And for $130-200, they will replace your top-case (including keyboard and touchpad). I have had it done more than once and it was a same-day turnaround each time (couple of hours).

I wonder if there wasn't something more wrong with his laptop caused by letting a worn-out battery sit in there too long.

Why can't they schedule they swap, and have him come in and wait?

For one they can't predict when they are going to get around to your machine. There may be 100 repair orders in front of yours, might take 1 day, might take 2. They can't possibly set up a system where they send you an alert to say "You are next in line, please bring in your laptop." That would cause incredible delay when that person doesn't show up and you have a tech repair guy waiting for a machine.

But surely you (or your workplace) have a backup plan if your laptop needs service that takes a few days. What would you do if you need a new screen, or a new hard drive, or a new fan... It's not like a laptop repair that takes a few days should be a big shock to anyone who's owned a few laptops (Apple or otherwise).

By the way, one of the things that the $500 Joint Venture program gets you at Apple is a loaner computer while your machine is out for service. So that's one option.

The other option, which we use at my work, is we have a spare laptop. It gets used for a number of purposes, one of which is a loaner for repairs.

But if 1 piece of machinery really is that critical to your business, you'll have an identical standby ready to go when your primary one eventually craps out.

I've decided to let Apple handle inventorying my standby machine. I can walk into an Apple store and 5 minutes later be ready to go again. Then the high resale value of my old machine makes it easy to sell on craigslist.

I've never seen the battery compartment be the source of physical issues. Typically it is the hinges on the LCD that give up or the case cracks in one of the four corners.

Mostly the case remains solid and the hardware within blows up.

If you keep your laptops long enough, you'll eventually have to deal with replacing a battery. My two-year old Dell latitude E6530 is solid (and admittedly heavy), with no noticeable flex. It has an easily replaceable battery as well as user-upgradeable RAM! I'd call it a well-made piece of hardware. I expect to replace the battery in the next year or so (the battery is starting to show its age by now, but at least it still works).

A bit off-topic: My previous laptop, a C2D Macbook Pro (old enough it had a replaceable battery) developed a swollen battery after 2 years. At the 3 year mark I had to open it up and replace a failed case fan (and a hard drive). Also, the optical drive failed within the first year, as did its warranty replacement. I eventually gave up on that (and removed the drive so it would stop churning incessantly) and bought an external USB drive.

My laptops last 4-5 years. This battery failure was at 1.5 years. I just replaced mine after 2 years.

I wonder why batteries aren't easily replaceable on both laptops and phones?

You know, it wasn't always so. I remember when you could literally slide the battery out of a laptop and slide a new one in.

And don't give me this thin bullshit.

I have a Samsung Series 9 and it is thinner than the Macbook Air. I just changed the battery myself. It took me 15 minutes. I unscrewed the back (standard philips screws) and slid the old one out and put the new one in. That's it. And I was still pissed, because, why the screws?

Oh did I mention I bought the new battery on eBay for $25? Has been working perfectly well for weeks now and when it doesn't, I'll buy a new one.

Honestly, this is nothing more than greed. Handicapping a product to increase service costs. That's just shameful.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2013+Ba...

BLUESHIRTER MAY 5, 2014 AT 3:44 AM Sadly, the guy you spoke to was very wrong. There are 2 part numbers for the same part depending on why it is being replaced. If the top case is damaged, or failed out of warranty, it’s 399. If it is a failed (out of warranty) or consumed battery, it is as stated above, $199, and 24 hours to replace. For validating your AppleCare, drop the machine for repair, go home, call AppleCare, email a copy of your receipt/proof of purchase, by the time you pick up the repair, you are golden. This is done nearly daily at every store in the country.

While $400 is expensive to replace a battery, it's obviously not as simple as just popping a new one in, which is the compromise one has to make if they want a Macbook Pro. If you want easily swappable batteries, get a different machine.

Also, $400 to get a brand new battery to essentially revive a computer that will probably work great for a few more years is a whole lot cheaper than having to buy a new computer. Just food for thought.

I was thinking about switching to a Macbook Pro, but for me this is just another argument to go with something else.

Can't deny that the hardware is great though, but to me this makes it less great. I had my last laptop for 8 years because I could replace broken parts myself, and upgrade to an SSD, I think that's a nice feature of the hardware too.

Yep, and this would still be true if the laptop was more serviceable. Most people don't change the oil on their car either even if it relatively easy. In fact most people don't even put air in the tires and instead rely on getting that done during quarterly oil changes!

I have a T450s at work. The stock battery is only 46 watt-hours, versus 75 on the similarly-sized 13" rMBP. The 15" rMBP has a 100 watt-hour battery, which you can get on a T550s only if you buy the extended battery that sticks out half an inch from the bottom.

