According to Apple’s service department, laptop batteries are considered “consumables”. Any use you get out of your MacBook battery after 1 year, the warranty period, is “a bonus” that you should be “grateful for” (their words!).
I don’t ask for much, but for a battery to go from holding 98% of maximum charge to holding zero to not being recognised by the system at all in the space of a week 13 months out from its last replacement (in-warranty and at Apple’s cost) is ridiculous. I’ve got a 4 year old Dell laptop that still holds 2 hours of charge and the battery is the one that came in the package.
A battery is not a ‘consumable’ – especially not at $200, an appreciable fraction of the cost of a new system – but an integral part of a laptop, and for Apple to claim otherwise is selling these things under false pretenses. The Next Byte store was sold out of MacBook batteries – and that’s not exactly something you’ve got people lining up at the tills for.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Apples remain some of the best looking systems and Mac OSX is so many miles ahead of Windows, I’d never even consider buying one again. All I ask is that Apple build a reliable fucking system I can use for more than a year.
I find myself in agreement with those who call for Apple to license Mac OSX – Apple make some great software, OSX and the iLife suite shining examples of such – and their design studios’ skills are to be respected wherever industrial designers gather. But clearly, they have fuck-all clue about building reliable hardware, and I wish they’d let someone else just have a go at building something with a little more quality control.
That is all.
Ed note: this no longer applies to new MacBooks, since Apple now build it in (i.e. non user serviceable) and push the expected lifespan as being in the order of 3 – 5 years; if you have any issues, shout very loud.
