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

And what if your MacBook Pro doesnt support 64bit mode Kernel?

Otherwise, I don't know if just booting "64" will solve any of the actual problems for "Pre-Unibody" users.

I have resisted the call to buy a new battery to fix this problem, based on previous experience with Leopard 10.5.6 which knocked out my Airport cards wireless connectivity in early 2009. At the time I maintained that it was an issue with the OS not the hardware. Apple replaced the Airport card and as soon as I re-installed the system with 10.5.6, the new card 'died' only to be restored to full health when Snow Leopard came out.

I am convinced that this battery problem is software related and that Apple will find a fix. My question is why have Apple not jumped in to fight this fire sooner.

I know that this is a user to user forum and I realise that Apple cannot respond to each and every post, but frankly when there is a problem that is affecting so many loyal users, they should do something about it and try and fix the issue, rather then encouraging users to go and buy more hardware to try to fix the issue. This is just profiteering in my view.

Just for the record, same problem here:
Sony ASMB012 battery, 26 cycles, "Service Battery" message, 20 minutes battery life, since upgrade to snow leopard. Desperately hoping for a software fix...

Same problem here. My company owns about 100 MacBook Pros, and 80 of them are showing "Service Battery" or "Replace Now" after upgrading to 10.6.2. I brought in one computer to the Apple Store and they replaced the battery under warranty, only for it to have the same problem a month later. The other computers all show relatively low battery cycles (about 120) but they all insist they need to be replaced.

Faced with downgrading the entire office to 10.5.8, we're waiting until 10.6.3 comes out before doing so, which means 80 people can't use their laptops away from a power adapter.

So much for "it just works" huh?

You are a smart person! I was having issues with FPS in a game I played were my FPS would drop very low ever since my last Mac update and this fixed it. Just wish i knew this before i formated and reinstalled my os losing all my old information =( The worst part is even after i did that once i did the update again i started rec the same issue! TYVM for posting this bud!

My macbook does not support 64bit mode Kernel however this still works for me. No problems with any drivers. Battery is charging and discharging normally. Give it a try, just make a backup of the file first.

zenmoused wrote:
Same problem here. My company owns about 100 MacBook Pros, and 80 of them are showing "Service Battery" or "Replace Now" after upgrading to 10.6.2. I brought in one computer to the Apple Store and they replaced the battery under warranty, only for it to have the same problem a month later. The other computers all show relatively low battery cycles (about 120) but they all insist they need to be replaced.

Faced with downgrading the entire office to 10.5.8, we're waiting until 10.6.3 comes out before doing so, which means 80 people can't use their laptops away from a power adapter.

So much for "it just works" huh?

This has to be the final nail in the "oh you have hardware issue and need to defrag and your battery is too old and generally you don;t know what you are doing" camp's coffin?

Come on Apple, go and wake up your software dude, he/she needs to fix this now!

ajophoto wrote:

zenmoused wrote:
Same problem here. My company owns about 100 MacBook Pros, and 80 of them are showing "Service Battery" or "Replace Now" after upgrading to 10.6.2. I brought in one computer to the Apple Store and they replaced the battery under warranty, only for it to have the same problem a month later. The other computers all show relatively low battery cycles (about 120) but they all insist they need to be replaced.

Faced with downgrading the entire office to 10.5.8, we're waiting until 10.6.3 comes out before doing so, which means 80 people can't use their laptops away from a power adapter.

So much for "it just works" huh?

This has to be the final nail in the "oh you have hardware issue and need to defrag and your battery is too old and generally you don;t know what you are doing" camp's coffin?

Come on Apple, go and wake up your software dude, he/she needs to fix this now!

The final nail? I doubt it. Mr It's Your Battery Because I Say So retreated to other parts of the forum to lick his wounds. In fairness to the blathermeister, he does seem genuinely trying to help (and often does). His vain attitude gets old after a while, I guess.

It's not worth the time/trouble going to the Apple Store for this stuff. Just open a ticket for each and every MacBook Pro that is still under warranty, and have Apple ship you a new battery. Rinse, lather and repeat as often as necessary.

I'm sure Apple is working on this issue. Once it's resolved we'll see fix, and maybe even an explanation.

Don

woznii wrote:
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

I did this, restarted, let the computer sit for several hours unplugged, came back to find that it had shut down, but when I restarted it I was at 10% instead of 90% like last time.

