Apple charges 54% more for replacing a 90% larger battery than the Macbook Air. More news at it comes.

I think a better point is "Apple charges $200 for a major repair of a $2200 item".

Replacing a battery being deemed a major repair is a good headline.

An interesting point. What's the marginal manufacturing cost of a macbook battery cell?

"Admittedly, the battery in the MacBook Pro is more powerful than the Air's: Apple rated the former at 95 watt-hours (Whr), meaning that it can produce one watt of power for 95 hours, or, say, 5 watts of power for 19 hours. The 13-in. MacBook Air's battery, on the other hand, is rated at 50 Whr."

Not that a 90% increase in battery capacity should have any impact on the replacement cost or anything...

Battery capacity is not the defining factor in battery cost, manufacturing is. I'd bet that they have almost identical manufacturing costs per laptop with either battery.

How much does Apple pay for the battery, and how much do they mark it up? If they only pay 10% more for the bigger battery, then they are gouging your 44%, etc.

Right, I doubt that it scales linearly like that either. My comparison was just as absurd as the article's comparison in the other direction. Really, we don't have a clue how much Apple is making or losing by replacing these batteries. My guess is that Apple's battery replacement charge is based largely on the price point of the original product.

I worked in the laptop battery pack industry for a few years, your description is fairly accurate.

6 cell packs cost ~$22 to manufacturer. 9 cell packs cost ~$30 to manufacturer (outdated numbers). Yet, 9 cell packs MSRP for easily 50+% more.

I had to replace a Dell laptop battery a while back and it was $140 just for the battery with self-install (notably much easier). So... I'm not sure that $199 is an outrageous price, given that they install it for you.

However, I'm more concerned about the turn-around time. Can they fix it while you wait at an Apple store or do they have to keep it for a day or more and return it later?

Turn-around time has been really bad for me for two distinct problems with my MacBook. First, the LCD backlight went out, and the local Apple Store had to ship it to a service center, which resulted in a 4 day wait to get it back in my hands. Then I had several keys mysteriously stop working - they couldn't figure it out at the store, so it was another week waiting for it to come back.

Another upside for Apple with these ultra-portables is that AppleCare sales will probably increase significantly.

I recall the 15" non-Unibody MBP batteries costing $149. So for $50 more you get a better battery, and because of a design that makes it a non-user replaceable battery, but also one of the thinnest laptops in the world with this kind of power, this story is getting voted up? Replacing batteries isn't a monthly ordeal, it's likely needed only once, possibly twice in the lifespan of the laptops usage.

As an example, here is a 12 cell HP laptop battery: http://www.hp.com/canada/products/landing/consumer-accessori.... Price, $159. User installed. I can understand people being annoyed they can't physically change the batteries themselves, but the pricing is not a scandal.

Different parts get better and cheaper (RAM, hard drives, processors), why wouldn't a battery? (serious question)

In my university years I worked at Best Buy part time and the HP rep who visited always openly acknowledged (and joked about) batteries as being overpriced as it's easier for people to justify a new laptop when the battery is approaching 1/4 of the price of a new one. Granted, this laptop we're speaking of is worth a lot more than $200 x4 but I think the point is clear.

It doesn't make good business sense to encourage people to spend $100 on a battery for a laptop they don't sell anymore when you could spend $800-$2000 on a new laptop.

The real question is: Why should a company provide better tech for their old machines when that tech has to be custom built for that and a small line of similar machines.

All the things you list are strongly influenced by Moore's law and things with a similar trajectory.

Batteries are on nothing like the same trajectory. I think the average rate of improvement is 10%/year. Not bad, but nothing compared to doubling every 18-24 months.

That HP battery's showing up as $160 for me, but point taken regardless

My apologies, I just corrected that. Thanks for the heads up!

"If the notebook is charged once each day, its capability will have dropped by a fifth after two years and nine months."

For a machine with non-upgradable RAM and currently no SSD upgrade path, who thinks they'll still be actively using one in > 3 years?

Well I'm still using an early-2008 white Macbook for Photoshop/Illustrator/Lightroom/browsing/coding without too much of a hiccup.

Considering that the MBP Retina can also play Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 comfortably, I could see myself using it for at least three years, if not more if I hand it down to a family member.

If it can play Diablo 3, I can see myself using it for twelve years.

I had my last laptop (a Thinkpad T42) for 8 years without upgrading the HD or (I think) the memory. Admittedly, I wouldn't want to do that with most manufacturers' laptops, but Apple's are pretty sturdy too.

I don't see any reason why a MacBook Pro bought today shouldn't still be perfectly usable in three or four years.

I got the last good macbook--the first 13-inch unibody, with a trivially replaceable battery and hard drive. Wish Apple would've kept that design around, it's fantastic.

How often do you replace the battery and hard drive?

I have a six-year-old 15" MacBook Pro, which is now on its third battery. A year or so ago the original 120GB hard drive started making ticking sounds, and I replaced it with a 500GB drive (not SSD - at today's prices I would have gone for a 256GB SSD). It's still a perfectly capable machine - a bit constrained by being limited to 3GB of RAM, but otherwise fine.

I had a late 2007 white MacBook whose original battery was still marginally usable last year (the menu status was Replace Soon, rather than Replace Now) - holding about 60% nominal charge, IIRC. The drive had been replace once, following an overheating incident which left it failing.

In the life of my 2008 MBP, I replaced the battery twice and the HDD three times (died mechanical failure once, second time became an SSD).

Maybe more often than you would expect. Don't SSDs have a higher failure rate than their spinning metal counterparts?

at least once?

I have the same laptop and replaced the battery last year and also upgraded to a SSD. This made my old 2ghz C2D just as fast in everyday tasks at the i5 air I got from work.

in other news I just ordered a new MBP Retina to replace it :)

As many times as he wants, he bought a computer.

I've had to replace battery at least once and buy a new power adapter for each mac laptop I've had since and including the tibook, which is a white macbook and a 15" mbp. The 5 or so different powerbooks I had never needed replacement anything, but maybe I used them less hours/day.

for over a decade, I've never kept a apple notebook longer than 3 years. It is best to not just upgrade some of the components, but to upgrade the whole unit to the latest technology. period.

glue's expensive

Well, at least, removing the glue is time consuming :)