Apple Macbook Battery Issues (again…????)
Since buying my 1st generation white Macbook back in June 2006, I’ve been a total convert to the Apple way of doing things. I love that I can make a DVD to send to family, connect what seems to be an unlimited variety of electronic devices without issue and use my home computer without having to read endless fora posts to find out why something doesn’t work. Everything just works - seemlessly.
There is, however, one particular issue that I and many of my converts (yes, I am responsible for converting 3 other people to the OS X way of thinking) suffer from and that is a terrible battery system. My buddy has been through 3 Macbook batteries, all failures, but luckily has been trouble free since the battery update Apple put out in 2007 to address the “missing” battery problem. I, too, has suffered from this same issue but I was happy when a courier arrived, delivered my new battery and took the old one away. The patch worked perfectly and I had no more battery issues. Until….
A friend gave me a great gift of an 500GB external hard disk and I decided to use this oportunity to rebuild my Macbook. I had tried out a fair bit of demo software and also some great open source stuff that sadly wasn’t great for what I needed it for. I was also getting short of space so simply copied my entire Macintosh HD to the external disk as a backup and got my Tiger disks ready to go.
If you’ve not installed OS X before, it’s a dream. As it knows everything about your system (since it’s from the same stables) the installation asks for just your location and a account name. However, in the time between reinstalling OS X and running Software Update, my battery disappeared. I applied all the updates and still, no sign of my battery. I ran through the list of recommendations such as resetting the NVRAM to no avail. Surely, the first application of the battery update was supposed to be permanent. Had I unwittingly given my battery the opportunity to fail by reinstalling OS X? Busy as always, I didn’t contact Apple right away. I should have since this replacement battery was just 1 year old but I didn’t. Then, some weeks later, I found a truly nasty surprise waiting for me.
My battery had begun to expand. Below, you can see the battery from the end of the connector.
Fortunately, I had removed the battery from my Macbook to check the part number and, after wondering why it was so tough to open the coin-lock, had found the bloated battery. Surely, this can’t be normal for Macbook batteries. I have had laptops from Sony and Compaq and even when the battery runs out of life, it doesn’t fail, nor does swell-up, ready to explode! What’s going on, Apple?? I have a second laptop, a Powerbook G4 667 (that’s right, a 7 year old laptop) which is still great for anything web-related including playing full-screen flash video and it still has a more reliable battery than my 2006 Macbook. My poor old Sony Vaio was left on charge for a year when I lent it to my Mum during a 13 month trip abroad and forgot to mention that it should be unplugged unless it needed charging. It naturally had a lousy life left, but it didn’t fail. It didn’t swell up like a sprained ankle and it didn’t need replacing twice!
I’ll get hold of Apple support and see what they say about replacing it (again) and post it here.
