MacBook's "Unremovable" Battery Easy To Remove

Slatterz writes "Going just a bit further than your average unboxing, someone has stripped a new 17-inch Apple Macbook Pro to its component parts revealing one or two little surprises. The biggest of which is that the built-in battery is easily accessible, requiring the tinkerer to remove just the 13 Philips screws which hold the bottom cover in place, and the three tri-wing security screws which hold the battery in place."

Comments

/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone for forgot the <sarcasm> tag in the article summary.

Re:/sarcasm

[zobier]

Well, PC Authority is dead after just 15 minutes.
Why don't they link to the actual disassembly over at iFixit!?

Re:/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thank you for linking to a blog that pastes an article from TheInquirer who links to iFixit.com ....

Re:/sarcasm

[DrLang21]

16 screws is a hell of a lot easier than it was for me to replace my old iBook hard drive! 54 screws! I only had one left over when I was done.

Re:/sarcasm

[MightyYar]

I got about halfway into it after a couple of beers and in the end decided to just live with the 40GB that it came with :)

Re:/sarcasm

[telchine]

I never have problems removing components from Macs. I take great pleasure it taking a sledgehammer to them after they die 2 days after the warranty expires!

Re:/sarcasm

[zobier]

How is this informative Mods?
I linked directly to iFixit.

Re:/sarcasm

[quenda]

alright: famous quote #17:

4 hrs ought to be enough for anybody.

-- Steve Jobs

Re:/sarcasm

[MrLint]

While there are a number of hints when dealing with any laptop tear down, however this is what I learned from more than one iBook (g3) teardown.

Each step, put all the screws in that set up a separate area (not unusual). However with the g3, many steps had a *lot* of multi sized screws. What I did was did a rough sketch of their relative positions and sizes; (xs,s,m,l, etc). You can find tear down instructions with screw sizes, but really, can you tell a 3mm from a 3.5mm?

Also, if you aren't going for immediate reassembly, you can lay out a strip of clear packing tape, and stick them down, separating them by step. Seal them over when disassembly is done, roll-up and store. You can slice them open one step at a time when putting it back together.

Re:/sarcasm

[dgatwood]

I did that whole drawing thing with an iBook. Somehow, I still ended up with extra screws. :-D

As for the question of easily removable vs. unremovable, I don't think anybody expected it to be hard to replace in terms of servicing. I know they say that these batteries should last an order of magnitude longer than what's in other laptops, but they'd have to be crazy not to hedge their bets on something like that. In terms of failure rate over the years, I've had more battery failures in laptops than all other parts put together with the exception of the wire leading to the power supply brick. Most computer manufacturers tend to put parts with higher failure rates in easy-to-reach places to minimize service time. It's just common sense.

That still doesn't cover the question of removability. That mostly affects people who expect to use a laptop while traveling, however, and the set of people who use laptops on long airplane flights and the set of people who use 17" laptops are pretty much disjoint sets, making this something of a moot point, IMHO. Just my $0.02. That said, I do hope that this is not part of a trend towards making batteries unremovable in other laptops. Having multiple batteries when flying is a life saver.

Re:/sarcasm

[judugrovee]

Yep - in fact, it seems like the old iBooks were built with the hard drive as intitial point and the other parts attached to it. ;) Reminds me of my old HP omni where I had to remove almost everything to get to the power socket, where I had to do braze a single (!) spot.

Re:/sarcasm

[MoonBuggy]

As much as that sucked, it at least made it understandable when Apple claimed that only service centres should replace the drives (not that I ever understood why they designed it that way in the first place...).

What I find odd is that this battery is still classed as non-user-serviceable, even though the (user serviceable) hard drive and RAM require the exact same procedure. Apple are quite happy for you to take off the back casing, pop out the memory and remove a further couple of screws to pull the hard drive, but if you dare touch the three screws to remove the battery while you're at it you lose your warranty.

Re:/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

After once dismantling a Samsung laptop to repair it and then later rebuilding it and having a screw left over only to dismantle it again checking every screw hole for a missing screw and being unable to find it I put it together again to still have this one screw left.

At that point I decided to set my mind at rest by coming to the conclusion that manufacturers just slip an extra screw or so into laptops to confuse people when they take them apart.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Re:/sarcasm

[crmarvin42]

That's pretty good. I ended up with 3 left over screws, at least one screw floating around inside the case, and my trackpad didn't work anymore.

Ended up having to buy a bluetooth mouse to make up for it (The MB was my dad's, D'oht!)

Re:/sarcasm

[Col Bat Guano]

Someone posted a story about them using tape to secure the screws of his Apple laptop, only to have his cat walk across him, collecting the tape, getting frantic and running around the house.

When he first noticed he did the big leap (in slow motion of course) yelling "Nooooooooo!!!!!!!"

Re:/sarcasm

[TJamieson]

I tried a slightly different tack... with each screw I removed, I taped it back in.

So with the bottom case, just tape each screw into its respective spot. Same with top shield, bottom shield, etc. I never lost a screw this way.

However, I did not figure out that trick right away, and had already lost 3 screws when switching out the crappy 30G drive. (G3-700 iBook).

Re:/sarcasm

[dmacleod808]

My ibook has a faulty hard drive. I did a zero format which seems to have fixed it for now. It would cost me at least $150 to replace it (i only paid 200 for the machine) 54 screws is recockulous, im likely to destroy the machine in the process. I even have a spare hdd :(

Re:/sarcasm

[eth1]

Also, if you aren't going for immediate reassembly, you can lay out a strip of clear packing tape, and stick them down, separating them by step. Seal them over when disassembly is done, roll-up and store. You can slice them open one step at a time when putting it back together.

Egg cartons, my friend, egg cartons! Friends of curious tinkerers everywhere! :)

Re:/sarcasm

[JCSoRocks]

And here I thought the 1 screw I had to unscrew to get at my laptop's hard drive was inconvenient. Don't even get me started on the little piece of plastic that I have to slide to release my battery. What a hassle. Macs really are better! I'm switching now! If only they'd made that information part of their marketing campaign... I could have switched years ago! ~

Re:/sarcasm

[DrLang21]

Despite the royal pain in the ass replacing that hard drive was, I must admit, it lasted 3 years of constant abuse before I had to replace it. In all reality, I don't think going through that much hassle for a once in the product's life event is that big of a deal.

Re:/sarcasm

[Arterion]

If you can, record a video of the disassembly. You can watch yourself do it backward when you need to reassemble.

Re:/sarcasm

[JonathanBoyd]

I'd imagine the issue is frequency. The people most concerned about swapping batteries probably plan on having a couple that they use consecutively and would be opening the computer to swap them far more frequently than anyone doing a RAM or hard drive replacement would need to. The more times you open the case, the more often something can go wrong.

Re:/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! I admire your patience.

I got about 50 or so left, after getting their mixed up, scattered all over the place, and lost.

So I put back the iBook with some duct tape and elastic bands.

I now call it MACGuiver.

Re:/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Battery counterfeiting has gotten bad as of late. It is also seriously dangerous. Nothing like plasma lithium sublimating your genitalia to get your day started off right! Sure, most people wouldn't install a battery they bought at www.superdiscountbatteries.cn but average joe six-pack might buy a pre-owned macbook off ebay that had one installed. Then Apple gets sued for a defective battery that wasn't even manufactured by one of their partners.

Re:/sarcasm

[Gizzmonic]

Hey President Ronnie, remember me? I saved you from those ninjas. Let's meet for a cheeseburger!

WOW

[timeOday]

Just 16 screws? How does Jobs do it? That shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so during my flight to Australia.

Re:WOW

[essinger]

Just 16 screws? How does Jobs do it?

You know some people don't realize how easy it can be to change to a generic power adapter by just soldering a new power connector attachment to the motherboard. Ahh, convenience!

Re:WOW

[Laser_iCE]

Just 16 screws? And it should only take you 20 minutes? I wish I was lucky enough to join the Mile High Club in such style!

Re:WOW

[je ne sais quoi]

If you fly to Australia (presumably from the U.S. and not from NZ or something) and need your laptop the whole time, invest in an airline power adaptor and check to see if your airline has connectors here. Or you know... buy a different laptop.

Re:WOW

[nmosfet]

And I thought it was hard to use a two button mouse.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because those laptop power points on planes are 100% guaranteed to be working all the time, especially when a flight is full.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, obviously, but I think it's still a valid design criticism given that battery swapping was trivially easy before - all you needed was a coin or a strong fingernail - and now you need to do all this.

Re:WOW

[wjh31]

you think you can take a screwdriver on a plane?

Re:WOW

[Malc]

I know you're being funny, but isn't it possible to run a MBP off the power socket in the seat? What airline do you go on? I haven't flown Qantas on that route, but I'd imagine United are too shit for the sockets, but Air Canada's planes are beautiful. My work laptops though... my Dell M6300 has a 130W power adapter that immediately overloads those 65W sockets. My older Dell M60 (90W adapter) didn't overload it if the battery was already charged, or I removed it.

Re:WOW

[timeOday]

Or you know... buy a different laptop.

I think you're on to something there.

I've never owned a laptop without buying spare batteries for it sooner or later. With a battery in the docking bay, you can swap the main battery without shutting down. (Too bad they don't build in a capacitor to run the laptop for 30 seconds while swapping batteries).

Plus, the batteries go bad after a couple years.

I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."

I guess you can't make any compromises if you're dead set on being the very thinnest or lightest. But count me in for something a little thicker with a lot more functionality.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Air Canada's planes are beautiful.

My experience with Air Canada was a 70's refurbished Boeing with silver screen movie projectors, on a flight from Montreal to Frankurt. This flight was 2008..... so I wouldn't say Air Candada is my first choice. LOL.

Quantas or SAS, those are good. Lufthansa acceptable. Malaysian is bliss.

Re:WOW

[tepples]

isn't it possible to run a MBP off the power socket in the seat?

Yes, but only if you pay extra for a seat with a power socket at the correct voltage.

Re:WOW

[Malc]

They've been updating their cabin interiors. However, Toronto to Shanghai and Toronto to Sydney (two of the main routes for me) are brand new 777s. When I fly Toronto to London, I pick either a new plane or one with an upgraded cabin - their website specifies, and they have several flights a day to chose from. Too bad you got one that hadn't been updated yet.

Asian Airlines though seem to live in a world of their own when it comes to customer service.

Re:WOW

[MichaelSmith]

I know you're being funny, but isn't it possible to run a MBP off the power socket in the seat? What airline do you go on?

In business class you would, but not everybody flys business.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but only if you pay extra for a seat with a power socket at the correct voltage.

What would be the incorrect voltage? I've used my MBP all over the world simply by plugging it in.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Two button? I thought they only had one.

Re:WOW

[chaim79]

I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."

That's been covered before, by making the battery completely internal they save enough space to increase the battery size by 40%, this is because of all the casings/latches/power connectors/etc required not only for the battery itself but also to separate the inside of the computer from the battery compartment. This allows them to provide a 17-inch powerhouse laptop with 8 hour battery life, something you only find in netbooks nowdays.

Re:WOW

[binarybum]

But count me in for something a little thicker with a lot more functionality.

Re:WOW

[binarybum]

whoops, my very clever tags didn't show up.

Re:WOW

[MightyYar]

But really, does it save any space at all?

Almost certainly. It saves both size and weight, since you no longer need to reinforce the walls of the laptop to handle the battery connection, and you of course eliminate any casing around the battery itself. You also get rid of the fairly heavy-duty external connector, and at least the iBook batteries were fairly complicated - they had a button and lights to indicate charge.

Now, is it a worthwhile tradeoff? I suppose the market will decide. Personally, I've never removed the battery from any of my laptops (except to replace) so it doesn't affect me. But if I routinely swapped out batteries, I'd have to consider another laptop. Or, more likely, I wouldn't waste money on a new OEM battery and instead I'd get one of those universal external batteries - if only because then you could charge both at the same time.

Re:WOW

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

Well if the company ain't paying for you to fly business they can't expect you to do business on the plane. Or you could buy the 15" with the one latch removable battery if that is important to you, which is going to fit on that cattle class tray table so much better anyway.

Re:WOW

[ktappe]

If you fly to Australia (presumably from the U.S. and not from NZ or something) and need your laptop the whole time, invest in an airline power adaptor

Speaking as a frequent air traveler, I'd never go near a 17" laptop of any brand--it's too darned large even if you upgrade out of coach/economy. My 15" MacBook Pro is even too large (but it does have a swappable battery as any true portable should--no way I'm defending Apple on this issue.)

Re:WOW

[Jeff DeMaagd]

In all fairness, I have to wonder why anyone would be using a 17" notebook on a transoceanic flight. As far as I remember, the 13" and 15" models do have easily swappable batteries, and those things are a lot more conducive to travel than the 17" model.

Re:WOW

[markov_chain]

Do what I do. Forget about changing the internal battery. Instead, take a deep-cycle lead-acid unit with desired capacity, put in a voltage regulator, and solder on a black and red pigtail with a DC plug matching your laptop on the other side. Secure everything with lots of duct tape, leaving a bit of the pigtail to stick out. Make as many of these as you need.

p.s. these are a real hit on airplanes!

Re:WOW

[mabhatter654]

Exactly, it's still not "user friendly" replaceable.

But it's not really about being replaceable. It's about FCC regulations. If you make a battery for "internal" usage, then it doesn't have to be as heavily built as one that's removable. By the time you add another 1/8" of plastic all around to make it "safe" and another 1/8" of plastic to make a cut out in the computer to put it in (remember the computer has to be "safe" without the battery) you're making the thing 25%-33% bigger and heavier for no marketable gain. Apple chose to go with a tighter fitting battery without all the extra plastic packaging ... and increase the size of the power cells 25% with the space they saved!

Obviously, Apple didn't weld the computer shut, or make the battery impossible to remove. There will be knock-offs available in 6-9 months as these go bad and you can have them changed at home.

But again, Apple is going for the Green angle here... because YOU shouldn't be changing these at home because YOU won't recycle. Apple is compelled by environmental regulation to recycle or dispose of safely at all their stores/depots. You really don't want these batteries melting into your ground water.

Re:WOW

[mabhatter654]

I thought the white Macbook battery was the "peak" of battery usefulness. It functioned as the bottom cover where you could swap out Ram and Hard Drive with just a few small screws. And the bottom of the laptop was otherwise free of all the warning labels and access door jigsaw puzzle that "normal" laptops have... even the bottom of a Macbook is pretty.

Re:WOW

[Starayo]

Tell me about it - my dad has a 19" alienware notebook.

That thing's a nightmare to take on a plane.

Re:WOW

[PopeRatzo]

It's a good thing that removing those 16 screws to change the battery doesn't invalidate your Apple Care agreement or any of the other agreements that Apple believes you enter into when you buy a MacBook.

Right?

Re:WOW

[tepples]

What would be the incorrect voltage?

If you brought the adapter that needs 115 or 230 V AC, then 12 V DC is the wrong voltage, or vice versa. Not to mention the difference between lighter and EmPower sockets or among the plug shapes used in various countries' implementations of 230 V.

Re:WOW

[PopeRatzo]

My experience with Air Canada was a 70's refurbished Boeing with silver screen movie projectors

You got a movie? Next you're going to say they gave you trail mix, too.

Re:WOW

[k_187]

The MBP power adapter is auto adjusting, but the power plug in planes doesn't use the MBP's brick, it plugs in straight. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB441Z/A?mco=MzE2OTkyOQ

Re:WOW

[PopeRatzo]

Well if the company ain't paying for you to fly business they can't expect you to do business on the plane.

Here's someone who doesn't work for a software company.

Re:WOW

[Lars T.]

isn't it possible to run a MBP off the power socket in the seat?

Yes, but only if you pay extra for a seat with a power socket at the correct voltage.

Yeah, you could be in big trouble if they put you on a 390V socket.

Re:WOW

[Malc]

Wish I hadn't wasted my money on that MagSafe Airline adapter. Never used it. I've always found standard N. American three pin plugs, I think at 110V.

Re:WOW

[Malc]

Not true. Never flown business class in my life. I did accumulate 85,000 miles on Air Canada, United, ANA, Air China and Shanghai Airlines last year, and found standard N. American sockets on many planes in cattle class, especially on Air Canada.

Re:WOW

[kylemonger]

In all fairness, I have to wonder why anyone would be using a 17" notebook on a transoceanic flight. As far as I remember, the 13" and 15" models do have easily swappable batteries, and those things are a lot more conducive to travel than the 17" model.

The usability trade-off equation is different when you're legally blind.

Re:WOW

[SouprMage]

And yet a whole host of others don't realize how easy it is to plug in an external battery, rather than complain about not being able to remove the 8hr battery that is provided.

Besides, how much Coffee does it take to stay awake for the duration of the flight. You would be spending half your time in the John, and thus not using your battery anyhow.

Re:WOW

[MichaelSmith]

Not true. Never flown business class in my life. I did accumulate 85,000 miles on Air Canada, United, ANA, Air China and Shanghai Airlines last year, and found standard N. American sockets on many planes in cattle class, especially on Air Canada.

Is that domestic in the US? I have never seen power supplies in cattle class internationally or flying domestic within Australia. Its definitely good they do that in the US though.

Re:WOW

[onefriedrice]

Yep. The Macbook Pro is a designer notebook. It's not for everyone, and I'm sure Apple is completely aware of the type of people who fit into their target market. You and I may not be in that market, but I know many people who are. Those who mock Apple about things like this really don't understand Apple's target market; especially they don't understand that they're not in it.

That said, I personally don't care one bit about the battery. I have never even taken the battery out of my ThinkPad T42. If I had more disposable income, I might pick up a Macbook. I realize it may not be as "functional" as something else, but it has everything I might need. Fortunately, though, I'm still quite happy with my old T42.

Re:WOW

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Well when i fly to Asia i have a 110 power plug that takes the standard charger that came with my MBP. I go 6 to 8 times a year and have been going since 1987....funny thing is they have always worked. /oh wait you mean your flying coach....wtf its a 14 hour flight are you crazy

Re:WOW

[0x000000]

Yes, I happen to have three of them on me at all times (small electronics screwdrivers. One end has philips the other has flathead, thanks to Parallax). Never had an issue with airport security. That being said, they also let me through with a leatherman, a swiss army knife at one point in time, so I am not sure if I happen to get lucky each time.

