I have also replaced battery from iFixit kit, I don’t know if I have the same brand, my machine sometimes while in sleep restarts by itself and I hear chime sound during the night while I’m sleeping. I have late 2013 MacBook Pro 15” Retina with integrated graphics.
Assuming the cost of the batteries were the exact same, that means that Apple is charging an extra $60-$100 for the battery install. If it took all of 30 minutes, that’s a labor rate on par (or better) with most automotive/mechanic/trade shops in my area.
I would love to be able to pay Apple just for the battery and do it myself, but I don’t know many people that want to learn how (even though it’s very simple).
This is where I get torn about how angry I should be...
I feel like Right to Repair laws should (exist in the US in the first place...) require that wear items be made available on their own. Not as an expensive assembly, not requiring authorized repairs when out of warranty, and not being DRMed. I think that certain classes of items should always be considered wear items- batteries, for instance.
However, at a certain point regulation (in the US at least) tends to either be SO broad or specific as to become regulatory capture for the incumbents or basically toothless.
On the other hand here, Apple is giving users a viable, quality option at what could be deemed a reasonable price.
To be clear, I’m not patting them on the back- I’m sure lawsuits forced their hand, they’re still making money, and they’re protecting their brand.
I guess the point I’m trying to get across is that it sucks that my options are battery of unknown origin which can have literal catastrophic implications or paying a non-inconsequential amount of money to repair a piece of equipment that is likely important to one’s daily life.
Per the above post, in some models the battery modules are glued to the top case, which also contains the keyboard and trackpad. This makes replacement either quite a labour-intensive job, or a job that also requires replacement of the top case.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're not replaceable; just that the battery bears load. The engines on most modern motorcycles are structural elements but you can still easily take them out and work on them / replace them.
Of course, the manufacturer could design them to not be replaceable. But it's not a requirement that structural elements are nonreplaceable.
On the contrary: Manufacturers should have the right to design their products in any way they want, so long as the product is safe, and compliant with relevant regulations e.g. labor and environmental laws.
You want a laptop with a replaceable battery, I want one that's as thin as possible while still doing the job. Good thing you can buy a ThinkPad and I can buy a MacBook!
> Manufacturers should have the right to design their products in any way they want, so long as the product is safe, and compliant with relevant regulations e.g. labor and environmental laws.
How is it environmentally friendly to have to glue in a consumable part?
How is it safe that you can't just remove it when it's damaged?
Which is why getting a battery replacement after a few years is actually a very decent deal because you are getting back a half brand new MacBook.
Although the repairing quality of Apple Store has gone downhill in recent years, the attention and care they used to put though during repair are no longer there.
That maybe only applicable to certain cases or is US-only. I was quoted ~$500 for rMBP 2015 due to swollen battery (which is entirely Apple's fault), from two of their authorized centers.
I was told they assess the extent of damage and charge based on that, but the whole top assembly is changed in any case (glued). For example, if they believe the keyboard was in good condition, you won't get charged for it (and hence the baseline $200).
Honestly between "disabling legacy extensions" on Mac and it being absurdly expensive or beyond your control to install genuine parts, I'm not sure I can bring myself to own another Apple product moving forward. Just sucks that work places will be much slower to drop them. Pop! OS runs great for me these days, if I could only polish off the last few warts :(
You can check the prices for various different countries by switching the country using the link at the bottom right corner of the page. In general, the price for battery service seems to be pretty consistent around the world, subject to local taxes etc.
In the United States, there are hundreds and hundreds of Apple authorized repair stores that have access to genuine Apple batteries. But this is not always true in other places, which leads to the HN echo chamber of "evil Apple is forcing obsolescence to sell more computers!"
I had a MacBook Air done at one of these this party authorized repair shops last year, and it cost the same as getting it done from Apple, itself: $129.
Apple authorised service provider asked me 400€ for the replacement battery and labour costs. So I decided to replace it myself with iFixit kit and it was worth it. The iFixit instructions are really nice and not too complicated if you have a little bit of patience.
A house in our neighborhood burned to the ground and the fire was started by a laptop battery (replacement) charging. It shot up through the roof of the kitchen into attic and started a fire that quickly consumed the house. I would never put in a battery not from the manufacturer after that not that that is a guarantee.
