Introduction
New Zealand has been in a Covid-19 "Level 4" lockdown for most of the past week, after a Covid-19 case was found in the community, announced on Tuesday 2021-08-17 (archive), which was later confirmed to be the "Delta" variant of Covid-19, linked to the NSW, Australia cluster by genome sequencing.
So it seems an appropriate time to finally tell the tale of last year's Level 4 lockdown (archive), when I needed to get an expanding laptop battery replaced during the Level 4 lockdown. Just before Easter. Less than two weeks into the Lockdown, so the rules were frequently changing and everyone was trying to figure out what it meant. It was "Interesting Times".
Telling this tale is somewhat inspired by a friend's story of a marathon drive to the US/Canada border (archive) early in the USA and Canadian Covid-19 lockdowns, to visit one of their mother's who was terminally ill, before she passed. Interesting Times (tm).
Background on the laptop
I have a Late 2013 model Apple MacBook Pro 15", bought in early 2014. Those models are sufficiently old to not be covered by the Apple MacBook Pro 15" Battery Recall, for models sold a year or two later (2015-2017), but seemingly new enough to possibly be prone to battery issues, as I have subsequently heard of a couple of others with similar models and expanding battery issues.
While on site at a client in mid March 2020, the week before the New Zealand Covid-19 lockdown was announced, I happened to notice that the laptop touchpad buttons were getting difficult to press making me wonder if the touchpad was failing (I mostly use an external keyboard/mouse in my office, so had not noticed earlier). At that stage I simply hoped it would not get worse, as Apple delivering several terrible laptop keyboards had discouraged me from replacing the laptop at a more usual interval (eg, 5 years after purchase).
Then a week later, New Zealand went into "Level 4 Lockdown" (archive), and my week passed in a huge rush assisting family members to be able to work at home, and clients to cope with all their staff suddenly working at home even before they had had time to test that scenario. Oh, and one client had a PostgreSQL performance emergency as well, so I spent several days debugging their slow performing queries and building indexes to optimise the pessimal queries their business intelligence tool was producing. The week went by in a rush.
Unfortunately by early April 2020 (archive) I noticed the laptop, back on my office desk, was no longer sitting completely flat on the table. There was a very slight wobble to it as either one or the other of the front feet could be on the table, but not both. The gap on the foot not on the table was maybe the size of a single piece of paper. But clearly something was changing.
When I tweeted about it I got a number of replies from people I knew... strongly encouraging me to get the battery out of the laptop. Which is non-trivial in unibody Apple MacBooks, as the battery is glued inside the case. And I did not have the special Apple specific security bit to open the laptop. Which also were not available for sale, due to the Level 4 Covid-19 lockdown (Level 4 lockdown rules only allowed "essential goods" to be purchased -- that apparently included laptop battery spares, but not the tools to install them :-/ ).
That was Friday 2020-04-03, a week before Easter Good Friday (a four day weekend in New Zealand).
Battery replacement required
Over the weekend, after a lot of thought about this laptop problem -- including trying to figure out how long Level 4 lockdown restrictions might last, and how long the battery might stay stable if I avoided charging or discharging it -- I ended up deciding on Monday 2020-04-06 that I was going to try to get the laptop battery replaced.
My first attempt was to try to call the two official Apple Authorised repair places in my city. After a considerable amount of time on hold, both of them eventually told me that they were only doing repairs for "essential businesses" computer equipment, and even then on a limited basis. While I could possibly have qualified as an essential business (the rules allowed for suppliers to essential businesses to be declared essential businesses, and some of my clients were definitely on the essential businesses list) that did not seem a very productive approach. Particularly since the official Apple replacement is a model specific battery/touchpad/keyboard/top case replacement, which may or may not have been in stock for my specific model.
Then just after noon I emailed The Apple Guy, to ask if they could assist, because (a) I had seen their stores around my city for some years (so at least knew they were more than just a website), and (b) they appeared to be the only Apple computer servicing location actually doing repairs of non "essential businesses" equipment at the time.
I got an (email) quote from The Apple Guy an hour later, for what seemed like a reasonable figure, for "courier both ways" service -- the only service option they were able to offer during the Level 4 lockdown. I told them I would let them know the next day (Tuesday 2020-04-07) whether I wanted to go ahead. Computer servicing just before Easter in an ordinary year in New Zealand was something likely to drag on for well over a week due to the public holidays. And 2020 was no ordinary year.
After some though, later that afternoon I made two full backups of my laptop, in addition to the ones I already had. And then discharged the laptop battery. At which point I was committed. Because there was no way I was going to take an expanding laptop battery through a full discharge/charge cycle, so I could neither use it from battery nor run it off the charger (as that would charge the battery).
