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Apple Details 17" MacBook Pro Battery Replacements, Same Day Service at Apple Retail

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3371

"Battery replacement should be performed only by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or at an Apple retail store. Attempting a battery replacement yourself could damage your equipment and void its warranty."

As noted previously the labor for the replacement and recycling are included in the price of the battery.

There are a lot more authorized service centers than there are Apple Stores.
 
All you need is a frickin' screwdriver, and you can open up the MacBook Pro and take out the "non-removable" battery. Jesus, my first two or three desktop computers (back in the '80s and early '90s) required screwdrivers to open them up and install expansion cards or more RAM. The battery isn't soldered in, for Christ's sake; it's not rocket science.

Some company, somewhere will come out with a compatible battery in the next couple of years — long before you actually need to replace it — that you can replace it with yourself, assuming that's all you have to do. Likely it will not last as long (either in hours per charge or cycles), but for those of you out there who can't part with your computer for an hour, that will be your alternative.

For those of you who do actually need longer than 8 hours of battery life between charges, there ARE already external power supplies compatible with MagSafe. They are just as big (well, maybe some are bigger) as the extra batteries you would need to carry around if you were going to replace the battery yourself, so you're not really carrying anything more than you would need to otherwise.

This "non-removable" battery is not a huge inconvenience to anybody who has two hands and half a brain.
 
Originally Posted by snberk103
Or, just perhaps..... despite the few vocal claims that the "end of the world was nigh" ... people decided that the benefits of the non-accessible battery out-weighed the inconveniences?

jellomizer said:
What are the real benefits that out-weigh the inconvenience of not using your computer for minimum 1 day. I am sorry, not having access to my computer for a mostly unscheduled, day/week is not tradeoff. Even for twice battery life, and longer run time. It is a 17" MacBook Pro. These things are supposed to be portable workstations not ultra light MacBook Airs, Give me a thicker PC that I can fix quickly and keep going.
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My wife and I frequently travel. We each have our own notebooks. We don't take extra batteries, because we like to travel light.

Our trips are often in the 3 to 6 hour range. This is a frequent travel time range, judging by the number of other people who are travelling on the same ferries and planes as us. We are very good at locating and sitting by power outlets because our systems won't quite make it the whole way through the trip.

A system that actually got 7 to 8 hours of use would benefit us a least once a month. Minimum. Of our 4 laptops (2 of which are older, retired - but used none the less occasionally because they still work - oldest one is an iBook G4) we have replaced batteries on just one. In fact, if it had come with a non-accessible battery, we would have been very pleased - because we have had multiple battery failures on it. Multiple failures means we would have demanded (and received under lemon rules) and a whole new computer.

We don't leave near an Apple Store (5 hours away), but like most people we do live near an Apple Authorized repair shop.

The world is not ending (at least as far as batteries are concerned - stocks and investments are someone else's problem, today)
 
I'll say this again - given the battery recalls, bulging batteries, random shutdowns and poor performance from previous Apple-supplied batteries, they're the last thing I want non-removable from my computer.

Also, rather than simply buying a battery and replacing it, with this we'd have to transfer all confidential info onto our servers, securely wipe it off our laptops before handing it in for battery replacement; and then restoring it 3-4 days later.

For a lot of people, this simply means "choose another laptop"; which is fair enough. It's just a pity that Apple is putting style over substance.

"Think Difficult".
 
whooleytoo said:
I'll say this again - given the battery recalls, bulging batteries, random shutdowns and poor performance from previous Apple-supplied batteries, they're the last thing I want non-removable from my computer.

Also, rather than simply buying a battery and replacing it, with this we'd have to transfer all confidential info onto our servers, securely wipe it off our laptops before handing it in for battery replacement; and then restoring it 3-4 days later.

For a lot of people, this simply means "choose another laptop"; which is fair enough. It's just a pity that Apple is putting style over substance.

"Think Difficult".
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You do like to think difficult. If you deal with sensitive information, you surely have FileVault on and a firmware password on a mobile computer that could be stolen out of your bag or car at any point.

It's too bad that Apple is putting style, structural integrity, battery life, and simplified engineering ahead of, um ... tradition?
 
Come on apple we see right thought you !

