ChaosServer (not the site, but the home server), sites in a drawer in my office. It's a mid-2012 MacBook Air with OSX Server and it runs hot, because it's spending most of its time transcoding video. I don't really pay attention to it - it does its job amazingly well and keeps chugging along. My theory is that some day it will not be able to install the latest version of macOS and I'll upgrade it to new hardware.
I opened the drawer earlier in the week to do something directly on the box and... hmmm... I noticed the machine was bulging. Well, actually, it sits on a pedestal in the drawer and I thought, "oh many, it's drooping around the edges. Closer inspection shows it was bulging out. Weird.
I made a joke about it on the Facebook, and received a couple people saying, "Hey, you're battery is expanded you should get that serviced immediately before it catches on fire." I also had a few people mention they had the same problem with their MacBook Airs, and Apple replaced it for free for them out of warranty. Pretty groovy.
I went in to my Genius Bar appointment this morning and let them run the diagnostics. That diagnostic program is AMAZING. Is that running System 7? Pinstripes? Maybe it's OSX Panther? I got all green checkboxes the whole way. The genius said, "So, it looks like it's going to be $120 to replace the battery, but the expansion may have done damage to the trackpad, keyboard, screen. It could be up to $500 to get it back to good working order." I asked if they could just remove the hazarded battery, and he said no. They *might* be able to replace it for only $120, but if there was other damage inside that might not be an option. I let them know I basically made the appointment to see if they would be awesome and make my dangerous computer safe - and if they weren't going to do it, I would try and do the repair myself with an iFixit guide. He wished me luck.
I have never had Apple's "be awesome" policy work for me. I've had a few under-warranty fixes, but never had an out-of-warranty fix for free. Mrs.Chaos did get one when she dropped her week-old iPhone 3Gs cracking the screen, and they fixed it for free. But that was it. She's cracked two more screens since then and we've paid for both repairs.
I came home to pull the battery and found out that my iFixit "Essential Repail Kit" does not have the required P5 Pentalobe screwdriver. I guess it's misnamed. I'll pull the battery on Monday when that shows up.
