The first battery I received was an absolute failure, would not hold a charge and would not shut off automatically when fully charged. The second battery works as advertised and my only gripe is that it doesn't fit as smoothly on the bottom of my Macbook as the original battery. The only really satisfactory aspect to this entire episode was the Brilliant Store which provided me the best customer service I have ever received.
Update: If I could I would lower this review to one star. The battery failed to hold charge after less than one year.
Update II. I gave up and finally ordered a replacement battery from Apple. Now, six months later it is working perfectly. My Macbook Pro will operate down to 1% charge remaining. Lesson, its better sometimes to spend a little more; in future I will only buy replacement parts from the Apple Store. Apple MA458LL/A 17-inch MacBook Pro Battery
I've now had two of these batteries stop charging then expand to where they can no longer be seated in the laptop without causing problems. For a $3000 laptop and a $130 battery this is completely unacceptable. I don't expect this or any battery to last forever, but the service life of these things is insanely short.
For Apple to suggest that this is normal behavior for a couple-year-old battery is ludicrous. To my mind they're simply shrugging off responsibility for a defective product. Yes, there was a recall - but guess what? The batteries they didn't recall often exhibit the exact same behavior and problems. I pointed this out at my local Apple store when inquiring about a replacement battery and was told essentially, "sorry, you're out of luck".
I've been a long time Apple supporter and own many Apple products. But this battery - and Apple's attitude about it - has caused me to remove myself from the ranks of the Apple faithful. In the future I'll look at Apple products last instead of first. Seriously Apple, WTF? You need to treat your customers better than this if you expect them to pay a premium for your products.
The one that came with my Macbook pro 17" actually physically expanded and made the track pad useless, until the battery is removed. I had to remove the battery and run the laptop with power cable all the time to make it usable and also make the base flat (not hilly).
I suspect the application that caused super heating up the battery and made it physically expand was Skype video chat. Default video is 640x480 that causes the CPU to heat up and battery is right next to it. There are threads (using skype config.xml) on how to downgrade the Skype Video quality to 160x120 without causing heat-up and also not too much noticeable difference in video quality. Secondly, a down-loadable battery update patch is available from Apple site that prevents the heat-ups and deformations.
Conclusively, Apple batteries have a major fault that needs fixing. Other laptops don't have battery problems with Skype video. I called Apple tech support to report a deformed battery but they did not help me since the problem occurred 2-3 yrs after laptop purchase.
Apple has some serious explaining to do: I've had 3 PC laptops and never had a battery fail so rapidly--- and to physically expand!
Read the blogs on Apple's own website, and you'll see this problem is rampant. Some users' batteries expand into the case and destroy the track-pad. But call Apple, and they'll tell you, "All batteries expand when their fuel cells are empty," and "Batteries are consumables so if you didn't buy our extended warranty, you have to buy a new battery." [NEVER MIND THAT ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE MORE THAN 370 USERS HAVE HAD THESE CRITICAL BATTERY FAILURES]. I have an HP from 2002 and the original battery is still running. Same for my 2004 Compaq, and even the original battery in our kid's knock-around Dell (circa 1999) is still running.
Sorry to say, but Apple really stinks on this front. Their customer service is seriously dropping the ball and is not at all competitive with HP.
BOTTOM LINE: Don't be surprised if your replacement batteries fail quickly (even Apple's "Senior Advisor" says they don't last longer than 300 charges or 9-15 months); and if your machine isn't under warranty be sure to replace the battery every 12 months so it won't expand and destroy your computer.
These things are junk. I have had 2 and both have lasted just over 1 year. After that they start to shutoff randomly and expand. Apple replaced my first one and said it was defective. When the second one went I was out of luck. Now I am using a third party battery in my macbook pro and it lasts for 4:50 minutes with a full charge. That is better than I ever got with the apple battery. If you buy this battery, expect no more than little over a year.
I own 3 Macbook Pro's and a Macbook 13 inch (white). All bought 1.5 to 2.5 years ago except the Macbook 13 inch which I got a year ago for my youngest daughter and has a battery I wish my pro had in a computer that is half the price! That little battery lasts 8 hours and came out about a month after I picked up the 3 pros with total clunker batteries that last 3 (supposedly 4) hours--Apple always does this to me- got me this time with an iPod Touch giveaway with purchase of the Macbook Pro-that is the giveaway a new model is soon to follow so WAIT DON"T BITE on the deal. So all the pro batteries for the larger- 15 and 17 inch lines should be recalled and its a disgrace IMHO that this is actually being resold with many people having to buy one every year-check out Apple's own reviews for those who doubt this on the Apple site under the same battery model number.
