. The repairs are supposed to be complete by June 23, 2006. Apparently the parts were backordered and should arrive by June 16, 2006. I will let you know if this repair fixes the problem with over heating."
More projector problems Users continue to note issues with output to digital projectors from the MacBook Pro.
MacFixIt reader Todd Birdsong writes:
"When I connect the MacBook Pro to a projector, both the audio and video work great when they are independent from each other. It is when you combine the two (which is 99% of the time) that the audio becomes irritatingly noisy. It is a steady 'buzz' which is completely distracting. After checking out all of my gear, I discovered that when you disconnected the DVI/VGA adaptor that the audio returned to normal."
If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know.
For further coverage, see our MacBook Pro special report
Re:Macfixt.com is apparently swelling, then failin (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.macfixit.com.nyud.net:8080/article.php
Re:Macfixt.com is apparently swelling, then failin (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad Mac Users! (Score:5, Informative)
Good thing some company like Dell doesn't have any problems with swelling in their laptops.
Hey, check this out! http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550 [theinquirer.net]
Re:You must be new here. QWZX (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Q: Is the iPod's battery replaceable?
A: Yes. Apple has an official battery replacement program for $59. The program requires that you send in your iPod (any model), and Apple will replace the battery and return it to you for $59 plus shipping and handling (technically, Apple actually replaces your whole iPod with an equivalent new model or factory-refurbished model in a new enclosure, with its own service warranty; if the iPod was previously engraved by Apple, it will be engraved again). AppleCare programs for iPod are also available in some markets outside the US, and are expected soon in other markets.
What a hassle. So my never-dropped iPod is going to be replaced with "refurbished" guts with who knows what history. Then I pay for shipping and handling. Then I have to be able to back up my music before my iPod dies so I can reload it again (assuming I CAN reload my music on the "refurbished" guts I get back). And, this program used to cost $99 for the battery, it has been reduced to "only" $59.
By comparison, I can pick up a name brand or generic battery for my cell phone anywhere I want to, and just snap it in.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
By comparison, I can pick up a name brand or generic battery for my cell phone anywhere I want to, and just snap it in.
So don't use Apple's replacement service, then. Get any number of third-party batteries, some of which are name brand, some of which are generic, and many of which are even better than Apple's batteries themselves. These can be gotten for as low as $25 [ipodbatteryfaq.com]. So every couple of years you take 5 minutes to replace your battery instead of 5 seconds? So what?
Also, you make "refurbished" sound a little bit worse than it is. First of all, all of the electronics and disk/disk surface are checked over and tested. Second, everything is mounted in a brand new enclosure, so that the iPod physically looks and appears to be brand new. And lastly, that replacement iPod has a warranty of its own. Of course, no one makes you use that option, as you can replace your own battery in your own iPod yourself, or have any number of non-Apple entities do this for you in your own iPod. Again, this only happens every 2-4 years or so, depending on your usage cycle and style, so is it really that big of a deal?
That's the tradeoff for the iPod having no access mechanisms, doors, or screws, giving it the sleek appearance everyone apparently likes so much. (And even if they did screws and not doors, Apple would still have to follow regulatory guidelines for segregating the battery from the rest of the electronics and innards, which would significantly increase the units size. And even a millimeter is significant for an iPod.)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Huh?
If your iPod is under warranty, and it needs its battery replaced, it's covered by the warranty. Therefore you're not "voiding your warranty" by doing something utterly retarded like BUYING a battery when you can get the entire iPod replaced by a new (not refurbished) iPod under the manufacturer's warranty. So what the hell are you talking about? (I don't expect you'll respond.)
(To say nothing of the fact that while all lithium iPod batteries degrade, it's a hugely small minority that would actually have batteries defective to the point of needing to be replaced within one year. Most peoples' iPod batteries last longer than two and three years or more, and that's just the pure and simple fact of the matter.)
Re:Early stories (Score:2, Informative)
There's a particular anti-hypertension drug (nifedipine.php [malecontraceptives.org]) that suppresses fertility in men; enough that it could conceivably be used as a contraceptive pill. This has been known for fourteen years, but the drug manufacturer has been suppressing the info and lobbying against research of nifedipine as a contraceptive, afraid that it will hurt sales of the drug as an antihypertensive.
This kind of baffles me. It's a short-term effect, and do most people really want to have a pregnancy most of the time. I would think that even for married couples the preferred state would be to not have a baby until you make a positive decision that it's time. Then you switch to a different hypertensive for a couple months until you conceive, then switch back. I really would imagine that this is a feature not a bug.
But everyone seem convinced that men want to have babies all the time, and therefore would feel that anything that temporarily reduces fertility is a bad thing.
I don't know any guys who feel that way, do you? In my experience, most people are worried about accidental pregnancy a fair amount of the time.
Re:Bad Mac Users! (Score:3, Informative)
I was probably one of the first people in the public to own a new Intel iMac (ordered it like a half an hour after it was up on the website, and it was delivered way ahead of schedule), and I've had no problems other than some improper permissions.
Conversely, my PowerBook - which was the second-to-last generation, mind you - has had a few problems here and there. I don't give it much of a beating, but I know that the keys start to act funny when it heats up too much.
My reasoning with electing to be an iMac beta tester^W^Wearly adopter was as follows: The motherboard is essentially a stock intel laptop model. The chasis is identical to the previous iMac revision, meaning that all of those components have a lot of room to breathe and stay pretty cool. The likelihood of the internals doing weird stuff as a function of heat is low, and the screen probably won't break. This is what I regard as an acceptable risk. If you shoved all of those components into a 1" thick aluminum case and integrate an unstable potential energy storage device such as a lithium-ion battery, and then start taking it everywhere with you where it can get hit, kicked around, tenderized, baked, fried and frozen, then things get more complicated. I will admit that the new cord design was ALMOST enough to get me to replace my laptop, however, there were just too many things that could go wrong. Every laptop owner knows this - or should know it.
The only real rough ride I've had has been getting my hands on Intel-native builds. But I use a lot of OSS, and most of it compiled with minimal tweaking. In the case of Emacs, it compiled perfectly with no tweaking whatsoever. Also, in some cases I was able to start a correspondence with developers and get pre-release universal builds of applications.
Holy crap man, get some memory! (Score:1, Informative)
Based on the fact that you use Photoshop (memory hog + Rosetta = double plus good memory hog), 1 GB is minimum. 2 GB isn't much more expensive and it's waaaaaay better.
On the glossy screen, I thought I would hate it. But I find it's actually better than a matte screen outdoors in the sun. Just don't sit so that the sun is behind you and reflecting on the screen, and the image will be more crisp. Meanwhile, the matte washes out easily in that light.
YMMV.
More photos of battery problem (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Insightful??? TROLL!!! (Score:1, Informative)
Just about every major package for Linux is available as a Mac installer, and the ones that aren't generally build from source just fine (stuff that interfaces with the graphics or sound systems sometimes requires some modification, but strict command-line stuff generally works right out of the box...
Re:You must be new here. QWZX (Score:1, Informative)
Re:You must be new here. QWZX (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)