I chose to order a NuPower replacement battery complete with a one year warranty from Other World Computing (OWC), a Mac upgrade and accessory specialist. The gas is undoubtedly toxic and YouTube is full of videos of such operations going sideways, often in the form of sparks, smoke and the occasional explosion. Some people have resorted to opening up their laptop and pricking the swollen battery envelope with a pin to release the gas. This MacBook Air is either pregnant or preparing to explode. Unfortunately, when I took it to the Apple Store as instructed, I received the news that Apple had stopped stocking or selling parts for this MBA - even the battery. The battery only had 300 or so cycles on it (it was rated for 1,000) but it was old and didn’t owe me anything. While prepping it, I noticed the lid not quite closing true one night, and by the next day the entire bottom half of the case had swollen up alarmingly. It was a backup machine that hadn’t seen use in several years, but very portable with a decent keyboard and Aidan was familiar with the Mac operating system so it seemed like a good use for the machine. One of my kids now has the option of using a laptop in class and, rather than go with a Chromebook, I decided to pull an original Apple MacBook Air out of storage. If your battery dies, Apple replaces it for you ($139). It’s flat, thin and specially designed to take advantage of every spare cubic inch of room within the case.

Since switching to the unibody aluminum design, Apple’s notebooks have been equipped with a battery that’s more like the one you’d find in a smartphone or tablet than in a typical laptop. I bought a replacement battery from Other World Computing (OWC) and installed it, proving that the non user-replaceable battery in these things is indeed easily user replaceable. Since Apple no longer sells components for this notebook - even though the battery is a consumable (thus the reason for my griping) - I was offered the choice of using the MBA only while plugged in, finding a third party battery or buying a new laptop.

I recently wrote a year end post about products that had disappointed me in 2014, and one of the featured culprits was a 2008 vintage MacBook Air whose battery had swollen to the point it was distorting the aluminum case.

Macbook 11 inch 2015 removable battery