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)