But can you imagine how big the batteries could be in a 15" MBP that was roughly the same size as those from 2012 and earlier? Those things would last even longer than a current 15" rMBP would, especially under load.

Same here. I've been a dedicated Mac user since 2002, and have been contemplating upgrading my 2010 MBP. The decreasing serviceability gives me lengthy pause, though I'm not sure that I would be happier with something else (even if it were more serviceable).

I loved, loved, loved the 15" unibody Macbook Pro design. It allowed me to upgrade to better components (RAM, SSDs) as prices came down. The only thing I felt was missing from my 2011 MBP was USB 3. Once the shift was made to thinner bodies and soldered-on RAM, the writing was on the wall for me.

Personally, after using OSX on Intel for a decade, I found that moving to Windows 8.1 and now 10 was not nearly as jarring as I thought it would be. Windows isn't the XP I remembered using. I actually like using Windows. The one thing I really like is touchscreens on Windows PCs. Of course, depending on your preferences (and/or biases), going to Windows may not be for you.

As soon as I realized this, I said "to hell with it" and bought a Macbook. I don't need the downsides to having a serviceable laptop if I never actually perform any service on it.

There are people who really like/want removable batteries but it doesn't seem to be enough to keep most of the market supplying them. And now that laptops use less power little juice packs (not unlike those for cellphones) become reasonable. Plus in general removable batteries made a lot of sense when basic typing would only get you 3 or 4 hours, but now that many machines can do basic typing for 10+ hours a ton of users can get by without needing that second battery.

Conveniently, built-in batteries also harm the resale value of a used device.

Eh, does any non-tech savy person really care about anything outside of size and weight? And maybe "speed", hah.

From what I can tell, to replace the battery on my year old lenovo ultrabook, you need to remove 16 easily accessible cross screws and disconnect a single ribbon cable. That shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. I guess there could be glue hiding under there.

Not to mention it continues to last up to 10 hours on a single charge.

It's not like this was a cost-saving measure for them; they're not pulling one over on you. They went nuts trying to make these things solid, lightweight, and skinny, and this was a tradeoff they made --- at significant expense.

Which is being directly passed on to the client along with an extra slice of profit making. Brilliant but not so nice if you're the client.

So if you think it'd be trivial to make this more repairable, you need to say precisely how.

BTW, $400 comes pretty close to buying a new laptop nearly as capable as a 2 year old machine.

Apple doesn't make a different machine.

Obviously what you mean is to buy from a different vendor, which is what I expect to do when the time comes for a new laptop. But how is it good for Apple that they got my money last time and won't get it next time?

...you get a number that tracks the economy in general and the consumption of luxury electronics in particular, is affected by the relative strength of Apple's ecosystem against Microsoft and Google, how badly Superfish has affected Lenovo's reputation, etc. etc.

And in any event the numbers aren't particularly optimistic:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/08/apple-mac-sales-slow-...

> How many sales has Apple gained by making the laptop thinner and lighter and giving it a longer battery life compared to sales lost from not making a few parts user-replaceable?

We don't even have all the data yet. Customers don't realize they want a user-serviceable battery until they've had to replace one that isn't. Apple started selling glued batteries three years ago, which means they're only starting to have to be replaced now and the largest effect will be seen going forward when the people affected are buying new laptops.

But you're asking the wrong question anyway. The interesting question is: What would their sales look like if they had both ultra lightweight models and slightly heavier models with user-serviceable parts?

The article is stating that the rate of growth (still positive) for Macs slowed somewhat.

The same article states:

"Apple nonetheless outperformed the overall PC market, which saw shipments plummet 11% to 71 million for the quarter, according to IDC. Moreover, given the worse performance of other PC makers, its market share rose to 7.6% in 2015 from 6.9% last year, according to Gartner."

That looks decidedly optimistic to me!

How is that supposed to provide any support for Apple's one size fits all approach?

> Most people, certainly most Apple customers, don't care that the battery is not replaceable. In fact, it works in their favour as they can use the failing battery as justification for getting a shiny new MacBook Pro in a few years' time.

How is incurring an expense of several hundred dollars (or reducing the resale value by that amount) supposed to work in the customer's favor? It seems the customer could achieve the same "benefit" by smashing it with a hammer.

I think the effect you're seeing is just that more people are using Apple computers than were even 5 years ago, and so there's just more feedback to read.

I can actually expect that. Apple have good enough designers to do so. But lack of serviceability for them is a feature, not a bug. Apple is pushing for rented hardware as a service in consumer space. Repairable, tweak-able or modifiable device is contrary to their goals.