Re:WOW

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Um... people who cant fly business class dont own MBP's ok... lets stick to reality. Those chattle us DELL's :)

Re:WOW

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

85K miles. Just stop it. I have put 250,000 miles a year on just EVA Airlines from USA to Asia in a year every year since '93. lightweight! /as anyone who has traveled much knows the US airlines SUCK!

Re:WOW

[operator_error]

Wow. May I suggest placing each tiny little screw in some sort of secure safety-bag during this flight, from your seating assignment; In case a little tiny screw gets dropped to the floor of the aircraft? It might be difficult later, to relocate the missing piece later, if a mishap occurs.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."

Yes it saves significant space due to casing design, connector design, and the mechanism to remove and connect. That said if the saved space isn't worth it to you buy something out but it does buy you a good bit of thinness.

Re:WOW

[je ne sais quoi]

For me, I think the whole swapping battery thing is overblown. I'm typing this on a macbook pro that, when I bought it 3 years ago, I decided to do the pro-active thing and bought two batteries for the purpose of swapping them out. In that three years, I can count on one hand the number of occasions where I've been stuck without access to power and had to use my laptop for an extended period of time. It's just about as much trouble to find a power outlet and plug my laptop in as it is to shut it down and swap batteries. So, for my lifestyle and uses, I'm not crying any tears over the lack of a swappable battery, maybe you might, but this is not your laptop then. The fact that the battery is relatively easy to replace should it fail or if reaches its end of life is a relief (and ifixit rocks btw, I have repaied two old laptops using their instructions, I love it!).

Re:WOW

[timeOday]

I have a T40. In many ways it's my favorite laptop and better than the 2 newer laptops I have. It's thin, has a good screen, and good battery life. The T60p is too big, hot and heavy, and the D630 has a short, crappy screen. The 14" 4:3 display is best.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAICT, "business class" is really "self-important assholes who want first class but must pretend to be working class". That is, upper management. You know, the same douches who require golden parachutes for when they screw the company into the ground with incompetence and graft?

If you want to find the business travelers, look in Economy--they'll be the ones twisted like pretzels trying to wedge their work around the reclined seat back of the coughing ass-hat in front of them. Everyone I've ever seen is "business class" is either watching the movie, or asleep.

Re:WOW

[MightyYar]

If the thing is still in warranty, why the heck would you be replacing the battery?

Re:WOW

[Malc]

Most of that was international. Cattle class within N. America, and particularly US domestic, has the lowest standards and seems to be last to be upgraded. A few years ago they started charging for a snack (free advertising for the likes of Subway), but somehow dropped the quality even further. What a privilege, especially considering some of the flights are almost as long as the trans-Atlantic ones, and often just as expensive (five hours Toronto to San Francisco, versus 6.5 hours Toronto to London, and under 6 on one occasion).

Re:WOW

[MichaelSmith]

24 hours in cattle class leaves me virtually unable to move. If my company wants to send me to Europe for work they have to pay for business class otherwise I spend the next week on site off on sick leave.

Re:WOW

[merreborn]

I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all?

Apple boasts 8 hour battery life for the model in question. Most laptops can't claim that. That's what there is to gain. Reduced weight and size, and increased battery capacity -- you can squeeze more cells in your laptop design if you don't put them in a neat, removable package.

Your average user doesn't have much to lose with non-removable batteries. I understand there's a group out there that must have removable batteries (anyone who works for hours on end without access to power), but many of us don't. Between my wife and I, we've owned at least a half-dozen laptops over the last decade. We've never replaced the battery on a single one of them.

Re:WOW

[Midnight Thunder]

Just 16 screws? How does Jobs do it? That shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so during my flight to Australia.

Chances are if you have a second battery you will not be able to take it with you. There was an item on the news some time back indicating this was the case.

Re:WOW

[AnObfuscator]

If you fly to Australia (presumably from the U.S. and not from NZ or something) and need your laptop the whole time, invest in an airline power adaptor and check to see if your airline has connectors here. Or you know... buy a different laptop.

According to the site that you linked:

[...]because of the limited amount of power draw per seat, it is possible that your laptop won't get enough power to both operate and charge. Some airlines, like Continental Airlines, specifically state that battery charging is not allowed and ask you to remove your rechargeable battery from your device.

So if you plan to use the laptop on flights, buying a different laptop certainly seems like the way to go, here. Then again, if you plan to use a laptop on an airplane, you probably aren't looking at a 17" model, anyway. ;-)

Re:WOW

[swillden]

Well if the company ain't paying for you to fly business they can't expect you to do business on the plane.

My company says it's entirely up to me whether I want to work, read, sleep, whatever on the plane.

Of course, I still have to bill 45 hours per week.

Re:WOW

[RedBear]

I've never owned a laptop without buying spare batteries for it sooner or later. With a battery in the docking bay, you can swap the main battery without shutting down. (Too bad they don't build in a capacitor to run the laptop for 30 seconds while swapping batteries).

They don't need to do that anymore. They've implemented something called "Safe Sleep", i.e. hibernation. When the laptop goes to sleep it writes out the contents of RAM to the hard drive. If it loses power completely while it's asleep, like during a battery replacement, it will boot up just fine and reload the RAM contents from disk. And it actually works reliably.

You can download a preference pane called Hibernate to choose whether the system will just do sleep, sleep + safe sleep (hibernate), or just hibernate.

Plus, the batteries go bad after a couple years.

There will certainly be replacements available from third parties before that time arrives. Although these are supposed to last longer. Or is it just more cycles?

I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."

I don't think it was about saving space as much as increasing the capacity of the battery. If I'm not mistaken the best the previous removable batteries could do was about 6 hours. By removing the thin but not negligible casing that the removable battery needs they were able to make the battery slightly larger without compromising the overall size of the laptop.

I don't usually make this kind of argument, but honestly if you have a need to own one of these and use it for an extended length of time while away from a power outlet I'd think you'd also be sitting in business class or first class where you'd have access to the airline power plug, and on land you'd be the kind of person who would have access to some sort of off-the-grid power generation capability under most circumstances. This doesn't seem like the machine to take backpacking down the Appalachians, for instance. So from a practical perspective it's fairly unlikely that anyone will ever need to use multiple batteries.

Re:WOW

[shmlco]

"... you can squeeze more cells in your laptop design if you don't put them in a neat, removable package."

Most manufacturers use sets of standard round AA-sized and shaped cells all wired together within the plastic case you think of as "the battery". This means that a good portion of the internal space is simply dead air. (Picture 4 AA's side-by-side.)

Apple, on the other hand, is having the cells custom sized and formed to fit the exact dimensions available to the battery, even to the extent of having the individual cells pressed into rectangular shapes in order to maximize the amount of the space actually dedicated to batteries.

Re:WOW

[isorox]

Our policy is, if you have to work within 10 hours of landing on a flight > 8 hours, you get to go business.

Of course the bigwigs will get first class all the way, but they have to present to 7 million people 3 hours after landing on a China->UK flight, so that's forgivable.

Re:WOW

[PopeRatzo]

Our policy is, if you have to work within 10 hours of landing on a flight > 8 hours, you get to go business.

And here's someone who's company just got a government bailout.

Which is it, GM or Citi?

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Try opening a Mini, it's *really* easy.

Re:WOW

[coolsnowmen]

Because the battery doesn't need to fail for the laptop to benefit from replacing the battery.

Typical batteries lose maximum energy storage over time. So if a new battery lasts 4 hours, an old one might "need replacing" 3 years later when it only lasts 2 hours (but this isn't covered by warranty because the laptop still 'works').

Re:WOW

[Hal_Porter]

It also means when your battery dies you need to go to the AppleStore to swap it rather than doing it yourself. Which probably means extra $ for Apple.

Re:WOW

[Hal_Porter]

I think the reason people mock Apple is because they do user hostile things like this which seem designed to charge people extra for 'servicing', tell the users that it is for their own good "You get 40% more battery life!" and the users believe it. I dunno about you, but looking at the design of laptop batteries that 40% figure seems obviously untrue.

A car analogy would be if GM decided to make the tires on their cars non user replaceable so you had to go to the service center and claimed that you got 50% better mileage because of the new tires.

All US companies screw their customers of course, the reason people mock Apple is because Apple customers are on average a lot more likely to believe the excuses Apple makes for doing it.

Re:WOW

[cayenne8]

"So if you plan to use the laptop on flights, buying a different laptop certainly seems like the way to go, here. Then again, if you plan to use a laptop on an airplane, you probably aren't looking at a 17" model, anyway. ;-)"

Yeah, but, you gotta figure...the non-removable battery is going to be coming in the other models too.

Re:WOW

[ChinaLumberjack]

p.s. these are a real bomb on airplanes!

Re:WOW

[ChinaLumberjack]

Lithium-Ion batteries lose 20% of max capacity per year. Especially with laptops, where the heat further damages the battery.

Re:WOW

[dangil]

in the old powerbook g3 (wallstreet, lombard and pismo) you could replace the battery while the machine was sleeping.. without shutting down or connecting to AC power also, those models had dual media bays that could hold 2 batteries.. just awsome too bad johnnny ives is such a minimalist these days

Re:WOW

[edalytical]

They made me throw my nail clippers away once, but let me keep the knife that was right next to the nail clippers. It's not so much that you're getting lucky as TSA is staffed by idiots.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I was lucky enough to join the Mile High Club in such style!

OH!! It was a sex joke! As a slashdot reader, I was actually calculating the fastest screwing I'd ever done and was thinking I could do the whole job in about 30 sec. (this may be another sex joke...)

Re:WOW

[theLOUDroom]

by making the battery completely internal they save enough space to increase the battery size by 40%

Citation please.

I would believe 10%. 40% sounds like a bunch of crap.

For example, the amount of space used by the casing and connector on my cellphone battery is miniscule.

This design choice sounds like removing the ability to change the wiper blades from a car as a "weight reduction" measure.

Re:WOW

[Gnavpot]

Secure everything with lots of duct tape, leaving a bit of the pigtail to stick out. Make as many of these as you need.

p.s. these are a real hit on airplanes!

Yes, transporting a device wrapped in duct tape onto an airplane is a real hit.

Re:WOW

[Bobartig]

Except to "fix your car analogy, "tires" are a commodity that will be replaces at most once or less in 95% of cases over the useful expected life of the car, and that 50% increase in mileage lowers the expected replacement rate to zero.

Here's a thought, how about comparing it to a car's BATTERY?

Re:WOW

[EvanED]

They don't need to do that anymore. They've implemented something called "Safe Sleep", i.e. hibernation. When the laptop goes to sleep it writes out the contents of RAM to the hard drive. If it loses power completely while it's asleep, like during a battery replacement, it will boot up just fine and reload the RAM contents from disk. And it actually works reliably.

This solves a lot of the problem, but not all of it. For instance, hibernate won't safe network connections, so if you're downloading something, sucks to be you.

Re:WOW

[Bobartig]

Just buy the "knifeless Leatherman Fuse" which passes all TSA regs.

Re:WOW

[BZ]

The 40% number comes from Apple's product announcement, and is a direct comparison of the battery size in the new 17" Macbook Pro to the battery size in their previous 17" Macbook Pro.

> For example, the amount of space used by the casing and connector on my cellphone
> battery is miniscule.

I'm going to assume that you've actually opened up the battery to verify this, right? Do you mind posting the numbers for the casing and connector, on both the battery end and the phone end (note that there's extra material in the phone so that it doesn't just collapse when the battery is removed).

But on a more serious note, it really doesn't take much of a difference in linear dimensions to make a big difference in volume, especially if some of the linear dimensions are pretty small (e.g. the thickness of the battery).

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

because a network connection involves state external to your computer

Re:WOW

[martin_henry]

you think you can take a screwdriver on a plane?

or a laptop that doesn't power on? they make me prove it turns on every time i fly!

Re:WOW

[martin_henry]

my g/f once got away with a 750mL bottle of contact lens cleaner fluid...

Re:WOW

[EvanED]

No duh. It's still a problem that you have if you put the computer into hibernate that you don't if you can swap batteries with the computer still running.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

This solves a lot of the problem, but not all of it. For instance, hibernate won't safe network connections, so if you're downloading something, sucks to be you.

I can't think of anything I would be downloading that can't be resumed. And do people often find themselves in a situation where they have no access to external power but need four or more hours of uninterrupted network access?

Re:WOW

[ColaMan]

even to the extent of having the individual cells pressed into rectangular shapes in order to maximize the amount of the space actually dedicated to batteries.

Sadly for Apple's 'innovation department', prismatic batteries are nothing new.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

According to TFA, the battery in the MBP has a 95 watt/hour capacity. My Dell XPS M1210 came with an 85 watt/hour battery. It too had a claimed battery life of 8 hours, but realistically, no notebook, especially one with dedicated graphics, can sip just 12 watts/hour. Now that we can see the actual design and tolerances, it seems like Apple should have been able to integrate a swappable battery, but chose this design path to further solidify the concept of the computer as being a disposable product. After all, in 3 years time (or sooner) when this battery is dead, do you really want to spend $300 replacing it, when the newest MBP just came out?

Re:WOW

[prockcore]

you can squeeze more cells in your laptop design if you don't put them in a neat, removable package.

Yes, but if you look at the photos.. the battery *is* in a neat removable package. It's in a hard plastic shell, stuffed inside the laptop.

Re:WOW

[cnettel]

Most multi-year warranty plans explicitly exclude the battery. Not sure if Apple is different here, and naturally you can frequently buy extra battery coverage, but they are not one and the same.

Re:WOW

[jabithew]

Not to mention the power level indicator, which I use all the time.

Re:WOW

[RMH101]

You know, when they first announced this, I was in complete agreement. I was picturing some new super-battery that wrapped itself around the internals of the Mac making use of every last bit of space. Something like an armoured gel pack type of battery, I guess.
Now iFixit does a tear down and it's a regular looking rectangular lump. Can't really see how adding an access panel to it would be all *that* hard, although having said all this I don't have a major issue with it as:
1) I expect the battery to last for the year of the warranty
2) It looks simple enough to swap out myself with a screwdriver when the warranty's gone

Re:WOW

[RMH101]

Well, in 3 years I'd be interested in buying one off eBay with a dead battery and doing a relatively simple replacement myself for cheap.

Re:WOW

[RMH101]

If I were to compare your comment to a car, it would be a BMW 120D. More environmentally friendly than a Prius, better MPG, handles, practical but destined to be overlooked as despite it being bang on target, people just want Teh Shin3y and damn the specs...

Re:WOW

[RMH101]

I suspect the only reason that they'll let you through with that one is that no TSA employee wants to take home a knifeless Leatherman.

Re:WOW

[beelsebob]

Well obviously I think it's still a valid design criticism of the old machines given that the battery only lasted 5 hours, not 8.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's just about as much trouble to find a power outlet and plug my laptop in as it is to shut it down and swap batteries.

Gee, if only there was a way to put the running state to disk and then be able to shut the machine down to swap battery, allowing you to restore to the previous running state after you boot..

Oh, wait, there is, it's called hibernation.

Re:WOW

[moggie_xev]

Batteries are guaranteed for 300 charge cycles.

system_profiler | grep -i "cycle count"
Cycle count: 85

Re:WOW

[moggie_xev]

What do you think a cars life is ?, our older car is 10 years old done 65,000 miles and I am getting the third set of tires put on tomorrow ( was mitchelin soon to be good-year ). I think it may have had its battery replaced in that time but I can be sure.

I wouldn't be surprise if the Toyota Avensis is happy for another 3 to 10 years.

Re:WOW

[drsmithy]

The 40% number comes from Apple's product announcement, and is a direct comparison of the battery size in the new 17" Macbook Pro to the battery size in their previous 17" Macbook Pro.

Well, that should give everyone a good idea of how honest a comparison it is.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

>buy something out

WTF does that mean?

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in response to pro-Apple bs could you get moderated troll for such an insightful comment.

If anyone really think this is anything other than to do with Apple making money by selling new laptops when old ones fail, or worst case being able to charge what they want to install a new battery then they're delued.

40% lol, these people are having a laugh if they think the thin layer of plastic on top the battery and the small clip that holds the battery in and the connector account for a 40% gain in space.

Ignore your moderation, only ignorant Apple trolls gullable enough to fall for Apple's BS like a religious nut falls for his religion's fairy tales could mod your troll for such a blatantly insightful comment.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hackaday.com/2009/01/23/adding-right-click-to-a-macbook-pro/ Hackaday got you covered.

Re:WOW

[DrXym]

Exactly. Apple devices are supposedly easy to use, but this absolutely is not the case with batteries. One would expect them to come up with some elegant invisible clip that comes loose with an intuitive movement, or perhaps some thumb size screws that reveal a hidden compartment. Something that hides the battery yet makes it accessible. After all, lots of small devices have replaceable batteries.

Instead Apple seal their units shut, or make it ridiculously difficult to remove batteries without special tools. On top of that they launch a battery replacement program which is expensive and couched in scary clauses about possibly not getting your original device back.

It's quite obvious they seal batteries in to encourage people to dump their otherwise functioning devices for a new model.

Re:WOW

[drinkypoo]

Is the entire capacity improvement due to an increase in volume? Is the new machine as rigid as the old machine?

Re:WOW

[drinkypoo]

I have a big fat wallet full of lots of change, and a big fat keyring with lots of keys (Which all go to stuff.) I accidentally threw a lighter into the little bucket underneath all that stuff on one of my vegas flights, and I got to take a lighter on the plane. They were probably busy watching my laptop go through or something.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for pointing the joke out for the humour impaired.

Re:WOW

[LizardKing]

Speaking as a frequent air traveler, I'd never go near a 17" laptop of any brand--it's too darned large even if you upgrade out of coach/economy.

That surprises me, as I'm 6'4" tall and can work quite comfortably on a 17" Powerbook when flying in economy. Perhaps you need to change airlines.

Re:WOW

[BZ]

Well, the size comparison is correct; it's been verified independently by just x-raying the laptops. The new battery really is 40% bigger, and there is no way to have fit that battery in the old laptop. It's weirdly shaped (which is hard to impossible to do with a user-removable battery) and really does take advantage of just that much extra space.

Or were you blanket-accusing Apple of lying without having done your homework?

Re:WOW

[BZ]

The entire capacity increase is due to an increase in volume as far as I can see, yes. They changed the battery tech too, but that was to increase number of cycles the battery can handle, since it's not as easy to replace.

The new machine is more rigid than the old one.

Re:WOW

[Phasma Felis]

Aaaand another sarcasm fail for Slashdot!

