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

I have a Macbook Pro purchased in December 2006. It is exhibiting the same problem as many of you. My wife is now using the laptop, it is regularly power cycled. I've replaced the battery once since it dropped down below a level that made it worth it to me. However now my wife finds that disconnecting the power the laptop shuts down with ~70% of the battery life still left. System profiler says to check the battery. This laptop hasn't been upgraded to Snow Leopard yet. Seems like a defective battery, here's hoping Apple sees it the same way, but out of warranty. I don't have a problem buying new batteries when they have gone through life, but this was almost overnight that she went from at least 2 hours to less than 10 minutes to shutdown with no warning. The lights on the battery show 4 of 5 LEDs lighting up, which corresponds with what software tells us once it's plugged back in.

My guess is this isn't so much a Snow Leopard problem as a battery problem that Snow Leopard just came coincidentally and better informed users about the state of their crap battery.

I noticed I had the same issue that someone else posted too- that not only does it shut off prematurely, but getting it to do a bit of work such as loading Safari (which also syncs with MobileMe and updates its RSS feeds when it loads) also makes it shut down. It struggles to try and do anything strenuous without switching off running on battery.

Same problem here, my MacBook Pro shows "Service Battery" and as soon as I unplug the mains it will shut down soon "*with no warning at all*", this is definitively an Snow Leopard issue, an important issue as shutting down with no warning can make people "*lose information*".

I also do maintenance on my battery quite often so this is "*not a coincidence*".

As suggested for some people here, I tried reseting the SMC and booting in 64bits, and none solved the problem.

It is clearly demonstrated (just personal experience and just looking and the rest of the discussions) Snow Leopard has been shipped with lot of defects, like the lack of printer drivers (which was soon solved, so it demonstrates it was an issue)

To those who said this is just coincidence and we are only a few post in a discussions, the problem is lot of people would just "buy" a new battery, as I was going to do initially, just because I had the suspicious of previous issues, I had a look on internet and the Apple discussions, I can now confirm that this is an issue.

I really hope Apple will take care soon, or we would just need to assume the Snow Leopard upgrade money is to waste and to downgrade to Leopard.

Jose.

I also have this problem. The one thing that i have noticed is that this is a problem with MBP and the ASMB012 battery. I have yet to find anything about a MB having this problem. Two of my friends have MB for about the same time that i have had mine, have more cycles then mine, and have Snow Leopard. I personally think that this is a problem with the battery. There are to many similarities between all of the cases to make this only a problem with the software. We all have MBP and the same battery.

I did talk to Apple, and the lady i was talking with did find it unusual for my amperage to be so low for how many cycles I have

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 551
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 1162
Health Information:
Cycle count: 130
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1048
Voltage (mV): 11879

I agree, even though it would be better for me if it were a software problem. I'm not having any trouble with my new battery but I'll be sure to keep an eye on it in case it fails after such a short time like my other one did.

I suggest that anyone with a computer under applecare get them to replace the batt, and anyone who's bought a battery that's failing within a year of purchase should also get in there and replace it. I'm sure we'll find out that this is a defective battery design but it doesn't really matter for those of us out of warranty like me.

I don't know, I'm reluctant to thing is just a problem with the battery, there are nearly two hundred posts here about this issue and I am sure much much people is having the same problem but just went and bought a new battery, and didn't think to check forums, so I don't think is just a coincidence.

Apart from battery calibration, yes, it's true most of us run from the mains most of the time, but I am also sure I unplug every often the cable until the battery runs off, have been doing this until I installed Snow Leopard. Problem now is we can't even calibrate again as computer will shut down before.

Here is a thought, I think most of our Macbook Pro are about a year old, therefore the battery is not in his best health, then it comes Snow Leopard, it seems from other people posts that some times it gets very hot and uses the fans at high speed, is it not maybe some faulty within the OS and some hardware combination, that makes it to use more amps and somehow can wear out the battery faster than usual?

What worries me the most is not only the lack of duration but the way it shuts down with no warning, first time it happened to me I nearly lose some info, hopefully I didn't, but I use the laptop to work, so is not good.

Anyway, I think is best to wait until there is some resolution about this issue before buy a new battery, maybe Apple comes up with a new update soon, as they did with 10.6.1

I have the same problem. MacBook Pro (week 10; early 2006). Since the upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6 and then 10.6.1), both of my batteries show "Service Battery". They are both less than 1 year old, and one of them has around 150 or fewer cycles, while the other has less than 50 cycles.

This is Definitely a Snow Leopard issue.

Don

I have switched my battery to other macbook pro's running 10.5 and it works fine, but suffers all the same symptoms of erratic behaviour that others are experiencing when I run it on my upgraded MB running SL.

I am reverting back to 10.5 for now.

Come on, Apple. This is obviously a bug with SL. PLEASE get it sorted quickly with an update!

Just wanted to add my experiences to this topic, as it really needs to be fixed as a matter of urgency.

Has happened a few times and just happened a minute ago.

My laptop was running on battery with around 25% charge. I left it for a minute, when I went back to it, it had switched off.

I plugged in a restarted. My battery charge was showing as 0% in the toolbar. It took about 5 mins to get to 1% and then 2% of charge and then got to 4% very quickly.

I then shut the screen and moved to another room (unplugged the laptop). I then plugged it in and opened the screen and the charge showed as 28%.

There seems to be an issue with the way snow leopard interacts with the battery. Major issue, makes working off the battery so unreliable its pretty much unusable.

Does anyone having this problem, have BootCamp so can reboot on another OS like Linux or Windows?

Would be interesting to see the battery performance there, although not sure if the SL upgrade also affects the hardware drivers for booting in a different OS.

I have also the same problem here, MacBook Pro 4.1 (Early 2008), just after upgrading from Leopard to SL, Service Battery message shows up.

I tried SMC reset, 64bits restart and none of them worked.

I hope Apple release an upgrade solving this problem, that obviously is affecting Snow Leopard users having these MBP models.

I was thinking what if somebody tries to replace com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file with some other previous SL beta file or even the Leopard file, maybe then SL won't replace that file and battery controls work "as if they were in Leopard"... perhaps this is nonense, but it's worth to try it (you can always delete that file later and have SL replace it I guess if it does not work).

Has anyone downgraded back to Leopard?
Would this solve the issue?

I did an interesting test, I booted from the Leopard 10.5 DVD, and guess what? from fully charged battery, it lasted for a couple of hours (yes, even if only one year old, my battery is not in good health), but most importantly, it didn't shut down suddenly, near 10% or 15% I got the alert of low battery.

So, I think this proves to me that it is some kind of faulty in Snow Leopard. I really hope Apple comes out soon with a solution.

Jose.

Is there any way of pointing Apple in the direction of this forum thread, so they can see there must be something in SL that's causing the issue?