The problem with bad/unsafe replacement batteries is that Apple intentionally makes it impossible to obtain an original battery.
If you could just walk into an Apple store and buy the original, Apple-endorsed battery at a fair price there would be no reason to go with third-party (and potentially unsafe) batteries.
Hmm. I walked into an Apple store and got a "Top Case Assembly with Battery Replacement" service for my 15" MacBook Pro. It was $199 total, which I thought was a fair price.
You mean, others that are providing real authorized battery replacements from the manufacturer of the original equipment? Ones that should be more likely to be covered by insurance if they do cause a house fire?
Well, replacing that battery is not that easy, I assumed 30 minutes labor in total, the battery needs to be shipped, too, and there is tax, so out of $199 the battery itself was perhaps $100 or so.
In other words, if I were to do this elsewhere, I would need to buy the battery, ship it, and pay someone (or perform the task myself) to do the replacement. The $199 price seemed entirely reasonable, especially as this was in California at the time.
I think the price seems "outrageous" only if you ignore the costs of labor, shipping and taxes.
It's a fair price for an entire top case assembly and labor. However it's wasteful and it's definitely not fair that this is the only possible option - that is still a lot of money for some people and they should have the possibility of buying the part only and doing the repair themselves.
I had this same thing happen with a battery from OWC that I dropped in a 2015 MacBook Air. It oddly works perfectly other than rebooting itself and turning itself on when closed. And I followed all the installation/system reset instructions to a T.
These are at least credible suppliers. If you replace w an eBay battery the results can be laugh out loud terrible. Years ago I thought of saving money this way - but didn’t - I actually don’t fully understand why apples batteries are so much more reliable than these third party ones - what type of bms is in them?
Ironically HN was railing about the non genuine notification appple provides buyers of used devices - very much worth checking when buying though.
Buying cheap LiIon replacement batteries that might burn down your house is a level of living fast & dangerous that I just wasn't made for. Removing an already bloating MBP cell using sharp tools is a terrifying experience. I blame Apple for encouraging this by over-pricing genuine repairs.
This is a worry that almost came true to me last week. My sons Laptop charge cord stopped working so went to Facebook and found someone selling a charger for it. The charger was from amazon they said. It was an obvious fake and looked nothing like the company provided one but tested it and the voltage output was correct so used it. Fast forward several months and last week I noticed the casing around the cords power supply was deformed and had at one point almost melted. Scary to say the least.
Apple restricts third party repair shop's access to genuine parts as much as possible. So, it is partly their own fault that high quality parts are not available with third parties.
On the A1466, I can do an extended SMC reset to make the MagSafe light flash green. But it doesn't respond in any other way (no chime). G3 hot is not high.
As for my A1398, I'm going to have to take a multimeter to it tomorrow. Not sure how to diagnose the GPU issue though, other than Single User Mode works, but the computer freezes when switching to NVIDIA.
People get shadowbanned here if they're obnoxious, or sometimes it's just bad luck. The comment you're complaining about was probably not specifically silenced, that poster is just in the hellban limbo.
If you like a comment (and maybe you need enough karma?) you can click through to it and 'vouch' for it, which makes it visible.
The test for banning is not whether someone breaks the rules 100% of the time. That would be like saying I can drive as fast as I want because I slowed down in a school zone once.
We're always happy to unban accounts if their history shows that they are now using the site as intended. If you notice such a case, the thing that will actually help your fellow user is to let us know about it at hn@ycombinator.com so we can take a look. You can also vouch for a [dead] comment that shouldn't be dead—the fact that banned accounts sometimes post good comments is the reason we created vouching in the first place.
(In the case of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398463, we could probably unban the account if they were willing to change the trollish username. I'll email to check if they want to do that.)
What's not so helpful is to post complainy comments about "mods deleting comments" and "echo chambers": they're not accurate, the fill the thread with offtopicness, and in the case where a user shouldn't be banned, they don't do anything to help that user.
I had the same issue happen recently: replaced the battery, GPU soon failed. My trackpad also stopped working.
For the GPU, I took it to a repair shop here in the Bay Area. They were able to quickly diagnose and sent it to another shop in the area that specializes in it. Was told it was a simple soldering fix. Apparently a guy makes his living doing this since he knows exactly where to solder.
GPU issues aside, I think the submitter wanted to draw attention to the fake charger posting about a hotel fire. It sounds like a much more interesting story than this battery GPU issue.
Call independent repair shops in the Bay Area that specializes in Macs. I could not get the name of the GPU repairer because the repair shop earned a hefty fee being the middleman.
There is a whole industry on fixing Apple's product. Simply because they refuse to admit any of its mistakes ( Especially on the Mac ). And refuse to fix any of its hardware. Literally all repair cost in Apple Store are there to show how it would be better if you just buy a new one. Hence the repair rate ( from Apple's perspective ) are exceptionally low, and the 3rd party repairing industry has been thriving because of it.
>Apple made a very good charger! But it was expensive, People assumed the cheap knockoffs where just as good. Sadly they aren’t! Most issues I’ve seen all come from using a bad charger.
An argument to keep in mind for the "right to repair" and third-party replacements...
All the more reason for Apple to provide parts to consumers and repair shops instead of withholding them only for authorised resellers (which often come with way more restrictions and rules than just how good they repair stuff).
Worst about this personally is how to distinguish between good and reasonably priced or bad and expensive. Because it's easy to know whats bad and cheap.
Given the situation happened, was the fire caused by either the right to repair or the laptop going through a repair? Why did you drag the "repair" and "a bad charger causing a fire" into one category?
>Why did you drag the "repair" and "a bad charger causing a fire" into one category?
Because a charger doesn't have some magical ability that makes it the only kind of device to cause this. The fire could just as easily come from an equally poorly made third-party battery...
>What a horrible strawman argument to make.
What a horrible, rude, violation of the principle of charity.
You always have to consider what you are purchasing, and Apple parts are not exception either.
During 2000s, I had a Powerbook G4. It's charger was famous for cable fraying, because SJ hated stress relievers. So I went through three original replacement chargers, where each developed the same defect.
The fourth one was third-party pc-like brick, except in white. That one never needed replacement.
What stops a company to setup a shop somewhere in Asia to develop cheap knock offs of their own chargers that would cause problems like fires, to ensure customers would never buy a knock off?
Is there any other market where there are plenty of choices of the product but zero trust in any of them such as the 3rd party macbook battery replacement market?
Every option seems to be a gamble. ifixt is the only brand but they don't make the battery so the trust is low on them as well.
I purchased a battery for 2011 macbook on Amazon. Not the cheapest one yet it ended up giving my macbook problems and lasted about 45 mins. The seller sent a replacement and that didn't work. Later I read High Sierra can cause problems for 3rd party replacements?
The cheapest batteries on Amazon start at around $30. Is there not a market for $50-60 replacement that you know for sure work?
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadhttps://support.apple.com/mac/repair/service#battery
I would love to be able to pay Apple just for the battery and do it myself, but I don’t know many people that want to learn how (even though it’s very simple).
This is where I get torn about how angry I should be...
I feel like Right to Repair laws should (exist in the US in the first place...) require that wear items be made available on their own. Not as an expensive assembly, not requiring authorized repairs when out of warranty, and not being DRMed. I think that certain classes of items should always be considered wear items- batteries, for instance.
However, at a certain point regulation (in the US at least) tends to either be SO broad or specific as to become regulatory capture for the incumbents or basically toothless.
On the other hand here, Apple is giving users a viable, quality option at what could be deemed a reasonable price.
To be clear, I’m not patting them on the back- I’m sure lawsuits forced their hand, they’re still making money, and they’re protecting their brand.
I guess the point I’m trying to get across is that it sucks that my options are battery of unknown origin which can have literal catastrophic implications or paying a non-inconsequential amount of money to repair a piece of equipment that is likely important to one’s daily life.
Of course, the manufacturer could design them to not be replaceable. But it's not a requirement that structural elements are nonreplaceable.
You want a laptop with a replaceable battery, I want one that's as thin as possible while still doing the job. Good thing you can buy a ThinkPad and I can buy a MacBook!
How is it environmentally friendly to have to glue in a consumable part?
