Horrible battery on Maverick

THIS IS JUST A SUGGESTION TO GET YOUR SYSTEM TO WORK AS EXPECTED. MAY OR MAY NOT WORK. FOR EXPERTS ONLY. This will clean out your system. Yes this is tedious amount of work. Hours to complete 3-4 days. 1/2 day to backup if needed. 2 days for battery calibration and 1/2 a day to reinstall. DO NOT SKIM INSTRUCTIONS AND READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

My Specs...

Bought in August 2012

13" Macbook Air 2012

I5-3427u 1.8GHz

128GB @ 30% usage

8GB RAM

10.9.0 Mavericks

6500mah(left)/6700mah(stock) @ 29 cycles

Turbo Boost Disabled.

Screen @ 50%

No USB Devices or SD card

Headphones connected.

Wifi On:

~9-10HRS (reading and music).

~5-7hours programming and compiling programs.

Wifi OFF:

~6.5hours 1800kbps 720p video.

~7 hours 1000kbps 480p video.

Remember how to do a SMC RESET AND PRAM RESET for your particular machine before doing this.

0.Back up all your stuff via timeline or your own method on a seperate EXTERNAL Device. Drain your battery from 100% to 5% continously. DO not turn your computer off and on or sleep while draining. DO NOT OVER USE your battery. I.E. Gaming or watching a 1080p video. Safari and playing music OK. Nothing more. NO FLASH OR YOUTUBE. Keep it idle. Install caffine if you have too. OVER ALL KEEP YOUR CPU USAGE under 5% WHILE DRAINING YOUR BATTERY. After draining your computer's charge to 5% keep it asleep for 5 hrs or more if youd like.(No more than 1 day though). Plug it back in to AC 4 hours (try using the grounded charger instead of the travel charger). While its charging do not use it. Unplug for 2 hours.

1.Plug in your machine again. Do an SMC Reset and PRAM Reset.

1.HOLD cmd+r on boot. Loads repair Menu

2.go to disk utility and go click your drive and partition -> partition layout-> partition 1. Label your hard drive what ever you want. Default format is Mac OS (Journaled).

3. Exit Disk utility once you have a working partition to reinstall mavericks.

4. reinstall mavericks.

5. Test your battery once more till its 5%. Work with usage at 5% or below 5% usage. Surfing on Safari and playing music OK. Nothing more. NO FLASH OR YOUTUBE. (DO NOT INSTALL ANYTHING).

6. Once drained let your battery rest for 5 hours of drainage. -Plug it back into the AC for 5 Hours and don't use your computer during this time.

FIY anytime you completely drain your battery or battery is less than 50%. let your battery rest at least for 2 hours after recharging. Anytime your are recharging from above 50%. Use only up to 5% of your cpu power and very light use of flash if neccessary while recharging. To keep your battery healthy, use up to 5%-10% of total cpu power anytime using your battery. This means discharging and recharching.

For those who don't know this, even when your magsafe connector switches from red/orange to green, it is still charging, just at a slower rate. it takes about an hour more after it turns green to fully charge your battery.

Sorry for caps, its for those who don't read all the instructions and they wonder why their computer is still not working as expected.

HOPEFULLY THIS WORKS FOR YOU! 🙂.

Also, I replaced my original battery because my original battery health was varied from 60% ~80.1% health @ 70 Cycles. <-----Apple was a pain in the butt to get this replaced. Took 7~8 times going to the genius bar to get this replaced. Warned them that the battery health depreciated too quickly at 10 cycles it was 91% the first time I took it in.

same problem with 2010 mba, tried smc and pr reset, useless...

half battery life here.

Also carried out an SMC and PRAM, partial success as it has increased from 2 hrs to 3hrs, just using Safari and shut Chrome down.

tut

I have an older (2008) MBP. I upgraded to Maverick since it was free. I noticed my fan running at full speed continuously. I checked the activity manager and was geting several MDS related programs that would reopen after I forced them closed. Perfroming a search on that problem found that spotlight was the problem. It was indexing in an infinite loop. I had to shut off spotlight to stop the problem. Yay. Wish I had never updated.

triber wrote:

... was geting several MDS related programs that would reopen after I forced them closed.

Those processes are required for Spotlight indexing. They will continue to run until they are finished indexing. If you continue to force them to quit they will never finish and your battery life will never improve.

The very first response to this pathetic rant-fest answered that question.

If you still have concerns please start a new Discussion so that your unique circumstances can be addressed. Thanks!

You're the one being pathetic here, refusing to see the problem. