How likely is Apple to fix swollen battery out of warranty?

[baryon]

That's strange. I opened my Late 2013 13" rMBP last week and battery looked normal. It's been used since November 2013 and is at 480 cycles right now. 2015 models should be much 'younger'.

I hope it's not getting swollen anytime soon - it holds charge very well.

It's pretty random, and does not always depend on how many cycles it has or how well it holds charge. Mine was at 600 cycles when it started swelling and it held charge as if it was brand new even when it was pushing against the case and trackpad.

 

[macagain]

I have this issue on a 2014 rMBP. Trackpad is behaving erratically, case is badly bent and the lid does not close entirely anymore. Time for an emergency visit to an Apple Store I guess.
Of note, I've been using this rMBP heavily since buying it 2014 and 99.9 percent of the time in clamshell mode always plugged to power. The battery only has 14 charge cycles ! I had no idea it is not recommended to leave a macbook always plugged to power and made this discovery researching this problem.
Anyway, my next laptop will be not be a macbook but a workstation laptop designed for the battery to be replaced easily with a large battery enclosure.

The problem I think is that when it's in clamshell mode, it tends to get really hot. Heat dissipation is severely limited by not have the big surface area of the top case avail. I noticed it when I hooked up a couple of 4k displays and worked in clamshell mode. The avg temp was easily 15-20% higher than open. Given that the fact that the battery is directly under the palm rest, it'd really heated up.

 

[Rocko99991]

 

[baryon]

Great video, I hadn't found this one when I looked at whether I could do it myself or not. Other videos (and iFixit themselves) recommend removing the entire motherboard and everything from the computer to do the battery replacement, which is a lot of work. Apparently the glue-remover substance can dissolve the plastic in the speaker assembly and the motherboard.

Don't forget that iFixit doesn't use genuine Apple batteries so they may be even less reliable than the original ones. To me it was worth going to a repair shop because it only cost a little bit more, they used genuine Apple parts, and it took much less time than to wait weeks for the delivery from the US, and they gave 6 months of warranty.

 

[bobbie424242]

Fantastic video indeed, way less scary than the 54 or so steps from iFixit !
Anyway, I have an appointement with some battery geniuses next week and I really
hope Apple will replace my battery for the standard price.

 

[bobbie424242]

Got my Macbook 2014 with swollen battery to Genius bar today and they agreed to fix it (malfunctioning touchpad included, deformed case) for the price of a standard battery replacement (about 200 euros).

 

[Frieg]

not recommended, MacBook is very slow without battery

He could, the throttling by OS X because of no juice from the battery can be disabled. Used this myself while I was waiting for the new replacement battery to arrive. This completely disables the Kernel Task Throttling.
https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/kernel_task

 

[Dovahkiing]

Yes, 3rd party service will remove old battery and they will put new one

Apple can only replace whole palmrest with the battery because their policy

I like their products, but god this stuff makes me hate them so much

 

[Greg78]

All right this nearly 1 year long frustrating story has finally come to an end! There have been many Apple appointments, weeks of living without a computer, months of not being able to use the trackpad, Apple claiming that due to their poor design, the entire top case has to be removed, which I have to pay for even though I didn't come up with this poor design choice. And dodgy repair shops, some which refused to do something (which should be) as simple as a battery replacement, some which simply didn't know how to do it, while others claimed it's only possible with high-failure rate 3rd party batteries that will almost certainly explode. One little corner shop however, magically had access to this rare and expensive battery that Apple is otherwise not selling to anyone, and was willing to go through the risks and frustration of putting it in the machine and still give me warranty on it.

Total cost: roughly 200 USD and more than 1 week without a computer. That's less than a third of what Apple quoted! During that time I had to grade 3 videos, render multiple projects, and write a dissertation, all on an 11 year old Mac Mini. It would have been even less if I had gone straight to the second place.

The moral of the story is: if you buy a product in which the battery cannot be replaced by design, then you're pretty much asking for this to happen. In a way as consumers it's our fault that we've let this happen. Indeed we have little choice, because all laptops that have removable batteries are PCs. But there are other options, Hackintoshes, desktop Macs, or older Macs that still used to have removable batteries. Or simply, we have to know some really good repair shops and know how much time and money each repair is, and if it's worth it. If we stop paying more for products that are designed to "go bad" eventually, and start paying less for products that last longer and are built to last, then that's what we will get.

I have no idea what I will do once my MacBook Pro becomes obsolete, because a desktop seems very limiting, and I really don't like Windows, but I definitely don't want to buy a MacBook Pro again. Maybe an old MacPro that can still be repaired.

Now that's a happy ending to a long and arduous journey! I'm having the same problem: bottom of my Late-2013 Retina MacBook Pro slightly bulging, laptop not sitting flat. From your earlier posts I gather that you are located in Hungary, which is where I am, so can you please point me to the "little corner shop" that finally did the repair? I've already set up an appointment with an Apple Authorized Service Provider here in Budapest, but I'd be glad to know of any reliable alternatives.

 

[baryon]

Now that's a happy ending to a long and arduous journey! I'm having the same problem: bottom of my Late-2013 Retina MacBook Pro slightly bulging, laptop not sitting flat. From your earlier posts I gather that you are located in Hungary, which is where I am, so can you please point me to the "little corner shop" that finally did the repair? I've already set up an appointment with an Apple Authorized Service Provider here in Budapest, but I'd be glad to know of any reliable alternatives.

The shop is called Appsolute, located at Budapest, Tartsay Vilmos u. 26, 1126. I highly recommend them, my computer still works fine and the battery lasts as long as the original did, so I have no reason to believe they didn't use a genuine battery. They claim to only use genuine Apple parts.

They quoted 63.000 HUF for the battery replacement, but I ended up paying less since the previous shop had already removed the battery (but had nothing to replace it with). The repair took one or two business days, and I had to wait a few days for them to receive the battery. Overall it was surprisingly fast and a good experience!