How is it safe that you can't just remove it when it's damaged?
Adding to those regulations is exactly what I'm suggesting.
Although the repairing quality of Apple Store has gone downhill in recent years, the attention and care they used to put though during repair are no longer there.
I was told they assess the extent of damage and charge based on that, but the whole top assembly is changed in any case (glued). For example, if they believe the keyboard was in good condition, you won't get charged for it (and hence the baseline $200).
In the United States, there are hundreds and hundreds of Apple authorized repair stores that have access to genuine Apple batteries. But this is not always true in other places, which leads to the HN echo chamber of "evil Apple is forcing obsolescence to sell more computers!"
I had a MacBook Air done at one of these this party authorized repair shops last year, and it cost the same as getting it done from Apple, itself: $129.
If you could just walk into an Apple store and buy the original, Apple-endorsed battery at a fair price there would be no reason to go with third-party (and potentially unsafe) batteries.
I'm a bit curious how you came to that conclusion the price was "fair". Did you compare it to the prices of others providing the service?
Those alternatives?
In other words, if I were to do this elsewhere, I would need to buy the battery, ship it, and pay someone (or perform the task myself) to do the replacement. The $199 price seemed entirely reasonable, especially as this was in California at the time.
I think the price seems "outrageous" only if you ignore the costs of labor, shipping and taxes.
Ironically HN was railing about the non genuine notification appple provides buyers of used devices - very much worth checking when buying though.
As for my A1398, I'm going to have to take a multimeter to it tomorrow. Not sure how to diagnose the GPU issue though, other than Single User Mode works, but the computer freezes when switching to NVIDIA.
People get shadowbanned here if they're obnoxious, or sometimes it's just bad luck. The comment you're complaining about was probably not specifically silenced, that poster is just in the hellban limbo.
If you like a comment (and maybe you need enough karma?) you can click through to it and 'vouch' for it, which makes it visible.
In the case of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398463 it was a combination of the trollish username (not allowed on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...) and the trollish early comments posted by the account.
We're always happy to unban accounts if their history shows that they are now using the site as intended. If you notice such a case, the thing that will actually help your fellow user is to let us know about it at hn@ycombinator.com so we can take a look. You can also vouch for a [dead] comment that shouldn't be dead—the fact that banned accounts sometimes post good comments is the reason we created vouching in the first place.
(In the case of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398463, we could probably unban the account if they were willing to change the trollish username. I'll email to check if they want to do that.)
What's not so helpful is to post complainy comments about "mods deleting comments" and "echo chambers": they're not accurate, the fill the thread with offtopicness, and in the case where a user shouldn't be banned, they don't do anything to help that user.
For the GPU, I took it to a repair shop here in the Bay Area. They were able to quickly diagnose and sent it to another shop in the area that specializes in it. Was told it was a simple soldering fix. Apparently a guy makes his living doing this since he knows exactly where to solder.
GPU issues aside, I think the submitter wanted to draw attention to the fake charger posting about a hotel fire. It sounds like a much more interesting story than this battery GPU issue.
An argument to keep in mind for the "right to repair" and third-party replacements...
Worst about this personally is how to distinguish between good and reasonably priced or bad and expensive. Because it's easy to know whats bad and cheap.
What a horrible strawman argument to make.
Because a charger doesn't have some magical ability that makes it the only kind of device to cause this. The fire could just as easily come from an equally poorly made third-party battery...
>What a horrible strawman argument to make.
What a horrible, rude, violation of the principle of charity.
During 2000s, I had a Powerbook G4. It's charger was famous for cable fraying, because SJ hated stress relievers. So I went through three original replacement chargers, where each developed the same defect.
The fourth one was third-party pc-like brick, except in white. That one never needed replacement.
Every option seems to be a gamble. ifixt is the only brand but they don't make the battery so the trust is low on them as well.
I purchased a battery for 2011 macbook on Amazon. Not the cheapest one yet it ended up giving my macbook problems and lasted about 45 mins. The seller sent a replacement and that didn't work. Later I read High Sierra can cause problems for 3rd party replacements?
The cheapest batteries on Amazon start at around $30. Is there not a market for $50-60 replacement that you know for sure work?