Q: MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

Same problems as others. At moment battery 97% health on 159 cycles, although experiences sudden drops to 25% for no reason, then back to normal.

Can others with the same battery problems try out this recalibration?, at present its working for me.

1. Allow battery to discharge completely and switch off
2. leave overnight
3. Recharge until green light on lead plug on
4. switch off at wall plug and WAIT UNTIL GREEN LIGHT GOES OUT.
5. Remove lead
6. Switch on Macbook.

FP.

Same issue her. I had the problem about 4 weeks ago and it just went away. Last week all of a sudden "Service Battery warning" I followed what you suggested and it is OK again. I went to an Apple store over the weekend and they indicated that they can do a test to check the battery. I plan to do that.
Dave

After quite extensive testing I have concluded this is an absolute red herring and a big in SL. I have a cycle count of around 70 on quite a new MBP (about a year old, with only light use). I have seen the following behaviour:

1. My battery health yo-yo between anything from 56% to 98%, irrespective of doing full recycles, drain and recharge etc etc. Last night my battery ran down to 4%, my health went back up to 97% and as soon as I took it off mains power it dropped to 64%.
2. I have seen the time left on the battery jump from less than an hour to well over 3 hours, in the space of a 5 or 10 minutes, doing exactly the same things on the MBP (email, surfing etc).

Now, there is a possibility that my battery has a fault, I accept, but given the above erratic behavior I sincerely doubt it.

I thought I was the only one who's having this problem. I originally wanted to buy a new battery for my MacBook Pro that's about two years old now but after reading this post, it becomes clear to me that this is a software problem, not a hardware problem. How could you do this to us, Snow Leopard?

Are you telling me that Apple hasn't make any updates or patches to fix this battery problem until now? Are they even aware of it? What's going on?

Speedcheese, you nailed it, I've having the EXACT same problem and it's been going on for months. I've gone to Apple.com/feedback, I've submitted a bug report, I've met with a genius. No luck on all fronts. Apple doesn't seem to care, they want us all to get iPads and then we can only use software from the App store.

It looks like for the most part we can no longer use Macbooks/Macbook Pro's as portable machines. That *****, but what can you do?

FWIW, I've also spoken to a really close buddy of mine who is an Apple engineer who says that Apple are well aware of this but he said he didn't think there was a fix any time soon (rather oddly). It's something to do with a bug in the SMC firmware apparently, or more specifically, how SL interprets the instructions from the SMC chip.

But keep watching - 10.6.3 is literally just around the corner which, at over 700Mb for the update, looks set to do some pretty wholesale changes.

That post really makes sense... Thank you.

Just adding my +1 for my MBP 3,1. Battery info is:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0001
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2895
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 2968
Health Information:
Cycle count: 139
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12401

I am having the exact same problem.

So as a postscript to my original post, I've now been running since then on 98% health without a blip. Been on and off battery, ran it down to 6% the other day and back up to 100%, and also had it on PSU for long periods. Never moved from 98% health.

So, if there was anything wrong with the battery than clearly it would have come up during that period. Just reaffirms my original, and subsequent, submission. Not that it helps anyone suffering the same problem of course. The only thing I have seen make a difference is the routine of completely draining the battery, leaving it overnight (drained), then charging it right back up again. Otherwise, roll on 10.6.3, with fingers crossed...

Having the same issues... Menu says "Service Battery" and MBP switches off without warning when working from battery.

Submitted as bug through the Bug Reporter.

Thanks all for sharing your experience and telling Apple that this is a widely appearing issue.

Same issue. Initially thought - like so many others - that my battery gave up. Got a brand-new battery and issue persist. After each complete drain of the new battery SL shows different battery health somewhere between 50-100%. Extremely annoying. Fingers crossed that the next update fixes this issue.

Same issue here. Noticed the "Service Battery" warning when I upgraded to Snow Leopard a while ago. Battery was working okay until recently. Now, it only lasts about five to ten minutes until it shuts off. The battery meter lights would still show 4/5. Disappointing since it only has about 80 charge cycles.

I'll add another may 2008 macbook pro with identical problems here.
My battery health is all over the place, going from +80% down to 20%, and it has been doing that for some time. But now it just shuts down after half an hours or so (read looses power and crashes, no sleep) when it's sitll claiming 80% charge left. Very annoying to say the least.

My battery has been treated good, as it says on the battery care pages from apple, and only has 57 cycles now.
Callibrating is useless, since it dies with 80% charge left.
Apple shop is no help either, since they refuse to replace it under warrenty (which they should since legal warrenty is 2 years here)

Message was edited by: Artfoto

I've read all these posts and have been experiencing the same "battery service problem". I edited:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

find there:
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>

and change it to
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>arch=x86_64</string>

All is well again.
Source: http://netkas.org/?p=127#comment-33707