Does Apple make a user-serviceable laptop these days? I suppose you could switch to PC, but that's not as simple as spending your $3000 at BestBuy instead of the Apple store.

Apple's in-store repair, in my experience at least, is fantastic. If something goes wrong they do whatever they can to address the issue. I'd recommend going through them if you're considering changing some of the internals of a macbook pro given how easily it can go wrong.

>Apple's in-store repair, in my experience at least, is fantastic.

This reeks of cognitive dissonance. Their repair is "fantastic" yet their repair technicians were incapable of turning on the laptop to see if it was even capable of booting. Then, they did the exact same thing again, eventually giving up and replacing the product? You lucked out that their repair department was so incompetent, or their product was so defective that you got a free upgrade to a newer model. Doesnt sound like a ringing endorsement of anything except customer service.

Regarding the business-level support, I think it's fair enough for the store to deliver a baseline level of support to consumers for free and a paid-for service for people who need priority and/or loaner machines to cover the repair period. I personally don't think that yelling at managers should result in priority over other people in the queue.

I think the main issue here is that because Apple integrate their batteries like they do, it's not possible to perform what was once a simple repair yourself. I'm personally okay with that, because the outstanding battery life on my MacBook Pro is a boon almost every single day.

I have no idea if Apple offers this sort of service, but if they do, I'm sure it isn't cheap. 3 day, in store, in (limited) warranty repairs isn't the same class of service.

5-10 years ago I had a laptop with some screen issues. I took it back to the retailer where I purchased it and they sent it for repair. I was without my laptop for 8 weeks for a simple swab of a screen.

I did this with Apple when my logic board failed just under two years after buying a Macbook Pro 2009 model. I argued that the product had only experienced normal use, Apple's website implied that their laptops should last 5 years (since they talk about upgrading Macbooks for 5 years), and the price of the laptop was a premium price so I should expect it to last for that period of time. It took a bit of arguing, but in the end they did the work for free.

If it was under two years, then it was covered by the warranty. [1]

[1] http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroa...

With the 2 year guarantee, after 6 months you need to establish that the defect existed on the product at the time of purchase. So if the battery stops working after 18 months, you need to establish that it was a faulty battery when you bought it, instead of you damaging the battery through misuse. This even extends beyond 2 years, for the period of time that you would expect the item to work given the price of the product and the manufacturer's claims, but obviously it gets harder to establish the older the product.

[1] http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/mac-english-uk....

Are they both `after taxes`?

No, it does not include AppleCare. Apple must provide a limited 2 year warranty under EU law. But they still sell their 1-year and 3-year AppleCare plans.

They don't. You have to buy AppleCare if you want it: http://www.apple.com/uk/support/products/mac.html

This is incredibly tough to prove. Also, in some countries, the burden of proof is with the consumer as soon as 6 months after purchasing (Netherlands).

People think that the EU law makes them incredibly powerful. However, if you are arguing with a well-informed employee, the outcome might not be what you expect.

They offered to fix it for roughly £400, and I:

* quoted the specific law, and had a print out from the relevant website - it was either Which or Gov.uk or something reputable (i.e. not one of my Hacker News comments)

* demonstrated that others had the same problem - I found posts on StackOverflow and the Apple forums

* that I had used the laptop reasonably - it wasn't damaged in any way, and I had a list of the things for which I used the laptop

* I also pointed out that I was a great Apple customer - I had an iPad, an iPhone, and spent a fair bit in the App Store.

The rep went to his manager, and came out a few minutes later saying they agreed to fix the issue for free.

I'm quite introverted and hate confrontation as well, so my advice would be to pre-plan but without making specific scenarios of what might happen. If you have things in writing, it makes you more confident and it makes the reps a bit more nervous as you have a record of the conversation. Also, definitely keep things impersonal. Make it clear that you're not attacking the rep, or even the company, but just the specific policy which you disagree with. Finally, don't make threats like "I'll post this on social media" or "I'll tell all my friends not to buy from you" as the rep's response will typically be "Go on then". Keep calm, professional and friendly, and a majority of the time the reps will be reasonable and try to help you.

Hope that helps!

AppleCare not being automatically associated with a device when it isn't purchased from an Apple store is pretty clearly marked on both the AppleCare box, and every third party dealer I've bought from has either pointed this out or offered to register it for me on the spot. Later in the article he mentions that the Apple tech said they could resolve this issue, so it was really not a problem and just looking for more things to rant about.

As others have pointed out, the Macbook batteries are rated for 1000 cycles, and as this was only at 652 it should have been covered by the AppleCare warranty for free repair. Reading between the lines of this article, it sounds like Apple did offer to replace the battery for free in the end here, which negates the whole rant about $400 being too expensive since the repair would have been free.

