Until yesterday, I’d been unaware that laptop batteries could fail in a way other than not holding a charge very well. According to the nice fellow at an Apple Genius Bar near my office, this happens occasionally. I wish I’d been aware of it sooner, so I might have gotten it replaced before AppleCare expired. When I did some googling, “occasionally” turned out to be a lot more often than I expected. Half-an-hour (and $129 later), a replacement battery made everything better. The battery had expanded to the point that it was pushing on the trackpad and making it difficult to click–in addition to preventing the laptop from sitting flush on flat surfaces. Now that it has a fresh battery (and even though it’s only a late-2011 MacBook Pro), I’m sort of tempted to replace it with a shinier new one. My new employer is of the “bring your own device” variety, and the MacBook Pro is quite a lot of weight to schlep to and from the office every day.