I need to do some more extensive testing, but this is the first time I've gotten past 90% while on (I was able to get past 90% if I unplugged the machine but put it to sleep).

I still see the Service Battery warning, but I'm pretty sure my battery is shot now.

No Don, Its just that there isn't much more to say about the matter. You'd be wise to give the personal attacks a rest. All it does is make your posts look childish.

The vast majority of people have realised that their problems have nothing to do with snow leopard, and quite a bit to to do with these batteries ageing faster than they should regardless of which OS they happen to be using.

In the vast majority of cases, where people have been suffering from the more serious of the two problems discussed here, unpredicted shutdowns, they get a new battery, it fixes the problem, and off they go. The same applies whether they are using Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard. Unfortunately it is pretty clear that the life expectancy of these batteries is around a couple of years in most cases - give or take a year or two, and if you get more than a couple of a hundred cycles out of them before they get below the standard 80% of original capacity level and start behaving increasingly erratically you are doing well, regardless of the OS in use.

In the often less serious situation of just receiving the new "Service battery" warning (which didn't happen in earlier incarnations of the OS simply because provision wasn't made for it), they do what Apple suggests and remove and replace the battery, reset the the SMC, and calibrate it and see what happens. If the problem persists they take the battery in to get checked for the ability to meet transient high current demand.

I know that a handful of you have a bee in your bonnet about all of this and will persist with your beliefs regardless, so every now and then it is necessary to get a few things straight to prevent any one who happens upon the thread from getting mislead into waiting for some sort of "magic elixir" from Apple to overcome a situation where their MBP is suddenly shutting down because the battery is dying. It just won't happen.

The following is intended for such people. Don, you can stop reading now. Everything that follows you've heard before. You don't agree. So be it.

When computers running on batteries shut down unexpectedly it is simply because the battery is not able to provide the transient power needed for a particular task or tasks. It usually occurs because the internal resistance in the battery has built up to the point where, though the battery can still store electricity, it can't deliver it sufficiently quickly to meet the demand. It is like a car with plenty of petrol in the tank but a faulty fuel pump. It will trundle along quite happily on the flat for quite a while, but if you put your foot down to overtake or climb a hill the engine will stall because it can't get enough gas to meet the increased demand. At this point you can choose the dangerous option to keep on driving on flat roads only, and to never overtake anything or "put your foot down" to get out of trouble until the fuel pump dies completely (which you can be certain it will soon do) , or you can get it fixed by getting a new one. The same applies with batteries.

OK, so the next question becomes "are there situations where installing Snow Leopard might increase power demands". The answer, as I've said earlier in the thread, is yes. There is one common situation where the computer certainly appears to use more power after Snow Leopard has been installed. It involves accessing Flash videos. The Adobe Flash plug-in uses more CPU under Snow Leopard than it did under Leopard and this means that if someone has a bad battery already then it may be sufficient to push it "over the edge". The level of CPU usage (and hence draw on the battery) approaches that of ripping a video or the like (which will often send a computer with a bad battery over the edge whatever OS they are using).

You can "work around" this to some extent by running Safari in 32 bit more (if you have a C2D MBP), by avoiding Flash sites, or by using another plug-in like "ClickToFlash", which lets you choose whether to view a Flash movie or not, or to use a less "processor intrusive" H.264 version in some cases (such as in many cases with YouTube vids). But , of course, a battery which has reached this sort of stage of deterioration is going to have increasing problems with even less demanding apps before long (and whichever OS it is using), so the "solution" will at best be a temporary one.

There are probably other applications which draw more power under SL , too, and others that draw less. The reality is that it won't really matter either way if the battery is healthy. Once you are getting unexpected shutdowns due to battery issues, though, no "tweak" from Adobe or Apple or anyone else is going to help you for long. The problem will simply continue to get worse. No modification of OSX 10.6.3 (or .4, or.5, or .6 etc etc etc) will fix a bad battery.

The other matter mentioned here, the appearance of a "Service battery" warning, is new in Snow Leopard. You would never have received it under Leopard or Tiger because it didn't exist then. Contrary to some suggestions here , no-one is saying that if a "Service Battery" message pops up you necessarily need a new battery. The first things to do, spelt out in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3782 , are to replace and re-seat the battery if it is removable and, if necessary, to reset the SMC. If this doesn't fix the problem then take it to be checked by an Apple AASP or Store.