This only leaves the fact that it takes 3 days, which in the scheme of things doesn't seem too unreasonable. In a perfect world, yes, they could service it while you wait. However, I once had to get an Acer laptop repaired, and it took at least 3 weeks.

Also, 652 cycles in just 1.5 years of use is insane. That's more than a full charge and discharge cycle every single day. I've had my Macbook for nearly 3 years and it's only at around 500 cycles.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201585

It should be criminal for companies to do this to their customers. It's one thing to require registration for a default warranty, but they shouldn't be allowed to take money for an extended warranty and then not provide coverage because of a pointless paperwork detail.

If they didn't require you to register the warranty to a particular machine while that machine is still under its original warranty period you could buy one AppleCare and wait to see which of a number of machines broke, then register it for that one. Better yet, buy a bunch of AppleCares each month then sell them a year later on a secondary market to people with broken computers.

If Apple accepted a receipt as proof of co-purchase, then people would print receipts.

Maybe Apple could have a refund program for people that bought AppleCare and failed to activate it? Their computers must know how many AppleCares go unactivated. Perhaps it isn't a widespread problem. I suppose they have no way of contacting the people that bought the AppleCare-in-a-box products and didn't activate.

I now adopt an adversarial mindset when dealing with Apple. :-)

> The tech said he thought they could get the AppleCare issue worked out.

So his whole rant about AppleCare not being registered was a complete non-issue.

I bought AppleCare from Apple's own online store, but didn't realise I had to additionally register it. By chance, I had a Genius appointment at one of their stores a few months later. When I mentioned I had AppleCare, they gave me a blank look and said it wasn't on their system. They asked if I'd gone to the website to enter the serial number (which I hadn't), so I did it when I got home with a few days to spare. It was my mistake (technically), but I wasn't impressed.

There should be no form to fill in, and this sounds very un Apple.

The trackpad is laughably horrible. I wonder if anyone at Dell ever tried using it. Or maybe my fingers are weird or whatever, but I just cannot for the life of me make the goddamn cursor go where I want. I feel like I'm arthritic.

And I haven't managed to get suspend to work properly. Amazingly, the side effects of the brokenness is that some random subset of font characters become garbled or replaced with other characters. I truly have no idea how that happens but I'm very curious! Maybe there is some obscure kernel patch somewhere, but whatever, I just shutdown and reboot...

I also haven't found the right Xorg settings to make smooth scrolling look actually smooth, which is psychically distressing.

The sound quality is kind of crappy, since the whole chassis resonates, like the equalization isn't set properly and/or again nobody tried using the damn thing.

I still appreciate the laptop. Aside from these inevitable quirks, I love having a fast Linux machine with me.

But every time I get out my MacBook, I feel relieved. I don't buy into any magical notion of Apple, but I'm pretty grateful that the basic components of their hardware feel like someone tried them for at least a whole day and incremented until it was usable enough.

There are complex reasons for all of this and so on... but I really just wish some person with a bunch of capital would just make a simple functioning laptop that works with a plain Linux kernel. I'd pay a month's paycheck for that.

I was told that the new one is pretty good, but it doesn't sound like that. That's sad, because if Apple replaces rMBP with some new MacBook-like nonsense, there won't be any reasonable laptop at all.

For full disclosure I'm not using the stock Ubuntu -- which I as a Linux nerd found to be really pumped full of bullshit that I don't want ever.

It's possible that their special distro has magic patches that they haven't managed to get into the mainline Linux kernel, but that doesn't impress me much since they advertise it as a "Linux developer machine," not as a "Dell Custom Ubuntu machine."

It also requires a proprietary WiFi driver, although I'm told some configurations have an Intel chip that works out of the box with Linux.

I strongly believe that a developer machine advertised to work with Linux should not require any proprietary extensions. Probably Dell doesn't care about this very much though.

But they should, since I'm now tarnishing the reputation of their flagship dev product in a forum full of semi-influential hackers...

That all said, I use the thing everyday and, whatever, I'm used to stuff being broken, and I can get used to most things. That trackpad though... so infuriating. On the plus side I'm using more keyboard navigation than ever. (And noticing how terribly the web works if your mouse sucks.)

Pick up an old Thinkpad, like an X220 or X230. The key is "old". For something old, even the conservative distros like Debian will have a kernel and Xorg that support your hardware. Thinkpads are built well.

For years I used old Thinkpads. The hardware and kernels worked fine. But the desktop environments became a disaster area with KDE 4 and GNOME 3. I hand-rolled setups with FVWM and then i3, but after getting tired of futzing with that and the lack of decent compositing window managers I switched to the Mac and haven't looked back.

