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

I don't have Apple Care, but I have Apple stock and believe in the company. I'm going to call Apple Care first, and if things don't get sorted out, I'm just going to use Time Machine to load my last backup, which I made right before installing Snow. I think it'll be a breeze.

Also, I have to mention Automator here since no one will answer elsewhere. It is now completely useless in Leopard. Can someone run a "watch me do" involving Safari or Firefox, set to repeat over the course of about 10 minutes. Then, while it's running, watching a flash video on the web. Doing this at the same time, guaranteed system wide crash on my Macbook Pro. I NEED someone to try this to see if the results replicate. Automator even crashed before stating the workflow, but the above is 100% within minutes.

I have a macbook pro4,1 and am experiencing the same thing. Poor battery performance, "service battery" indication, and only 79 cycles on a battery that worked well under leopard.

There is obviously a serious bug in SL. I went through to Apple Care and when the pointed out my MBP was out of warranty I told them that I wanted it fixed under the SL warranty. They bought that and opened up a case. Suggest everybody else does the same thing. I don't want to roll back, don't want to boot into 64 bit and I don't want to buy a new battery - which doesn't guarantee fixing the problem anyway. I just want the **** thing to work like it says on the tin. Use Twitter, Facebook and anything else to put people off upgrading by spreading the link to this thread. If this doesn't get sorted I'm starting snowleopardkilledmymacbookpro.com!

Add another MBP killed by the white cat.. How can apple not say there is a serious issue with this? My mbp lasts 20 mins and dies.

Even though my MacBook Pro is shutting down at around 78% battery full now, the little lights on the battery show 4/5 lit. So the battery knows it has that capacity, but something in my MBP doesn't.

Just out of interest here are my battery stats...

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): 2627
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3187
Health Information:
Cycle count: 260
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 1508
Voltage (mV): 12488

Yours look a lot better than mine - considering mine has a lot less cycles...

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): 693
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 693
Health Information:
Cycle count: 81
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12470

Sadly, same issue here. After upgrading to 10.6 my battery lasts about 4 minutes max. It went through 106 cycles. It would hold a solid 1:30hr charge prior to upgrade.

New system software is the only culprit here. I uninstalled 10.6 and battery functioned as it had previously.

Update:
Seems like i was celebrating to soon when i posted that booting into 64-Bit mode fixed the battery issue, as the "Service Battery" message and unstable battery health are back again. So, booting in 64-Bit is no solution to the problem, at least not for me.

To all,


Please post your battery info , in order to see if this is problem occurs just in some types of battery.

Until now, more affected seems to be MBP's 4.1 with Sony Battery.

Hersteller: Sony
Gerätename: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware-Version: 0110
Hardware-Version: 0500
Zellen-Version: 0303

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number: Sony-ASMB012-3a54-9ea1
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): 4659
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 5367
Health Information:
Cycle count: 36
Condition: Good
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 1323
Voltage (mV): 12538

I've given up on SL for now, at least until Apple address this issue. Restored pre-SL and battery is now functioning normally and as expected.

here is mine, with SL, booting into 64-bit mode

Informazioni batteria:

Informazioni sul modello:
Produttore: Sony
Nome dispositivo: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Versione firmware: 0110
Revisione hardware: 0500
Revisione cella: 0303
Informazioni sulla carica:
Carica restante (mAh): 3950
Carica completa: No
In carica: No
Capacità a carica completa (mAh): 4332
Informazioni sulle condizioni della batteria:
Conteggio cicli: 132
Condizione: Normale
Batteria installata: Sì
Amperaggio (mA): -1085
Voltaggio (mV): 11991

Same issue here. Funny thing is I didn't really notice until I installed 10.6.1. Battery took almost 24 hours to fully charge. I did the SMC reset to no avail. MBP is turning off completely after 30 mins or so of use. I did not have this issue under Leopard.

Apple please take a look at this issue.

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): 2357
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3269
Health Information:
Cycle count: 208
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -2411
Voltage (mV): 11012

For Battery Condition, mine will switch back to "Check Battery" when the "Service Battery" message appears in the battery icon drop down rom the menu bar. The message seems to appear while it's charging. After it's first been completely charged and then unplugged, it will disappear, and then reappear with about 2 hours remaining. Then it goes away again until it's nearly run out. Also, my time remaining is fun to watch as well. I JUST watched it go from 50 minutes to 1:10 minutes, and I've got nothing open but Safari and system Profiler.

Anyway, my battery info.

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): 1675
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4613
Health Information:
Cycle count: 142
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1891
Voltage (mV): 10785