Re:WOW

[MightyYar]

Good point. I guess you'd have to figure in the cost of an Apple authorized battery swap if you elected to go with Applecare.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

comic book guy, is that you?

Re:WOW

[ivan256]

I had a lombard.

I hated (hated. Was that strong enough? I Don't think it was...) I FUCKING HATED the removable batteries. At the least opportune times, you could somehow manage to catch your shirt or something on the battery eject lever. It happend maybe a dozen times to me, and there's never really a good moment for your system to suddenly lose power.

I haven't owned an Apple laptop since. And I can't say I've ever removed the battery from the other laptops I've had except to replace it when it wouldn't charge anymore. If you're one of the few that take long flights or something and need to swap batteries, then there are laptops for that. I don't think easily removable *anything* belongs on a mass-market laptop though.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet I change out batteries every couple of days, because I'm unlucky enough to be traveling when the "Power Low" indicator pops up.

Steve Jobs has decided my best course of action is to whip out my second COMPUTER and keep going.

Re:WOW

[ivan256]

It's dumber than that. You're actually allowed to bring lighters. You can even buy them at news stands past security.

If you check the list, you'll see that you can carry up to two on, but you can't have them in your checked baggage.

Re:WOW

[drsmithy]

Well, the size comparison is correct; it's been verified independently by just x-raying the laptops. The new battery really is 40% bigger, and there is no way to have fit that battery in the old laptop.

The point is this says nothing about whether the same size increase would have been possible in the new machine with a removable battery.

It's weirdly shaped (which is hard to impossible to do with a user-removable battery) and really does take advantage of just that much extra space.

Please explain why you think it's "hard to impossible" for a removable battery to be "weirdly shaped". (Or even what's "weird" about the shape.)

Or were you blanket-accusing Apple of lying without having done your homework?

I'm saying their comparison is not valid. I'm not calling it "lying" because while the invalidity of the comparison is obvious to anyone with even the slightest critical analysis capabilities, it probably never crossed the mind of a marketdroid whose whole life revolves around trying to _avoid_ such things.

Re:WOW

[drinkypoo]

If you check the list, you'll see that you can carry up to two on, but you can't have them in your checked baggage.

At the time, you weren't allowed to carry them on. I kind of thought that was implied. But I guess there's always someone willing to assume I'm a big idiot.

Re:WOW

[BZ]

> The point is this says nothing about whether the same size increase would have been
> possible in the new machine with a removable battery.

Looks pretty doubtful from the X-rays, but you're welcome to do the research yourself.

> Please explain why you think it's "hard to impossible" for a removable battery to be
> "weirdly shaped". (Or even what's "weird" about the shape.)

Seriously, do some googling. The battery is wedge in around other components, basically.

> I'm saying their comparison is not valid

They really didn't change that much about the internal layout of the machine other than the battery, so it's not completely invalid. Again, I suggest doing some research if you really care about the issue.

Re:WOW

[stewbacca]

Well, I'm on 3 years for my Macbook and I've gone through more Magsafe adapter thingies (two) than I have batteries (zero). The only time I've even removed the stock battery was to add ram, and I'm not even 100% sure I even needed to do that (can't remember).

Re:WOW

[MightyYar]

I'm on 314... no wonder I only get 2 hours! Thanks.

Re:WOW

[ivan256]

What time was this? As far as I'm aware, they've never been disallowed. (That doesn't mean they were never confiscated...)

I didn't assume you were a big idiot. It seems pretty natural to assume that something dangerous like a lighter wouldn't be allowed considering all the benign things that are banned.

Re:WOW

[AkiraRoberts]

I'm pretty sure that they don't care about lighters anymore. Every trip I took in 2008, I took a lighter through security without any problems. Never really even bothered to hide it, just tossed it in the bucket with keys, change and a big old pack of cigarettes. And the last of these you'd think would pretty much scream 'Hey, this guy's got a lighter on him.' Not a peep out of the old TSA.

Re:WOW

[St. Alfonzo]

These arguments conveniently ignore the fact that this particular battery starts with an eight hour battery life. IF you use your laptop on battery power for more than four or five hours at a time battery wear might become an issue, after several years. Personally I'm perfectly happy with three or four hours.

Re:WOW

[lwsimon]

Holy crap!

Did the plane blow up?

Re:WOW

[drsmithy]

Looks pretty doubtful from the X-rays, but you're welcome to do the research yourself.

Links to these X-Rays ? A cursory Google search doesn't show them up.

Seriously, do some googling. The battery is wedge in around other components, basically.

The only battery pictures I've seen are from the iFixit disassembly, and it looks like a standard rectangular prism taking up roughly 1/2 the depth and 3/4 the width, starting from one corner. Nothing appears to even vaguely suit the description of being "wedged" around it. If it were some funky shape around other components like an 'S', or even something a bit less exciting like a 'U' or an 'L', you could say it was weirdly shaped. But it certainly appears from the photos to be no more 'weirdly' shaped than the battery on the back of my E4300.

They really didn't change that much about the internal layout of the machine other than the battery, so it's not completely invalid.

Say what ? The internal arrangement of the new MBP 17 is almost completely different to the outgoing model (optical drive moved, battery moved and resized, mainboard resized, ports all moved to one side). About the only component that _hasn't_ changed location and/or shape and/or size is the hard disk.

Re:WOW

[BZ]

> Links to these X-Rays ?

Don't have them offhand, sorry. They were linked from somewhere in the Slashdot comments on the initial announcement, as I recall.

Re:WOW

[Hognoxious]

What would be the incorrect voltage?

The one you get in cattle class. No matter how many amps you draw the power's not enough.

Re:WOW

[Astadar]

Congratulations! You have just expedited your addition to the no-fly list by using those two words in the same sentence!

Now you can get "assistance" at the airport when bringing your replacement batteries along!

--Your friends at the TSA (or your local equivalent)

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck getting the screwdrivers past security :0

Re:WOW

[joetheappleguy]

20 minutes for 16 screws? Ah, I remember when I got my first screwdriver too.

Re:WOW

[coolsnowmen]

8 hours is for using your laptop as a picture frame. If you actually want to do anything with it the time is much less.

Re:WOW

[multimed]

The other thing of course is the time degradation of Li-ion is doubled. 20% per year is lost as a function of time - completely independent of use. I bought two right off the bat once as well. After a year, you have two batteries that have diminished capacity & at about 2 years, you got two that are crap. You're better off waiting & buying another battery after a year or 2 than right away.

Re:WOW

[multimed]

That's what I thought too - but when you do the math - $179 actually seems like a pretty reasonable price. If it is price gouging, it's less gouging than other OEMs. Dell charges $155 for a 85WHr battery, $134 for the 53WHr one to replace my 2 year old machine. Apple charging $179 for a 95WHr one including service to do it doesn't seem like a huge profit center.

Re:WOW

[Rich0]

You're the reason the economy is tanking!

To make up for your sins please report to your local GM dealer and buy 3 SUVs and push them off a pier. Ok, now you're caught up. Just buy one more and you can drive it for two years before it is outside of its "useful life."

Re:WOW

[Rich0]

Actually - the TSA website indicates that saline for contacts is allowed in large volumes. I was allowed to take mine on one flight, and it was then confiscated on the return flight...

Gotta love it...

Re:WOW

[Rich0]

Ah, so the secret is to stuff your toothpaste and contact lens cleaning solution into a lighter case...

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you most go through a lot of cars. Most people I know have their cars at least 10+ years and 150,000+ miles which is quite easily 3-4 sets of tires and that's only if your kind on tires.

Now I've never had a car battery last less than five years which is something neigh on unheard of for a laptop (and still hold a charge long enough to be useful).

Re:WOW

[maxume]

He was insinuating that the giant corporation probably picked convenient facts.

The comparison to the previous laptop makes for good copy, but it doesn't mean a great deal.

Re:WOW

[rthille]

I believe Apple's warranty says they'll replace the battery if it's below 70% of original capacity within the warranty time frame.

Re:WOW

[ooloogi]

Most likely that was sarcasm, to point out how Apple's claims are also flawed. It's not hard to work out that most cars will go through at least 5 sets of tires through their life of various owners.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Because replacing an under warranty Apple battery in some corners of the world can be a multiple week ordeal. This is how the "Genius" at Icon S.A. in Costa Rica explained it to me when my original MBP battery died:

"4 days of service to diagnose the problem
2-4 weeks of shipping time
4 days to install the new battery"

Flabbergasted at the response, I asked if I could just hand him the battery and keep the laptop, which he agreed to. Now if I had been stuck with one of the new MBP's I would have had to endure at least 4 days, as they only service the laptops at a service center which requires at least 2 days.

I thought Apple support would have been as good as IBM's, but alas it was far from it.

Re:WOW

[glittalogik]

There are like, 5 people who can do sarcasm on the internet. They don't come to /. very often.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. The linked page (and the tests it in turn links to) are about the 15" unibody MacBook Pros, which Apple rates at about 5 hours of 'wireless productivity', not the 17" unibody MBP with the 8 hour rated battery. How can you tell? The article's dated to Nov 4, 2008. At that point in time Apple had not yet even announced the 17" 8 hour model, much less shipped it to customers. Today's slashdot story is about the 17" 8 hour model, not the 15 inchers with the much smaller battery. (95 Wh on the 17", 50 Wh on the 15", nearly twice the capacity... but of course the 17" has a significantly larger display and backlight power use scales with that so you don't realize a ~2x gain in battery life.)

All your attempt at snark proves is that real people tested Apple's battery life claims for the 15" models and found them roughly accurate, provided that you are trying to conserve power (as any real laptop user would) by enabling all relevant powersaving features, and aren't attempting to keep the CPU and/or GPU pegged at 100% the whole time. For example, AnandTech's finding of 4.77 hours of wireless websurfing.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

It too had a claimed battery life of 8 hours, but realistically, no notebook, especially one with dedicated graphics, can sip just 12 watts/hour.

Uh, you do know they're dual video chip notebooks with an integrated NVidia 9400M for high battery life and a dedicated NVidia 9600M for full performance, right? When you switch to the 9400M, the 9600M is completely powered down.

By the way, you're a bit confused about watts. Watts are an instantaneous measure of power, a rate at which energy is being delivered. One watt is one joule per second. (One joule is roughly the amount of energy required to lift a small apple about 1 meter straight up in Earth's gravity.)

The units used to rate batteries, watt-hours (Wh), are power times time, which resolves back to a unit of energy. (Power = energy/time, so power * time = energy.) Because of this relationship, you can say that an ideal 95Wh battery can deliver 95W continuously for 1 hour, or ~12W continuously for 8 hours.

Yeah, I know I'm being pedantic from your viewpoint, but it is an important distinction.

(Also, it is not unreasonable that they could come close to 12W average power when mostly idle. Power saving features have gotten really good these days.)

Now that we can see the actual design and tolerances, it seems like Apple should have been able to integrate a swappable battery, but chose this design path to further solidify the concept of the computer as being a disposable product. After all, in 3 years time (or sooner) when this battery is dead, do you really want to spend $300 replacing it, when the newest MBP just came out?

It's $180, not $300. And actually, given the claimed 1000 charge cycle life for this new battery, it probably won't even be dead in 3 years.

Re:WOW

[theLOUDroom]

The 40% number comes from Apple's product announcement....I'm going to assume that you've actually opened up the battery to verify this, right? Do you mind posting the numbers for the casing and connector Hold on just a frinkin minute!

So you're satisfied with marketing literature for the 40% claim but you actually want part numbers and dimensions from me?
WAKE UP MAN. I'M NOT THE ONE TRYING TO SELL SOMETHING.
Why don't you try reading the article?
You're posting a comment to an article where how to replace the pattery pack is described.
Did you even read it? That means that is both has a connector and a casing. They exist inside the laptop.

... and apparently you live in some fantasy world where cellphone batteries use standard connectors with readily availible part numbers and datasheets as opposed to the custom, one-of-a-kind connectors that are actually used.

What it comes down to is that using tri-wing bits to make it a bitch to remove and replace a battery does not create a weight savings, nor does adding a useless warning label.
At a bare minimum the designers could have not been assholes and used regular philips head screws.

The claim that Apple has done all of this to improve capacity, doesn't justify the silly screws and warning label.

Re: WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

...me...I...I'm...I...I...I...I've...my...my...my...I'm...you...not your...I...I...

Enough about you, let us move to a more interesting topic: Me.

I have swapped batteries and wished I had a 3rd more times than I can count on one hand (and what is the other hand doing?).

I can not imagine what the hell they are thinking:
1) Removing the ability for users to change batteries
2) Removing the revenue stream and subsquent profits from their shareholders

I can not wait for a 24 hour full-bore laptop. Well, netbook if possible.

Me me me! I want replacable batteries! I I I! I use them all the damn time!

Re:WOW

[shmlco]

That's lithium-polymer, not lithium-ion. That's custom sized and shaped, not OTS standard sizes as per your link. That's adaptive per-cell power control and charging. And so on...

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/17inch-battery/

Re:WOW

[badkarmadayaccount]

I'm on lithium salts, you insensitive clod!

Re:WOW

[Refrag]

Plus, the batteries go bad after a couple years

Do you realize that the lithium-polymer battery tech Apple is using in the 17" MacBook Pro battery is expected to have a life of 5 years? That is longer than most people keep a computer.

I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."

They gain considerable volume by ditching the rugged battery encasing that other laptops must have. Apple claims that they were able to achieve 40 percent greater capacity than they could have with a traditional user-serviceable battery. That means to get the same battery capacity, they would have had to make the battery about twice the size with a user-serviceable battery. That would add a good bit of thickness and weight to the laptop.

Re:WOW

[somersault]

I'm unmitigatingly sorry that I have better things to do with my time.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll probably spend more than 20 minutes just getting your Philips screwdriver through security!

Re:WOW

[WinterSolstice]

I find that an interesting point - you must be one of those fun people who spends the first 5 minutes of any given meeting plugging in your laptop, then the last 5 minutes unplugging and packing it.

Here we are *required* by corporate policy to bring our laptops to every meeting (we don't get to use disposable cups either, btw - same mindset), and we are also *required* to be logged into our IM client all day. It's often used for note passing during meetings when a boss or PM or whatever will ask for specific information or details regarding a point during a presentation or conference call.

So - on my side? I use a battery about 3 hours a day, every day. I also do oncall support that has (on occasion) required me to do a fix from the odd coffeeshop/diner/restaurant/beach.

Maybe you don't really need a laptop with a decent battery, but I *live* on them, and carry 2 extra batteries and an aircard like religious talismans.

Oh, and my *former* MBP? I went through 4 batteries at least before I finally got rid of it, because they all ended up with about 10 minutes of power after a couple months. Now I use a different brand and after a year I still get an hour from the original battery. Not that I'm bitter.

Re:WOW

[WinterSolstice]

I call BS. Look at the photo from TFA.
The page: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/MacBook-Pro-17-Inch-Unibody/618/2

The actual pic: http://s1.guide-images.ifixit.com/igi/Gf2GPJlfKvbLJLDZ.large

That doesn't look unusual to me. I have difficulty believing that couldn't be made replaceable if they had cared. It might have made it *slightly* larger. Oh noes. Most likely it would have cost more, and damaged Apple's revenue stream.

Re:WOW

[WinterSolstice]

Agreed, and I posted the links just a moment ago for those who can't be bothered to RTFA.

"Easy"?

[MrEricSir]

A total of sixteen screws. To change the battery. And that's "easy"?

My laptops require zero screws to remove. What does that make them?

Re:"Easy"?

[djupedal]

> What does that make them?

Over designed...?

Re:"Easy"?

[corychristison]

My laptops require zero screws to remove. What does that make them?

Idiot^WZombie-proof.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anti_Climax]

My laptop [batteries?] require zero screws to remove. What does that make them?

Removeable

Re:"Easy"?

[PixetaledPikachu]

A total of sixteen screws. To change the battery. And that's "easy"?

My laptops require zero screws to remove. What does that make them?

Normal? your laptop's battery is designed to be removable. The MBP isn't

Re:"Easy"?

[vux984]

A total of sixteen screws. To change the battery. And that's "easy"?

To change a battery that is not designed to be removed by the end user? Yes. That's easy. Especially compared to the effort required to change the hard drive in an original clamshell ibook, for example.

My laptops require zero screws to remove. What does that make them?

It makes them laptops designed to have the battery removed by the user.

Hint: Glibly comparing the difficulty of removing parts 'designed for end user removal' and removing parts 'not designed for end user removal' leads to a FAIL. What do they teach kids in school these days?

Re:"Easy"?

[gad_zuki!]

>Especially compared to the effort required to change the hard drive in an original clamshell ibook, for example.

Yes, two wrongs make a right. Apple still hasnt learned. Dont compliment them by saying "Oh its not as bad as it used to be!"

Re:"Easy"?

[Erikderzweite]

No, that's different. Think different, remember?

Re:"Easy"?

[vux984]

Yes, two wrongs make a right. Apple still hasnt learned. Dont compliment them by saying "Oh its not as bad as it used to be!"

Quite frankly, most people don't change their laptop battery EVER. After 2+ years when the original one dies, most people STILL don't even do a one time replacement... they just use it plugged in or buy a new one.

Yes, there are road warriors out there that do buy 2 or 3 batteries and rotate them daily. They aren't most people, they are a niche. And they won't buy a MacBook now.

So it doesn't really matter, those of us who never change the battery will be unaffected by the fact that they now can't; and they benefit from a smaller lighter laptop.

Those of us who do actually buy a new battery after 2+ years to replace the old one that no longer holds its charge well, will find the process for changing the mac battery un-daunting. Spinning 16 screws once every couple years simply isn't an issue.

So, why exactly should Apple go out of their way to make batteries more user removable?

Most of their customers are quite happy to give up the option of switching them on the fly, in exchange for a battery that's smaller, lighter, and lasts a bit longer.

Re:"Easy"?

[i.of.the.storm]

The point is that making it not designed for end user removal is stupid, as is using the world fai; in grammatically incorrect ways.

Re:"Easy"?

[ucblockhead]

You seem to be confusing "making a product I don't want" with "a wrong".

Re:"Easy"?

[arekusu_ou]

Well they have a term for that with females, but it wouldn't be PC to say it.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your laptop is a prostitute, it will take any battery that comes it's way.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a mac enthusiast who also enjoys the ability to swap batteries with in seconds. The new Apple line up leaves me out

Re:"Easy"?

[pete-classic]

I'm at the other end of the spectrum. My laptop battery is guarded by a dragon.