- A high resolution display - Decent battery life - A good keyboard - A Unix based OS (Though I'm fine with Linux) - Hardware that feels good to use

The MacBooks are easy to compare to pick the one you want, all look good, and you're pretty well guaranteed that you're going to get what you expect, even if it costs a little more. On the other hand, to pick another manufacturer, you have to dig a lot to even start finding what the options are, much less to refine them. I paid $X more to get a macbook and not go through that :P

The hardware is very well designed, well put together, feels like a premium piece of equipment. PC laptops used to (and cheap ones still do) feel like junk. Apple is willing to put expensive trackpads (amazing!) in their laptops instead of accidentally crippling the machine with one piece of penny pinching.

OS X does everything I need and does have all the unix stuff underneath so I can use it to do development in an environment very similar (relative to Windows) to the Linux servers code is deployed on.

And OS X has a good community of software developers making great programs like MarsEdit, BBEdit, and all sorts of other things. There is paid software (Office, Photoshop, etc.) if you need it, something that isn't the case with Linux.

The total experience was so much better than I remember with Windows, and I can work well on it. I don't have to worry about tracking down weird drivers. If something is wrong there is one place to go: Apple. I remember the fun of Dell telling me it was Windows and to call MS, who would tell me it was Dell's fault.

So that explains the rise of OS X. I'd place the 'fall' of Windows at two things (this is just speculation on my part): stagnation and hardware.

Stagnation is obvious. Windows XP was great, but it sat around forever while Apple kept improving OS X. Then we got Vista (I won't judge it) very late, then eventually 7, then by 8 and 8.1 MS was actually starting to move again.

On the hardware side the race-to-the-bottom with prices really made it much harder to find good computers that weren't built like toys. By and large the PC guys didn't target that market very hard. Their 'upscale' laptops often felt like lower end ones with better specs but the same build. It seems like this is turning around (a bit) as MS tries to force it, which is great to see.

That's a consumer-oriented view. Dell, HP and Lenovo continued to supply solid business laptops and portable workstations. Some were even ultraportable, including the ThinkPad X series and Toshiba Porteges.

Not sure why you think "the PC guys didn't target that market very hard" since they had more than 90% of the market. But if you were just watching the consumer market, perhaps you didn't notice?

It's interesting to see the shift; I know some old-school techies who've moved to Macbooks despite using Linux/BSD laptops for as long as laptops have been practical.

I switched to the thinkpad (currently, lenovo carbon x1) and honestly it's fantastic. Never had a better laptop in my life (way better than Macs).

At least those are my reasons. I'd rather have something else, because I don't agree with Apple on many points (like their walled garden) but there are no alternatives.

I use OS X for the same reason, but it's a great Linux box as well.

My reasons:

+ The iPad was my gateway drug to the iPhone. The iPhone was my gateway drug to the Apple ecosystem. All of the "relearn an OS" cruft I was expecting to hit was greatly, greatly shortened by the experience of being on iOS.

+ Apple is a monoculture in the development communities most of interest to me. Ruby gems would break randomly on Windows due to e.g. using `ls` to get the contents of a directory rather than using any of the stdlib functions. All tutorials start with the assumption you're using homebrew. The final straw for me was when I started needing infrastructure pieces that just wouldn't run on a Windows machine -- Redis was, IIRC, the motivating technology. (MS sponsors a Windows Redis these days. Good call, a few years late. Sorry guys.)

+ I'm no more immune to social pressure than anyone else is, and my peer group was actively mocking me for running Windows since, minimally, five years before I switched.

+ I do a lot of international travel and need a laptop with me. Previously I used "the best Dell makes", generally a Dell Studio, with a big screen and lots of RAM. I affectionately called my Dell "the aircraft carrier", because it was heavy and bulky. My most recent Dell was a replacement for one which, when on a shoulder-mounted laptop bag, swung out an inch too far and caused the power button (side-mounted) to collide with a door frame, breaking it. (I had to turn that machine on by shorting the two wires attached to the power button which now strick from the case!) Every time I got back from the airport I complained bitterly about how heavy the bag was, and was mocked again by friends who ran functionally equivalent computers which seem to weigh about half as much.

+ Might not be relevant to everyone, but highly relevant to me personally: my main development machine also has to play video games. This was a major thing keeping me on Windows, and literally the day before I bought my first Mac, I said "I might get myself a Mac purely for programming, but my main machine has to play games." "Which games?" "Recently, League of Legends and Starcraft 2." "Both are available on Mac." "I'm buying a Mac tomorrow."

+ As Thomas said, every Macbook looks like it has been sculpted out of aluminum. Equivalently powerful PCs are... am I allowed to say ugly? I used a Dell machine made and marketed specifically to artistic professionals -- it's literally called "Studio" -- and even to my very limited standards it seems to lack artistic taste, particularly when it is sitting next to a row full of Macbooks.

