What computer do you have?

[Tiberius]

"This item does not ship to Canberra, Australia."

Lithium Ion batteries cannot be carried by air, so how long do you think it would take to arrive in Australia IF I could buy one?

And before you ask, no you cannot get them on Amazon Australia, and the ones sold on eBay are almost certainly fakes (recycled old batteries - heck that's probably what's on Amazon too). For example notice that this one does not carry the C-Tick. Which means that they need to be an approved importanter and have had the item tested and have a certificate issued for it  - which they don't have either (more info on all that here). It's actually not at all difficult or expensive to have a cert issued for an electronics product you are importing, so the fact that the products on eBay do not carry them shows they have been illegally imported, have not been tested or approved for use in Australia, and therefore are almost certainly fakes (reused batteries).

LMAO. I give up. You move the goalposts every time you are proved wrong, it's sad and pathetic. First you say MacBooks aren't serviceable, and I link you to a page which describes how to replace the battery. Then you complain that the tutorial required you to ignore a sticker saying "do not remove battery", despite the fact you can remove the battery with no issues. You further complain that you can't buy batteries from Apple, and I link to them being sold on Amazon. Then you have the audacity to complain that they can't be shipped to Australia by air, like that has any bearing on whether MacBooks are user-serviceable or not.

Look, I know you hate Apple, all right, but just because you hate a company, doesn't mean you get to make up shit about that companies products, nor does it mean you get to constantly redefine your own definition of "user-serviceable" just because someone keeps proving you wrong.

It's not a "feature" Tiberius, it's the durability design of the product. And since it's a standard design now for laptops in that price range, people could reasonably expect their Macbooks to be spill resistant if Apple does not make it clear that there is a critical design flaw in their products at the time of sale. Again, I'm talking Australian consumer law - I know that in the USA there is not as much protection for consumers, but what I'm saying is that this feature is so standard now in laptops of that price range that I strongly believe that Apple would lose a court case held against them - just as they did for refusing to honour statutory warranties. Because it is reasonable for a consumer who has owned a Lenovo, Dell, HP, Toshiba, or ASUS in the absence of clear information otherwise to assume that a new Macbook would also be spill resistant.

Whatever you want to call it, it doesn't matter. I'm not getting into an argument over the features / "durability designs" of MacBooks vs other laptops. Laptops are all different. I'm sure some laptops have better keyboards than MacBooks, that was never my argument and as I said before, I don't care to get into it, especially with you.

I takes the ACCC something like 2-3 years to act on these matters, because of how long it takes them to build a case. The right thing to do is for the company to obey the law in the first place, or for consumers not to purchase things from Apple. Especially not laptops. Spilling something on your keyboard should not render an expensive laptop unusable.

Still irrelevant to the discussion. Also, I'm not sure how long you've been around consumer electronics, but generally speaking water based liquid + electronics never mix. Again, this is about selling products to a general user base, not you. You sound like you spills stuff on laptops way more than the average consumer. Apple don't care about you; they care about regular people who don't spill stuff on laptops (I've *never* spilled stuff on my laptop, because I know not to have a drink next to a laptop).

Again, watch the video I posted. The hinges in Macbooks from that time (and I imagine this applies to 2009 ones too) were deliberately designed to crack. There's nothing you can do to stop it, and this obvious "design flaw", or from Apples POV obsolescence planning, was carried on year after year.  That's simply a fact, it can't be argued since they took a good design that works for every other laptop on the market, and worked for Apple, and delicately chose to redesign how the hinge attaches to the screen so that the frame holding it is weakened by the screw hole, gets hairline fractures, and eventually snaps. Like I said - not opinion, that's fact.

No, it's a fact that there was a design flaw. It's your opinion that the flaw was deliberate. It's not the first time there's been a design flaw in an Apple product (remember the iPhone 4's antenna issue). Apple aren't perfect; nobody is claiming that. However they fixed the antenna issue and gave everyone a free case which solved the problem.

Anyway, as it happens, Apple are repairing these design flaws for laptops that are out of warranty: https://www.christopherprice.net/macbook...-2036.html

Don't think that's the attitude of a company that deliberately designed the flaw in the first place...unless of course you are delusional enough to think Apple likes wasting money.

It doesn't need to completely fail to be rendered unfit for purpose. For all I know, you didn't cycle the battery enough to drain it to the point where it needs replacement. For all I know you're not prone to spilling shit either.

Nope, I've replaced the battery once. I could have bought one online, but I had AppleCare at the time so they replaced it for free. My point is, it still works, 8 years later. It's used on a daily basis by my wife. If it were designed to break after a while, Apple failed in that department.

...oh, and no, like most of the human race I don't spill stuff on my electronics.

Again I'm calling BS on this. 1. no non-technical person ever has a problem swapping out an external battery. 2. It takes 5 minutes work to open a Macbook and change the battery, that's not worth charging people $100+ above the retail cost of the battery for, if anything the service should be performed for free - or cost no more than $10 above the retail cost of the battery.

My guess is you haven't been around many non-technical people. Non-technical people have problems turning laptops on and off, let alone changing a battery. In regards to the cost; there are likely computer repair shops which can do the replacement for a lower amount. I'm not sure, I've never replaced my battery via a third party, but given that the instructions for doing it are online, I would imagine computer repair shops would be able to undercut Apple.

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Okay, okay. My hatred of Apple goes wayyyy back to the first Macs. I was doing an AP computer class (1st year uni credit) in programming, but Apple soooo cock-blocked programmers from having any access to features of the operating system, including graphical routines (drawing shapes etc.) and playing sounds in assembly language. They had a series of technical books you had to buy. So after hours of weedling and begging my school, they bought the books-- which Apple said they'd send "right away," but which arrived months and months later, at the end of the school year. So my computer had about $2000 worth of kindling, and I never got to make my 1st pro app while I was still in high school.

On my Radio Shack Color Computer, you could literally buy a commented print-out of the whole operating system, and you could ALTER IT to function how you wanted. Money at that time was actually made by people making cool new OS mods for that computer. PC computers were similarly easy-- you could buy a non-proprietary book on how to program for the early PCs, and get down to work.

So yeah-- proprietary bullshit, extra costs, shitty service, but all of it in a sparkly, futuristic-looking package.

My opinion of Apple users is that they consider the inflated prices a membership fee to inclusion in a cool vision of the future-- and other users are people who want a product they can use how they want, and for which they can expect reasonably-priced service.

I'm sorry to hear Apple fucked you around at school, however if we're talking about the first Macs, that was decades ago. You probably shouldn't use decades old behavior to complain about a company today. The company back then has almost no resemblance to the company today. If you ever get a Mac again, you'll be happy to know that the OS is now UNIX based, and you can play around with the OS much like you can with Linux (there's even a load of Linux applications ported across).

Personally, for me it's not about paying extra for a "membership fee". I justify the cost in three main ways:

1) The MacBook Pro is durable and will last you a very long time. As I stated before, my 2009 MacBook Pro has been through some abuse, being carried around for years, probably dropped, but it still works fine.

2) The OS X operating system is, IMO, one of the most powerful for personal computing. Now, I love Linux, and I use it on servers, and I have a NetBook with it installed, but if you want me to do everyday tasks, I'm going with OS X. It being UNIX based means I have a shell and I can hack around the OS a bit too.

3) The look. MacBooks to me, look very nice. Note that this is #3 on the list and deservedly so. I don't care too much about the look, but I'd be lying if I didn't consider the aesthetics something worth spending a little extra money on, considering the above two points as well.