Cheers

Rod

I think if that were to be the case, I would not be experiencing such dramatic fluctuations in battery health. I simply do not concede that for the percentage health to read 98% one minute then, quite literally 2-3 minutes later, read 38% can be anything but a software error. I have tracked my battery health over the course of the past 3 weeks, with regular periods on and off mains power and have seen it bounce from these two extremes quite regularly. FWIW, my charge cycles currently read 77 so it's not as if I've given this battery a heavy workout. I wouldn't mind so much but when it shows, say, 38% health the corresponding life that SL allows me goes down dramatically.

I accept that SL was the first OS to actually provide a readout from the SMC on this but, as my buddy who is an Apple engineer has quite rightly pointed out, unless the software can accurately report on the data it is receiving from the SMC, it is very much prone to error. This is, in both his professional opinion, and my amateur opinion, what is going on here.

As you say though, not much more to be discussed on this topic in terms of remedy unless and until there is a new release of SL which may or may not do anything in this regard.

The fact that you are seeing dramatic fluctuations in battery health actually strongly points to a defective battery, Speedchase. The fact that the fluctuations are not just occurring in the figures, but in actual usage, makes this seem even more probable.

In fact , one of the methods of checking for a defective battery without the use of third party software is to simply fire up terminal, enter "pmset -g pslog" and leave the window running while you use the computer. You then use the log generated to check for sudden discontinuities indicative of a failing battery.

But there is another compelling argument for suggesting that this is not a "Snow Leopard" problem. If it was, then surely far, far more of us using Snow Leopard would be experiencing it, and those who are not using it would not be?

I've been using Snow Leopard on both my 2007 "Santa Rosa" and my 2009 MBP13 since the day it was publicly released. Neither of these computers currently display this problem. The nearest I've ever come to a situation like yours was with a bad battery that I had to replace BEFORE I updated from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

I regularly see many other people posting on these boards with problems with sudden shutdowns, variable battery behaviour etc here who are NOT yet using snow leopard (almost invariably linked to bad batteries). I also know many people other than myself using Snow Leopard on exactly the same computers that are the subject of this thread with no battery problems at all. If this is really a "Snow Leopard" software problem, how do you explain such things?

Cheers

Rod

Rod Hagen wrote:
No Don, Its just that there isn't much more to say about the matter. You'd be wise to give the personal attacks a rest. All it does is make your posts look childish.

The vast majority of people have realised that their problems have nothing to do with snow leopard, and quite a bit to to do with these batteries ageing faster than they should regardless of which OS they happen to be using.

In the vast majority of cases, where people have been suffering from the more serious of the two problems discussed here, unpredicted shutdowns, they get a new battery, it fixes the problem, and off they go. The same applies whether they are using Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard. Unfortunately it is pretty clear that the life expectancy of these batteries is around a couple of years in most cases - give or take a year or two, and if you get more than a couple of a hundred cycles out of them before they get below the standard 80% of original capacity level and start behaving increasingly erratically you are doing well, regardless of the OS in use.

In the often less serious situation of just receiving the new "Service battery" warning (which didn't happen in earlier incarnations of the OS simply because provision wasn't made for it), they do what Apple suggests and remove and replace the battery, reset the the SMC, and calibrate it and see what happens. If the problem persists they take the battery in to get checked for the ability to meet transient high current demand.

I know that a handful of you have a bee in your bonnet about all of this and will persist with your beliefs regardless, so every now and then it is necessary to get a few things straight to prevent any one who happens upon the thread from getting mislead into waiting for some sort of "magic elixir" from Apple to overcome a situation where their MBP is suddenly shutting down because the battery is dying. It just won't happen.

The following is intended for such people. Don, you can stop reading now. Everything that follows you've heard before. You don't agree. So be it.

When computers running on batteries shut down unexpectedly it is simply because the battery is not able to provide the transient power needed for a particular task or tasks. It usually occurs because the internal resistance in the battery has built up to the point where, though the battery can still store electricity, it can't deliver it sufficiently quickly to meet the demand. It is like a car with plenty of petrol in the tank but a faulty fuel pump. It will trundle along quite happily on the flat for quite a while, but if you put your foot down to overtake or climb a hill the engine will stall because it can't get enough gas to meet the increased demand. At this point you can choose the dangerous option to keep on driving on flat roads only, and to never overtake anything or "put your foot down" to get out of trouble until the fuel pump dies completely (which you can be certain it will soon do) , or you can get it fixed by getting a new one. The same applies with batteries.