My daughter's similar 15 inch battery failed within 2 months and cycle count was below what is minimum to be declared functional (according to the tech at APLCARE who replaced it and sent it without asking for old one back first--what you expect when you buy a top of line laptop that cost more than double its winblows competitor -fortunately when you are within warranty Apple treats you respectfully.
However, I felt like Rodney Dangerfield 2 days ago after 2 hours of futile gripes and pleas of outrage (I have worked designing embedded systems for 25 years and so I know when an item is a failure vs. a wear and tear issue)! My 17 inch macbook pro and my wife's BOTH failed within the same week! Precisely when the option to pick up APLCARE for my Macbook expired a month or so earlier and I checked on the prices of replacing the whole shebang and at 1199 it seemed with 3 what -maybe ONE would fail--I could buy a whole other Macbook for price of 3 Aplcare contracts! This seems to be reason customer service really decided they hated me-I made the comment-a sin-but with 3 of them its hard to not think its cheaper to pool the 3 times 300 bucks in self insurance and have enough to almost buy a new Macbook if not a Pro at current prices.
My battery, this same one you will be buying to replace your old one is the same defective dangerous jiffy pop battery that failed you before and will fail you again in a year or so.... not only puffed open to a whopping 4 inch thick flat out pried open looking battery -it leaked brown battery acid into the housing of the battery case, which sits adjacent to your RAM interface (slot where you can add more memory) and it almost destroyed the entire computer power system in addition to potentially causing a fire. I can not for the life of me understand with the Apple site rife with 100s of similar gripes (and this is what gets screened by apple) on their review of same battery how Apples' VP of customer support can show his face in public.
I wrote a review after becoming so infuriated that customer care was initially going to replace at least my insanely mutant battery and then abruptl stated NOPE WE WONT-sorry never said we would! Oh and this is recorded so don't say we did say we were going to replace it and they are not defective-this is normal for a failing battery to expand and pop out of your laptop 3 times its size like the incredible hulk. My review on APPLE site, Indicating that I was ready to try and band together people interested in filing a class action law suit against Apple for this insanely stupid customer service cheap out no doubt never made it to their site so I figured maybe it would be therapeutic to vent to other poor souls who are paying to replace this-some blessed few are getting free ones but its a crap shoot apparently.
I was so angered by the vitriolic customer support rep. and his totally condescending attitude-he basically asked me if I HAD PICTURES OF THE ACID I CLAIMED LEAKED As if I was making it up- I said I have two bulging batteries like this and I say this is clearly a defect not wear and tear--I say what are odds 3 Macbook Pros all have battery fails--apparently the "gentleman" Never took probability and statistics as for 3 batteries bought randomly by the same household to fail on each battery and their not be a defect places odds of about "NO WAY" that one person winds up with 3 failing batteries. He said, I probably was just unlucky and claimed to not have heard of many bulging battery issues (this with the Apple site full of reams of customers all citing the bulge battery issue--it literally grows and pops out of the frame and will not fit back in. THey seem to expect Apple users to be monitoring battery issues via diagnostics like checking one's oil or tire pressure--get real apple these are consumer laptops not Crays. I offered to mail them the battery and accept a replacement after they verified the truth of my statements but they just found a way to deny me by acting like I was uncooperative in not letting someone "Take a look" at my Mac-which could of course wind up costing me installation fees as well as repair fees-been there and done this with 2 hard drives on a Powerbook.
Not only is this battery functionally non-functional, its potentially dangerous and likely to break your computer as it also starts power cycling down your notebook over and over when the failure begins to manifest....an audible pop finally was noticed and that is when I realized this thing was dangerous and as I felt the battery and noticed why my laptop was propped up as if floating above the table, the heat was close enough to recall the earlier MAC power brickes that literally lit ablaze-why is it Apple muffs its batteries all the time then will not recall them--just like the iPhone Consumer Reports issue on call drops--it shows a total arrogance developing at a once earnest and hard working little company that came back from dead with a visionary leader who seems to have gotten lost in his own success,
So, I could not even power cycle mine on with the battery pulled out--maybe the acid that was leaked into the casing that i had to wipe out was glitching something--I could not boot to the hard drive and fortunately was able to firewire in to the laptop as a remote hard drive and salvage my iTunes and photos which I stupidly had not checked in time machine to back up. Fortunately i remembered I had bought a terabyte backup drive and run Time Machine backup just about a week before this failure and once I bought a new battery I was able to restore the Macbook pro by wiping my hard drive (which nodes had somehow become fubar) and recopying the music back from an old iMac that I use basically also as a redundant memory store.
On my wife's, battery failure--I was already checking on it and she (who had made fun of me claiming mine failed as I do not care well for my items) as hers too became a jiffy pop battery that bulged out of its frame....but we yanked it right away and she could run with power cord alone til new crappo 2006 made battery came in mail--another 270 bucks to Apple for their defective batteries-agida.
