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

Really. I have even made posts on here about bad battery life, and guess what those were all on 10.5 not 10.6. No one on here is a developer of 10.5 and or 10.6. Your making assumptions on not even 1/4 of the laptops that are out on the market saying its a 10.6 issue. You have yet to provide significant facts, yet again of any research. I asked people to post battery stats, but you do not even know if its due to a revision in a laptop. Maybe its a core duo issue or maybe a core 2 duo who knows. Yes with a lack of posts you can not come on here and state some ridiculous so called fact and expect me to believe it. Show me supporting detail besides maybe 20 people complaining about a battery issue.

Please show where I stated cycling a battery is bad? I never said the such, I said and quoted everything from Apple's support site about batteries and how to care for them.

Go back through the pages and really find out how many have issues and how many are legit. If a user has 5 cycles and the battery warning goes off, that is a true indicator of a bad battery. If a user has 250 cycles that could be a sign as well. Apple has released a battery tester for technical support to use to test a battery. If that shows it has failed it has. Guess what? All those that took there battery in for service to a genius and had them run that test, failed. So again how is it SL?

I had random shut downs in 10.5.8 and 10.5.5 and I have had 2 apple support cases about it. Again not SL.

Erian:

I considered doing the same thing, downgrading the OS--however, as I use my laptop for my business, spending hours and hours rebuilding a machine just isn't in the cards for me right now.

Fixing bugs and introducing bugs is always a risk in an OS patch/upgrade or whatever we call it. In no way was I expecting soo many "damaging" results from what was touted as a "clean up" of all the things that should have been done when Leopard was rushed out.

I have my trusty Core Duo Macbook Black w/2Gigs of RAM still chugging away on SL, albeit painfully at times. I keep an eagle's eye on the battery meter so I don't go completely flat while unplugged from A/C.

My battery shows 87% Health, 182 Cycles at present. I've done all the cursory resets/SMC resets etc. to no avail.

Coconut Battery 2.6.5 shows current battery capacity of 4390 mAh, with original Capacity at 5020 mAh or 87% of my original capacity--Very much a usable battery. SL has lost the ability to accurately determine when to put the OS to sleep vs. suck the battery completely dry.

48 hours ago, my battery health was at 95%--go figure. It changes frequently and quite a bit from what I can tell.

My largest concern is that in my observations since the upgrade, SL seems to ignore the "hibernate free ratio" setting. Typing "pmset-g" in a terminal window lists the Power Management settings in effect.

The "Hibernate Free Ratio" setting is what tells the OS to hibernate when your battery reaches 'x' percent remaining if you have ever set it before.

Pre SL, I was at 10% remaining, then it would gracefully shut down--allowing me time to get a power cord or even hibernate over night as the case sometimes was.

This was handy, because as the battery ages, maybe 15% or 20% remaining until hibernate might allow me to work without the A/C cord until the battery reached a state where it could safely hibernate without fear of complete power and data loss.

Now, even when that is hibernate free ratio setting is changed to 60%, the battery will continue discharging all the way down to 0%, or to the point where it goes completely dead.

Running the "pmset -g pslog" in terminal to watch the state of the battery, the OS receives the low battery warning at 20% when the battery is discharging--it just never pops that warning message I used to see telling me that the battery is low or I have so many minutes remaining (usually a 10 minute warning)

As a former IT Engineer of 10 years--this isn't a "sudden" hardware/bad battery issue. Its the way the OS is interpreting the data from the battery and deciding what to do.

The battery has a microprocessor in it as well from what I've read, and just some refinement in how it and the OS communicates is all that seems to be needed.

I refuse to accept that a perfectly fine battery has all of a sudden lost its ability to hold a charge because of an OS upgrade. Unless, of course, all of our batteries are secretly communicating with each other and chose this precise upgrade to go on strike!

My battery is simply DEAD, my Macbook says 'replace now' and does not charge.. Idiots claiming this is not a 10.6 issue can go to wonderland. It might be that 10.6 is better in indicating bad batteries but I did not upgrade to find a battery that's not working at all. If it is better in indicating it should just say that and let the battery do it's job.

So it is a bug; the battery was working for hours (don't know any stats right now) but I had more than 3 hours on 240 cycles and now it doesn't do jack!

Problem is I'm situated in the netherlands and my Macbook is over 2 years old.. I guess apple needs a little more ROI right? I just hope they can help me tomorrow when I'll call & go to an apple reseller.

"Please show where I stated cycling a battery is bad? I never said the such, I said and quoted everything from Apple's support site about batteries and how to care for them."
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You NEVER stated cycling a battery was BAD, your position was the opposite, that cycling was GOOD. For a Lithium battery, that is completely wrong, period.

When 10.6.2 is released and this battery issue is gone, will you admit that there was a bug in SL? Probably not, but you'll KNOW the truth and at least admit it to yourself in private.

I actually feel sorry for you. Stop believing in coincidences and start believing in the obvious...

