If you follow the US automobile industry, you'll see how manufacturers were forced to recall and repair vehicles for safety faults which were many years past the original warranty period.
Further, I claim that a manufacturer cannot dodge claims for failures causing safety hazards regardless of such occurring after the explicit warranty period. I do claim that every item sold in the US has, unless explicitly stated otherwise before the sale, an implied warranty of fitness. I did not claim that the notebook was under its original explicit warranty no need to suggest otherwise. You will see that many are related to batteries, very often those manufactured by Sony, although Sony is not alone with that (Apple in the past has used batteries manufactured by Sony, as well as others.) Incidents happen occasionally, sometimes leading to repairs or recall of possible defective units.ĭo a search for "laptops on fire". Others are more "involved", and may die a more violent death. Many batteries die gently, and just lose charge capacity. Other symptoms manifest themselves in various ways, such as running hot, physical swelling, or even leaking. That's one symptom of older rechargeables as they wear out. The batteries eventually stop taking on a charge, or the charge, such as it is, lasts nowhere near as long as when new. But asking for a replacement battery is not too much things would be much worse for Apple if a fire had started.Īll rechargeable batteries deteriorate over time. I'm not asking for a replacement notebook, although that would be an acceptable compensation for the scare. No where in Apple's advertising or product documentation did it say "Do not use after warranty has expired." Nowhere did Apple ever deny an implied warranty of merchantability. Further, I had used a special stand to support the notebook so that it could get extra cooling from air passing underneath. The notebook was never abused and it along with the battery and charger are all original Apple hardware. Under warranty or out of warranty, a well treated piece of equipment should not pose a safety hazard. Both upper and lower surfaces are flat, although they are no longer aligned because the right side of the upper surface has been pushed far up with its little plastic inner latches broken to bits. If the battery is original, then 9 years is a long time for a battery to last, when many only go 3 to 5 years before losing enough charge capacity to make them useless on battery.Ĭlick to expand.I have the battery in front of me and it shows no signs of pre-event swelling. You can try taking in to an Apple store, but I think that you will find that all MacBooks that use that battery are now obsolete, and Apple won't have replacement batteries for that generation (I could be wrong on that. Not as bad as yours, but they can suddenly go "off" It had been slowly swelling for most of a year before that time.
The next time I charged it, the battery case split open. The Macbook that I have in front of me now (early 2008) had a battery that was slowly getting "fat".Īt one point, I let the battery discharge until the MacBook powered off by itself. I think it's highly unlikely that you had a perfectly flat battery. If the battery rocks instead of being flat, I call it a fail. Takes 5 seconds to pop out the battery, then flip upside down on a flat surface. But the US Postal Service refuses to ship a damaged lithium ion battery.Įvery time I see an older Macbook or MBPro - one of the first things that I check is the physical shape of the battery. I'd like to send the battery back to Apple for a replacement in exchange for me forgiving them for bad design/bad manufacturing. Perhaps I should be glad that I was in the next room and not out for an hour running an errand then coming home to a pile of ashes. While the notebook and its battery were no longer under the one year warranty, I feel that even when a warranty expires the product should not become a safety hazard. The charger was at a normal temperature, but the battery was very hot.
I immediately disconnected the changer from the notebook and unplugged it from the wall in fear that it may have been the culprit. The notebook, still running, had been pushed up and off its stand because its Apple battery (a removable one, model A1175) had given up the ghost, breaking its case with some of its cells expanding to three times their normal width. Not halfway through my pastrami sandwich, I hear a popping noise from the pantry where I had left the notebook running with its Apple charger connected. Over the weekend, I had my old yet still useful 2006 MacBook Pro do some CPU intensive work unattended while I was enjoying my lunch.