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Apple Still Offering Free Delayed Battery Repairs for Some 2012 and Early 2013 MacBook Pros
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I took that as "waiting a month" does not mean your will be without your Mac for for 1 month... If Apple had a laptop for 1 month, people would be freckling out... Most Replacements/Repairs 1 week tops at an Apple Store
Batteries are consumable items. They wear out. All batteries do this. A battery needing to be replaced after five years is not a faulty battery; it's completely expected.
Probably - check with Apple.
Why would you have to be without your Mac? There's no reason you couldn't hold on to it and have them notify you in a month's time when they are able to perform the swap.
I don't get the confusion here? Apple has some batteries, expects to get many more in a month's time, but might run out in the meantime. To avoid that, they offer anyone willing to wait a month a free replacement. That means fewer people opt for a replacement right now and so Apple is less likely to run out of batteries. That also means that anyone who REALLY needs a new battery ASAP won't have to wait.
Most likely - I believe that message means that your battery has lost a significant amount of its charge capacity, which in the past has qualified for a replacement.
You'll need to take the MacBook Pro in to confirm eligibility for the program. They'll order the part but you can take the device back in the meantime. When the part arrives, you'll need to bring the device back to the store and leave it with them for 3-7 days.
This isn't a surprise - those machines are still great, and newer ones offers so little advantages - or even disavantages - that a lot of people prefers getting them a new battery instead of replacing them. In fact, my late '13 is starting to have battery issues, I guess I'll have to replace it in a year or so.
All I think of, when Apple does this is, “free battery! Another 2-5 years of life on my device!”
I got that on my iPhone 5 a week before the iPhone 6 came out, and my daughter is still using it, 5 years after I got it.
I just called about getting the battery replaced (I had logged issues with it on a case id anyway). I didn't even get to asking about price or ETA of parts - they said to bring it into a repair centre and anything they find will be fixed free of charge under the UK consumer law 
I'm thinking this is too good to be true and half expecting them to laugh at me when I go into the repair centre. But if this works, then it somewhat justifies the UK paying extra for Apple products.
As a side note. I had taken the Macbook into a repair centre last week for diagnostics for battery and the "video issues", so this was logged on the system
I'm thinking this is too good to be true and half expecting them to laugh at me when I go into the repair centre. But if this works, then it somewhat justifies the UK paying extra for Apple products.
As a side note. I had taken the Macbook into a repair centre last week for diagnostics for battery and the "video issues", so this was logged on the system
Just came back from the Apple Store (in the US) a few minutes ago. Genius originally told me the parts weren't constrained, that it'd just take 3-5 days for it to come in. He walked away for a minute or two and when he came back told me that he was wrong, the parts were still constrained and if I wanted to wait until Nov 15th (or later) the repair would be free. And to the person wondering if they'd be keeping your Mac for the month, no, there's no reason for them to want to hang onto it for a month and for you to be without it.
If Apple didn't glue the batteries in they would have avoided this issue in the first place.
The fact that batteries are consumable items is besides the point in this case. Apple is admitting they have an issue replacing/repairing them. That is the reason why they offer this service for free. If everything would be hunky-dory they would not do this in the first place. My point is that every self-respecting company (when they admit it is their fault) will try to solve this in a customer-friendly way.
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Great point. I thought they used space-station level glue just to prevent regular weak glue gradually coming loose due to heat and then rattling with time...
But your idea of just having 4 screw hole posts per battery corner and screwing them in makes more sense and would have given the same level of security against rattling, while being totally repairable.
F- ing Apple... Somehow they have a huge team of hardware engineers and tester and nobody made sure to say "Uh... let's NOT use space-glue on a freaking degradeable component that must be replaced every 1-3 years?!".
I think this was literally upper management going: Well, if it's glued and costs $200 to replace, perhaps they will just trade their dead laptop in to us (so we can refurbish it and re-sell it and make more money from selling it again) and then they'll use that small trade-in credit plus the $200 they saved (by avoiding the battery repair) to buy a NEW model instead... so we can keep fleecing our sheep, instead of letting them keep enjoying their current laptops for years.
Sounds extreme? No. That's literally the only conceivable reason why they shipped laptops with space-glued batteries. User-nonreplaceable by design.
Thankfully iFixit came up with a glue dissolver kit:
Thanks iFixit.
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2011 was the zenith for Mac in my books, that's for damn sure.
Lack of USB 3 and Nvidia GPU aside my mid-'11 iMac is a hell of a machine after I added a Samsung 1TB SSD.
It's such a shame that I cannot justify adding a Macbook to the mix, I'd love to.
