Yes, I'd love it if Apple's laptops were more easily repaired, but when I saw the great surprises contained in my repair - even the ports were new - I realized that sometimes, Apple's industrial design can create excellent accidents. Apple offers a battery replacement service for all MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro notebooks with built-in batteries. The one-year warranty includes replacement coverage for a defective battery. It was as if my MacBook Pro went away to a spa and came back after having had a cleanse. Your battery is designed to retain up to 80 of its original capacity at 1000 complete charge cycles. And while the MacBook Pro is harder to repair because all of those parts are contained in the top enclosure where the battery is affixed with a strong adhesive, it also somehow meant that my model got a new lease on life for the price of only one of its parts. This is when I started to ask myself why I never looked into getting the speakers replaced, and remembered I never could fully confirm that my MacBook Pro's sound issue was rooted in the hardware of the speakers (and not caused by some fraying cable like in Flexgate).Īnd then I noticed that everything else was clean, with the replacement of the keyboard deck, the keys (including the A key cap I'd clicked so much it was fading away) and the touchpad. And when I got to the Apple store and booted it up, I was delighted to hear the Apple startup chime ring out without any distortion. Proįive days later, though, Apple called to tell me that it had finished servicing my MacBook. MORE: Which MacBook Should You Buy? MacBook vs.
Its age concealed the big surprise: The technician told me that since the battery was connected to many other parts in the top half of the case, getting it fixed wasn't as simple as replacing just that battery. Why so long? My 2012 MacBook Pro is classified as a "vintage" machine, and so Apple couldn't guarantee how long it would take to find the necessary parts. After a technician performed a veritable autopsy to confirm that the battery was indeed bad, the rep told me it would cost $199, and that I'd need to leave my MacBook Pro with Apple for up to two weeks. And so I booked a Genius Bar appointment to get the battery checked out and hopefully replaced.