Thought some might be interested in this story. I noticed yesterday my mid-2011 11” MacBook Air had an issue: the lid wouldn’t close properly and the trackpad wasn’t clicking. Looking at it I could tell the battery had swollen up and I should probably get it replaced as eventually that case will break and the laptop will be unusable.
I found an appointment for that same day (amazing!) - when I arrived the genius told me that the laptop is what Apple calls vintage and there is no way in their system that they could open a service request for it. I was kind of baffled because as Apple has said before that batteries are consumables that eventually need replaced and for Apple to refuse to replace the battery seemed to be a bit bizarre, especially since that battery hasn’t changed design and the 2015 version or whatever the last version of the 11” Air would have those same parts and they could pretty easily continue to do battery replacements even if the other components are what they call vintage.
He was sympathetic to my concern that the laptop would get worse if the battery was left in and offered to simply remove the battery and that it would continue to work as normal if plugged into a charger. I took him up on the offer and got that done for free.
It is pretty interesting to use a laptop without the battery - the Air especially has balancing issues without the battery down there, at times it’ll tip backwards, and it is even lighter than before.
I also find it baffling that the hardware is unserviceable and vintage by Apple’s standards, but OS wise it runs High Sierra, so if I had a hardware issue caused by an OS update that Apple couldn’t help in any way.
I don’t use my Mac that often (once a week for a Google Hangouts Live podcast I do), so at some point I may get the $40 to $70 battery and install it, looks pretty simple. I’m curious how long this Air will continue to run, for a now almost 7 year old laptop it feels just as snappy as it did day 1 and I’d say I’ve gotten some good life out of it. I’ve switched over to 2 iPad Pros (a 10.5 and 12.9 gen 2) and this 2011 MBA is probably the last Mac I’ll ever own. Anyways thought I’d share this story.
I found an appointment for that same day (amazing!) - when I arrived the genius told me that the laptop is what Apple calls vintage and there is no way in their system that they could open a service request for it. I was kind of baffled because as Apple has said before that batteries are consumables that eventually need replaced and for Apple to refuse to replace the battery seemed to be a bit bizarre, especially since that battery hasn’t changed design and the 2015 version or whatever the last version of the 11” Air would have those same parts and they could pretty easily continue to do battery replacements even if the other components are what they call vintage.
He was sympathetic to my concern that the laptop would get worse if the battery was left in and offered to simply remove the battery and that it would continue to work as normal if plugged into a charger. I took him up on the offer and got that done for free.
It is pretty interesting to use a laptop without the battery - the Air especially has balancing issues without the battery down there, at times it’ll tip backwards, and it is even lighter than before.
I also find it baffling that the hardware is unserviceable and vintage by Apple’s standards, but OS wise it runs High Sierra, so if I had a hardware issue caused by an OS update that Apple couldn’t help in any way.
I don’t use my Mac that often (once a week for a Google Hangouts Live podcast I do), so at some point I may get the $40 to $70 battery and install it, looks pretty simple. I’m curious how long this Air will continue to run, for a now almost 7 year old laptop it feels just as snappy as it did day 1 and I’d say I’ve gotten some good life out of it. I’ve switched over to 2 iPad Pros (a 10.5 and 12.9 gen 2) and this 2011 MBA is probably the last Mac I’ll ever own. Anyways thought I’d share this story.