Apple is learning how to redirect the costs to the customer embedding the battery reduces cost and weight to some degree, but at the cost of the customer. I am sure we will see cost of ownership go up on all apple products as everything gets incased in there form factors going forward.
 
gnasher729 said:
Sure, $179 is almost three times as much as $129.
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Well, if you are one of those who needs to send it in for 3-4 days as opposed to order a new battery online and swap it out in your own time then the associated cost of not having the machine for that time could add up.

That being said, even if we low ball the numbers and say the battery only gets to 3-3.5 years of usable life then hopefully there will be more Apple stores around so more people have easier access to one. Though I would be curious to see how well this works for the international markets where Apple stores are not very common at all (i.e. Australia) and will the turn around be based on what the authorized repair center offers or if they will also be required to do the 3-4 day turnaround.

Frist rule of thumb, if you live in the USA and it is early November and your battery is struggling you won't want to get caught sending the MBP in at Thanksgiving time, you could potentially be MBP less for 8 or 9 days.


Personally, the extra battery life is a decent compromise for the inconvenience of the non removable battery. I am not in the market for one of these machines as I recently purchased a new laptop but I would be rating things such as price, ram, graphics, cost etc above removable battery on the list of things I want/need.
 
What are they thinking on mail-in turnaround??

The same-day in-store service on this is great, but the three to four day turnaround for mail-in is completely unacceptable. I recall when I had a Powerbook 145, which was an excellent computer except for an LCD fault that was the subject of a recall and reparable with a small shim behind the display. That shim replacement on mine -- a year after the warranty expired, by the way -- was three days from start to finish, as in I reported the problem, I received a prepaid mailer the next day and sent the computer in, they turned it around the same day and I had the computer back less than 48 hours after I shipped it.
 
Memory Upgrades

I don't mind a built-in battery, but I hate that I would have to resort to tools to ugprade the RAM myself.

With my current MacBook Pro, I got 4GB from Amazon.com for $54 instead of the $399 Apple wanted to charge (down to $300 now - woot!).
 
Can you imagine what this will cost if there should be a large scale battery replacement due to faults?

That will cost money... and time.
 
and environmentally responsible disposal of your depleted battery.
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Now I know that the cost of disposal would be something that is included in the cost, but this should be a thing that Apple themselves take care of and it should not be the responsibility of the consumer. With this wording, it seems that Apple acts like they are offering this stellar disposal program, when it reality it is how they are legally supposed to dispose of the battery.
 
If you are REALLY worried about battery life just get an external battery, I personally much rather have this built in longer battery then a weaker removable one as I would never carry another battery with me.
 
what about my needs?

When do they fix the battery in my new 15" macbook... the battery life on this computer sucks... (everything else rocks though)...
:confused:
 
Some people will only get 2 or 3 hours of battery life....

snberk103 said:
A system that actually got 7 to 8 hours of use would benefit us a least once a month.
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While the 7-8 hour might be achievable under light use, people who stress the systems will get far less - perhaps only 2 or 3 hours.

The 17" has a 35 watt CPU, 23 watt GPU, and a 95 watt/hour battery - that gives a worst case runtime of less than 2 hours. (95wh/(35w+23w) = 1.64 hours)

Add up the wattage used by other chips, radios, fans, disks, display (and subtract some to compensate for the likelihood that real applications won't push both the CPU and GPU to the TDP), and 2 to 3 hour runtimes would be expected.

This isn't to say the 7-8 hour claim is wrong, it's just that any workload that gets the laptop warm or cranks up the fan will result in much less than 8 hours.
 
jb1280 said:
Of all the arguments against the built-in battery, the long distance traveling one is one of the weakest.

In the real world, 16-18 hours of travel time for a transatlantic trip [from check-in to baggage claim], once we account for check-in, security screening, transferring, boarding, clearing passport control, clearing pre-screening for the transatlantic flight, take-offs, landings, and myriad meal services on board quickly gets reduced to a significantly less amount of viable time to get substantive work done.

Further, I can't imagine comfortably working on a 17" notebook in a KLM economy seat from AMS to SFO for 6 to 7 straight hours.

[...]

