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

In system profiler or using a free program called coconut battery.

This forum is getting useless and confusing due to people telling us how stupid we are and to go and but a new battery as there are no OS issues.

The forum is suppose to be of any help to people having issues, and there has been proof enough of us having issues, all detailed regardless what they say, we report our issues and we report ways to try and solve it or live with it on a way to help each other.

So causing confusion and alienating people is not helping anyone.

Message was edited by: jmgomezg

I think the problem is you do not like the answer, so instead of swallowing your pride you take offense to an answer that has now been said numerous times by multiple IT people.

I haven't called anyone an idiot. I'm not a battery rep, I am a physics lecturer at a medium sized state university. I don't make a ton of money and it really hurt having to fork over $130 to an apple genius to replace a year and 1 month old battery with 87 cycles on it.

But, my machine works now and I'm running snow leopard with essentially no other problems. I certainly wish I'd had apple care and almost bought it just a month earlier.

Oh and all you people complaining about the mac and wanting to switch to windows, go ahead. I'm sure you'll find the grass isn't so green on the other side either.

NIce then, can u just explain me why i've no issues at all with my battery when i boot from Leopard instead of SL?
i am really curious, really.

This is definitely an OS problem. My daily routine is to work plugged-in at the office, go home with laptop, and use it for personal email, TV-guide and stuff at home on battery. I often got the low battery alarm using Leopard and would plug in. The charge indicator was accurate.

On Snow Leopard, I get 10 minutes of use from a full charge (indicator showing >1 hour charge left) and I lose all power (and unsaved work) without any warning. It's the "fail without warning" that bothers me and seems to indicate OS trouble.

I guess I'll get a new battery and see if that fixes it.

I just reset the PRAM (boot holding CMD, Option, P, R). My battery life is back up to 4 hours without the 'service battery' warning.

I guess my battery ISN'T messed up... I'll repost as soon as SL starts crying wolf again.

You guys on here who aren't having any trouble with your machine, trying to convince us all that we're delusional, have you no shame? We're all experiencing issues here, and you're not helping.

Considering I'm able to get rid of the 'service battery' warning and double my battery life by resetting the PRAM there's just no possible way that this is a problem with my battery. Here's my battery info again for the record, I posted the info earlier as well:

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): 4631
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4856
Health Information:
Cycle count: 61
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1196
Voltage (mV): 11967

well, SL is at it again, battery life now says 1 hour with the service battery warning (was at 3 hours with no warning moments ago). I'm going to reset the SMC now, and the PRAM again... this is BS.

The only thing your proving is:

1) SMC module is faulty
2) 10.6 has a better battery "reader" then 10.5

Again its not 10.6, 10 people complaining does not make up the population of all laptops sold. You might want to have apple check your MLB where I believe the SMC resides as well as the battery.

Denial is a powerful force. Snow Leopard has a battery problem. It isn't limited to a reporting problem, especially when the battery lasts half the time it does under Leopard and shuts SL down in a random fashion.

Don't blame others for your lack of reading comprehension. I expect more from a Physics teacher. Maybe that's MY problem...

If after all "those years in IT", this is your way to find a solution for a problem, linking us how a Li-Ion battery works, i'm quite sorry for your customers; even my grandmom (she is 84) knows how a li-ion battery works; so stop treating us like braindead, since probably most of us has a better knowledge in IT compared to yours,considering how you reply.

I am asking you for the second time, since the first one i didn't get an answer from one of the bestes IT tech in the whole world:

Can you please explain me why my battery lasts for more than 3 hours and half when i boot from Leoprd, and just 1:40 when i'm running SL?
thank you

oh man, these people keep going and going sabotaging this forum, don't they have anything better to do?? like an annoying fly, please leave us alone!

by the way:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/13/apple-bug

Apple starts admitting bugs on the OS, finally!! there is no pride to swallow but your own words.

Well, I think like you guys about the problem. I still think theres an issue with battery life with sl,

However I had to buy a new battery cause I needed it to work on a 10 hours flight and its working wonderful. Im having 4-5h battery life in SL. Im beginning to think that my old battery was actually bad after 2 years of work and that actually I didn't noticed the problem in leopard.

rkovelman:

Thanks for your input. Your opinion and recommendations have been duly noted. However, there are a number of folks who respectfully do not agree with your assessment or recommendations.

As someone stated earlier, it’s best to just note your problem with relevant details, or your recommendation for resolution. This isn’t really the adequate venue for people to go back and forth arguing about who is right or wrong, or implying that some posters don’t know what they are talking about. Let’s please just stick to relevant details.

Since we’re listing professional backgrounds to validate opinions, let me state that I’ve been in software development for 10+ years. Since the power management component of SL has been altered to, at the very least, move the battery health indicator into a more easily accessible place, there is a reasonable chance that these updates induced an bug which many folks are experiencing. Though GUI updates may appear benign, they can often belie the complexity in making the change. It’s also likely that power management was updated in other ways outside of GUI updates.

Since the permutations of hardware platforms and components which SL will run on are vast, it is impossible for Apple to test the OS against every permutation to ensure there are no issues. It is highly probable that the issue manifests itself only in a subset of hardware configurations whereby the communication between the power subsystem and the OS is experiencing issues.

For the record, I too am experiencing this issue with a battery with just over 200 cycles on my home MacBook Pro. On L I would get just shy of 4hrs use, and now I’m lucky to get 1hr and there are no warnings when the shutdown occurs. I work at a company where we develop on Macs and we are holding off on updating until the OS settles as there have been some other issues, e.g., erasing data after the update. Further, I know of a few other developers with similar hardware who are experiencing the same behavior. The fact that some have rolled back to L, reset the SMC, and resolved the issue seems to indicate that there may very well be an issue with SL interacting with the SMC in some hardware configurations.

Do you care to explain this
"Since the power management component of SL has been altered to, at the very least, move the battery health indicator into a more easily accessible place"

"It is highly probable that the issue manifests itself only in a subset of hardware configurations whereby the communication between the power subsystem and the OS is experiencing issues."

- That would be the SMC module which I just indicated

Again the random shutdown is that of the battery itself and its nature. Again I am trying to help you guys have a case with this, but the only thing anyone keeps hinting to is the SMC. As a matter of fact just had a user who experienced the same thing on a MacAir. Reset the SMU and her battery is back to almost normal considering the cycles they have on it. I tried to search on Apple's support pages about the SMU and its functions other then power and found nothing. SMU does stand for Source Measure Unit.
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/6850

Anyone with a MacBook or the pro that never did the battery update not have this issue? I am thinking the algorithm used is off or not calculating properly as the battery life goes down.