Having spent so much time on the Windows side of things, is there some aspect of that ecosystem that you find yourself missing even after the year or so you've been on a Mac?

This was big for me. I actually could run almost everything I wanted on Linux too, but it wouldn't, well, work. It did on OS X, and as a bonus, OS X has wider support.

Personally, it's the only choice if I'm going to work on iOS, and conveniently I can do Android work as well. Basically (and again, personally) it does everything a Linux box is going to do, plus iOS dev.

Also, it's easier to run Windows on an Apple machine than it is to run OSX on a non-Apple machine. As someone who has to test websites in OSX, it's just easier having native access to OSX.

Apple having service centres (ie, the back of their retail stores) scattered in convenient locations in large cities all over the world, where many repairs can be performed while you wait or the same day, really is a treat.

Which other brands are offering a similar level of service?

Also, this 'calibration' is just charging and discharging. Which happens normally. Also, the mac doesn't go to sleep, it crashes, so I guess it doesn't get calibrated.

Maybe I'm holding it wrong. ;)

Also on the built-in batteries I found that it helps to get a more accurate battery estimate and improve the "battery health" rating.

Apple did what you ask for in PPC era already. At least I remember, that it worked with PowerBook.

Stupid battery warning meters are a lie, and a waste of valuable power.

If you have enough power to show me that you don't have power, I know your battery meter is full of shit. It means the board can still operate, and is probably performing a small subset of tasks without my awareness, in a low power mode.

Maybe the accelerometer is still capturing events, maybe lots of things are happening, below the threshold of activating the monitor and expensive motors.

The greatest sin of all, though. The hands-down WORST crime committed, is when the hardware IS PLUGGED INTO A POWER SOURCE, BUT REFUSES TO POWER ON BECAUSE "THE BATTERY NEEDS TO CHARGE FIRST."

WHAT???

No, they're not. Knowing the charge of a battery accurately is essential to managing the performance of a lithium battery; they're pretty sensitive to this stuff.

If you have enough power to show me that you don't have power, I know your battery meter is full of shit. It means the board can still operate, and is probably performing a small subset of tasks without my awareness, in a low power mode.

See above. Power management systems never let a battery completely discharge; this would destroy a lithium battery. There will always be a small amount of reserve power available for managing battery life.

The greatest sin of all, though. The hands-down WORST crime committed, is when the hardware IS PLUGGED INTO A POWER SOURCE, BUT REFUSES TO POWER ON BECAUSE "THE BATTERY NEEDS TO CHARGE FIRST."

Again, this is down to the sensitivity of lithium batteries. If the charge of the battery falls below the minimum safe level, the device will charge it before allowing you to take power. There are a couple of reasons – it's important to make sure the battery doesn't fall into deep discharge, and to ensure that device power isn't immediately cut off (=hard crash) if the user subsequently disconnects the power before the device charges to acceptable levels.

  Again, this is down to the sensitivity of lithium 
  batteries. If the charge of the battery falls below 
  the minimum safe level, the device will charge it 
  before allowing you to take power. There are a couple 
  of reasons – it's important to make sure the battery 
  doesn't fall into deep discharge, and to ensure that 
  device power isn't immediately cut off (=hard crash) 
  if the user subsequently disconnects the power before 
  the device charges to acceptable levels.

1. If the main board is receiving power, it can use some of that power.

2. The user can pull the plug, and and cut power to the main board, and guess what, the main board can simply stop working without trying to consume power from a battery without enough power to operate safely.

3. The operating system can employ an architecture that tolerates hard faults, in the middle of code execution, and address them upon the next successful reboot. Yeah, that's expensive to develop, and yeah, Apple computers are expensive.

4. With each of these preceding points in place Deep Discharge of lithium batteries is irrelevant, because the main board is in control of whether or not the battery is even called into action at all. With AC power, no power needs to be sourced from the battery. Anxieties about a bricked device are circumvented with a durably designed OS. The end.

There are a lot of edge cases; consider that in some cases devices being used a full-blast power can draw more current when operating then a charging device can supply, meaning they can still discharge batteries even when AC power is available. (Apple example – smaller power adapter than supplied. Still technically works to charge, but not supply power. Or any arbitrary 500mA USB charger.)

Yeah, I don't doubt that you could probably engineer something that works. But would the complexity be worth it? Probably not. The fact that every modern device (Apple and otherwise) behave this way should suggest that it's not that easy – if it were, it wouldn't be implemented that way.

