Some of you might know we had a death in the family – well if you consider computers family which I sort of do – my Apple Macbook Pro 2015 died, so there’s been some downtime on the podcast, blogs and etc. All my projects for this week posting my artwork and podcasts have been delayed or halted.
The official authorised Mac repairer started to upsell into replacing the unibody top and keyboard, saying ‘oh we have to fix everything’ – not for an extra £500=600+ you won’t! It was already in the realm of over £200 just for the battery. and they wanted £40 non-refundable just to look at it. And that was the repairer that Apple Support itself directed me to! Nope.
Talking of £500, thanks everyone who donated to the GoFundMe setup by Scott Cairo…Feel free to still donate, I will use the money left over to go towards a new laptop. This one won’t last forever (and the battery isn’t the only thing wrong with it, speakers are fucked as is the keyboard…so it won’t last forever – cue Queen).
This is the scene I was faced with when I opened it up earlier to fix it – WTF Apple? Those are official batteries, not some dodgy replacement; swollen up to dangerous size. It’s lucky there wasn’t a fire. My era Macbook Pro was one that had the battery recall but I was endless told that my Mac didn’t qualify for replacement, the serial ‘wasn’t one affected’. Well this proves it was one of those dangerous Macs. My 2010 MBP battery died, but that wasn’t stuck in and it never looked like this!
Also I found unlike the 2010 which will happily run off the PSU without a battery connected, the 2015 won’t boot up if the battery has died – something to remember for those ignoring the ‘Battery Needs Servicing’ message. Sooner than later, people – and if you have a 2015 which rocks back and forth, the screws have popped out or the trackpad is not flush – it’s possibly the battery swelling. Open it up and check it. And don’t let Apple fob you off.
What are you going to do Apple to make it good? Nothing probably, which is why this Mac user of 11 years is thinking that my next Mac will be a PC….given that of all our devices, the only one that actually worked with WordPress was the thirteen (!) year old Sony Vaio Windows laptop.
The 2010 and the iPad 2 had browsers that were too obsolescent and the operating systems can’t be upgraded any further. Whereas the Vaio is running Windows 7 32 bit (it’s a 32 bit machine so can’t upgraded to Win10), far from new and very slow and creaky…but new enough and supported enough that new-ish browsers still work on it.
It’s that sort of expensive servicing, discouraging self-repair, shoddy workmanship like sticking batteries firmly in, faulty batteries, and planned obsolescence which makes Apple far from green.
I scarily and gingerly removed the batteries (replaced it with a Newertech battery which aren’t the cheapest but supposed to be as good as the official ones – I am conditioning the battery atm so it remained to be seen) and left the dangerous ones in the garden, I need to work out what to do with them, how to dispose of them properly and even recycle them, although I’d suggest they are in far too dangerous a state to do that!
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