Brought a MacBook in 2009 to replace my dead PowerMac and over the past 18 months the rubber base has bubbled and gradually came away. I’ve been trimming the loose bits off with just a tiny bit left on and have not really bothered about it with it being way out of warranty. But last night googled for a replacement and was shown a link to the Apple site AppleCare and that they acknowledge their was a problem with late 2009 and upto early 2011 versions of this happening and warranty replacement is available FOC.

So I went to the link that asked for my details and serial number thinking the offer must be way out of date but I put them in anyway and was sent a email thanking me for using AppleCare. This morning got an email saying a new base cover is being sent out 🙂

Bearing in mind it’s coming upto 5 years old is it worth replacing the battery as I will l be messing about with the back case and if so has anyone done it and how hard is it?

You can check the health of your battery (have a google).

If it’s needing replaced, I can recommend this guy

I bought a replacement in mid 2013 and it has been great. If I’m honest, I still think it’s genuine, but maybe just older stock. When you compare the original and replacement side by side, it’s just too perfect a copy to be a fake. The different plastic parts of the battery have different finishes, some matt, some gloss etc and they all match perfectly, there is no way to tell the difference. But, regardless, it works.

You can replace the battery easily yourself in those models – link below but the battery just pops out. How long does it hold a charge for, I bet not that long after 5 years. If you don’t use it on battery power just save your money.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2037?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Just googled according to Apple its good for 1000 cycles and mine says its done 795 so far. Mainly runs of the main power and if it just browsing i’m doing its still good for a fair few hours. Think your right jambalaya better off saving my money or maybe a bigger hard drive for it 😉

Kuco, this is a timely note as I had the back off mine this weekend to replace the HDD and the base has started to bubble and peel off. I too had found links about a warranty replacement but didn’t take it any further given the age of the laptop and period of time out of warranty. I’ll get onto Applecare tonight!

By the way the battery does have big warnings on it not to remove, not sure why, but its there and easily accessible once you’ve got the base off.

I have a mid 2009 Macbook Pro, which works fine except the battery is definitely not holding charge like it used to. Because of the design i am not meant to replace the battery, but it is only £100 for apple to do it, which isn’t that bad considering.

I suppose 1300 cycles might be a bit more than 1000….

Yes you can get batteries on ebay for a lot less, from experience there is a reason they are cheap!

wobbliscott just follow the link 🙂 It does mention about taking it to an Apple store to get it done but my nearest it a good drive so I thought I do it myself.

mrmo I think when this one finally dies I jmight ust replace the laptop 🙂

Thanks Kuco, done. My 2009 Macbook works like a brand new machine now i’ve upgraded the HDD and once its cot a new rubber bottom it’ll look like a new machine!

I had to change my battery on my mac

amazon link

Its very easy to do – but just to make life easier get the stupidly shaped screwdriver to remove the battery or its a pain in the butt

@Kuco plenty of life left in the Mac and you can still get decent money selling it if you want to upgrade. My 2009 Mac Mini is still going strong after putting in 8gb ram and 750gb HDD (it was a base spec with 2/160 respectively)

Instead of spending money on a battery you have the following upgrades (obviously varying degrees of complexity to install)

8gb ram £75 (pretty easy to upgrade yourself)
HDD £65 for 750gb running at 7200rpm (50% faster than current drive)
SSD’s £60 for 120gb, £110 for 256gb (8x faster than current drive)

I have a mid-2007 MBP still going strong. It’s maxed out at a whopping 4GB RAM and has a 512GB SSD. Other than about 30mins battery life it’s still very good. Ironically I had to plug it in as the battery died half way through this post

Jambalay I didn’t know you could expand it up to 8gb ram till I read your post and googled, thought 4 was the max. The site I went to about the ram has one of THESE and as I very rarely use the CD/DVD drive on it and with it not always burning disc correctly I have thought about one of these to replace the drive with an extra HDD has anyone tried one.

Well, that was quick. New base turned up today was expecting at least a weeks wait.