Apple’s Tedious and Expensive Procedure for Replacing the Battery in the New MacBook Pro ⇥ ifixit.com

Carsten Frauenheim and Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit:

Apple’s official replacement process requires swapping the entire top case, keyboard and all, just to replace this single consumable component. And it has for a long time. That’s a massive and unreasonable job, requiring complete disassembly and reassembly of the entire device. We’re talking screws, shields, logic board, display, Touch ID, trackpad, everything. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t get transferred are the keyboard and speakers. The keyboard is more or less permanently affixed to this top aluminum, and the speakers are glued in — which, I guess, according to Apple means that the repair is out of the scope of DIY (we disagree).

At least one does not need to send in their laptop for a mere battery replacement. Still, I do not understand why this — the most predictable repair — is so difficult and expensive.

I hate to be that guy, but the battery for a mid-2007 15-inch MacBook Pro used to cost around $150 (about $220 inflation-adjusted) and could be swapped with two fingers. The official DIY solution for replacing the one in my M1 MacBook Pro is over $700, though there is a $124 credit for returning the replaced part. The old battery was, of course, a little bit worse: 60 watt-hours compared to 70 watt-hours in the one I am writing this with. I do not even mind the built-in-ness of this battery. But it should not cost an extra $500 and require swapping the rest of the top case parts.

[…] But for now, this tedious and insanely expensive process is the only offering they make for changing out a dead battery. Is it just a byproduct of this nearly half-a-decade-old chassis design, something that won’t change until the next rethink? We don’t know.

“Nearly half-a-decade-old” is a strange way of writing “four years”, almost like it is attempting to emphasize the age of this design. Four years old does not seem particularly ancient to me. I thought iFixit’s whole vibe was motivating people to avoid the consumerist churn encouraged by rapid redesigns.