OK, so the next question becomes "are there situations where installing Snow Leopard might increase power demands". The answer, as I've said earlier in the thread, is yes. There is one common situation where the computer certainly appears to use more power after Snow Leopard has been installed. It involves accessing Flash videos. The Adobe Flash plug-in uses more CPU under Snow Leopard than it did under Leopard and this means that if someone has a bad battery already then it may be sufficient to push it "over the edge". The level of CPU usage (and hence draw on the battery) approaches that of ripping a video or the like (which will often send a computer with a bad battery over the edge whatever OS they are using).

You can "work around" this to some extent by running Safari in 32 bit more (if you have a C2D MBP), by avoiding Flash sites, or by using another plug-in like "ClickToFlash", which lets you choose whether to view a Flash movie or not, or to use a less "processor intrusive" H.264 version in some cases (such as in many cases with YouTube vids). But , of course, a battery which has reached this sort of stage of deterioration is going to have increasing problems with even less demanding apps before long (and whichever OS it is using), so the "solution" will at best be a temporary one.

There are probably other applications which draw more power under SL , too, and others that draw less. The reality is that it won't really matter either way if the battery is healthy. Once you are getting unexpected shutdowns due to battery issues, though, no "tweak" from Adobe or Apple or anyone else is going to help you for long. The problem will simply continue to get worse. No modification of OSX 10.6.3 (or .4, or.5, or .6 etc etc etc) will fix a bad battery.

The other matter mentioned here, the appearance of a "Service battery" warning, is new in Snow Leopard. You would never have received it under Leopard or Tiger because it didn't exist then. Contrary to some suggestions here , no-one is saying that if a "Service Battery" message pops up you necessarily need a new battery. The first things to do, spelt out in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3782 , are to replace and re-seat the battery if it is removable and, if necessary, to reset the SMC. If this doesn't fix the problem then take it to be checked by an Apple AASP or Store.

Cheers

Rod

Dude, 5,400 keystrokes? Not much to do in your world, is there. Again, you're free to voice your opinion, but when you cross that line and hurl snippy insults at people, you deserve to have your credibility negatively impacted. I've suggested this before, you really need to step away from your keyboard. Get a breath of fresh air. You've lost any credibility you had with me many tens of thousands of keystrokes ago.

PS, you never responded to my inquiry regarding your Macintosh support credentials. It would probably increase your level of credibility (since it's been spiraling downward, at least in this tread) if everyone can see that you're not simply someone who has a couple Macs that isn't seeing this problem.

To all the folks having this problem, call Applecare and open a ticket. Once you're run through a few steps over the phone, demand to get a new battery shipped out to you. If it's a defective battery (as Rod stated oh so many times), you should receive a replacement in the mail. Then you can give it some time and see what happens. Don't waste your time going to the Apple Store. While the folks who work behind the counter are enthusiastic and generally helpful, they lack real world Mac Support experience (as appears does Rod) , so you're likely to waste a lot of time.

All the best,
Don

76 pages? wow. I wonder how much of this is Rod's blathering. Dude, I'm sure you're a great guy and you love Apple. But in this case you're wrong.

We've got countless people with the exact same (or almost exactly the same) problem. It's only a matter of time before Apple can no longer ignore the issue.

Until then, we're all stuck plugged into the wall. Keep submitting bug reports, feedback reports and keep getting free batteries. They'll all keep dying and Apple will maybe get tired of giving out batteries.

I haven't read one of Rod's post's in the last month, I just show my room mate how many pages he types and we have a good laugh about how absurd it is that there's really somebody out there who goes to such lengths to deny the obvious.

Snow Leopard kills batteries, period. Fix the problem Apple. Naysayers, you're 5,000 word essays are not being read, you be wasting your time yo.

I've followed this thread with interest having had the problem twice now. I've been recording the health of my new battery (Jan 13th 2010) every day for 2 months, you can see the results here:

http://timmyers.posterous.com/macbook-pro-battery-issues

Were they defective batteries (both faulty ones were Sony and identically specced, the current one isn't), or did 10.6 somehow kill them? I don't know and I don't think the evidence supports a definitive conclusion either way but so far 10.6 isn't killing my battery.