-Peter

Re:"Easy"?

[el americano]

So, why exactly should Apple go out of their way to make batteries more user removable?

Because MacBook batteries have a history of dying? An alarming number of the MacBook and MacBook Pros in our office needed replacing around the 1-year mark. Yes, we did the MacBookPro battery recall. Yes, we installed the OS update that fixed what was killing some batteries. Several needed replacing anyway, most of them just out of warranty.

I'm sure nothing will go wrong this time though. Good call!

Re:"Easy"?

[Silicon Jedi]

I hate when people use "fai" that much. They're like, "fai", and I'm like "EPIC FAIL"

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

this doesn't have to do specifically with batteries, but have you ever tried to switch out anything in an apple laptop? I've worked with a few, doing things like changing the hard drive, and it's a terror! it's not like every screw is the same, and it's not like there's a rhyme or a reason to which screws go where. Adding more things in the not-easy-to-replace area just makes them that much more of a terror to work with?

Why are you even trying to defend this? Given the option between a piece of plastic that you turn/slide to remove component X, or removing 2 or 3 (identical!)screws to remove Y, why would you opt for 16+ screws to replace X or Y? How does that help the home consumer that wants to replace their battery, or their hard drive, or their memory?

Re:"Easy"?

[SuperMog2002]

Not to mention that the new battery in the 17" MBP is supposed to last 8 hours on one charge, and takes several times as many charging cycles as most Li-Ons do before it drops to 80% capacity.

Re:"Easy"?

[Shados]

A switchable battery isn't bigger, heavier or last less. At best, Apple is using the 0.1% of room they gain from not having to put a flap to put a larger, bigger, heavier battery in (which will last a little longer). Its just not significant overall so no one minds. But the battery is definitely not lighter just because you cant remote it.

Re:"Easy"?

[DigiShaman]

So, why exactly should Apple go out of their way to make batteries more user removable?

Logically, they shouldn't. Psychologically however, they should. Even if a user will never change the battery throughout the unit's lifespan; not giving the user the option can stop an Apple sale dead in its tracks. More so in this crowded market I might add.

Re:"Easy"?

[Ross D Anderson]

You're right, but for me that's down to the fact that the batteries are rediculously expensive I'd rather put up with the low charge or just save up and buy a whole new laptop.

Re:"Easy"?

[vux984]

Logically, they shouldn't. Psychologically however, they should. Even if a user will never change the battery throughout the unit's lifespan; not giving the user the option can stop an Apple sale dead in its tracks. More so in this crowded market I might add.

Yes, a small number of sales will be lost because of this. However it will be a small number. And the cost of those sales is probably less than the cost of making the batteries removable, and will be more than offset by the service center profit from swapping batteries that die after a couple years at inflated prices for users who lack the savvy to get a replacement online, and spin those 16 screws themselves.

Re:"Easy"?

[TechForensics]

Open?

Re:"Easy"?

[Chirs]

It certainly could be. A non-removable battery doesn't need as tough a shell (since it's protected by the laptop itself), doesn't need a latch mechanism, doesn't need a nice-looking exterior, doesn't need a special connector, and doesn't need to be shaped in such a way that it can slide in and out. I'm guessing the difference could be 10% or more rather than 0.1%.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

A total of sixteen screws. To change the battery. And that's "easy"?

To change a battery that is not designed to be removed by the end user? Yes. That's easy.

Um, no it's not, unless you're comparing it to other Apple notebooks, which have historically been a pain in the ass to service. 16 screws is on the hard side of medium difficulty for replacing a part. LCDs are usually fewer than ten, for example. I've replaced some motherboards by taking out about 16 screws...

Re:"Easy"?

[Daniel Weis]

Accidentally moderated you redundant, posting to undo...

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a Mac??? (so you lame and out-fashioned...)

Re:"Easy"?

[duiu]

But this Apple. This time all your parts aren't inside the LCD screen, so compared to that, it's a piece of cake.

Re:"Easy"?

[vux984]

A switchable battery isn't bigger, heavier or last less. I misspoke for simplicity. A switchable battery requires a rigid durable casing of its own, and the laptop must be sufficiently rigid and durable as well when it is removed. In practice this tends to add a mm or so to the thickness, a key metric that you want to reduce in laptops. Perhaps even importantly, the switchable battery is MUCH more limited in terms of its form factor. It must be regular convex shape so that it can slip easily into its slot, make contact, etc. Take a look at a new MacBook Pro battery. Its a big pancake that fits into every available nook of space on the macbook pro covering most of its bottom surface. This enables it to utilize every bit of available space, and add the least amount of size. This is how they are able to make it last longer. Its a bigger battery, much bigger than anything they could fit into it if they had to keep it the same size. A giant irregular pancake would never be able to be rigid enough to be safe bouncing around in your backpack. When I said it was 'smaller and lighter' I was comparing it to how big and heavy it would be if they had bolted on a battery of the same capacity that was user switchable, and thus had to be self contained safe secure convenient enclosure even when it was out of the laptop. There is no way you can put the macbook pro battery into to such an enclosure. As an engineer you get to choose between: a) have a high cap sprawling pancake that fits into the nooks and crannies b) have a high cap battery in a big bulky container and make the laptop much bigger c) have a lower cap enclosed battery that will fit into the biggest single nook they can manage. They chose a, and gave up user switchability for 'high cap using all available irregular space'. At best, Apple is using the 0.1% of room they gain from not having to put a flap to put a larger, bigger, heavier battery in (which will last a little longer). Its just not significant overall so no one minds./i

Re:"Easy"?

[db32]

Correction. They wont buy a 17" MacBook now. However, most of those road warriors that I know that have to rotate batteries don't buy 17" laptops anyways because they tend to be more of a pain in the ass to lug around and drain batteries much faster. Really, this whole debacle is just a way for the antiApple folks to get their panties in a twist. Watching people bitch about how difficult it is to remove a laptop battery is laughable. The most I have screwed with laptop batteries in the past many years of very heavy laptop use was to removing them from the box and putting them in the laptop since they ship disconnected.

What I haven't seen discussed by any of these people is whether or not the extended capacity would even remove the need to swap batteries in the first place...but hey, that would take away a reason to bitch about Apple. There are plenty of valid things to complain about with Apple, but this is certainly not one of them.

Re:"Easy"?

[vux984]

In actual fact the macbook battery is essentially an irregularly shaped pancake.

Because of this, there is an additional challenge to making it removable, aside from the irregularity.

Batteries aren't 'bendable'; you don't want them flexing. That would lead to shortouts, and possibly fires.

Giving a battery that shape enough structural integrity would would add a LOT of bulk. Imagine building an enclosure for a 12" vinyl record rigid enough that it wouldn't flex if you stepped on it, dropped it, put it in your backpack, or did all the things people expect to be able to safely do with a spare laptop battery.

Or they can make it non-removable...

Re:"Easy"?

[Shados]

And a desktop video card is user switchable(relatively speaking), and it is definitely quite fragile, has a shit looking exterior, and doesn't slide in or out.

I know what you're gonna think/say. Compared to a TYPICAL removable battery... then yeah, thats true. Nothing stopping them from making an ugly and fragile (well, as fragile as it can be without being dangerous...there IS chemicals in there) thing that needs a few screws to take out.

The difference really, between a removable and a non-removable battery is the tech support and the enclosed instructions, IMO :)

Re:"Easy"?

[ktappe]

just out of warranty

I'm sorry you got burned. Cases like this are why I always recommend extended warranties (such as AppleCare) for any brand of portable computer. Desktops rarely need it, but portables take enough jostles and have such tight manufacturing and operating tolerances that the extra cost often ends up paying off.

Re:"Easy"?

[Surlyboi]

Only if you're buying a 17" or a Macbook Air.

Of course, you were trolling, but I figured I'd throw that out there anyway.

Re:"Easy"?

[mabhatter654]

now they did learn. The white Macbook is a dream. You take out the battery and a thin, tin cover over the ram and hdd, 3 screws is all the tools required. They followed that up on the new 13" aluminum Macbooks, but the Pros still have that cover to remove..but they look more perrty.

Re:"Easy"?

[Lars T.]

A total of sixteen screws. To change the battery. And that's "easy"?

Sure, it's not as easy as claiming "The battery is not removeable".

Re:"Easy"?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Linux?

Re:"Easy"?

[Lars T.]

A switchable battery isn't bigger, heavier or last less.

Exactly, it's smaller, lighter and holds a smaller charge.

Re:"Easy"?

[Bobartig]

Actually, the battery is bigger and heavier, allowed by the removal of all the extra packaging that would be required to make a removable battery in the first place. But yes, I agree with your points.

Also, Apple includes installation with the price of the replacement of the battery, so you don't even have to spin those 16 screws, if you aren't so inclined.

Removable batteries in most laptops is correctly described as a feature that people perceive the need for, but very few people actually ever use, and some very small single-digit percentage actually ever need.

Re:"Easy"?

[lordSaurontheGreat]

A lot of users don't realize that LiOn batteries loose their ability to hold a charge over time. You can slow this dying effect by - ironically enough - beating the hell out of your battery. Literally, use the laptop on battery power! Drain it low - the lower the better - and then fill it back up. If you do this even once a week you can stall that inevitable kaput by a year or so.

I have an IBM X40 (still have, even though I've since moved onto a nice white MacBook) that - when it tried to run Windows - had this interesting battery tool that would drain and then recharge the battery. You left the machine plugged in, then the tool would somehow drain the battery, then recharge it. When I moved to Linux I lost this tool (but gained CPU frequency scaling, a working sleep mode, etc...) but I keep its lesson with me: beat up your battery! It likes it rough!

Re:"Easy"?

[sbeckstead]

Prone to falling out?

Re:"Easy"?

[vux984]

Um, no it's not, unless you're comparing it to other Apple notebooks, which have historically been a pain in the ass to service. 16 screws is on the hard side of medium difficulty for replacing a part. LCDs are usually fewer than ten, for example. I've replaced some motherboards by taking out about 16 screws...

Except that 16 screws and one plug is the total effort. Replacing a motherboard from a PC is usually at least a dozen screws plus power connectors, sata, ide, fans, usb leads, power/reset/hddled leads, first removing any expansion cards, not to mention the re&re on the CPU/heatsink which is probably one of the hardest parts to replace if you are unfamiliar with doing them.

16 screws is something my father would attempt without hesitation. replacing a motherboard? not a chance.

Re:"Easy"?

[ceoyoyo]

That's an excellent argument for why the 16 screws is a good thing (as opposed to soldered onto the MB or something).

That's not a particularly good argument for why the battery should be designed to be removed frequently.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arithmetic and grammar.
oh, you mean before the senior year??
sorry, my bad.

Re:"Easy"?

[ucblockhead]

Hard drives also have a history of dying, yet few demand those be made removable.

Re:"Easy"?

[Doctor_Jest]

That's a shame, really. (At least they didn't burst into flame!) I've had little trouble with my "dodgy" rev-A MBP (other than the fact that it's not a Core 2 Duo... and the internal DVD burner is the shittiest this side of actual shit) and its battery after 31 months of continuous use. It even doubled as my main desktop while I was swapping the HDD's out of my 5 year old G5.

But like the iPhone and iPod Touch, I am not keen on buying a laptop that doesn't just let the battery pop out. Engineering or not, marvel or not, I want to know that I can take a quick trip to "batteries-r-us.com" and get myself a new laptop battery with no hassle, no trip to a genius bar, and no trip to the overpriced malls that Apple Stores tend to breed in. Not that the stores aren't a marketing marvel... just not my marvel. I love MacOSX, but if the trend continues, Leopard will be the last iteration I use. (It is the last one I can use on my G5) I refuse to bother with the "computer as a work of art" any more. I just loved the OS. I didn't care if the computer looked like a cube or a brick. I guess I'm just getting old, and my old computers are working just fine.... but for those who enjoy that sort of thing, I'm not badmouthing you (or Apple)... it's just not my cup of tea.

I use Linux, and it's not a major stretch to make it my primary OS. But that's just me. The fact that the new 17" MBP battery isn't welded to the frame is a good thing, but in the grand scheme of things, will it stay that "simple"? My 2nd Gen iPod has a semi-simple way to replace the battery... and they even supply the tool. :) Which is why I still use it, and have no need to buy another. Of course it is FW only... and Apple's got a bug up their butt to remove Firewire. :) Artificially restricting (out of the box) G5's from using some features of iLife '09 disturbs me more than the non-user-replaceable batteries. They're no better than Microsoft (or anyone else) in that regard.

Re:"Easy"?

[Doctor_Jest]

IF a HDD died at the same age as a battery, you'd bet your sweet ass they'd want them removable. I have a 14.4GB IDE HDD that STILL works in a 1997 model Dell. If a battery lasted THAT long, I'd not care if they soldered it to a pipebomb that went off if you tried to remove it. :) The HDD's I yanked out of my G5 were 6 years old (well the boot drive was the original in the machine so only 5), and they still work after a bit o' cleanup and some TLC. :) I bet that can't (or won't) ever be said for a battery.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remove yourself from the reality distortion field before it becomes permanent.

Re:"Easy"?

[Grail]

I used to be a road warrior. I never took spare batteries, just an in-car charger to go along with the wall-wart.

Re:"Easy"?

[Grail]

What about the sales they'll make due to the unibody mac having no visible seams?

Re:"Easy"?

[i.of.the.storm]

Bleh, I saw that on the preview but I usually automatically hit submit as soon as it shows up and then went noooooo as the comment got submitted right when i noticed. But epic fail needs to die too, or at least overuse of it, because very few things are actually epic.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hint: Glibly comparing the difficulty of removing parts 'designed for end user removal' and removing parts 'not designed for end user removal' leads to a FAIL. What do they teach kids in school these days?"

You're overstating to force your point.

No, they're not meant to be removable... but that's kinda the point we're going over here. Leaving out a feature that every laptop built in the last 15 years has had by default is retarded... especially when you're selling an obscenely expensive machine.

Re:"Easy"?

[martin_henry]

the extra cost often ends up paying off.

Yes, for the insurance company. Otherwise, there'd be no profit in insuring them!

Re:"Easy"?

[bluesatin]

That 'memory effect' is only on the old Nickel Cadmium that isn't used for much nowadays.

Lithium Ion batteries do not exhibit this 'memory effect' like Nickel Cadmium batteries do, meaning that beating the hell out of your battery probably does more harm than good.

Wikipedia has a nice long list of things you can do to prolong your battery life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Guidelines_for_prolonging_Li-ion_battery_life

(Note it says that completely draining and then charging your battery is ill advised, but it has it's uses to try and re-calibrate the battery monitor).

Re:"Easy"?

[Weedlekin]

"Removable batteries in most laptops is correctly described as a feature that people perceive the need for, but very few people actually ever use, and some very small single-digit percentage actually ever need."

Expansion slots in budget low-end consumer desktop PCs are in the same category. All the stuff that originally used to live in those slots has been built into their motherboards for years, and the vast majority of the target market will get a new PC after a couple of years "because the chip's worn out on this one" (their memory, CPU, and Internet bandwidth are maxed out hosting four dozen botnet clients and keyloggers, so stuff they want to use takes ages to load, and runs very, very slowly).

Re:"Easy"?

[lordSaurontheGreat]

Interesting...

I have been curious as to the lack of adoption of the better Lithium-Iron (LiFe) battery systems. They don't have the same thermal runaway and degradation problems seen in LiOn cells. Well, they still have them, but they're nowhere near as pronounced.

I know their native voltages are different, however, I would imagine that would be trivial to work around.

Re:"Easy"?

[TheSpoom]

Does this warranty of which you speak cover the battery?

Re:"Easy"?

[dunkelfalke]

on most notebooks i know the hard drives are pretty removable. two phillips screws in the worst case.

Re:"Easy"?

[RedK]

1 year mark ? 1 cycle per day, that's 365 cycles, average for a battery. This new unremovable battery, on top of having more initial charge capacity will live well beyond the 300 cycle rating on the removable batteries. Apple is claiming 1000 cycle, which means your 1 year Macbooks will now live 3 years. Also, this non-removable battery is only in the 17" Macbook Pro. If you still need the option to swap batteries, the 15" Macbook Pro might be more up your alley.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing has Pro built right into it's name. I guess you could call people who have to use more than 1 battery Pro users.

But dumbing down a Pro machine just doesn't make sense to me when there's already a non Pro machine, the macbook.

Re:"Easy"?

[drinkypoo]

It's a sad day when computers are priced on the North American Car Sales model, which is to say the "we'll make it back on service" model. This model is currently murdering the big three automakers. The difficulty of mapping computer problems to car analogies raises questions as to whether the same effect will be present here, but I suspect that it will - sooner or later the Japanese will just wipe them out :D Actually, I don't really propose that change will come from Japan, but the principle is the same. There will eventually be a new Apple.

Re:"Easy"?

[gad_zuki!]

>I always recommend extended warranties (such as AppleCare)

Wait. So they are already paying a premium (2800+ dollars) for Apple quality. Now "Apple Quality" turns out to be a myth so they now have to spend even more for an extended warranty? Wow.

Thats like buying a new car and being told "Well, you need the rust undercoating for this. It'll fall apart in a week!" Its a borderline scam.

Re:"Easy"?

[King_TJ]

I really don't get the huge fuss over this particular situation though -- because for starters, we're talking about the biggest notebook in Apple's product line, with a 17" display!

If you're doing all sorts of long-distance traveling and feel a need to swap batteries regularly for more run-time, why aren't you buying a smaller laptop in the first place? The 15" version of the same thing from Apple has a very easily removable battery!

As far as I'm concerned, this was a conscious design decision that made sense. People using a big 17" display notebook should primarily be people who use it sitting on a table or desk someplace, where there's likely a wall outlet to plug it in anyway. If not? Well, put as high capacity a battery in the thing as you can possibly cram in there, and that should get people through most other situations until they can get back to a wall outlet.

I know on airline flights, it's been a struggle for me to even get a 15" laptop's lid open to a usable angle without hitting the back of the seat in front of me. (Yeah, I don't fly first class.) So a 17"? Not practical....

Re:"Easy"?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

this doesn't look like a pancake or a vinyl record or "irregular" at all. this looks like a rectangle that is located in a corner of the case. it is longer than normal for a laptop battery, but it could still be made to be removable if that is what they wanted to do...

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they be user removable?

1) trouble shooting. Is the laptop not powering up on battery because the battery is shot, or is it a deeper electrical problem? With removable batteries this is a 10 second diagnostic.

