That could also explain many of the other issues, such as poor battery life, slow charging, CPU throttling, etc.

In general though, I have had a terrible experience with Apple's QA as well. I've had 4 Macbooks over the years and they all had multiple (usually different) things that really sucked and drove me insane.

The battery swelling happened after the other issues (like not sitting flat on the desk).

Also, my sample size is dozens of these laptops. My experience was typical.

> The battery swelling happened after the other issues (like not sitting flat on the desk).

I had 2 x86 MacBooks that had issues with batteries swelling. Not sitting flat on the desk is simply the first symptom of the problem. Once it swells up a bit more the keyboard starts to show problems.

I think the main issue with those machines was thermal management. That Intel chip got too hot and that affected the battery as well. I used mine quite intensively and they regularly ran hot even with the fans running full speed.

I used one of those for work until last year, don't know what you call typical but it did last for 4 years without major problems so maybe that was atypical. It made a noise like a hairdryer when starting Teams (but then, even my new M3 doesn't like Teams). Also, the spacebar did sometimes trigger twice but not often enough to make a fuss about. First MacBook Pro I've used that didn't need replacing something during warranty ;).