MacBook Battery Swelling?
Last Tuesday, I took apart my 2nd-gen BlackBook to fix my squishy right palmrest (top was not flush against bottom case) when I was surprised by the heat and size of my battery. I don’t have a picture, but it looks like the one in this MacRumors thread.
The battery is thickest at the center. The heat melted the adhesive, so the rubbery back panel is separating from the metal part of the battery. The charge status button needs to be depressed further for the green LEDs to light up.
Summer’s coming on, and it’s pretty humid here in Kobe, so it might just have been the heat, but I feel that this has malfunctioned too easily. There was a battery update/replacement program, but that’s been discontinued since May 31 this year (zut!). Running GNU/Linux, I never got that battery firmware upgrade, and it won’t install from Mac OS installed on an external drive.
On the bright side, the battery still (just) fits, and the capacity doesn’t feel diminished. But I’ll get a new one next month, though, and keep this one as a backup.
And that squishy palmrest: apparently, the top case had been bent when I took it apart last year. I simply bent it back, and no more squish. :)
Design, Build, Test, Iterate 