2) battery recalls. What happens if these batteries start catching fire because they are so densely packed? Recalling user-replaceable batteries is cheap and easy. Just ship a replacement an process the return. A recall on these batteries will mean labor costs.

Re:"Easy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bet on it. This is being typed on a 5 y.o. FSC AMILO L1300. Still going strong. The battery was wimpy from day one, but this was meant as a desktop replacement, so it isn't even slotted in anyway.

So? Who uses Apple anyway?

[BigAssRat]

I didn't even know that Apple made the battery "non-removable" by ordinary users. Why would they even think to do that?

Yet another reason I don't 'use Apple products.

non-removable batteries

[OrangeTide]

the mounting hardware for clip-in hardware uses up a fair amount of space that you could use for a larger battery. While Apple's decision is inconvenient for travelers that like to switch to spare batteries. It is probably a useful change for most customers who would rather have 10% more battery capacity, and to Apple who probably saves a little money on build costs. The third party battery market probably won't even hiccup at the difference, eventually providing users the ability to buy a battery (and throw in a couple of screw drivers as a "kit"). How often do you replace a weak/broken battery? Once every couple of years and hopefully not more often than that.

Given that Apple assumes you need to take it to a certified apple tech to replace the battery, they will either have to eat the cost of replacement or bundle the price in with the battery part cost. But overall it is probably a net savings for Apple.

Re:non-removable batteries

[Trailer Trash]

It's not a 10% difference, the battery life is at least double what it would have been.

I think it's obvious that the battery isn't "non-removable", just that it requires removing a few screws rather than a simple sliding latch.

Re:non-removable batteries

[b4upoo]

Do you actually want to do business with a company that uses tactics designed to get you to use their tech and their battery simply to replace a battery? I sure don't!

Re:non-removable batteries

[camperdave]

The mounting hardware for a removeable battery does not need to take significantly more room than a non-removeable battery, and certainly nowhere near 10%. It's just Apple trying to be "cool".

My guess is that Apple is banking on the fact that when it comes time to replace the battery, they can:

• charge more for it
• make it expensive enough that people would just get a new machine rather than upgrade the ol' clunker.

Either way, Profit.

Re:non-removable batteries

[samkass]

The cost is $179.

As for whether it's 10% or not, [citation needed]. My previous-generation MacBook Pro has quite a bit of plastic and latches and such to make a quality battery compartment. In addition, it's a big block out of the bottom of the case that undoubtedly weakens the torsional rigidity. Considering the new one's core is made out of a solid block of aluminum, I think it's pretty cool they made the decision not to cut it up for a battery.

Count me as one of the ones for whom this decision is perfect.

Re:non-removable batteries

[petermgreen]

According to TFA (but I can't see any mention of it on the ifixit site) the screws are tri-wing. If so that seems like a deliberate attempt to make things more awkward for those who want to swap it themselves.

Re:non-removable batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that Zune working out for ya?

Re:non-removable batteries

[dfn_deux]

The mounting hardware for a removeable battery does not need to take significantly more room than a non-removable battery, and certainly nowhere near 10%.

I'm no apple fan boy, never even owned anything they make aside from an old II/E and an ipod, but I say that you really don't know what you are talking about if you can't see how the space required for a removable battery can't be more than 10% the volume of the battery itself. A removable battery includes a casing, a connector, latches, etc. and these are also present on the laptop too to accept the removable battery. I think that the video on their own site does a pretty decent job of showing the difference, but I suppose you have too big a chip on your shoulder about Apple "trying to be cool" to bother trusting that the simple line drawing explaining the design is clearly both feasible and likely.

Personally I'd like to see Apple give the option of trackpad with some real physical buttons (more than one and certainly more than none); but in the end it doesn't matter since I think their gear is a bit too finicky and pricey for my taste.

Re:non-removable batteries

[OrangeTide]

tri-wing discourages people from removing things unless they are serious about it.

Re:non-removable batteries

[OrangeTide]

the gains you can get from merely discarding all the mounting hardware is 10% in the industry. there are other things that were done to make the battery larger that is beyond the simple issue of making a battery removable or not.

Sorry if I didn't give you context, I am trying to focus this thread on discussing the choices that were made that have an impact on the user serviceability of the battery.

Re:non-removable batteries

[OrangeTide]

The mounting hardware for a removeable battery does not need to take significantly more room than a non-removeable battery, and certainly nowhere near 10%.

this has just been my personal experience in doing a consumer product. I don't work for Apple. But the space savings on the product I work on (and the thinness) were significant compared to our previous product. Of course we didn't put a bigger battery in because we got better at power management and extended battery life that way.

Re:non-removable batteries

[TheUser0x58]

Lets take take a rational approach to this issue. Forget about the space taken by the latching and mounting mechanisms, and just consider the casing in the battery compartment. Lets say that the case is 1mm thick, which probably isn't too far off from the actual thickness. There is a casing around the battery that we will also estimate to be 1mm thick. The (removable) battery in my 15" MacBook Pro is roughly 110x140mm.

So the total area used by the battery is
W * H = 110mm * 140mm = 15400 mm^2

The total area used by casing is
(compartment casing thickness + battery casing thickness) * (2*W + 2*H) = (1mm + 1mm) * (220mm + 280mm) = 1000mm^2

1000 / 15400 = 0.065 = 6.5%

So not even counting the extra mechanical structures needed to hold the battery in place and to allow the battery to be released, there is a 6.5% increase in available surface area, which can accommodate that much more battery life. If the case is a little thicker - 1.5mm - the casing turns out to be 10%.

IUTWIMCED (I used to work in mobile consumer electronics design). The first thing I learned is that every aberration from a simple box case and every moving part has significant effect on available internal space. The MacBook Pro is no different.

Re:non-removable batteries

[OrangeTide]

Show me cellphones, laptops, mp3 players, etc that use a standard off-the-shelf LiPo or Li-ion battery form factor and I might take your comment seriously.

While you can buy a third-party make of a battery in one of hundreds of proprietary shapes to fit hundreds of different products out there. There is absolutely nothing preventing a third-party from making Mac Pro (or iPod) batteries just because they are screwed into the case. You can currently buy non-Apple replacement iPod batteries.

Re:non-removable batteries

[Synn]

Wow, almost $200 to replace a dead battery? We use Macs in our office and the batteries die all the time.

That has to be a nice little profit item for them.

Re:non-removable batteries

[camperdave]

Why do you assume that the battery compartment needs casing? Just cut a battery shaped hole in the bottom of the laptop, hold the cover on with a pair of screws and some tabs and make the battery contacts a pad and spring style instead of the ribbon connector. No difference in battery shape, size or placement. Minor mods to the case. It's not that big of a deal. There's no need for special latching mechanisms and cases within cases beyond what's already there now.

Also, why do you assume that the battery casing is different from the computer casing? Just make the battery part of the case, like a cell phone battery. That way, you can get a bigger, longer lasting battery in the same space.

Re:non-removable batteries

[OrangeTide]

What you just described is how iPod, Mac Book Air, Kindle 2, etc work. You have to unscrew the case to remove the battery.

And yes doing it this way leaves more room because you don't have to make a battery that is protected from flexing. You also do not have to reenforce the midframe to make room for your hole/slot for removing the battery and supporting a door or socket. Of course the problems you face with a cellphone or ipod are different than with a laptop. And the soft packs you get in a typical Nokia or Blackberry are perfectly practical and maximize the space efficiency despite having a slide on/snap on cover to allow user replacement.

When you make laptop battery that latches in all fancy you don't want the celled to be dented or bent because they will rupture. Therefor you wrap the whole thing in a tough shell. In a laptop sized battery that can be a very dangerous and energetic reaction to damage the cells.

Re:non-removable batteries

[ColaMan]

If so that seems like a deliberate attempt to make things more awkward for those who want to swap it themselves.

"It was pretty easy to get into with just philips head screws and I was just trying to prise the connector out with a pair of scissors, and they kinda got stuck across the wires and started glowing and it looked really cool so I got my camera and tried to take a picture but the flash was too bright so I turned it off and turned the macro on and got reeeeeal close to it and it went BANG and my eyebrows caught fire and now Apple owes me eleventy billion dollars for pain and suffering!!!1!!!1"

Not that you or I would ever do that, but *sigh* companies have to take into account the lowest common denominator when building a laptop.

Re:non-removable batteries

[petermgreen]

Not that you or I would ever do that, but *sigh* companies have to take into account the lowest common denominator when building a laptop.
I call BS for two reasons.

1: The vast majority electrical or electronic equipment i've seen can be dismantled with ordinary screwdrivers.
2: Taking the lid off this laptop requires only normal screwdrivers. It is just removing the battery module that requires a tri-wing. If the reason was to protect idiots I'd expect to see the security screws on the outer case.

Re:non-removable batteries

[samkass]

Wow, almost $200 to replace a dead battery? We use Macs in our office and the batteries die all the time.

If the battery dies prematurely it's covered by warranty. The new batteries in the MacBook Pro are rated at a much higher lifetime, as well. If after 5 years or so you need to replace the battery, less than $200 isn't exactly going to break the bank.

That has to be a nice little profit item for them.

$200 every 4-5 years? Probably not. I suspect it barely covers costs.

Re:non-removable batteries

[drinkypoo]

In addition, it's a big block out of the bottom of the case that undoubtedly weakens the torsional rigidity.

This begs the question, does it undoubtedly weaken the torsional rigidity? And I personally have a doubt. What I doubt is that you could have a laptop just as rigid (or more rigid, equally possible) without also adding more complexity and weight.

What Apple has done here is reduce complexity. This is generally desirable. Whether battery technology has advanced to the point where they can feasibly pull this off on a laptop with these power requirements is another issue. In general my experience has been that batteries mostly die because of failed components up or downstream (like the charger cable) or misuse (girlfriend unplugs the laptop.) But then, I didn't get one of those fabulous Sony batteries.

Re:non-removable batteries

[St. Alfonzo]

Read the ifixit article again. They mention the triwing screws and also that they were able to remove them with a small standard screwdriver.

Re:non-removable batteries

[petermgreen]

Ahh sorry I missed the "next" link and so only readthe first page.

Yeah, if triwing screws aren't too tight you can jam a flatblade in to turn them. I've done this before to open GBA carts.

Re:non-removable batteries

[ColaMan]

Call BS all you want.

But I would suspect that somewhere in a subsidiary licensing/purchase agreement between Apple and the battery cell maker there is tiny fine print that says, "ensure end users are not able to easily remove the internal battery, due to safety reasons."

Meaning "All the control/protection electronics are in the laptop motherboard and any clown who tinkers with the unprotected battery module by itself is likely to lose their eyebrows."

That'll show 'em!

[straponego]

Now all you have to do is make your own replacement battery.

Re:That'll show 'em!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fairly easy. You just need a spot welder, some LiP cells and duct tape (or the original plastic battery housing).
Optionally replace the charging circuit, and protection circuitry on the battery.

Compared to removing those 16 screws, it shouldn't be a huge deal.

What a relief...

[argent]

If your Macbook Pro battery starts swelling to the point where it's likely to damage the laptop, as mine did, you'll be able to pop out the battery as soon as you notice it, and get an advance replacement from Apple overnighted to you the way I did, and run your laptop off AC in the meantime.

Right?

"Security screws" = no

[Rix]

I don't have a screwdriver that will fit those, and I doubt many of you do either.

Re:"Security screws" = no

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you probably shouldn't be replacing a MBP 17" battery.

Re:"Security screws" = no

[Briden]

so get one: tamperproof screw driver kit

Re:"Security screws" = no

[BlackSnake112]

I have a screw driver kit (one handle with 30 something bits) I picked up over 10 years ago with these three way phillips bits. These have been around for a while just not many people have been using them. I picked this kit up for $20.

Re:"Security screws" = no

[Techman83]

These days you can get a similar Stanley kit for about AU$10 from Bunnings. One of my most used tool kits!

Re:"Security screws" = no

[VisceralLogic]

I believe they mentioned in the article that you can just use a small straight screwdriver.

Re:"Security screws" = no

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy kits of these so called "security screwdrivers".

Manufacturers use security screws not for actual security but simply because in some cases security screws are cheaper then normal screws because I believe some screw head designs are patented (eg. Pozidrive), and other designs aren't suitable for automated assembly (eg. flat head).

Re:"Security screws" = no

[Grail]

My local Jaycar, Dick Smith or Bunnings all carry "security screwdriver" kits. Those screws are only used as a question to the user, "do you really want to be futzing with this?"

Re:"Security screws" = no

[CharlieHedlin]

They sell a tamper proof bit set at Fry's for about $17. Its only annoying when the tamper proof screw is recessed and a bit won't cut it.

What happened to the Torx screws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time, Apple used all Torx screws, and it was good. What is with these insanely tiny, fine, and easily stripped phillips screws on the newer machines?

They are just awful, and you still need a Torx driver if you want to replace the disk anyway.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[v1]

#0 philips a and the occasional T6 torx. Found at pretty much any hardware store. Sorry probably not wal-mart.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[essinger]

Once upon a time, Apple used all Torx screws, and it was good. What is with these insanely tiny, fine, and easily stripped phillips screws on the newer machines?

They are just awful, and you still need a Torx driver if you want to replace the disk anyway.

Let's have a geek-off where brag about the Torx drivers are in our toolboxes! I got one that is so small it is invisible to the naked eye!

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[Falconhell]

"I got one that is so small it is invisible to the naked eye!"

I see, own a Hummer and an assault rifle do you?

Oh wait you mean a screwdriver......

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[Anonymous Coward]

so small it is invisible to the naked eye!

That's what she said.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[dave562]

I think it's just an industry wide thing. All of the OEMs have gone to those easily stripped phillips screws as far as I can tell. I think they do it so that they can ding you for a parts charge. Every OEM I've dealt with sells a "screw kit" or something similar that includes every single screw you will need for the laptop. At this point I just buy the stupid kit and write it off as a cost of doing business.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[swb]

HP still favors Torx on their server products.

I haven't bothered to even read the Wikipedia entry on it, but does Torx provide some magical anti-strip ability that other drive systems don't (square/robertson drive, etc)? I can pretty easily snap square drive fasteners hanks with a power driver without ever stripping the head. It has to be more involved (or at least require better tooling) to make torx heads on fasteners than square drive.

Hex drive is the one I wish would go away. E-Z to strip, and the really small sizes are often indistinguishable from Torx.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[0x000000]

Or just use a properly sized screw driver bit and this problem would go away as well. I have never stripped any of my MacBook Pro screws.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[Russ Steffen]

BTW, a lot of those easily stripped "Phillips" screws are actually JIS screws. They look similar but the angle of the point is different. A Phillips driver doesn't quite make enough contact and will just core the head right out if there is any resistance.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Perhaps you have some bad hex drivers or screws? As they're quite common in the RC world because they're not as easy to strip (less you're using the wrong size).

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[mlts]

When you twist a screwdriver, Torx has one of the better mechanisms for ensuring force stays in the rotational axis. Philips tends to cam out (actually Henry Ford adopted Phillips screws because of the fact that they do cam out rather than break.)

I also agree with you, although I think mechanics who use the existing Allen head fixtures like bicycles may balk at the change, however I think it would be good in the long run.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[Anonymous Coward]

One PC maker tells people who open their laptops to always replace the screws with new ones from a maintenance kit.. The screws are coated with a Loc-Tite coating which gets stripped off, and if one doesn't do this, later on down the road, the screws may loosen.

IMHO, Phillips as a screw type needs to die and die soon. There are so many designs that are so far better with transmitting force evenly, and are resistant to stripping that there isn't any reason for Phillips other than the fact that everyone has this type of screwdriver somewhere.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[petermgreen]

I haven't had any real experiance with square since it doesn't seem to be used much on this side of the pond.

Phillips and pozi have a tendancy to "cam out" requiring a strong downward force to be applied when turning tight screws. They are also easilly confused with each other if you are not very carefull. Finally they sort of work with the wrong size making it tricky to tell if you have the right size or not.

flatblades tend to slip out sideways.

Re:What happened to the Torx screws?

[petermgreen]

and this is the problem with cross head screws in general, too many types that are easilly confused and will sort of interoperate but with a far greater risk of damange to the head than with the proper driver. Similar issues happen with nearby sizes of the same type.

Underestimation.

[detox.method()]

Apple thought the combined ignorance and laziness of its customers would have rendered the battery inaccessible. This just shows that there might be someone with intelligence and motivation that uses one of their computers. Who woulda thought it?

Re:umm

[Anonymous Coward]

Neal? Is that you?

-- Rob

Re:But the battery is still $189

[OrangeTide]

Loading up with dual Dell batteries, which is about the same power capacity cost the same. Not much of a tax if you ask me.

The Apple tax is a myth. If you want a tax try Alienware.

Non Removable Again?

[nurb432]

I thought Apple learned the lesson with the IPOD with how it pisses people off.

Guess not.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

What lesson would that be? The one where they corner the portable music market and become a pop culture icon? Oh...

Re:Non Removable Again?

[v1]

the ipods are a little different story. Apple would like you to occasionally buy a new product from them. They make very little on upgrades, if anything at all. iPods are meant to be replaced every 2-3 years, and computers every 3-5 years. We replace batteries for iPods here all the time. Or you can go to one of several web sites and buy replacement battery kits. FastMac and iFixIt are our two biggest suppliers for ipod batteries, screens, etc.

As previously mentioned several times, Apple is installing a battery with very long runtime and is adding a little capacity by not installing a latch. There's extra space savings by not having a hinged latch or cover too. Not a lot, but every bit helps.

If your battery does get used a lot and wears out (high cycle count) Apple will replace it for a reasonable cost. Or you will soon be able to get replacement battery kits same as the iPods.

My wristwatch requires a special tool to open up because it's a diving watch. I can't change the battery myself. I've been in twice since I bought it to get a replacement battery. At wal-mart of all places. I don't want to sacrifice what it takes to make my battery replaceable.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Is it still used as a diving watch after walmart changes the battery? I've done that before with my water proof watch, only to have it die in the shower, post change.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[nurb432]

1 - They want you to upgrade your laptop too.
2 - You can easily purchase the tool to open your watch. its designed to be water proof, not replacement proof. Nor is it designed to be 'obsolete' once the battery dies.

Sure, you can find replacement batteries for ipods and 'break the seal' to do it yourself, its all about intent.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Bemopolis]

Right on! Oh, and the iPhone too. I mean, how did Apple ever survive the fact that no one ever bought either one of those products?