I emailed The Apple Guy late Monday 2020-04-06 to confirm I did want to go ahead.
Courier pickup
I got a reply from The Apple Guy first thing the next morning, with instructions for coordinating the repair:
Package it well for transport
Address it to the home address of the person doing the repair (all stores were closed, due to the Level 4 Lockdown)
Include return details
Provide the password for the device, so they could test it
plus an invoice to be paid "before the device was returned".
I paid the invoice immediately, by online banking: if you want a supplier to think of your work favourably paying promptly always helps, and the repair total was considerably less than the cost of replacing the laptop.
The password was more of a struggle. After a little thought I concluded what they really needed was a password which could boot up the laptop, and test it, not actually my password. So I created a temporary service account, and sent them a photograph including that password (which seemed marginally better than including it as plain text; I could maybe have called them with the password but (a) they were already very busy, and (b) chances are they'd have misplaced the note with the password by the time they needed it). I even put a sticker inside the laptop with the temporary password, just in case.
So then I just needed to finish discharging the battery (down to a few percent, so it did not take long), and pack it for courier delivery. Fortunately my policy of keeping all potentially useful boxes and shipping material paid off, and I was able to find one sturdy box a little larger than the laptop, and lots of bubble wrap. So after wrapping the laptop in three layers of bubble wrap, I sealed it into the box along with a note taped to it with the repair needed and the return address details.
Their first email of the day said the "the courier will come to collect your device either today or the next working day.". So I read that as either Tuesday 2020-04-07 or Wednesday 2021-04-08.
No courier came on Tuesday 2020-04-07. In the middle of the night, unable to sleep from stress, I changed my mind about having a password for the laptop on a sticker on the laptop, and got up, unpacked the laptop entirely, removed the sticker, and packed it all up again, sans sticker. Relying on the emailed photo of the password to be sufficient (which it turned out to be).
Wednesday 2021-04-08, I needed to go shopping before the 4 day public holiday (when even the few shops open during the Level 4 Covid-19 lockdown would also be closed), and tried to figure out whether to wait for the courier pickup or shop first. I ended up calling the courier company directly, as I had a pickup reference from The Apple Guy, to try to find out when it might be picked up. The courier company could not tell me, but did offer to amend the pick up instructions -- so I decided I would just leave it on the back doorstep, and go out, and had the courier company update their instructions to pick up from the back doorstep.
Then I contacted the two nearest neighbours and asked them to keep an eye out for lost couriers and direct them to the package, and start getting ready to go out shopping -- an hour plus round trip, given the Level 4 queuing to get into the shops. None of it seemed particularly safe, but unusual circumstances call for unusual tactics. And I had already pretty much resigned myself to the laptop possibly not ever coming back (or at least not coming back working).
Just as I was walking out the back door to get in my car to go shopping, I was met by someone in a courier uniform, coming to pick up a package. It turned out that my phone call had prompted their pick up after all, not on their regular pick up route but because they happened to already be delivering near by.
What followed was one of the more surreal conversations of the whole experience. I was giving them a package with no courier ticket on it, and no other courier information on it (just destination and return addresses, as it was a supplier organised pickup -- and I was given shipping information hours before the supplier had any courier pickup reference). The courier asked if I was paying for the courier, and I said no, it was being paid for by the supplier. Of course I did not know the supplier's courier account number either.
After about a minute's discussion, we agreed that I would find the courier pickup reference number, write that on the package by hand, and the courier would take the package and put a courier tracking ticket on it. I never did find out what that tracking ticket was, so I had no way to track the parcel. The courier left. I went shopping. It took about an hour.
At this point I was even less certain the laptop would ever return, let alone return working. And I was certain it would not return before Easter (spoiler: it did not return before Easter).
Battery repair
Early afternoon of Thursday 2020-04-09 I got an email from The Apple Guy saying only "I received your MacBook just now". So the courier process worked. Overnight, across town, delivery, in a Level 4 pandemic lockdown, with just a promise that the supplier who organised the pick up would pay for the delivery.
Early afternoon Saturday 2020-04-11 I got an email from The Apple Guy saying they were replacing the battery, and had noticed one of the speakers was blown, quoting another $100 to replace the speaker. I do not know if the speaker was blown (I had not noticed it before), but (a) it was clearly going to be cheaper to replace while the laptop was open already, (b) even if it was damaged during shipping/repair that would be impossible to prove either way, and (c) even if it was a "value add" service the amount was sufficiently small that it was not worth arguing about. So I paid that $100 immediately, and said "yes please" (they had them in stock). I tend to believe the speaker was probably damaged earlier -- it was a 6 year old laptop by that point -- but there is really no way to be certain.
