Apple offers worldwide battery replacement for some MacBook Pros

Apple has said that component failure in a limited number of MacBook Pros has caused built-in batteries to expand, with the company offering worldwide free replacement for such batteries.

However, Apple stressed that the flaw, reported in some 13-inch Macbook Pros without touch bars, is not a safety issue.

The affected units were manufactured between October 2016 and October 2017, Apple said on its support page, without revealing the precise number of MacBooks affected.

The iPhone maker previously came under scrutiny after it confirmed in December that software to deal with aging batteries in iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE models could slow down performance.

Apple subsequently acknowledged in December last year that its software sometimes deliberately slows phones with weak batteries. Apple apologised and lowered the price of battery replacements in its stores from US$79 to US$29 for affected phones.

Critics said at the time that Apple had obfuscated the fact that a worn-out battery not only fails to hold a charge, it also degrades the phone's performance.

"The battery wears out," said Kyle Wiens, chief executive of iFixit, which publishes repair guides for iPhones and sells replacement parts. "They have been pretending like the battery doesn't wear out. They've made billions of dollars on that pretense."

Indeed, repair advocates have long criticised Apple and other technology companies for making batteries hard for users to access and replace.

As of December last year, at least eight lawsuits against Apple had been filed in various courts since the company opened up about the year-old software change.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil; editing by Sandra Maler; additional reporting by Stephen Nellis and Paresh Dave; additional editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Weber; with ARN Staff)