I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing that the device waits until it has enough charge to boot properly. Otherwise, if you disconnect the power source the computer does not have enough power to finish booting and will hard crash somewhere in the boot process. I don't know if it's enough to brick your machine but it's easier to just let the thing charge for a minute before you hit the button.

No exceptions.

So design the OS bootstrap to never spike consumption past the load capacity of the power supply. Once booted, deny access to processes that will slam power consumption, until you have a sufficiently energized battery.

Hey, presto, a weightless solution solved in software without any additional added mass!

I blame the technician for not supporting the client, now of course the client was nuts for thinking that they could offer a turn around time for this machine in a day with no parts in stock.

There is also the testing phase to consider which adds several hours to the machines repair time, if not overnight.

Almost every complaint in the article has a counterpoint. Bought AppleCare but didn't register it. Complains about the Genius Bar repair time - try finding somebody to even speak to you in person for free about your PC laptop.

When my previous Thinkpad T400 needed servicing - a line of bad pixels developed on the display - the display was replaced by the next business day, for free (under warranty). The kicker is, that I didn't buy the NBD service and I didn't need to prove anything about the date of purchase or something - I forgot to bring my proof of purchase and the service center looked up everything they needed in their system.

I can't expect anything approaching level of service for the Apple laptop. In my country, we don't have Apple Store and Genius bar, and in the past it took the authorised repair center cca 3 weeks to do anything, including simple swapping faulty power supply. Not because they are lazy (they are great guys actually), but because they have to wait for spares.

Yes, mine has been under warranty. It is important to note however, that this Thinkpad came with 3 years warranty as a standard. (Looks like they scaled that down to 2 years since then).

> Their current systems allow them to have parts on order within 12 hours and they don't have to hang on to your machine,

I assume this is US-specific thing. As I wrote, I was always waiting for weeks for the spares to arrive (once for HDD and twice for power supply). There is only third party service center - only 8 out of 28 EU countries have Apple Stores - and they are not allowed to stock spares. They also have to send the swapped parts back to mothership.

Where I'm at I can be at an Apple store talking to a tech within 30 minutes. For a major problem, I can be walking out of the store with a brand new laptop within an hour. Apple does all the same stuff with your registration, as long as you bother to register it, unlike the author.

Getting a PC fixed, on the other hand, it's pretty much going to the retail store where you bought it (which has a tech team that's barely qualified to install anti-virus software) or calling up the company and finding some mom-n-pop repair shop that services their warranty repairs.

Incidentally, it turned out that on-site didn't mean a specific site. My son got on-site service both at home and at his student digs, 200 miles away.

Dell also offers 24/7 phone support.

Apart from that, there are independent third-party support services that will handle PC laptops, and most cities have both large and small shops that will repair PCs.

Repairs are, of course, much less of a problem with desktop PCs, which sensible businesses use for ergonomic reasons (as well as for their superior price/performance and greater longevity).

Finally, how can one possibly think these machines are 'pro' quality? They are obviously aimed at and targeted at consumers. Just because it's called pro, doesn't mean it's intended for professionals. Apple stopped catering to professionals a long time ago, and even things like the Macbook Pro are obviously aimed at the end consumer. That's how they can get away with having pretty much all custom, unserviceable parts. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing laptops, but they're just not 'pro'.

Then, just this month, the same laptop's power supply cord started fraying and even sparked a little. Took it in to the Apple store; gave them the serial number, and in 5 minutes, I walked out with a new power supply. Again, no cost to me.

I couldn't have asked for better service.

Yes, you read that right - cheap. When I wanted to replace the battery on my Dell XPS 13(2010 model?) Dell wanted 220 pounds for the battery, which was absolutely nuts(oh and the delivery would take 3 weeks). Ended up buying a fake one from China for 1/4 of the price.

I find such things exploitive and the product's success giving a green light for other manufacturers to re-engineer their products based on less honorable principles.

For instance, on flip phones, batteries would eject if you dropped it in order to absorb impact. They were designed to fly out to minimize the damage to the device and screen. Very clever - solid engineering. However, what if if you want to sell a phone when the battery dies or make a fall break the phone so you can ... sell more phones! And now the industry no longer follows what was a very smart durability focused engineering practice.

Like the laptop in the OPs article. They could have decided to adhere it in a more clever way to make it removable instead of fusing it with glue. Screws, latches ... lots of technology was readily available.

I'm not interested in "debating" whether this is "true", clearly I'm the only one at this time, on this thread, that thinks this. I'm curious as to whether I'm just some minority of one here.

Partly, they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Partly, they know damn well that they're screwing people over. True believers that actually buy the Brooklyn bridge are rare birds.

"Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective."

I'm claiming that replaceability, durability, composability, these things no longer made the cut in the design.