A little later that afternoon, my VPN server noticed my laptop connect to the Internet/VPN. So at least I knew it was alive again. (From examination of the files on the laptop after I got it back, it seems the battery calibration procedure is: charge battery to 100%, boot laptop, turn screen brightness up to maximum, run program that plays a video streamed over WiFi in a loop, disconnect charger and let the laptop play video until it turns off due to a flat battery. So it was connected to the VPN for quite a while, during the test.)
Monday 2020-04-13, two days later, I got an email from The Apple Guy saying the laptop was ready and would be couriered back the next day (Easter Monday is a public holiday in New Zealand). Wednesday morning, 2020-04-15, I got a tracking link for the return delivery.
Then at 10:30 on Wednesday 2020-04-15 the laptop was back in my hands. Almost exactly a week after it left my house. And about nine days after I stopped using it.
Aftermath
One of the first things I noticed when I got the laptop back was that "About this Mac" was reporting "Serial number: Unavailable". Which was causing some serial number locked software not to run, including Alfred which I use all the time.
From a bunch of research I found out the older Apple MacBooks stored their serial number in the firmware ROM, embedded near the end of the firmware image (it is replaced into the ROM image as it is programmed). The "hwc" (model information) and "ssn" (serial number) values are initially set by the Apple internal "Blank Board Serialiser", and then copied from firmware image to firmware image each time the firmware is updated. And it turned out that my MacBook Pro had indeed forgotten its exact model information too (it now shows "MacBook Pro" instead of a precise model).
I did ask The Apple Guy about this, but they had not encountered the serial number disappearing during the repair before. Some Macs definitely had no serial number information, but it was either there or not there. Despite speculation on Twitter that the repair place had changed the mainboard I do not believe that was what happened: everything else about the hardware was identical to what I sent, it was just the "hwc"/"ssn" information that had gone missing.
As best I can tell the most likely explanation is that an earlier, possibly much earlier, firmware upgrade had been interrupted, and that had caused the firmware image to be programmed without the "hwc"/"ssn" values being updated in the firmware image. But since the MacBook had never been fully powered down (ie, no mains, no battery) until the battery repair, the "hwc"/"ssn" values had been cached in the hardware controller RAM for years. The firmware update which left out the "hwc"/"ssn" values from the flash programming could have been months/years earlier.
Ultimately Alfred support told me I could just re-register with the same license information and it would work (and they put a note on my license file that "no serial number" was expected; they had seen other cases of no serial number being available, but not of it disappearing during repair. And I managed to get Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop/Lightroom) to work again by deleting a bunch of the installation and forcing a reinstallation.
Since then the laptop has worked normally, for over a year. I am writing this blog post on the laptop. The replacement battery seems to work okay, the laptop has sat flat on my desk for well over a year, and the touchpad worked properly with just the battery replaced, so there was physical room left to push the buttons down.
The now over 7 year old laptop is starting to suffer from thermal throttling issues. But that is unrelated to the repair. There seems to be a common issue with the thermal paste under the CPU heatsink eventually drying out, and being a poor thermal conductor, resulting in poor cooling. So the fan runs more loudly at times than it used to. But I am resisting trying to repair that thermal issue until I have fully moved to the laptop's replacement (a Mac Mini).
Oh, and I now have two screw driver sets with the Apple MacBook Pro bits included. Both purchased once New Zealand moved to Level 3 Covid-19 lockdown restrictions at the end of April 2020.
Conclusion
So that is the story of how I had the expanding laptop battery in my 6 year old laptop replaced, during a Level 4 Covid-19 lockdown. By someone I had never met, or spoken to (all communication by email). Who was working from home. On Easter Saturday. And somehow it all worked out. I am very impressed with what The Apple Guy managed, working from home, at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, when every official repair place was turning away repairs.
(I am also glad that I ordered the Mac Mini to replace it before the 2021 electronics shortage really got started though; even if I still have not fully moved over to the replacement.)
ETA, 2024-06-13: starting in 2023, and on into 2024, the replacement battery in the same MacBook Pro 15" also started expanding, and got to the point that the touchpad buttons were almost impossible to use and the wobble sitting on the desk was about 2mm.
So I ended up making more backups, contacting The Apple Guy (now renamed to Device Repair Guy, but the same owner and same store locations), and then dropping the MacBook off for them to deal with recycling the MacBook and batteries. (I just had them remove the Apple SSD from the MacBook, in front of me, so I could take that away; which minimises the risk of data loss, even more than just having the drive encrypted does.)
I have to say, dealing with a laptop with expanding batteries outside a Covid-19 lockdown is still not exactly fun. But it is a lot easier than dealing with it in a Covid-19 "level 4" lockdown :-)
The spot on my desk where the MacBook Pro sat for 10 years looks rather empty now :-/