Brand-New MacBook Just Shuts Itself Off
A little story about Apple, or the worst and most frustrating purchase experience I've ever had. Maybe it helps one or the other user. I've split the incident into "The full story" and "Result" for those who don't want to read everything :-)
The full story
Three days ago I treated myself to a new MacBook Pro again. 13" with Touch Bar. Full of anticipation, I drove to the Apple Store, made the usual small talk ("Hi, welcome to Apple. We're glad you're here" ... blah blah), paid quickly and got home even quicker. With the first power-on of the device, though, the anticipation was over. Disk error. Luckily a restart helped. But still, my mood dropped considerably. Disk errors are not the first thing I want to see on a new MacBook. After about two hours of setup came the next shock: the MacBook simply shut off, despite 70% charge. Okay, I kept working on power. At some point I unplugged it again... and again: 70% - MacBook shuts off. So back to the Apple Store, explained the problem, and listened to the usual words: "Strange, you got a Monday device, of course we'll give you a new one"... So, new MacBook. Anticipation. Drove home, 65% battery charge. MacBook shuts off. I slowly started doubting myself. Can the battery be defective on two devices? Did I install something wrong? Am I too dumb? I reinstalled everything, reset the NVRAM and SMC and hoped for improvement. Unfortunately, no luck. At 65% battery charge it was over. So: back to the Apple Store, this time much more frustrated (each trip is about 1h of travel for me...). Again the usual "Strange, you got a Monday device". Got a new device. With foresight I tried it right in the store, without installing any software. And lo and behold: 63% battery charge. No luck. The incident escalated to a store manager. He offered to exchange the MacBook one last time, after which I'd have to order one online (hello, Apple? I come to the store so I can hold the device in my hands IMMEDIATELY and not wait days). On top of that, to return it I'd have to return the Beats as well, which of course I didn't have with me. My mood hit rock bottom (I tried to stay friendly, since the employees didn't build the device, but I was boiling inside). Last exchange. Same error at 62%. Last hope: a Genius. So, to the Genius Bar, explained the problem and pushed for an immediate appointment, which worked out well. The Genius looked at the device and I reproduced the error. First some strange looks and a panicked attempt to define the problem through hardware analysis. Result: hardware not defective. At least. On we went, and somewhat at a loss, the Genius looked into Apple's internal knowledge base. At some point I heard a "hmmm yes, there's something". The employee left their iPad lying there for a moment and went to the back. I took the chance to take a quick look at the knowledge base article. And lo and behold - the open article EM1075 described exactly my case and showed me how Apple tries to keep problems secret.
Result
This internal Apple article states that on MacBook Pros, 13" with Touch Bar, from August 2019, the battery was not calibrated properly. So you have to charge the device for 8h before it can be used (hey, Apple, remember your earlier advertising promise: "Unbox, get started"? What happened to it?). The instructions given to the Genius Bar employee in this document suggest that Apple wants to keep the problem secret, because the explanation said explicitly that the customer should not be shown the article and should only be told that they need to charge the MacBook for 8h first if this error occurs. Sad world, Apple, sad world. So if you buy a new 2019 13" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, charge it for 8h first, and if you have problems, point your Genius to knowledge base article EM1075. Result of the purchase: I'm pretty disappointed by such poor handling of problems that are obviously being kept secret. Simply charging the MacBooks before sale would fix the problem; alternatively it would make sense to tell the customer about the problem before or immediately after the purchase, and not only after several replacement devices with the same error have been handed out. What saved it was Genius Bar employee number 1, who proceeded very professionally, and Genius Bar employee number 2, who left the iPad lying around :-). Otherwise I would definitely have switched to Windows.