Actually, my experience with the dozens of Apple laptops I've seen over the past few years tells me that the design or manufacture of the Macbook Pro batteries

Actually, my experience with the dozens of Apple laptops I've seen over the past few years tells me that the design or manufacture of the Macbook Pro batteries (up until the recent redesign) was inferior to that of the regular Macbook. The battery swelling / exploding problem was particular to the MBP, for instance. Incidentally, the battery inside of the laptop I'm currently using (a black Macbook), is the most heroic battery I've ever encountered: At 2 and half years old and 993 loadcycles, it still retains 95% of it's original capacity. It only began reporting consistently under 100% a couple of weeks ago. In contrast, by business partner's Macbook Pro of similar age (and ~600 loadcycles) can barely hold a half hour of charge. He finds my battery's longevity fairly irritating.