Glassed Silver:ios
I took my wife's and my rMBP Late 2012 and Early 2013 in a week before the program ended for the swap and it took about an hour with a Mac Genius all together and they tested the batteries. My wife's 2012 fell under the percentage of I think was 70% (69%) so they authorized a swap for a brand new 2017! It took about a week for them to authorize but yeah... Mine (2013) hit at 72% so it didn't make the cutoff but the Apple rep said to run it night and day and bring it back in a week or so when it gets under 70%. Alas the program ended. I'm at 59% right now so hopefully if I go in they will hook up a new battery to at least help with the resale of the machine.
I took my 2013 MBP into the local Apple Store yesterday after seeing this article as I've been having trouble with my battery. The Genius Bar dude was pretty rude - I showed him the article and he said "not true, it's a "rumor" site"! He showed me his iPad and it had no information on battery replacement that agreed with the story. It bothered me a little that he had never heard of Mac Rumors... So he did the internal test thing on my MBP and my battery came up as faulty. I said I want to get it replaced either way so he started punching stuff into his iPad. As he was finishing up, my work order refreshed and lo and behold - batteries/unibodies were out of stock until at least 11/15/17 but no further information. I couldn't even make a Genius Bar appointment to bring it back. He said just make one for after that date and everything should work out. I got on Apple's web site when I got home but you can only make appts for 7 days into the future? Weird. At any rate, he said yesterday's visit was attached to my account so there shouldn't be any questions. I just smiled at him when I walked away...
Probably not the best way to approach the situation. Walking into the store and saying "hey I heard I can get this service for free on the internet so you should make it happen" definitely isn't going to make them want to help you. I walked in, played the part of normal customer wanting to see how much it'd cost to replace my battery and everything worked out perfectly.
I've made an appointment to have my rMBP looked at, so in preparation I put the original 512GB SSD back in (been using a Transcend for a while) and installed the OS from scratch, via internet recovery. So I ended up with OSX Lion when it completed, battery status was still "Service Battery". I then updated to High Sierra (via Mountain Lion) and now the battery status has reverted to "Normal". I pulled the original SSD and put the Transcend one back and now it's "Service Battery" again.
I'm assuming that the status got reset at some point during the installs and the clean install hasn't yet detected the true state of the battery.
I'm assuming that the status got reset at some point during the installs and the clean install hasn't yet detected the true state of the battery.
I tried this at one of my local Apple Stores (in US), but they only offered me the option to either send out my MacBook for repair or have the part ordered to the store. When I asked how long the options would take, they said I'd either have to send my MacBook out for a week or have the part shipped to the store in 2-3 days and leave my MacBook with them at the store. No mention of the part being constrained or about any free replacement in November. Do I have to commit and say that I will order the battery for the constrained noticed to pop-up?
Maybe I missed something, but I don't think there is a fault here. The service costs the usual $199 for people who want it right away. It's only free (temporarily) for people who choose to wait, due to supply constraints. That strikes me as pretty customer-friendly to me.
Again, maybe I'm missing something - can you point to any evidence of Apple making an exception because of a design defect or similar issue?
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That's a nice conspiracy theory, and I'm sure it crossed someone's mind at Apple, but it's definitely not the only reason, or, IMHO, even the main reason.
The real reason Apple has gone to glued batteries is the pursuit of thinness. Removable covers add thickness. The entire phone industry has ditched swappable batteries, and phone batteries tend to wear out even faster than notebook batteries. In the portable PC space, note that several other manufacturers competing in premium / ultra-sleek categories where thinness is particularly prized have also moved towards non-swappable batteries in recent years, some of them also using glue.
You should research cloning your 3rd party SSD contents to your stock SSD. That way the service battery logs would remain.
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A laptop is not a phone. Glue is insane in a laptop battery.
Since their battery cells are custom designed, they could at last have used a soft glue plus 2 little round holes in each top corner of the cells, to screw two corners per cell into the case. It would not add thickness, would not rattle, and it would be cheaply replaceable.
It is clear they did not have any incentive for "cheaply replaceable".
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I said: "Apple is admitting they have an issue replacing/repairing them. That is the reason why they offer this service for free". The issue/fault is in this case indeed 'supply constraints'. I never said it was a design defect (but the glue certainly does not help). Why should I point you to any evidence if we already both have established Apple has an issue (due to a shortage and the gluing)? Or am I missing something now?
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Please clarify, is that OK that Apple Support know nothing about this program? Just called them and spent 20 minutes trying to approve, thanks to the article...
And why don't they have anything about the program on an official site too?
apple.com – Exchange and Repair Extension Programs
And why don't they have anything about the program on an official site too?
apple.com – Exchange and Repair Extension Programs