“Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of fuel. Sentimental people call it inspiration, but what they really mean is fuel. I have always needed fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio”
Hunter S Thompson
Nope - if you do a bit of digging it appears it can affect any laptop from Apple (and probably others) from at least the last ten years and right up to the present.
Its an inherent risk to all laptops fitted with Lithium Polymer or Lithium Ion batteries.
Apparently you should get a built in warning that the battery is 'due for replacement' but its can also occur quite suddenly and without warning.
Actual occurrences are also a lot more common than I expected but have not been really openly acknowledged as a threat by Apple until very recently.
Even then, they made it appear to be a limited issue .....
It’s not just Apple. Remember the burning Dell laptops? Then there’s the Boeing Dreamliner battery’s, Samsung and Nokia phones. That hover board thing etc etc. Anything that has a Lithium battery has a potential to explode or burn, it’s the nature of them...oh Tesla as well, try not to crash. Talk to RC enthusiasts who use fast charging techniques for their batteries and the issues there of.
I have a feeling MacBooks may have a longer use life than a similar windows laptop in that they are in single ownership for longer as they are expensive to start with and continue to be usable for a long time. My 2011 MBA is still going strong (it’s on its second battery) unlike my Dell latitude which became unusable after 3 years.
Listening in a Foo free Zone...
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
But let's not forget that the one under discussion here is 6 years old. Mines' 9 years old, been on 24-7 stills holds 93% charge
Kuzma Stabi/S 12", (LP12-bastard) DC motor and optical tacho psu, Benz LP, Paradise (phonostage). MB-Pro, Brooklyn dac and psu, Bruno Putzeys balanced pre, mod86p dual mono amps, Yamaha NS1000m
Main System
Turntable: Heavily-modified Technics SL-1210MK5G [Mike New bearing/ETP platter/Paul Hynes SR7 PSU & reg mods]. Funk Firm APM Achromat/Nagaoka GL-601 Crystal Record Weight/Isonoe feet & boots/Ortofon RS-212D/Denon DL-103GL in Denon PCL-300 headshell with Funk Firm Houdini/Kondo SL-115 pure-silver cartridge leads.
Paul Hynes MC head amp/SR5 PSU. Also modded Lentek head amp/Denon AU-310 SUT.
Other Cartridges: Nippon Columbia (NOS 1987) Denon DL-103. USA-made Shure SC35C with NOS stylus. Goldring G820 with NOS stylus. Shure M55E with NOS stylus.
CD Player: Audiocom-modified Sony X-777ES/DAS-R1 DAC.
Tape Deck: Tandberg TCD 310, fully restored and recalibrated as new, by RDE, plus upgraded with heads from the TCD-420a. Also with matching TM4 Norway microphones.
Preamps: Heavily-modified Croft Charisma-X. LDR Stereo Coffee. Power Amps: Tube Distinctions Copper Amp fitted with Tungsol KT-150s. Quad 306.
Cables & Sundries: Mark Grant HDX1 interconnects and digital coaxial cable, plus Mark Grant 6mm UP-LCOFC Van Damme speaker cable. MCRU 'Ultimate' mains leads. Lehmann clone headphone amp with vintage Koss PRO-4AAA headphones.
Tube Distinctions digital noise filter. VPI HW16.5 record cleaning machine.
Speakers: Tannoy 15MGs in Lockwood cabinets with modified crossovers. 1967 Celestion Ditton 15.
Protect your HUMAN RIGHTS and REFUSE ANY *MANDATORY* VACCINE FOR COVID-19!
Also **SAY NO** to unjust 'vaccine passports' or certificates, which are totally incompatible with a FREE society!!!
True - which is why I have always been happy to pay over the odds in the first place.
Longevity is one of the key reasons I have been using Macs since 1993.
My first Mac iBook G3 lasted about 12 years, albeit with a replacement (original) battery; only stopped using it when it became redundant tech.
Safety and reliability have also been other deciding factors and the main driver when we bought the MPB for my daughter (despite the high price).
What I never expected was for it to die in such a spectacular fashion
I had heard rumours of swelling batteries in MacBooks (I had a similar experience with a 'refurbed' iPhone off ebay) so always assumed it affected ones that had also been 'refurbished' with dodgy after-market parts and never paid it much heed.
More fool me it seems ... yet another nail in the coffin of the trust in Apple that I (mistakenly) had.
Just to add closure to this sorry tale on a relatively high note.
I assembled a range of suitable small screw drivers today and sent them off to daughter and also emailed links to good 'how to' pages so she could remove the hard drive before some enterprising soul broke the back gate lock and legged it with the conspicuous looking laptop in the back garden.
As luck would have it, her boyfriend was visiting from London and between them, and with the sole aid of a small phillips screwdriver that came (literally) from a christmas cracker, they managed to get the bottom plate off and remove the hard drive.
Unfortunately they couldn't remove the battery and save the rest of the MacBook because Apple (in their infinite wisdom) have secured it with tri-point headed screws ... presumably to stop consumers replacing batteries themselves and instead be tied to Apple's ludicrous replacement charges .....GRRRR !!
Location: Forest of Dean
Posts: 643
I'm Gary.
Marantz CD63 KI Signature
Project Debut II
Pioneer A656 Reference
Epos M5s
Atacama Stands
Maplin speaker cable cos I can't hear a difference
Various interconnects as above
Apple laptops in general have in the past lasted hugely longer in usable condition (ie fast enough for hard working professional use) than even the highest-spec PC laptops. I've seen the wife go through a succession of high end Sonys and Lenovos with touch screens and the like, while my last two Macbooks (13in Macbook Pro from mid 2009, and a 2011 15in Macbook Pro, just go on and on forever. Both have had replacement batteries and no issues other than occasionally losing rubber pads or screws from the back. (They do need tightened up now and again). The 2012 Macbook should be a very good machine as it was made before the brand hit the skids.
Sadly, there are clear signs that Apple started to go down the pan even before Jobs died - the whole thing with dongles where they keep changing/removing connection options, building phones where the camera sticks out in a stupid way (early lenses were flush), and generally doing stupid things like the touch ribbon. They have lost control of their supply chain (as well as their design integrity) in a never-ending quest to increase their margins (hence the doubling of the price of the most expensive iPhone since only 2015), and these quality control issues such as described above. I would be absolutely furious too.
I'm curious though - if this is a 2012 laptop then it's likely to have had at least one battery replacement - was it bought new or a few years back as a refurb from the Apple store? There are a lot of fake 'Apple' batteries around so just buying a battery off ebay and sticking it in is not the best idea. With genuine batteries I really don't think they would need replacement annually.
It's a shame as Apple has pretty much always had THE state of the art laptop to have (the original Luggable from 1989 excepted which was a total turkey) ... I've owned Macs since 1985, the year after the Mac came out, and never been without at least one ever since. I even worked for them for back in the 90s. I've owned pretty much all of the iconic desktop and laptop models (such as the SE30, IIfx, the original Apple Powerbook, the early iMac, the G4 desktop) though I didn't get into the iPhone till the 4S, being stuck with a corporate Blackberry till then. Their reputation for quality used to be absolutely deserved. Not any longer though.