Trackpad button problems? Could be your battery!

Question

My trackpad button lost all its clicking function yesterday, suddenly becoming much more mushy than usual. By the end of the day, it acted as though it were permanently clicked, arbitrarily dragging items all over the screen, wherever the cursor was moved. By this evening, the trackpad button wouldn’t move at all.
I removed the battery and cautiously touched the trackpad from beneath, as that area is exposed in the battery compartment. It made the original clicking noise in the middle, both sides, front, and back. I then opened the lid (lifted the screen up) and pressed on the trackpad, finding that the clicking sound and action worked fine.
After replacing the battery and restarting the computer, though, I found that the clicking function was still gone, and that the button wouldn’t move at all.
Removing the battery, I looked at it against a light and detected an almost imperceptible bulge in the middle. I guess the specifications are so tight that bulge is raised enough to permanently press up on the trackpad from beneath, making it impossible to click from above.
I then inserted my recently purchased backup battery and find that the trackpad button is fully clickable with it.
I’m glad that this probably means I won’t have to live without my computer for a few weeks, as it should need to be sent in for repairs. However, because the battery still charges and supplies power without any noticeably problem, and the bulge is so slight as to be unnoticeable, I doubt that Apple will be willing to replace it.
I’ve already had three power adapters melt within six months, and the last replacement took three weeks to arrive, so I didn’t want to lose that much income again while waiting for a trackpad button replacement (which appears to be unnecessary). Obviously, it is a heat problem for both the adapters and battery. I use the computer almost always on a hard-surface desk, but of course it is used about sixteen hours a day, seven days a week (minus four hours of church meetings on Sundays). The power adapters are in the open air, so I don’t know where all the heat is coming from. All of us who own a MacBook Pro notice within the first hour out of the box that it is too hot to sit on a lap, so I guess it is a design problem—and maybe quality control problems at the Chinese factories.
I similarly went through eight iBook G3 logic boards due to heat problems without ever getting the computer replaced as hoped. This time, I have AppleCare to make it more likely that I can get a replacement once they solve their various heat-related problems with a revised design if I encounter too many more problems. I’ve lost so much income in recent years from long repairs (unavailable replacement parts) of new or nearly near Apple laptop computers. I’m still committed to the platform, though, after twenty years of devotion.

Answer 1

Thanks! That’s great news. I’ve been delaying it until now, because I couldn’t find the original box of my second battery, so I assumed that I couldn’t send it in, and I haven’t had time to go to a local dealer yet.
This general recall and ability to use the one working battery in the meantime will solve my problem and avoid future similar issues.
The description on that page also makes it sound as though it won’t be a replay of my problem with the iBook logic board that I kept getting replaced (eight or nine times) with more than a two-week wait sometimes, only to have the last failure happen outside the three-year extended coverage. If this is in fact a quality control problem rather than a design problem as was the case with the iBook, I don’t expect a recurrence after this.
Unfortunately, though, looking at the number of power adapters that I’ve been going through with this MacBook Pro, I do suspect multiple recurrences throughout the future, as it is clearly a design problem. Having two of them should leave me with one working one, though, while waiting for replacements.
15" 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBookPro1,1   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   2 GB 667 MHz RAM