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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."
Someone for forgot the <sarcasm> tag in the article summary.
Just 16 screws? How does Jobs do it? That shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so during my flight to Australia.
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?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Now all you have to do is make your own replacement battery.
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?
I don't have a screwdriver that will fit those, and I doubt many of you do either.
I thought Apple learned the lesson with the IPOD with how it pisses people off.
Guess not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
How about a working link to the tear down instead of a slashdotted page that just links to it anyway.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
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.
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!
SSC
Ah, this is obviously some strange new meaning of the phrase easy to replace.
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.
just a ghost in the machine.
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
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Cross the chasm of doom, fight the dragon, and then just pick up the crystal of enchantment.
Simple.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
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.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
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).
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?
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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!