I mentioned that my wife’s MacBook died in my last post. Yesterday it returned to the land of the living in the dumbest way possible.

Before I explain, you have to understand something. This thing was dead dead. Completely unresponsive to any and all input, including the recovery key combos. I let it sit on the charger for a good long while. No change. I took it off the charger for another good long while. No change.

Making it Apple’s problem

Apple will do a free diagnostic if you take your device into a store. I may as well, right? Just before leaving, I double checked the laptop again so I wouldn’t accidentally look stupid bringing in a working device for diagnostics. Still dead, as expected.

We get to the store, check in with a support person, explain the problem, and open the laptop for them. Obviously it immediately lights up and goes straight to the login screen. So much for double checking it beforehand.

Best guess

They ran a diagnostic anyway since we were there. Everything came back 100% which is a lie because I know for a fact the battery at least has seen far better days. So there’s still no great leads on what killed it in the first place.

My current best guess is something to do with the aging battery. There’s a chance I’ll replace it myself. A small one, since — and I’m not exaggerating — you have to take apart the entire MacBook to do a battery replacement. Not to mention I’d be doing all that based on a hunch, crossing my fingers that it doesn’t decide to randomly die again.

In any case, we’ve been considering replacing the whole thing with a Linux laptop anyway. This MacBook really shows its age on recent versions of MacOS. It’s also the second one we’ve had die in this weird way, so we’re done with Macs.

What to replace it with?

Framework, maybe? They’re considerably more expensive than comparable models from other companies, but simply reading a battery replacement guide for the MacBook has already started to radicalize me. Paying a premium for easy repairs and upgrades might not be a bad idea.

I’m considering Lenovo as well. Some of their models are way cheaper, comparably specced, and at least appear not to be actively hostile to repairs. Their higher end models are apparently quite repairable from what I’ve recently learned, and I’m wondering if they would be a better value than Framework.

I’m super open to recommendations here if you’ve got them. You can get in touch at the bottom of the page.

— JP