Swollen battery under warranty APP will not replace?

Not so, apple extended warranty does cover the battery and they will replace it. Just ask for supervisor and explain the problem to him. I have done several times with different notebooks and I was never turned down. Be firm but cool.

Not true, not true, not true.

You might be able to throw a fit and convince a rep to replace a battery, but that means they're making an exception, NOT covering something that the warranty is supposed to cover.

Batteries are consumables. They are good for so many charge cycles after which they are considered consumed. AppleCare absolutely covers batteries with defects, but not batteries that are simply used up.

What AppleCare told you is 100% accurate, it is not that batteries are intended to swell, it is simply a possible chemical reaction for that particular model.

If your battery is over 300 cycle counts (check in System Profiler > Power), then your battery is worn out.

AppleCare covers batteries for one year or 300 cycles, whichever comes first, for models before late 2008. After that, the number of cycles before a battery is considered consumed is higher, because the batteries are different models/designs.

When you purchased and registered AppleCare, you accepted the terms and conditions. Whether you took the time to read them before spending the money, I have no idea. You can review them here if you don't believe AppleCare: http://images.apple.com/legal/applecare/docs/NAAPP_Englishv5.3.pdf

The T&C States:
b. Limitations. The Plan does not cover:
[omitted]
(ix) Consumable parts, such as batteries, except in respect of battery coverage under APP for iPod or unless failure has occurred due to a defect in materials and workmanship

{quote:title=Literature at http://apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html also states:}{quote}
Battery Lifespan
For Apple notebooks with removable batteries — such as previous generation MacBook and MacBook Pro computers — a properly maintained battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 300 full charge and discharge cycles. You may choose to replace your battery when it no longer holds sufficient charge to meet your needs.

At any rate, this is common practice across almost every computer manufacturer who sells extended warranties, unless you purchase a plan that explicitly highlights battery coverage as a feature of the warranty. Some, like Best Buy's Black Tie protection, limit battery replacements to one per the duration of the warranty. I am sorry that this was not apparent when you purchased the warranty. Keep in mind you always have the option to call AppleCare and cancel your protection plan for a prorated refund.

I have never thrown a fit to get my batteries replaced. Without much hesitation they replace it. I never would coerce or force someone due what is against policy.

But their is nothing wrong with being polite and ask.

Willp..

Take the battery out and run your computer on AC power. You'll have full trackpad functionality.

Batteries can certainly die all of the sudden, though uncommon. I've seen them work fine, then not work at all the next day. Sometimes it is not the chemicals that are the failure point, but the integrated circuits on the battery. Obviously if the battery is swollen then the cells in the battery are what have failed.

Go into System Profiler and then to Power. Look for your battery's Full Charge Capacity. It's represented in mAh (milli-amp hours, hope I spelled that right). That battery should have between 4000-4500 mAh if it's in good healthy shape. If your full charge capacity is something like 50 mAh, your battery will show it's fully charged (all the lights are green on the battery) if it's charged to 50 mAh, but that may only last you a minute or two.

The X indicates the OS isn't detecting the battery, likely because it's not seated fully because of the swelling.

There's really nothing you can do to revive this battery, so either take it up with Apple or buy a new battery.

A 'full charge' is completely relative, hopefully I explained that well enough, it's kind of early for me. That's like my scooter, which has a one-gallon tank, saying it's full at one gallon, which for my car would put me on E.

Of all four of those scenarios you mentioned, three mean the battery's defective. The computer is not defective if you take the battery out and it runs fine, or if you try a known-good battery in the computer and it's fine.

The point I was trying to make before was that the warranty doesn't cover it. That's plain and simple. Apple, however, is committed to customer service, so occasionally they will/are able to make exceptions when they feel it is warranted. Apple does not monitor these forums, so I'd urge you again to either take your issue to Apple or replace the battery.

Running a MacBook Pro without the battery in place will cause the CPU to slow down by 1/3 to 1/2 and deprive you of the battery's function as an uninterruptible power supply, so that isn't a good idea except as a very short-term measure while you're waiting for a new battery to arrive. You really need to have a battery in place to use the machine at its intended level of performance. But once a battery has begun to swell, it does need to be removed immediately, because contrary to what the AppleCare rep said on the phone, it can damage other parts of the machine.

I would expect Apple to replace a swollen battery as a matter of course if it's under a year old, and not to replace it if it's over two years old, even with AppleCare coverage. In between, it's likely to be a discretionary decision by the rep or the Genius looking at it, with the cycle count playing a large role. Anecdotal evidence from past threads here suggests that your chances of getting a free battery are better at a Genius Bar than in a phone call to AppleCare, simply because the Genius can look at the machine and the battery in person.

eww wrote:
Running a MacBook Pro without the battery in place will cause the CPU to slow down by 1/3 to 1/2 and deprive you of the battery's function as an uninterruptible power supply, so that isn't a good idea except as a very short-term measure while you're waiting for a new battery to arrive. You really need to have a battery in place to use the machine at its intended level of performance.

I would love to see where you're pulling this statistic/statement from. In all my years as an ACMT, even working for Apple at one point, I never came across anything that even came close to insinuating this.

On models like MacBook Airs, since they have one teensey fan, they'll clock down their CPU because of heat, but there's absolutely no documented reason for a MacBook Pro to run any slower without a battery, unless of course you can provide a link.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2332

Wow, thanks for the link. Odd that I never came across that before.

I don't see any place that it says it will decrease your speed by any given amount, you said 1/2 or 1/3.

It makes sense when your CPU's under heavy load, but not when you're not asking much of it.

I don't see any place that it says it will decrease your speed by any given amount, you said 1/2 or 1/3.

I think it's generally about 1/3, but can be more on some models. Because of the nearly-useless Apple search function, I can't find an article I think I've seen that said how much it was.

It makes sense when your CPU's under heavy load, but not when you're not asking much of it.

This is true, of course, but the machine has no way of predicting when, with two bus-powered external drives and a FireWire audio interface connected so that you're close to the adapter's output capacity, you're suddenly going to launch some additional process that requires a lot of power, exceeding the adapter's limit and causing the machine to shut down instantly if a battery isn't present. So it slows everything down as a precaution just in case you do that. I don't know how possible it is to exceed the adapter's output budget even with the CPU clocked down, but I suspect one could still do it with the right assortment of power-hungry peripherals and a greedy app or three. Still, better safer (if not completely safe) than sorry. Keeping a battery in is clearly safest.

Huh. Thanks for the info. Definitely good to know.