Yet another MacBook problem

I’ve been very unlucky with my Apple hardware. After a dead superdrive, case problems and dead hard drive on my first MacBook (all within the first year), the battery of my second one just died after only 18 months (not to mention the superdrive is half-dead, reading disks only when the macbook is upside down and the no-longer-detected webcam).

The battery is detected but with 0% charge and is not charging, removing the magsafe connector (easy) make you loose all your work.

I’m going to call Apple to see if I can get a free replacement…

UPDATE : ok, Apple considers that a battery dying after 18 months is totally normal. I don’t. Even more because Apple acknowledges hardware problems in their batteries but it seems that since I use my laptop every day (thus got too many cycles), my battery cannot be replaced as part of the warranty. (I still got a 30€ discount from the customer service to buy a new battery : 140-30 = 110€)

That’s really interesting because none of my 2 macbooks was still fully working after 1 year and they both got a major failure before 18 months. On the other side, my PC laptops are still working after 4/5 years, slowly, with reduced batterylife, but they are still working.

Now I understand why everybody seems to purchase the 3 years AppleCare extension. At least you know that you’ll still be able to use your laptop after 3 years without additionnal purchases (being freely replaced several times during that period).

I’m really asking myself what I’ll choose for my next laptop :

  • Apple (nice-looking and OSX, but expensive and, from my personnal experience, low quality)
  • Sony, Dell, … (cheaper, better quality but with Windows)

Posted in Apple, SAV - February 9th, 2009.



  • Hi Tom,

    Nice to see you found my blog :)

    I totaly agree with you on the benefits of OSX and I use it both at work and at home.
    But there are really a lot of hardware issues on Apple Intel laptops and many users end up with motherboard, drive or screen replaced several times during the warranty.

    With this high failure rate, you cannot expect to keep your laptop long after the warranty period ended.

    See http://theappleblog.com/2009/03/05/is-applecare... or http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2008-05-14/#16321
  • Tom
    Hi Nicolas :)

    I've had the opposite situation, where my PC notebook died on me after two years of intensive work (was an Asus), while both my iBook and MacBook are still holding good :)

    Except for HD failure that you will most probably encounter whatever the platform/brand, I think the problem here is our usage of the computer. I stopped using solely my laptop at the office and cried to get a desktop workstation. This way, you reduce your number of battery cycles (plus you get more CPU-power hehe).

    After many years of been a Linux user on my laptop, then switching to OSX, I wont go back, at least on my "personal" machine : it is soooo convenient to have both a commercial OS (with office, photoshop, spotlight, etc...) alongside a terminal on an Unix environment. Not to mention a nice hardware support (especially sleep-mode), so time-saving compare to the old shall-I-code-my-driver-or-wait-for-someone-else-to-do-it :)

    Regards
  • You're right, this would probably be my second option if I decided to revert to standard pc laptop. The first option could be running OSX on it, but getting all the hardware fully working will probably be tricky.
  • > Sony, Dell, … (cheaper, better quality but with Windows)

    or Ubuntu... don't forget Ubuntu :)
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