After my futile efforts to get it repaired at the independent shop and the Apple Store (they never came for me even with my appointment and I wasted an hour sitting in that place for no reason), I bought a third party battery and a set of guitar strings to replace it myself. I was successful but the battery was garbage so I had to return it and go back to the original swelled battery to be able to use the laptop albeit plugged in; I gave up and asked work to order me a new MBP instead. Total waste of time: 3 hours plus a perfectly good MBP going probably to the landfill thanks to a difficulty that Apple created for no good reason. Edit2: the guitar strings were used to saw off the nasty glue strips holding the original battery, along with d-limonene as a solvent to weaken their deathgrip.
In contrast, replacing the battery in my HP Elite x360 was a piece of cake - no nasty glue, no proprietary screws, and oem batteries available everywhere. HP sent me the battery under warranty (shipped next day) when I called them to buy one and I was able to replace it in minutes. Now that's a repairable product. Edit: clarified that HP in fact covered the battery cost under the included 3 year warranty.
Edit3: want to say that it was a bit uncalled-for of you to assume that I couldn't do the replacement myself. This was a work laptop (i.e. not my property) so I didn't feel it was my place to dink with it.
> In contrast, replacing the battery in my HP Elite x360 was a piece of cake - no nasty glue, no proprietary screws, and oem batteries available everywhere.
Replacing the battery for my Surface Pro was a different story. The shop told me there's a high probability that removing the screen will break it. Warrant repairs from Microsoft consist of them taking your surface and shipping you a refurbished machine in exchange.
I remember the earlier Surface machines got a pretty bad repairability rating from iFixit but it seems newer models get better ratings. I bought the HP precisely because of its repairability.
I just ordered one off ebay, let my current battery discharge until the mac shutoff (risk of fire is greatly reduced completely discharged), and yanked out the old one with no special care or care about the glue. Set the new one in place, works perfect.
The second half of my comment was clearly tongue in cheek. Sorry if it seemed personal, it wasn't.
I didn't mind - just wanted to clarify that I did try to make this work :) . Thanks for clarifying your intent. Edit: you lucked out that your eBay battery was good - mine was unfortunately a total dud even though it claimed to be OEM (and had labeling on the battery to match) but caused the machine to shutdown randomly. Edit2: I was also responding to a thread on how Apple treats its certified shops, which is why I left out the details on my endeavors to replace the battery after my attempts to get it done properly failed. Edit3: all of the procedures I saw (iFixit, Youtube) showed a fairly complicated procedure with that nasty glue removal so I am surprised your battery came off easily - perhaps it was previously replaced?
Totally understandable. No the battery wasn't replaced previously, I am the first owner. I think the difficulty of the glue is overstated (especially iFixIt's guide where you take apart half the machine to use some solvent, wtf). Just pull the battery cell at an angle so you don't bend it too much, it'll come off.
In contrast, replacing the battery in my HP Elite x360 was a piece of cake - no nasty glue, no proprietary screws, and oem batteries available everywhere. HP sent me the battery under warranty (shipped next day) when I called them to buy one and I was able to replace it in minutes. Now that's a repairable product. Edit: clarified that HP in fact covered the battery cost under the included 3 year warranty.
Edit3: want to say that it was a bit uncalled-for of you to assume that I couldn't do the replacement myself. This was a work laptop (i.e. not my property) so I didn't feel it was my place to dink with it.