This is of course anecdotal, but I rarely ever see people working on large notebooks from the end of the first meal service continuously to landing.
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I've had a 17" PowerBook and now a MacBook Pro 17", and frequently use them flying economy... it is uncomfortable, and I can't say that I've ever done more than about 3-4 hours effective work on any given flight, but with the PowerBook I did carry a spare battery. When I did swap batteries it was usually after I'd done 1-2 hours work, and then wanted to watch a movie.
 
Warbrain said:
I find it ridiculous that people think they need to swap batteries - most people don't. Plus, it's a terrible mess to have to switch batteries because you have to power down the machine if you're away from an outlet, swap them, and then start back up. I have NEVER swapped my notebook batteries and I have never swapped my cell phone batteries.
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With my old PowerBook 17" I did it fairly often when flying... you just close it, swap batteries, open it, and you're back where you were. They probably have a capacitor or small battery or something that backs up the internal state for the short time it takes to swap the battery.... I didn't know about it, and was quite amazed the first time I swapped the battery.
 
Said it before, I'll say it again, $179 seems pretty arbitrary to me... I don't anything that costed $179 on a particular day and still cost that 5 years down the road.

That is, unless they have a 400 hour battery available in 2014 for $179
 
VoR said:
The video doesn't sufficiently explain why it is non-removable though. It's still just a battery with a terminal - seems to me like their design spec was too concerned with small outside seams and the increased revenue from a shop only replacement.
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The video does explain this- a removable battery needs connectors, fasteners and strengthening ribs inside the chassis that take up room. This is apparently why Apple have been able to increase the capacity by 40%.

However I don't like the non-removable battery as I think it poses a serious design flaw if (or more likely when) a defect battery swells and destroys the internals of the laptop. A removable battery would make life much easier.
 
40% still seems widely exaggerated to me. I was just thinking it's a big battery in a big laptop enclosure. Also, I couldn't imagine the non-removable battery having a soldered connection to save space. I would have thought the battery could slide in sandwiched between components and the top and bottom of the case and needed no extra support than what was already inside (the newly designed case).
 
Winni said:
Seems almost three times as expensive as the battery for the older 17" notebooks. "Decent" is something else in my book - especially when there is no option for the customer to change the battery him- or herself.

Usually, a battery will need to be replaced after one year of regular usage. Let's see how long those new batteries will last and if the 179$ charge will still be regarded as "decent" in a year from now.
Click to expand...

2 points
1) Old 17" battery was $129 not $60.
2) Apple claims the battery 3x the cycles (300 vs 1000) before you start seeing major problems with holding a charge

O have been very critical of apple over the last year, but this actually seems like a very good move for them.
 
jbernie said:
Well, if you are one of those who needs to send it in for 3-4 days as opposed to order a new battery online and swap it out in your own time then the associated cost of not having the machine for that time could add up.
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Batteries don't stop working suddenly. Their charge time gets lower very slowly (with the new batteries usually over five years). So one day you wake up and think "maybe I should get a new battery for my MacBook Pro". That doesn't mean you have to get a new battery right then. That battery will still be working for a very long time, so you can pick a time to send it in when it's convenient for you. Or maybe the next Apple Store is two hours away, but every two months you visit that town anyway.

And anyway, we are talking about a five year old MacBook Pro at that time. It is very likely you are buying a new one anyway.
 
gnasher729 said:
Batteries don't stop working suddenly.
Click to expand...

Defective ones can.

A lithium cell is essentially an explosive device - the battery contains safety circuits to prevent an explosion or fire (most of the time).

If these circuits decide that a cell is unstable and unsafe, they'll disable the battery without warning.

On a Dell, the battery signals this by flashing the five charge indicators in a special pattern.
 
Macmel said:
I'll make you see why, then: I want a battery that I can exchange myself, like I can in my current 15" MBP. And I complain because if I buy this computer, I won't be able to do it anymore.
Also, I don't live in the US and the closest Apple retail store is 5000 miles away. I can't even send it to Apple because there's no Apple service in France. You have to send it to an Apple "associate" business, which in many cases are used to work with other brands and are not as knowledgeable about Mac computers as one would desire. Bad enough is having to send the computer to them for repairs. Now you have to do it even for stupid things like battery replacement.
Click to expand...
Exactly. A battery should be user-replaceable.
 
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