- they came up with 3 different chargers so far, and may come with more types opposite to industry standard.

- phones goes from 16gb to 64gb, no 32gb

- Their mac charger top pin gets broke in year, and it cost $80+. And they have different chargers for macs in last 3 years (Air and pro). It would be fine in PC world to get away with this kind of things as there are different manufacturers. Here apple is the only one who designs and creates it.

At the moment I don't know what to do. I can't buy a new MacBook Pro because they are all broken in my mind, so am looking to see what Lenovo do with their 'retro' ThinkPad.

I thought the computer was still in warranty but after talking to half a dozen people at Apple they told me it was 3 years out of warranty. Then they told me they'd have to replace about half the computer which would, not surprisingly, cost me 50% of what I paid for it.

I complained politely for about 45 minutes, talking to a few more people and then they reactivated my warranty and asked me to take it in to a shop. I got it back in about a week and was happy to see that they had also replaced my battery, which for about a year had given the same warning as in the article.

While I was happy about that, and it made me like Apple more, the reality is my computer is a business expense and in the big picture not a really large one. Also, computers are still developing fast enough that they're not practically a long term purchase. People talk about wanting to service computer themselves but that's a very small percentage of the overall market.

[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7000724

Anyway I gave AppleCare a call. Told them that bootcamp version XYZ was messing up Windows 8.1's installer and that the older version worked fine, and asked if I could downgrade. Essentially they told me to "call Microsoft for support with Windows." And that's all I could get out of them. Zero bootcamp supported offered, even if it is Apple's own software.

The answer in an Apple store was (paraphrasing) "we don't recommend Bootcamp, if you want to run Windows then buy Parallels Desktop."

PS - Took them over seven months to fix Bootcamp.

And he say you should ignore it and continue to use it until it really die.

I think he has a point there, but i also hope the day when we don't have to replace battery due to cycle problem.

Since 2013, batteries are unservicable and as a result I will not be buying any more new Macbooks. As long as 2012 models are available and continue to be solid, usable machines, that's what I'm going with, in fact, I bought one last week. $800 was a lot of money for a 5 year old computer, but well worth it for me. An unservicable battery, (and, btw, unservicable RAM, it's soldered to the motherboard), will never be worth one dime to me.

I have had this laptop for a year and a half, I can't upgrade its RAM from 8 to 16 GB, the battery feels worn out, the Retina screen has stains on it and the command key is discolored from pressing it too much I guess. With my old ThinkPad these would have been non-issues.

fully charged battery -> 4h max ... (running mostly chrome and keynote) not really the "all day battery life" they promised (http://www.apple.com/macbook/design/)

I'm not kidding. Try Safari for two days and be amazed.

There are probably things you can do to make it better, but for whatever reason Google doesn't seem to care and ships (what I would say is effectively) broken software.

Hint: It's the ad for the top 7 ways you didn't know you could get bunions, and there's a 50% chance it will convince you to buy new shoes.

I run Firefox with NoScript, and my battery usage is always very very good. An additional benefit is that I see few ads, since they invariably rely on third-party javascript.

yeah, chrome is in there.

but switch to safari? my thoughts a) i'm a developer, i rather like new APIs, latest HTML 5 features b) my whole company infrastructure relies on google services (and they work best in chrome, no surprise there) c) my old macbook air (2013, maverick, killed one month ago by my son with self made kombucha) had about 7h battery-life

Your problem is probably Chrome + screen brightness. Recommended monitor brightness in an office setting is 100-150 cd/m^2. The MB gets up to 375 cd/m^2 for outside use, but inside it should be at like a 35% setting. Also, Chrome guzzles juice like there is no tomorrow--use Safari.

Chrome on the Mac is very tough on the battery.

A switch to Safari increased my battery life by about 80%.

I hear that Chrome sucks up battery like nothing else though; might be worth investigating whether Safari's improved power usage is worth the tradeoff in other aspects?

Chrome is terrible for batteries.

I have the same "Service Battery" warning and I was hoping to eventually get this service on my 13" MacBook Air.

Likely the $129 is for the labour portion and doesn't include the parts cost.

After some thoughts, I just bought replacement battery, two custom screwdrivers and changed the batter by myself (+ upgraded the hard drive) in about 15 minutes. Replacement battery cost around 150 USD here in EU and it is very easy to do.

What a whining entitled brat :/ If there was no warning about battery degradation you can be sure he would be making blog posts about losing his work because laptop didnt last whole photo editing session.

I had that happen on a machine bought through Apple education. Had to argue we always buy AppleCare. I was rather annoyed.

I would hate to be this guy's mechanic

This is how some apple owners act when they come for "new phone case" with iphone 6 that has been stepped on.