A few days ago, I picked up my beloved laptop to find the battery was popping out on one side. The MacBook apparently has a history of swelling batteries. I spent a few hours trying to figure out if it was safe to keep using,  and whether or not I could get a free replacement as part of some recall.  I’ve always taken exceptional care of my laptop battery. I discharge it once a month and otherwise try to run it off battery power about a quarter of the time. I expected it would eventually fail, I just didn’t expect it would fail in such an obviously bad way.

From everything I could find (which wasn’t very official because Apple’s website had no sign of my serial number) Apple’s in-store support could sometimes replace batteries even though Apple doesn’t officially acknowledge that the 17″ MacBook Pros have a problem with batteries swelling. So I made an appointment with one of the in-store support personnel, who may or may not have been of above average intelligence. His name was Rob, and his basic attitude was, “Yeah, that happens. It means the battery is failing. You should replace this for $129.” He didn’t seem terribly concerned that it might swell into my track pad or memory, nor did he say those things would be replaced by Apple if their battery damaged it.

I am grumbly about it, but rocking out on my new battery at least.