Cycling for the battery is good, ANY battery. A battery needs to be trickled, does not matter the type. Apparently again, yes I am speaking in a bad tone, you did not read my previous link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
Li-ion battery has no effect of a recharge, they have no memory unlike a NiMH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-metalhydridebattery
Where a full discharge and recharge is necessary.

Where are you getting your information from?

Again if 10.6.2 fixes the issue I will whole heartly say I was wrong, BUT a change to the notification system is not a change to the battery itself. A true fix would come in a form that would do both 10.5 and 10.6 as random shutdowns are found in both. 10.6 added in a far superior user notification like with the wireless, when you can be connected to a switch but still have no internet.

Coincidences and obvious? Come on...ever hear of perception? What your perceiving and what ever your reading about batteries is OBVIOUSLY wrong. Coincidence, I think not. Think about what your accusing Apple of right now? Do you have any idea of the lawsuit that would take place and the charges if they falsely advertised a battery for being bad, and making there customers buy there battery?

While you ARE correct that a battery needs to be trickled (in fact, the trickle is built into most Lithium-Ion batteries), cycling a Lithium-Ion battery will REDUCE it's service life (your reference link doesn't dispute that).

I learned these facts several years ago and my cell phone batteries out last most of my peers as I don't let them fully cycle very often. Unfortunately I no longer have the links , but living by these rules have significantly extended the lives of all my Lithium-Ion batteries.

If what I have read about batteries is obviously wrong, please don't tell my batteries. As for Apple and lawsuits, I'm not accusing Apple of anything other than having an OS bug that needs to be fixed, which apparently, they are fixing. I doubt an OS bug or selling a few batteries is an actionable item, at least I hope its's not. I also doubt there would be enough money to gain the attention of a lawyer (thank god for small favors).

Actually the trickle was done by apple in the G4 laptops, and maybe the G3. Apple even with the release of the intel chip and switch to the new battery still does the trickle charge, but that is besides the point.

And how convenient when I ask you for proof or some sort of background links you fail to come through and talk about a past experience with a cell phone battery.

Time will tell

Clearly a reading comprehension issue. The battery experiences was/is plural across many cell phones and several laptops, but after seeing the way you write, that shouldn't surprise me.

The trickle I refer to is built into ALL Lithium-Ion batteries, it is NOT specific to Apple laptops. Again, something you should have gleaned from the post.

It's sad to think that you are an educator with the writing and general communications skill you demonstrate on the forum. You should concentrate on improving that skill set and leave the technical issues to those trained in that arena.

lapwolf - again keep up the wrong information:

"No trickle charge is applied because lithium-ion is unable to absorb overcharge. A continuous trickle charge above 4.05V/cell would causes plating of metallic lithium that could lead to instabilities and compromise safety. Instead, a brief topping charge is provided to compensate for the small self-discharge the battery and its protective circuit consume. Depending on the battery, a topping charge may be repeated once every 20 days. Typically, the charge kicks in when the open terminal voltage drops to 4.05V/cell and turns off at a high 4.20V/cell."

Li-Ion batteries do NOT come with a trickle charge. Apple applies this with the PMU and SMU units. Go back and read the links I posted. You might be able to type better then me but apparently the technical side just ruled against you.

Ok seriously, if it is like your saying it is that the notification system is so good it tells you to get a new battery just like you are connected to the internet but still don't have any internet...

That just ***** man, that is no good at all. My battery was working pre SL and now it doesn't AT ALL.

Explain that mr. wiseguy..

I am accusing Apple of something, a mistake. Some people allready went out to buy a new battery and paid in excess of 100 (pound, euro or dollar) for a freaking bug in the software... Partly their own fault for not double checking but mainly Apples since the software tells people to.

What if you bought a new one and it says the same in 3 weeks time?

rkovelman - When I reference trickle, my reference is about a trickle "discharge", which IS built into all Lithium-Ion batteries.

Your tangent has gone far enough, we'll see how you respond once 10.6.2 is released, if in fact it does address this battery issue...

OK, just installed the 10.6.2 update (nothing in the release notes about batteries). I'm cycling the battery and resetting the SMC. Let's see what we get...

Has the update helped anyone's problems?

I've had my Genius appointment today:
Result: My battery is broken. He couldn't tell me why though he obviously could confirm that i have been treating all of my stuff really well.

Reading between his lines he said something like: "there is a new algorithm addressing the calculation of the battery life. They seem to have f*cked up something with that, 'cause we've had many many people coming in and having the same problem ..."

That's really bad and i really need a new battery 'cause i'm going for a trip and what's the point in having a broken 30min battery with me?

BTW: My battery health just dropped to 30% and after that jumped up to 38%. At the Genius Bar it was 31,2% ...

i'm really clueless but it guess since my macbook is that old (and me being a SORT OF "satisfied" customer, although this issue really *****) i just have to get a new battery ...