In a support document, Apple tells us that when you eventually send your iPad in to have its battery replaced, Apple will just send you a new iPad instead. The Battery Replacement Service will cost 0.

Ever since Apple ditched the floppy-drive with the original iMac, people have kicked up a fuss about each new hardware “omission”, calling it a “deal-breaker” (as in “No built-in dial-up modem? Sorry Apple. That’s a deal-breaker.”) The latest has been the steady euthanization of user-removable batteries, which started in the iPhone and ended in the MacBook Pro (although nobody moaned about the iPod). Those complainers have now shut up, realizing that the slew of third-party external batteries are both more powerful and less messy to use than actually swapping batteries, but Apple, it seems, is still a little gun-shy.

You won’t be able to use the Battery Replacement Service to replace a broken machine. The support page includes “accident, liquid contact, disassembly, unauthorized service or unauthorized modifications” among the things that will prevent eligibility. And if you are sending the machine in to Apple, the turnaround is a week (make sure you backup first).

The replacements will, we assume, be refurbished models, and its likely that Apple will just hand you one if you take your juice-impaired iPad to a Genius bar. I’d prefer to keep my actual machine, though. I recently swapped an iPod Touch with a dodgy home button for a new unit in the San Francisco Apple Store. The transaction was fast and easy, but the new unit has an even worse problem: a dodgy accelerometer.

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