Maybe they negotiated a share of that avalanche of Zune sales.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[jrothwell97]

Yep, they learned a lesson with the iPods—by looking at other portable music players. When people drop their MP3 players they don't want a breakable part to come off and four AAAs to roll under the sofa.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Grishnakh]

You can buy the "special tool" for your wristwatch at Harbor Freight for about $5. It's not a special tool either, as tons of watches use the same tool.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[v1]

but since they install it for free, and the battery is like $3, who in their right mind would buy the tool?

Re:Non Removable Again?

[ktappe]

I thought Apple learned the lesson with the IPOD with how it pisses people off.

It took Steve Jobs 15 years to learn that users wanted a second mouse button. I think we're seeing here that his stubborn streak continues. See also: lack of cut & paste on the iPhone.

(Before you mod me "flamebait", I'm an avid Mac & iPhone user. I just don't think Apple's always right.)

Re:Non Removable Again?

[v1]

no diving watch is guaranteed to its original tested depth after it's been opened by anyone but the manufacturer. When they open it, they replace the seals. The problem with the seals are they deform when you screw it shut, and then they stick in that position, and seal well. But when you open them, by that time they've lost some of their elasticity and get warped in the opposite direction, and then back again. So the original seal will never be nearly as good as it was when installed. Mine's not a really high end one, it's only good to 300m, but with the battery changes, it's probably down to 100-150. But I don't dive. I just used to break watches regularly with water. I shower with this one on and it's surviving fine. When they changed the battery last time she said the seal was getting kinda mangled and I should replace it next battery.

This is a casio dw-5600. I got my first similar one 25 years ago, and it was damaged by a 35 ft fall onto asphalt, which broke the backlight, the speaker, and two segments on the display. (shattered the internal frame) It still kept perfect time. I replaced it, and the new model has "g-shock" armor on it, to prevent falls like that from breaking it. I suppose it's indestructible now with that upgrade? I expect them to bury me with this one. They are still selling this exact same model today, it was on sale at wal-mart 4 months ago when I got a battery When you come up with a good idea, stick with it I guess. Oh I did have to order a new g-shock cover a couple years ago because it was cracking. $4 each, I bought a spare. Not many watches you can just order replacement parts for cheaply?

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they? People still buy iPods, people still buy Macbooks. It isn't sound logic for a company looking to maximize profit (just like any other).

Not an excuse, I know, and I'm not defending them at all, but it's probably why they haven't done anything and why they won't either.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[ceoyoyo]

Yeah, that best selling product. They sure learned their lesson on that one!

The non-removable battery in iPods pissed off a few whiners who probably had never actually used an iPod anyway. Everybody else just used their iPods until the batteries died, then bought a $15 replacement battery kit.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[liquidsin]

a watch repairman?

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that business completely imploded, nobody buys iPods anymore these days!

Re:Non Removable Again?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Pisses you off, obviously. I like the slimmer hardware, and find it especially important on something that I carry around with me all the time in my pockets.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's possible they just learned that not that many people care. I mean, how many of the 10 or so million people that purchased iPhones / iPod Touches complained?

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably don't read slashdot... just their sales reports. Idiots.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[Voltageaav]

When I went on to Walmart, they replaced the seal on the watch when they replaced the battery. It's no diving watch though, just a regular Fossil and a different seal may be required.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[3247]

You can also easily purchase the tool to open your Macbook Pro. The battery is designed to be unremoveable, not unserviceable. Nor is the notebook designed to be 'obsolete' once the battery dies.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[V!NCENT]

Apple ships a single product, not 25. "Huh?", you know, a computer, not an OS, RAM, CPU, Mainboard, Case, Webcam, Battery, GPU card, PSU, etc.

When it's dead you bring it to warrenty and when warrenty is over your product is doomed. This goes for your stereo, TV, etc.

Apple is also into minimalism (design), so each extra screw, button, lid, etc. is not beautiful.

It's OK. We like technology, but those people out there that don't want computers as a hobby (nothing wrong with that) don't like the complicated crap.

Re:Non Removable Again?

[amoeba1911]

Walmart, Radio Shack or a battery store is not the place you should go to have your watch battery replaced if you have a high quality watch. I made that mistake, brought a nice watch to the local Battery Plus store and they replaced the battery but they didn't reseal it properly. The watch that had lasted 6 years on the same battery died within a month after the battery replacement (water inside).

You can have the manufacturer replace the battery but they will charge you an arm and a leg and take a long time. The other good option is to go to a jeweler that sells good watches and know what they're doing, they will be able to replace the battery and reseal the watch properly. I went there to replace the battery

I found the same model watch, the model is discontinued, so I purchased an old-stock and of course the battery in it was about 10 years old so it was dead, I brought it to the jeweler, and got the battery replaced, and it's been working great for the past 4 years.

How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[argent]

In a Macbook Pro? Once, so far, but it wasn't because it wasn't holding a charge... it was because it was visibly swelling in it case. If I'd had to wait until it had distorted the laptop case before I noticed it was swelling and replaced it... well, replacing that battery would have taken a week or more while I waited for Apple to repair or replace my laptop and ship it back to me.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[ekhben]

I had that on my first edition MBP. I called Apple, they said there was a recall on that brand of battery, they had a new one shipped to me in two days, no cost as long as I returned the warped one via the included shipping box.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[risinganger]

That'll be Sony you want to thank ;-)

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had that on my first edition MBP. I called Apple, they said there was a recall on that brand of battery, they had a new one shipped to me in two days, no cost as long as I returned the warped one via the included shipping box.

Which would have been illegal to do, since it contains hazardous and potentially explosive toxic materials.

They should have had you turn it over to a battery recycling company and fax them the receipt.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[ekhben]

Yes, so I understand. But then, I don't care, or need to care, who made what part of my MBP. If it breaks, Apple fix it. Same goes for Dell, Gateway (do they still exist?) and other brand manufacturers. They brand it and package it, they take the responsibility for it working as per the terms of the warranty, they all usually do a reasonable job of fulfilling those terms. The GP should've called Apple, is all I'm saying. :)

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[argent]

Yah, I just wonder how you'd tell what the problem was before it trashed your laptop if it was a current 17" Macbook Pro... since the battery's completely internal with no way to relieve the pressure without removing 16 screws.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[ekhben]

Huh, never even considered that. Might be different laws in Oz, but we do have shipping laws about dangerous goods. Eh well, I'm not in jail, clearly I didn't blow up some hapless postman.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[speedtux]

it was because [the battery] was visibly swelling in it case

You're looking at too much battery porn!

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[Grail]

So it's okay to ship laptops by courier, but not the batteries? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[risinganger]

Oh you won't get any disagreement from me on that part. Apple sold it so it's their responsibility as you said.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[CharlieHedlin]

A battery that was already swelling and a known fire hazard?

I'm not sure on the law, but we know the fire suppression systems on aircraft can't handle lithium fires. I would think as long as it were shipped ground (as a return label usually is) it would be ok.

Re:How often do you replace a weak/broken battery?

[argent]

*snort*

Don't DO that when I'm drinking coffee.

Apple = Disposable

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol!

Link to the tear-down

[Anti_Climax]

How about a working link to the tear down instead of a slashdotted page that just links to it anyway.

Scotty Need more power

[ireallylovelinux]

Scotty I need more power to the aft engines. I am working on it captain but I am having trouble getting the 13 screws removed from the dilithium battery.

If only....

[zach_the_lizard]

Now if only someone could design a laptop battery that is removable without opening the case. I know, I know, this is WAY too futuristic in this day and age, even for a company like Apple with the appropriate vision.

I've been up all night trying to find a way to design such a battery, but so far all I've been able to do is marvel at the shear ease of the Apple battery removal. My designs required 20 screws be removed!

Re:If only....

[m.ducharme]

Now if only someone could design a laptop battery that is removable without opening the case. I know, I know, this is WAY too futuristic in this day and age, even for a company like Apple with the appropriate vision.

You mean, like the battery on the bottom of my macbook, that pops out with the turn of a coin? Apple is more than capab^w^w^w^w has already designed laptops with removable batteries. If they didn't on the new macbook pros, then they made that choice for a reason. You may not like that reason, but that's fine.

I, for one, am glad I didn't wait for the new macbooks to come out before I bought mine.

Re:If only....

[Anonymous Coward]

i for one, don't like the reason.

Re:If only....

[zach_the_lizard]

Wait, wait, wait....

You mean to tell me that Apple has produced a removeable battery!? And it's not present on a newer model!? This must be a myth. No technology that advanced could ever be removed from a future model.

I understand. The ways of the Steve (Peace be upon Him) are mysterious indeed, and I need to get back to studying them.

Re:If only....

[EvilIdler]

Or the batteries on the other unibody Macbooks ;)

It's only the 17" unibody which has this tricky battery. The smaller models, Macbook and Macbook Pro, have batteries which can be pulled out without loosening a single screw.

Re:If only....

[Refrag]

I wish I could buy a 15" MacBook Pro with a higher capacity, non-user-serviceable battery.

Re:But the battery is still $189

[Malc]

The so called Apple Tax comes with second-to-none customer support. My MBP is just over a year old. My battery started playing up a fortnight ago. I called Apple, and in no time whatsoever they had a brand new replacement battery in the mail to me. Oh, and I bought the laptop in the US, I live in Canada, but I'm currently visiting Australia. Try getting that level of service out of Dell.

Only 13 screws?

[damn_registrars]

You can remove the engine from an original beetle by removing only 6 bolts, IIRC. The water pump on my slightly newer vehicle was held in by 13 bolts, for that matter. I can pull the motherboard out of my thinkpad with less than 13 screws, for that matter...

Re:Only 13 screws?

[dfghjk]

What do you mean by original?

The engine in the beetle was attached to the transmission by only 4 bolts, but there was a large number of fasteners holding the cooling sheet metal together. 6 fasteners is not very close.

Re:Only 13 screws?

[MarkTina]

I thought you removed the engine of a Beetle by driving around ?

Re:Only 13 screws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damnit, my arm is latched on to my shoulder with only 13 screws !

Huh?

[Falconhell]

Ah, this is obviously some strange new meaning of the phrase easy to replace.

IANAL, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... isn't this some kind of DMCA violation?

Re:IANAL, but...

[Bandman]

Only if Apple asserts that the case was cryptographically assembled to protect intellectual property.

Of course, having taken apart some powerbooks, they might have a case on their hands...

Re:IANAL, but...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Couldn't an argument be made that tamperproof screws constitute some sort of protection mechanism that would fall under the DMCA?

Hell, lawyers have argued stupider things before...

It pissed so many folks off they lead the market

[cpu_fusion]

Maybe the average consumer isn't a poweruser like you and me?

The funny thing...

[weston]

is how far Apple's fallen here since the design of the Lombard/Pismo Powerbook. Those things would hold two batteries in different swappable bays. This meant that not only was it DEAD EASY to swap out a battery, you could actually keep a laptop running indefinitely on a series of charged batteries ... without having to power down.

I suppose individual battery life has improved somewhat, but that's pretty much scant comfort.

only 13 screws TOTAL

[tyme]

it appears that nobody, including the submitter, read the actual source article (I know: I must be new here).

In fact, there are 10 screws that hold the bottom plate on the machine, not 13 as indicated in the summary, then three screws that hold hold the battery in place.

Yes, the three screws that hold the battery in place are weird, tamper-resistant screws, but you can easily make a driver for them by filing down three points on a torx driver of the appropriate size (I did this about 15 years ago in order to open my first Gameboy, which used similar tamper resistant screws).

If you're not up for filing down a few points on a torx driver, you have no business fiddling around inside a laptop anyhow.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Bandman]

While I have replaced the hard drive in a TiBook before (and I don't recommend that for anyone, anytime), I've got to say. Big difference between 10 phillips-head and 3 security screws and the little plastic sliding latch on my Dell.

Yes, the water-carved-from-a-single-block-of-unobtanium is cool, but usability is higher on my list.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[MentlFlos]

or geek up and get the screw driver kit you should already have http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=91310

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[couchslug]

"If you're not up for filing down a few points on a torx driver, you have no business fiddling around inside a laptop anyhow."

True, and if you have a Dremel and a fine abrasive bit you can trim the torx even more easily.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[nick.ian.k]

If you're not up for filing down a few points on a torx driver, you have no business fiddling around inside a laptop anyhow.

Fuck the filing. If the battery were removable, you wouldn't be fiddling around inside a laptop to begin with. Something simple and routine has been made needlessly complex. People can argue "but road warriors are a niche!" and such all they want - 1.5 years out, ordinary people who like using laptop computers as laptop computers suddenly finding themselves having to go to the damned Genius Bar to change out a battery are going to be pissed.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could do something totally insane and just buy a proper tri-wing screwdriver? There's tons on ebay for cheap.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, only 13 screws. Man, I don't know why I was getting so frustrated before.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Usability is also higher on my list, which is why the better battery life from axing swappable batteries is a winner for me. I've never - literally never - swapped out a battery on my laptops, and my personal computers have been exclusively laptops for the past seven years. I haven't gotten a power adapter for flights, and yet I still haven't had a problem coding and compiling to my heart's content while flying between SF and NYC - even taking a break to watch an episode of Freaks And Geeks on DVD. There have been a few times over the years where a few minutes of extra battery time would have been cool, and this change covers them.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[ceoyoyo]

The non-removable battery enhances usability for the vast majority of people. I have two batteries for my MBP and other for my older one. VERY occasionally I carry the second battery and swap the two to give me about eight hours of careful use. If I could get an eight hour battery that wasn't removable? Count me in.

I expect 99% of Apple's laptop customers NEVER carry a spare battery.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[liquidsin]

not so pissed that they don't upgrade to a new powerbook next cycle anyways.

not everyone cares whether or not they can change the battery themselves. you think most people swap out the (easily user replaceable) battery in their car when it dies? shit, my mom can barely replace the batteries in her remote control.

the vast majority of users have zero interest in doing any sort of service themselves. when i did HP phone tech support, we'd get users wanting us to send them a tech to open tray one and clear a paper jam. most consumers want to consume, not tinker. apple is betting that their target audience will appreciate the design choice. i'm betting they did their homework. don't like it? don't buy one.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I expect a major revolt against this -- like we saw in the past when it came to watch batteries and car batteries. History has shown us that blood will be shed. I feel bad for the Genius Bar pawns who'll die in the name of larger batteries with better charge time that aren't swappable, because Apple is clearly in the wrong. Give me shorter charge times for the sake of swappability that I've never used in my life, or give me death!

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap, that's only five bucks?

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[zippthorne]

Ordinary people.. who bought the most expensive macbook pro....

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god for $0.20/h the work labors of china!

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[nick.ian.k]

not so pissed that they don't upgrade to a new powerbook next cycle anyways.

I never suggested they weren't stupid, hypocritical, etc.

not everyone cares whether or not they can change the battery themselves. you think most people swap out the (easily user replaceable) battery in their car when it dies? shit, my mom can barely replace the batteries in her remote control.

Your mom's likely not buying the hotshit new Apple products! We're not talking about her and her fumble-fingers and techno fear, we're talking about people already predisposed to buying a premium laptop or notebook computer. This category ranges from Macbook Pro-needing professionals making informed decisions to clueless dickheads with money to burn looking for a status symbol to wing around the coffee shop or board room (if you don't think there an awful lot of these people, you're walking around with a blindfold on). It's likely these people have had contact with a notebook before and have engaged in the rather simple process of undoing or sliding a latch mechanism and popping out the battery.

the vast majority of users have zero interest in doing any sort of service themselves. when i did HP phone tech support, we'd get users wanting us to send them a tech to open tray one and clear a paper jam. most consumers want to consume, not tinker. apple is betting that their target audience will appreciate the design choice. i'm betting they did their homework. don't like it? don't buy one.

You want to talk about people not being interested in self-service and then you go on about people appreciating design choices? Get a fucking grip. The "clueless rube" category of people who can't fathom one can't wrap their heads around the other, they're just capable of affording teh shiny. And when these people learn that an operation that, in other brand portable computers, requires just as much skill as switching the batteries in their TV remote, they're not going to go, "Oh, well, Steve & Co. made this clever design choice that yields X Y and Z," they're going to go "That's fucking stupid, I could change the battery on my old [brand of choice here] and this expensive bastard doesn't let me at all. I have to sink time into getting someone else to do it for me, which likely means time away from my precious device. What a waste."

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[JustNilt]

Holy crap, that's only five bucks?

Harbor Freight, the "99 cent" store of hardware/tools. They've actually got some ridiculously cheap prices on some items that you just don't need top quality for, as in the GP's link. I wouldn't use them for everything but hell, sometimes they're the best game around. I was going to post that link myself as I hate the expensive sets other places sell.

As an aside:

I just replied to an AC. I feel dirty.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the 15" then. The 17" is unwieldy anyway.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[jonaskoelker]

uid6621> I know: I must be new here.

No, you just haven't figured out how the uid autoincrement works quite yet :p

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[drinkypoo]

Thank god for $0.20/h the work labors of china!

I wouldn't actually assume they get paid that much, or in fact, anything at all. China has state-operated work-slavery camps.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[parkrrrr]

I have this set that seems a little better suited to working on laptops. It comes with a wider variety of the smaller screw sizes you see in such applications, including the tiny Torx bits and the triwing bit.

Note, too, that the bits in this set are smaller than the standard 1/4" hex shank - these are 5/32" - so they're more likely to fit in the smaller spaces you get in laptops.

And, replying to what another poster has said, if the hardness of the steel is a problem for you in a tiny application like this, you're probably torquing the screws a bit too hard.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[nick.ian.k]

Yeah, I expect a major revolt against this -- like we saw in the past when it came to watch batteries and car batteries. History has shown us that blood will be shed. I feel bad for the Genius Bar pawns who'll die in the name of larger batteries with better charge time that aren't swappable, because Apple is clearly in the wrong. Give me shorter charge times for the sake of swappability that I've never used in my life, or give me death!