The thing that is really becoming disgusting about APLCARE is they still are charging 275 or 350 for a computer that costs about 1500 with extra memory and stuff I added on like video graphics upgrade more memory etc. at time I bought these they were over 2k each- you would expect a customer who buys 4 Macbooks (3 of them pros) to get a fair shake with a battery 4 inches wide and brown acid leak but guess what--they made me feel like I was an idiot who should have been checking the battery and known to replace it long ago! Still, I am guaranteeing that it is unlikely they would have replaced the batteries even under APLCARE as they would likely say 2 years is beyond the wear and tear warranty. THey pulled similar stunt on the Powerbook displays which had a "pinch" problem where simply touching the LCD in the corner cracked the entire 17 inch display and APLCARE split out screen coverage AFTER THE FACT and started selling supplemental display care coverage for 130 above and beyond the 275 for basic care.
My wife's Macbook pro on board diagnostic still claims the battery works and is in "fair" condition but their Do it yourself dept. where the hoveled masses who do not buy overpriced APLCARE contracts get sent to purgatory to deal with the nastiest supervisors known to techland--tells me the cycle count shows it is worn out -so apparently the diags is an optimistic program.
The DIY customer care rep SUPERVISOR-the little guy told me he could never get authority to give me a replacement- "DAVE" told me that its normal for batteries to bulge and leak when they are old ( 2 years )--Dave tells me laptop batteries are similar to those Duracell "AA alkalines will do that"-tell me, is this the same company with the "genius bar' at the store? A lithium 130 dollar battery is prone to leak acid after its cycled out and its normal for it to bust open, leak, and grow 3 times its original width?
Bottom line is if you read reviews--if you take it into the store and show a grossly damaged battery -wave it around make a bit of noise you are likely to be quietly handed a replacement -after all it does not look good to prospective buyers to see a battery that looks like godzilla-but any poor soul who is disabled or can not get to the Apple store gets the shaft. They have a random policy generator--if you tell Apple that they have a defective battery that should be recalled you are placed on the naughty customer list and given nothing for your wise alec complaints! NO SOUP FOR YOU! THey seem to have contracted the SOUP NAZI tech support company!
Not having the time or energy to spend perhaps another 2 hours of my time plus driving back and forth, another 2 blood pressure pills and a brown bag to blow into for an anxiety attack to argue yet again, this time perhaps with a "genius." I resign myself to be shafted and fork over my 270 bucks to the newest evil empire replacement and realize I now dislike Apple as I did MSFT in the early 90s. Say it aint so Steve?
It continues to confound me how a company with cult like following abuses its cult worshipers--and count me among the fans--yet it is classic cult leader behaviour to begin to abuse ones followers. I guess Old Steve Jobs Prednisone is making him crankier as steroids are wont to do and making his need for greed grow even more as he realizes he has the only decent desktop, consumer oriented laptop in town....man its MSFT 2.0.
Who would expect this from a company smart enough to come up with the iPhone, iPod, run Linux and lose old long in tooth MAC OS--I mean the company is genius yet this customer service issue looms large and will make me now always go to the cheapest mac books i can get and those proven to be out for a year without defects.
My daughter's liittle 13 inch macbook has unibody vs. the crappy old screwed in frame on my "Pro", a minor water or coffee drop spill takes out your keyboard and more likely your whole mac....never ever had a spill break my softy Toshiba's etc. never, you could run them over with a truck and they would boot--it seems Apple will never get to grasp what even enterprise grade much less carrier grade quality means- I laugh picturing the enterprise IT guys going to iPhones and talking about 5 9s reliability--what is that? said the consumer device QA guys....
These batteries are the worst of any on any laptop I have ever owned---3 hours tops life and you are supposed to download and "Calibrate them monthly!" give me a break Apple! I just am so miffed after my discussion with their "support" team that I am sad to say that I am no longer planning to join in with the rest of "Heaven's Gate/Mac worshippers" when the next Hale Bopp comet passes by!
Did mean to review the battery only but its hard not to describe the entire customer experience that went along with trying to get treated fairly by being given one for free. The worst issue is we are buying the SAME defective battery again made in the same 2006 dated lot and they will continue to fail in same way over and over-til we buy newer mac models, which I guess is the plan hey? Apologies for the length but this would never get by the moderators on Apple board although its 100 percent true and not opinion--objective reality is that APPLE just does not care about your problems once you punt on APLCARE---its YOUR OWN DARN FAULT! Yeesh...
RedHAT hear I come! - Laptop Batteries - Apple - Defectivebydesi'
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