Obviously you posted AC because your argument's shit. Laptop batteries *elsewhere* are generally piss-easy trivial to change out. Get some experience and crank up those comprehension skills, or go back to drawing dicks on your comp book.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I bought an assortment of "security" bits at my local data cable supplier (place which sells racks, punch downs, any kind of cable you need, security cameras, cable testers, etc..) for less than $20. I needed it when removing a drive from an IBM hot swap sled. They used Torx, but with a center pin, so you need a torx bit with a hole in the center. I was not about to order IBM sledded drives when I hab perfectly good older SCA drives lying around by the dozens. You can also order a cheap triwing screwdriver for like $1.98 from several of the websites that sell junk by mail from Hong Kong. I think people are too freaked out, I have a much cheaper Acer laptop (work bought them...) wich needs 4 or 5 screws and several plastic snap-in joints to add memory... it's no big deal, and I don't think I even know anybody who owns two laptop batteries.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Rich0]

Just think how much effort has gone into designing screws which underperform conventional designs in every way, and whose only virtue is that it requires a hard-to-find tool to turn...

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[liquidsin]

You want to talk about people not being interested in self-service and then you go on about people appreciating design choices? Get a fucking grip. The "clueless rube" category of people who can't fathom one can't wrap their heads around the other, they're just capable of affording teh shiny.

you've not spent much time with artists, have you? i can probably come up with a dozen people off the top of my head who bought macs for graphic design, video production, recording audio, etc. they appreciate the design. they don't care to tinker. and they are apple's target audience.

"That's fucking stupid, I could change the battery on my old [brand of choice here] and this expensive bastard doesn't let me at all. I have to sink time into getting someone else to do it for me, which likely means time away from my precious device. What a waste."

i hate to reuse my old points, but take a look at how easy it is to change a car battery, and then consider how many people will take it to the shop. and i'd bet it's just as prevalent, if not more so, with "people already predisposed to buying a premium [product]". you seem to be assuming that user-serviceability is a given with a "premium" product, or that that's something that the majority of their customers care about.

Re:only 13 screws TOTAL

[Huge_UID]

Thanks for the link! Now I can take apart the bathroom stalls at work.

Ewww... I usually don't defend Apple choices

[Shivetya]

but honestly what are we losing? While I won't purchase one on the simple grounds is that it is hilariously overpriced. I mean, people on Apple forums deride gamers who buy silly cases or pay extra for AW yet turn around and go all ga-ga over the new macbook cases. Hell they feel honored to pay $50 extra for a matte screen surface!

No, in this case there is no net loss for consumer or Apple. Face it, the majority of those who might take one on a long flight are going to be in the class that allows them to plug it in. Even then most who do fly usually are well prepared enough to not need to do extensive work in flight. Short hops on trains don't even raise an eye with a battery that can last as long as this one is. Let us also toss out the fact most travelers don't use 17" laptops in the first place, the size is annoying.

So, comparing it to the iPod issue. The iPod is something you could likely keep and not need or want to replace after killing the battery. Early ones had streaks of bad batteries but for the most part that isn't an issue now.

Last point, how could they or anyone have learned? Who else has made a laptop that the battery isn't easily removable? Let alone one as capable? Time will tell if the decision is bad. From what I read on the forums the biggest issues that come up is the obnoxious cost, not the battery.

Can you imagine the hell that would be raised if it didn't support fire wire? Now that would get the masses in an uproar :P

ahahah

[Cam42]

A measly 16 screws. Dang... Plus you gotta take it apart first. haha.

Oh, so it's easy!

[Bandman]

Cross the chasm of doom, fight the dragon, and then just pick up the crystal of enchantment.

Simple.

Not User Serviceable != Non removable

[mccoy1701]

No one ever said it would be unremovable, and if it was, they sure as hell wouldn't be offering a battery replacement for $180 (Can we say replacement MLB or whole unit swap?). Besides, how many people who are complaining both: a) own/would ideally own a 17-inch MacbookPro and b) swap between working batteries in said computer? The answer is few if any. Don't hate on Apple for doing something different, just because it's different, or it's not what a small portion of the public wants in that product.

have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[SuperBanana]

Just 16 screws?

Hell yes. Ever removed the hard drive from an iBook?

I have, about a dozen times. It requires nearly complete dis-assembly. I had about sixteen PILES of different screws. When I took one apart that was for parts, the screws could have filled about a third of a shot glass. You need a large table, mostly to hold sheets of paper with areas marked out for keeping track of where the screws came from (not terribly hard to remember, but better safe than sorry.)

Total time to disassemble, swap drives, and re-assemble, after you've had practice? I think the fastest I ever did it was a little under an hour. Add extra if you refresh the loctite coatings on the screws that have it (recommended for machines which are young and will be kept for a while; the screws loosen up quite a bit with age.)

I don't know which was worse: the numerous (and continued, throughout the life of the series) major defects, or how badly it was designed WRT servicing. It's almost like they intentionally designed it to be a bitch to service to make up for thinner sales margins so they could nail people (mostly students and teachers) on labor after the glorious one-year warranty expires.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always buy the 3 year extension for what really amounts to a pittance.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[swillden]

You could always buy the 3 year extension for what really amounts to a pittance.

And with the iBook, you needed to.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

i hear you, brother... i hear you...

by the end, the magnesium frame going around the battery (L shaped skinny piece on the corner where left palm is) had snapped off. i had it attached to the plastic covers, but it wasn't very sturdy...

but at this rate, i'll still be an apple user for the rest of my life.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Jon Abbott]

I experienced the same thing recently while disassembling a WD MyBook external hard drive. My solution to the screw dilemma: throw away the screws that don't appear to fit (and don't appear to affect structural integrity) upon reassembly. There were two of them. Strangely, neither of them appeared to secure the drive to the external drive case any better. The drive powered up fine and works nicely. (Yes, I can hear you saying "For now!" under your breath)

Replacing a HD in a user-serviceable iMac G5 is pretty easy, but it takes a Torx T10 screwdriver (which their DIY service instructions neglect to mention). Thankfully I had multiple Torx bits around from replacing a PowerBook G4 hard drive before. I'm wondering how easy the Mac Pros are for replacing a hard drive... It looks like it's entirely screwless, which would be a nice change.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[isorox]

Total time to disassemble, swap drives, and re-assemble, after you've had practice? I think the fastest I ever did it was a little under an hour.

Isn't it cheaper to simply buy a new one?

If you enjoy it, work on something more satisfying.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[ColdWetDog]

My solution to the screw dilemma: throw away the screws that don't appear to fit (and don't appear to affect structural integrity) upon reassembly.

Ah yes, the old concept of "adding lightness".

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Hal_Porter]

You could always buy the 3 year extension for what really amounts to a pittance.

Which of course is the real reason for Apple switching to non removable batteries.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[DarkVader]

I can do it in under half an hour. It's still a pain. I have no idea how many times I've done it, it's well over a dozen, probably over a hundred.

I suggest smaller table and ice cube tray, btw. Make sure your screwdrivers are magnetized.

I didn't think it was that bad in terms of defects, I had a 12" iBook G4 for a few years and it didn't really give me much trouble. I believe it's still in service today with the person I sold it to.

And servicing is always a mixed bag. The keyboard is really easy to replace - and usually took the worst of the liquid spills that were probably second most common to drops in terms of damaged machines.

But in terms of labor charges... I can do anything in terms of hardware repair on the iBooks in under an hour - and since it's my minimum charge, it's no worse than replacing an optical drive in a Mac Pro for your labor bill.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[JonJ]

The AppleCare Protection Plan does not cover batteries.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Hal_Porter]

Hmm, so before you paid for AppleCare and once the battery wore out you bought a third party battery which you could fit yourself.

Now you pay for AppleCare and get them to fit a new battery. They force you to buy a more expensive Apple battery and once you are out of warranty they charge you to fit it too. Unless of course you're happy taking your notebook apart, but the whole point of Apple is that they sell things to people who aren't.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Splab]

Tried getting the hard drive out from one of them colored CRT Macs back when I was doing IT for a university and needed the drive out for destruction. God those are a pain to disassemble, when I started it I was going for a reusable Mac, but after fighting the damned thing for most of 30 minutes I started using violence to get inside the thing.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[RedK]

The battery and it's installation is all covered under the same 179$ price. There's no extra charge for Apple doing any work. The battery also lasts 1000 cycle vs the standard 300.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Hal_Porter]

If you could replace it yourself you could buy a third party battery. Since you have a choice it seems likely you'd pay less than $179

As the register put it
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/14/17_inch_macbook_battery/

If you assume that the costs of a replaceable battery's case, contacts, latches, and other hardware might cancel out the labor cost of the MacBook Pro's battery replacement, the Apple laptop battery isn't inexpensive when compared with batteries for other 17-inch laptops. The battery for the HP Pavilion dv7t series is $139, for example, and the battery for the Toshiba Satellite P300-ST3712 runs $149.99. Of the laptops we looked at, only the battery for the Dell XPS M1730 is more expensive, at $189.99.

Furthermore, the 17-inch MacBook Pro's integrated battery makes it impossible for the frugal MacBooker to pick up a third-party replacement (or spare), such as the $129 battery from MacConnection.com for the previous 17-inch MacBook Pro.

We're willing to bet, however, that when the first 17-inch MacBook Pro batteries need replacement in three to five years, enterprising shops such as TechRestore will offer less-expensive alternatives.

See from Apple's point of view the integrated battery is much better. They get $179 instead of MacConnection.com getting $129. From the user's point of view they are $50 down on the deal. In fact I'm surprised they don't add some authentication to the battery to stop TechRestore taking their money.

They could use one of these chips
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-locks-tv-out-in-new-ipods-breaks-video-add-ons/

Presently, the only apparent way to turn this feature on is if you connect your iPod to a device with an Apple authentication chip built in. Authentication chips are only available in Apple products, and in a handful of products made by Apple-licensed third-party developers. The chips are not available to unlicensed developers, and add additional costs to the prices of iPod accessories. Upcoming Apple video cables that will work with the new iPods will sell for a staggering $49.

They irritated me by stopping my iPod touch from charging from a 5V adapter with a USB socket. Official Apple chargers put non standard voltages on D+ and D- to authenticate themselves.

http://forums.ilounge.com/archive/index.php/t-166847.html

There's no user benefit to this feature, it's just an attempt to get people to buy official Apple chargers

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[zeet]

Then you were an idiot. The only difficult to service part on the original iMac was the power board. The rest was easy; I did warranty service for Apple at the time and loved working on those machines.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[petermgreen]

Lets assume 250 working days in a year and an 8 hour day thats 2000 working hours per year (approximations but easilly right to within an order of magnitude).

So if you get payed $100000 a year and the overheads of employing you are equal to your salery then your time is costing your employer about $100 per hour.

Figure $100 for your time and $100 for the drive and it's still easilly cheaper than a replacement laptop.

Also if your employer is well organised and has a reasonable ammount of spare machines they should be able to arrange things so that "fixing up old machines" is done on time that would otherwise be spent idle.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[RedK]

You're entirely missing the point that this battery has over 3 times the lifetime of all those batteries you compared it to. Not to mention it also has about twice the capacity and thus can last longer between charges. All for 50$ and not 2 or 3 times the price. You're just comparing apple and oranges here.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost like they intentionally designed it to be a bitch to service to make up for thinner sales margins so they could nail people (mostly students and teachers) on labor after the glorious one-year warranty expires.

I guarantee you Apple's #1 cost priority when designing things is always manufacturing cost, not warranty service cost. From their perspective, as long as they're doing their job right, not many units will be coming back for service, pre- or post-warranty (*). However, by definition, they MUST pay the assembly cost on every unit. Service cost is at best a secondary concern.

That doesn't mean low service cost and low manufacturing cost are necessarily contradictory goals. If it's a bitch to take apart and reassemble a machine for warranty, that also means it's a relative bitch to put together in the first place, and that translates to higher labor costs.

There are some places where service and manufacturing costs scale inversely. For a while Apple was in love with tape in its notebooks. It's easy for the assembler to slap a patch of tape on to hold a cable in the right place, but it creates a big pain in the butt for the service technician who has to remove it without damaging the cable. (Internal cables in notebooks are usually rather delicate.)

But the bucket-o-screws approach? Definitely bad for both manufacturing and service.

(*) If you design to avoid failures inside a 1 year warranty period, you're also designing to avoid failures beyond that period. Most things which survive a year will survive a lot longer than that. Yes, many iBooks had a specific failure mode which tended to happen outside warranty, but Apple ended up offering a special 7 year warranty extension covering that defect. There are enough consumer protection laws on the books that a company like Apple can count on eating the repair costs if they screw up badly enough.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Please, please, let me stop running into stuff like this that reminds me of how much "fun" I had repairing those over the years. I did it so many times that I was able to get it down to about 20 minutes start to finish for replacing the hard drive. After a while, you don't even have to think about it anymore, and it becomes mostly a matter of how fast you can move your fingers while still keeping them steady. The way I did it was always to set the bottom case next to the computer itself and lay the screws in the position on the case that matched up with where they went inside the computer, so everything always ends up exactly where it came from without having to remember or keep track of anything other than that. Words cannot express how relieved I am that my sister's old iBook died for good after she gave it to her boyfriend last year. With any luck, I may never see the inside of one again.

Re:have you ever removed an iBook hard drive?

[isorox]

So if you get payed $100000 a year and the overheads of employing you are equal to your salery then your time is costing your employer about $100 per hour.

Figure $100 for your time and $100 for the drive and it's still easilly cheaper than a replacement laptop.

Once you have practice it's 1 hour, first time more like 2, I know plenty of people who charge way more than $500 an hour.

Best news ever...

[RedBear]

Best news ever...

Why? Because there are just 13 screws to remove and they're all on the outside! Sounds like a lot but it's dead simple compared to every model that came before!

All previous generations of MacBook Pros, PowerBooks and iBooks required major surgery internally and the removal of dozens of different screws from different areas just to do something simple like a hard drive upgrade. MacBooks and the newest 15" MacBook Pro models have FINALLY changed that and made the hard drive accessible just by removing the battery. I was afraid that this new unibody 17" model was the last holdout and would still be a major pain to upgrade, but this changes everything.

Now I'm going to go buy one, whereas before seeing this I would have bought the 15" model just for the ability to easily upgrade the hard drive. This is truly major news, but it should have been all about the hard drive, not the battery that almost nobody will ever need to replace. The hard drive is something that almost everyone will eventually want to upgrade on this machine.

Simply awesome news. This really makes my day. I can't believe it's so easy to get inside it and upgrade everything. It's amazing how few items are in the breakout photo at the top of the page. A child could put it back together.

Re:Best news ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Still like my thinkpad.
Battery: 2 Clips.
Hard Drive: No Clips, No Screws. Held in by friction. (I might have lost the 1 thumb screw.)

Re:Best news ever...

[CompMD]

Oh, its so easy!!

Give me a break.

It takes 2 seconds to swap batteries on my ancient Powerbook 520c, and I can even have two of them installed at once.

Apple *used* to make much, much more useful laptops.

What about ram?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know on my laptop the directions say to remove the battery when installing ram. What about the MacBook? Is it necessary to remove the battery?

(Super flame-bait but still funny...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Continued proof that Mac users are still a bunch of limp-wristed pansies.

What about emergency battery removal?

[booyabazooka]

Quite frankly, most people don't change their laptop battery EVER.

Neither do I, but when I dumped a can of Dr. Pepper onto my eee last week, I was glad I could slide two switches and pull the battery out in just a couple seconds.

you're missing the point

[MarcoAtWork]

I think Apple going with an internal battery has a lot more to do with not having to waste space/weight making the battery 'safe' on its own (I bet batteries have to pass all sort of puncture/drop/freezing/other tests).

Having the battery inside the aluminum shell enables them to leverage the computer case to pass whichever test they need to, which means less material used to user-proof the battery, which means more capacity.

And why wouldn't they make it easy to change? After all they do plan to be able to if they service your laptop...

WOW, only 13 screws TOTAL???

[mangu]

Oh, and here I was believing that removing that battery was something difficult!

you can easily make a driver for them by filing down three points on a torx driver of the appropriate size

What's this "Torx" you mention? How does it taste? I think I've never heard of this stuff, I prefer Gatorade myself, but of course each to his own taste...

If you're not up for filing down a few points on a torx driver, you have no business fiddling around inside a laptop anyhow.

Last time I had a new battery in my Swatch the guy used a nickel to open the case. You say we need to file the point of a soft-drink can to change the battery in an Apple notebook? Sounds complicated...

Why, though?

[reidconti]

I agree, but after looking at the pictures, I wonder why it couldn't have been made removable? I almost never remove my laptop battery and would be fine with the arrangement shown, for those rare occasions (battery swap when the old one starts showing it's age, for example).

But the battery isn't exactly a strange/unweildy shape that means a removable battery impossible. On the other hand, Apple's other notebooks (minus the Air) have removable batteries, so it's not like the company's opposed to them in principle.

Just seems strange. Maybe if I saw it in person I'd understand why it would have been difficult to make removable and still retain the same form factor for the laptop.

Re:Ewww... I usually don't defend Apple choices

[Grishnakh]

How many people ever change their laptop battery anyway? I don't mean after 3-5 years when it dies, but to quickly swap it out for more runtime. As you said, anyone that dedicated to running their laptop while traveling will probably be in the class where they can just plug it in.

As far as I'm concerned, easily replaceable batteries are an unnecessary feature in most portable devices that just result in lower battery capacity. I've never needed to quickly swap out the battery in my laptop, or my MP3 player for that matter. If I need really long runtime, I just bring the charger, which is a lot smaller and lighter usually than a replacement battery (at least a laptop battery). And when the battery finally dies, if I'm still using the product, I don't have a problem getting out some screwdrivers and replacing a battery.

Re:But the battery is still $189

[Urza9814]

I had Gateway send me a free motherboard for a computer that was two years out of warranty. Would Apple do that?

Re:So? Who uses Apple anyway?

[mabhatter654]

they did OK with the Macbook Air... that one seemed to go pretty well. Probably the same guy's idea.

niche markets

[speedtux]

Yes, there are road warriors out there that do buy 2 or 3 batteries and rotate them daily. They aren't most people, they are a niche.

So are people who pay $2800 for a laptop.

Re:niche markets

[vux984]

So are people who pay $2800 for a laptop.

Good call. They are also, more importantly =different= niches. Road
warriors who want the ultimate portable they can swap batteries on the fly with aren't likely to be carrying around 17" 3k$ desktop replacement laptops.

They tend to shoot for smaller more portable devices with long battery life.

I'm a little confused

[DJRumpy]

I have a new (er) Macbook Pro. The batter is easily removed by pushing up on two tabs on the back cover much like any standard laptop battery setup. I take it the newest (released in Jan?) aren't accessible in this fasion?

How do you power down?

[colinrichardday]

To those of you saying that an irremovable battery is OK, what do you do if the laptop freezes up and the power button doesn't work? On my laptop I just slide out the battery (assuming no AC). I once had my mom's Thinkpad do that, and I just had to wait for the battery to die, as I did not wish to break a seal (the battery is external).

Re:How do you power down?

[TW Burger]

Exactly, what I was thinking. But the Macbook Pro is not a Wintel PC (although it is now Intel based) and I am sure it must have a way to do a complete reset. Is there anyone out there with a Macbook Pro that knows?

I like to complain with my dollars. If I can't swap batteries I will not but a Macbook no matter how nice it is. I can change the battery in my HP laptop in a few seconds with one latch. The non-user-serviceable battery is a bad design in my opinion but it is Apple's choice. We have lots of options available.

Re:How do you power down?

[ceoyoyo]

I've had various Powerbooks and MBPs for about ten years, using them a minimum of eight hours a day, and have never had one freeze to the point where holding the power button didn't reset it.

Re:How do you power down?

[colinrichardday]

Who are you to question Him?

An adherent of the Church of GNU Emacs

Re:How do you power down?

[dch24]

The most stringent reset process is the Parameter Reset (the equivalent of taking out the CMOS/NVRAM battery) - Command+Option+P+R

Safe Mode is activated by holding down shift.

An easy option is to just hold down the power button until the machine powers off. This is usually controlled by the power microcontroller and cannot be disabled by the OS.

Of course, while in MacOS, you should be able to hit Command+Option+Esc to force quit any frozen application.

This article summarizes your options.

Re:How do you power down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could have just held the power button down for 4 seconds.

Re:How do you power down?

[Spamboi]

As with any PC hardware which implements ACPI (basically every modern system), you use the "power button override." See ACPI v. 3.0b section 4.7.2.3 "Sleeping/Wake Control. The description of the PM1.PWRBTN_STS bit in Table 4-11 gives further details.

In short: press and hold the power button for 4 seconds, and the system will transition straight to the G2/S5 Soft Off state.

Re:How do you power down?

[bytta]

Clearly your mom's Thinkpad wasn't running OSX.
Suggesting that OSX might freeze up is just ludicrous.

Re:How do you power down?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

And is this really such a common problem?

BTW, there's nothing stopping you disconnecting the battery, as far as I could tell, just a label preventing you from removing it.

Re:How do you power down?

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you do if the laptop freezes up and the power button doesn't work?

Minor flamebait I know, but this doesn't generally happen on Macs. Not saying it could never happen, mind.

Re:How do you power down?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yeah, well when the computer is frozen, then any solution that involves pressing keys ISN'T GOING TO WORK. That's the whole idea of a hardware reset.

Re:How do you power down?

[CountBrass]

You press and hold the power button.

There's never been a need to remove the battery on a Macbook in order to reset it.

And the only time I've had to was whilst I'd Bootcamped into Windows...

Re:How do you power down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold down the power button for 5 seconds, like on every other MacBook.

Re:How do you power down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should read the post you're replying to?

This is usually controlled by the power microcontroller and cannot be disabled by the OS.

That means the power button still work even if the OS is frozen.

Wait, wait.

[rantingkitten]

Are they saying that if I take something apart, I can access the components inside? That's astonishing.

13 tiny screws?

[iminplaya]

No biggie. Our insect overlords can deal. And it's easier here on earth. Hail Ants!

Insect Overlords?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the robot overlords? I made welcome posters, dammit.

Re:So? Who uses Apple anyway?

[Nyeerrmm]

I believe the idea was that they were able to custom fit higher energy-storage batteries. The latches and casings to include a removable battery aren't insignificant in terms of weight and volume, so there is a certain argument for eliminating them. With an 8-hour battery life, it seems fair to expect that most people won't be itching to change it all the time.

I've never really made use of the fact that my laptops have removable batteries, except for replacement after years of use (which 16 screws isn't terribly difficult for long-term replacement). At the same time, with a 17" laptop I have trouble believing the extra weight and volume would make much difference... doing it for the air makes more sense to me.

If it is an important feature to you, there's the 15" MBP (which is probably better for travelling anyway). And I guess the small part of the market that really wants a 17" with a removable battery isn't a large concern for Apple... if they wanted to fill every niche we'd see the xMac, a netbook, a tablet, and everything else people have been asking for for a long time.

An overlooked issue - resetting the PMU

[tubegeek]

On my MacBook, resetting the PMU goes like this: shut down/ remove AC adapter plug/ remove battery/ hold power button down and count to 30 or so/ put it all back together and start up (and run fsck -fy while you're at it just for shits and giggles)/ Profit! What are you supposed to do if this model needs resetting? You can't tell me they'd add back a reset button on this gorgeous piece of sculptural aluminum, that'd piss Jobs off something fierce.

Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

What about the hard drive? I will not turn over a laptop for service without removing the disk. On my ThinkPad, that takes removing one screw. Apparently it takes 13 on the new 17" MBP.

Things I can replace on the ThinkPad with 6 screws or less:

- Keyboard
- Memory
- Touchpad
- Hard drive
- Optical drive
- WLAN card
- WWAN card
- Modem
- Clock battery
- DC power connector (it's on a separate PCB, not soldered to the system board)
- Battery

Keyboards break when you dump Diet Coke on them. Hard drives crash. Clock batteries die. Batteries get recalled.

What do you do when your ThinkPad is out of warranty and something breaks? You buy the part for cheap on eBay, download the service manual for free, and spend 20 minutes replacing the part. Or, if you're not savvy, you pay someone to do it for you - and it's relatively cheap.

What about when your MacBook breaks and isn't under warranty?

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[lliinnuuxxlover]

> What about when your MacBook breaks and isn't under warranty?

    Well I guess you iReplace it! -)

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about when your MacBook breaks and isn't under warranty?

When was the last time you saw a 3+ year old Apple laptop in the wild? I don't think this will be a big issue for the typical Mac user.

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[EvanED]

When was the last time you saw a 3+ year old Apple laptop in the wild?

Last night.

I thought very long lives were a selling pt of Apple laptops, used as an argument why the extra cost is offset?

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[Hannes2000]

but... but... it just works!!1 right...?

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about when your MacBook breaks and isn't under warranty?

You buy a new one.

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Did you even look at the fixit guide? It may be 10 screws (a whole 4 more screws!) to take the back off, but that's hardly a chore -- no prying apart plastic tabs etc. And then the HDD is sitting right there and is pretty easy to replace (2 screws), along with a lot of other things. You're replacing a HDD -- does it really matter if it takes an extra 30 seconds on top of everything else involved? Perhaps the keyboard is another matter, but a small price to pay for a keyboard that doesn't bounce, IMHO. The magsafe connector is also on a separate board -- even though there is less chance of damaging it to begin with.

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[RMH101]

This is a pretty good point. I don't expect it to last too long now they're 100% Lenovo but this is why the Thinkpads are great for corporate use: they're easy to field service, parts are cheap, and they have put some thought into making their products robust: my old X61s had *drainage holes* so that liquid spilt on the keyboard could exit without causing too much damage - and this is on an ultralight.
"Designed by engineers", not "engineered by designers" comes to mind...

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[CountBrass]

Oh yeah with a Macbook it's much more complicated, here's what you do. You buy the part cheap on eBay or ifixit, you download the service manual for free and spend 20 minutes replacing the part. Or, if you're not savvy, you pay someone to do it for you - and it's relatively cheap.

Better to remain silent and thought a fool than speak and confirm it.

Re:Forget the battery - what about the hard drive?

[drinkypoo]

I'll just chime in here and say that 10 screws for opening the case is downright minimalistic. You do NOT want to see how many fucking screws there are in a HP/Compaq land yacht laptop. If you take as a given that the internal battery is acceptable then there's really no room to complain about having to take out ten screws to swap a disk, or add memory.

How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me for asking, how does one actually smoke a cock?

Is it detachable? Which end do I lite?
Or is it some sort of Hookah/Waterbong?

So what you're saying is...

[Rix]

That the MacBook's battery is not, in fact, easy to remove.

Which is exactly what I said.

I couldn't rtfa

[Rix]

It was slashdotted when I tried.

Piece a cake

[code4fun]

It was a lot more stressful taking apart a PowerBook 12". If Apple is going after the enterprise, it make sense to have an easily serviceable system.

Re:But the battery is still $189

[Synn]

The so called Apple Tax comes with second-to-none customer support.

So called Apple Tax? Dude, just deal that you're paying a huge premium on the machine. Nothing wrong with that.

But then there's also nothing wrong with buying a $300 EEEPC Laptop and pocketing the extra 2k.

Your options to Australia include external power

[SuperKendall]

So for the 1% of the population who take plane trips long enough that the Macbook Pro 17" 8 hour life is not quite enough computing time for you, you have these options:

1) You don't use the laptop at all - basically true of anyone not flying business class. I gave up working on even a 15" laptop in economy a long time ago. Plane seats are simply too close together to work much at all, let alone eight hours. Get a netbook or something and sync it to a larger laptop (or just use that if it's enough), would be one solution...

2) you use in-flight power, which you have if you sprung for business, which you did if you are in fact so very busy you simply must compute in-transit

3) For those of us on the fringes who simply WANT to compute in-transit as long as possible even if we really don't have a need, there are external battery packs. For the life of me I've never seen why people consider any sealed device unable to run longer than just the internal battery will allow, since these external packs are not much larger than the equivalent extra battery would be and thus are no more trouble to carry. Same goes for the iPhone, or the Air. People who have an issue with sealed batteries are people who really have a grudge to bear against the company they are complaining about (see: Apple Hater).

Just to let you know, Macs do support hotswap...

[SuperKendall]

I've never owned a laptop without buying spare batteries for it sooner or later.

But because the batteries needed to be replaced, or because you needed more power?

In the case of replacement, as this article shows a user can easily do this after the three or four year battery life is up. Or you can have the Apple store do it for free (just the cost of the battery).

If it's for more power, there are external battery packs not much larger than the extra battery you'd buy.

I bought an external battery for my Macbook Pro for a conference, but never needed it.

Too bad they don't build in a capacitor to run the laptop for 30 seconds while swapping batteries

All Macbooks with battery doors (which include the Macbook and 15" Macbook Pros) let you do this.

But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."

Look at the rest of the casing, and connector. The battery has to be strong enough to take abuse inside of a backpack or pocket without being destroyed or discharging, all of which can be done away with if you get rid of the battery case. It may not seem like much but all that structure adds up (especailly bracing structure inside the battery, not just around the edges).

Although the quality of this set...

[thrill12]

...is not that good (I bought the exact same set in The Netherlands) - it's all made in China.
The bits quite easily get damaged because the material is not as hard as it should be.
Besides that, there are quite a few devices that have their "security screws" deep inside a narrow plastic cylinder, meaning that you can't get to them using these bits (as the socket is larger than the cylinder, mostly).
Apart from that: great set to have, and I can recommend it.

Re:Although the quality of this set...

[petermgreen]

Where did you buy it?
What bits does it have?

Re:Although the quality of this set...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly the same as on the parent site:

Hex end to 1/4" drive adapter, magnetic hex bit driver, hook hanging bit (Y- design), 1/4" hex to 1/4" socket drive bit and 1/4" hex wobble adapter; also includes 8 Phillips, 8 Pozi drive, 9 slotted, 4 spanner, 9 torque, 4 tri-wing, 9 hollow tip torque, 3 torque-set, 9 metric hex, 4 square, 10 SAE hex, 3 spline, 6 hollow metric hex, 6 hollow SAE hex and 3 clutch bits
Weight: 1.90 lbs.

I bought it at the "Gamma" store in The Netherlands (like Home Depot).

Re:But the battery is still $189

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Macs are virtually 100% secure, the illusion of an "Apple Tax" is more of paying for actual security. No worries about viruses, worms, Trojans, Web browser glitches, privilege escalations, or ID thieves from offshore stealing info. A Mac user can browse the Web in safety and not have to worry second by second if a web site, or a third party ad spooger on a legit site will be transferring a rootkit to the machine.

But that's parts, Apple charge $125 to put it IN!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 189 and 125 which is helluvalot in any currency

Re:But the battery is still $189

[mlts]

This is one reason that Apple is doing so well. They sell a lot of machines to people who are not caring how much MHz the cores are, but what work they can do. If something breaks, there is both a place to call, and a place to physically talk to a live person in an Apple store. I've had to deal with PC companies who the second they even think they have a software issue, will immediately say, "aha, don't bother us, call Microsoft... ." This is also why companies pay the big bucks for enterprise class machines from IBM and Sun -- one entity to call and yell at if something goes toes up, and it doesn't matter if the problem is software, hardware, or drivers, someone will end up fixing it at that company.

Excellent

[RMH101]

Things I Have Done To My 2000UKP MacBook Pro Computer That I Couldn't Afford To Replace Anymore Whilst Drunk:
Replaced the stock hard disk with a larger one
Taken the screen apart and fitted a sheet of overhead transparency paper with the old Apple rainbow colours to make the Apple logo light up like an old Powerbook's

I'm also a big fan of flashing the firmware of anything you can get your hands on whilst under the influence of a 4 pack of beer. Nothing beats the buzz of half-assed hardware hacking!

Re:Excellent

[Trashman]

I'm also a big fan of flashing the firmware of anything you can get your hands on whilst under the influence of a 4 pack of beer.

Oh Wow you Too!?! I Love flashing firmware. I try to update firmware on almost any device I come across. //Wonder if there's a online group or website devoted to firmware flashers. hmmm.... Uh, I gotta go register a domain. ttyl.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen!

Re:Excellent

[TheMMaster]

I suggest 'drunkflashing.com' .... but it might be taken :P

Re:Excellent

[RMH101]

Aaah, there's gotta be a site dedicated to this. There's various forums for similarly obsessive stuff like Every Day Carry of microtools and stuff (edcforums, multitool.org, candlepowerforums etc).
My best firmware flash was the ECU in my Skoda Superb 1.9TDI. Up from stock 150BHP to 193BHP plus 312ft/lbs torque. I did have help with that one, though...!

The defense of Apple on this regard is pathetic.

[jotaeleemeese]

The irreplaceableness of their batteries is an anti consumer decision.

To try to paint this as a wise design decision is frankly ridiculous.

What a funny definition of easy

[DrXym]

Easy to me means AT MOST undoing a few clips or standard screws. Having to dismantle the whole underside of your laptop and calling it easy is simply ridiculous. Especially when we're talking about Apple, a company which likes to promote ease of use.

Let's face facts here. Apple deliberately makes its batteries difficult to replace because they know that doing so increases the liklihood that someone will buy a new device rather than bother changing the existing one. To compound this, they offer a battery replacement service which is both expensive and doesn't even say you will receive your old device back.

I'm sure this is great for their business but it is a cynical tactic and one I wish that someone like the EU would stamp on. All consumer devices could easily feature removeable batteries without significantly impacting on their form factor or functionality.

Whoosh...

[Viol8]

Yet another traveller misses his flight on Sarcasm Airlines...

Take a video

[PetiePooo]

Take a video of the disassembly. Run it backwards when its time to reassemble.

Re: Try replacing the hard disk

[Douglas Goodall]

I watched a video of the replacement procedure for the hard disk in my MacBook Pro 17" machine (2.4GHz). After seeing that I decided that it is unwise to do the upgrade. Not only are there about 96 screws of different types and sizes involved, there is the removal of tape, unplugging of little bitty wires, and pulling on things that resist.

If Apple offered to do upgrades, it would be worth it to let them do it right. There is no way I am trying this myself, and I am fairly confident.

easily accessible? NOT

[JustNiz]

>> easily accessible, .. just the 13 Philips screws .. and the three tri-wing security screws

16 screws is not easily accessible", especially when 3 of them need a specialised tool which is hard to find and most people don't have.

My laptop PC just has a slider that drops the battery out. Now THATS easily accessible. Why can't Apple do that? Simple... they want to make money by making the average joe have to take their computer to a dealer so they can get massively overcharged.

Re:The defense of Apple on this regard is pathetic

[Alioth]

I suspect Apple did actually do some market research, and found out how many users use extra batteries or replace them, and probably discovered the number was very small. They probably also looked at how long people use their machines off the mains.

Most people I know very rarely use their laptops for more than an hour or two off the mains. My 12in PowerBook when new 4.5 years ago, had about a 4 hour battery life; today, I still get at least two hours of use from a charge. Now consider a battery that's 8 hours when new - to get down to most people's "battery doesn't last long enough" would take at least two half-lives of the battery, so probably between 4 and 8 years depending on how much the laptop is used off the mains. So the tradeoff of making a battery that lasts longer vice making an easily replaceable battery was deemed to be worthwhile.

Geez, and Apple charge for this.

[Neanderthal Ninny]

I have a new MacBook and 15-inch MacBookPro at work and from the pictures I see the only thing that Apple did was to remove the access panel for the 17-inch MacBookPro. I don't know how much space it would have saved when they removed the access panel for the 17-inch MacBookPro but IMHO not much from these photos. The access panels for both new MacBook and 15-inch MacBookPro doesn't appear to take that much space and IMHO can fit in the 17-inch MacBookPro.
I think Apple wants to remove the access door for the 17-inch so that they can charge for replacing the battery or hard drive.

Re:Your options to Australia include external powe

[Anonymous Coward]

1%? Made up number. FAIL.

You restrict long computing sessions to airplane rides. FAIL.

8 hours? Accepting the high-end of the scale and assuming it won't go down over time. FAIL.

Only business class? HA! Liar. FAIL.

Have you priced business class for a long flight? FAIL.

Assuming only those with the big bucks need to compute. FAIL.

Assuming that "need" is the only criteria. FAIL.

Acting like an external battery is a choice for a Mac. FAIL.

Acting like an external battery is a good solution. Have you ever SEEN them? FAIL.

How about this? The reality of the 6 hour battery has dwindled to 3 hours, and there is just no power plug in that meeting room. Or, or, [insert obvious examples 2, 3, 4, 5, ...n here]

Re:Ewww... I usually don't defend Apple choices

[Refrag]

I agree with you on all of your other points, except for this one...

they feel honored to pay $50 extra for a matte screen surface

No one feels honored to pay $50 for a matte screen.

At least there ARE screws!

[Anonymous Coward]

I inherited a 21" Apple CRT back in the day. There were no screws. I took it to a service shop that wasn't familiar with Macs (we both figured, hey, it's a CRT, how hard can it be to fix?).

Neither the service guy nor I could figure out how to take it apart...except with a sharp, or very blunt instrument.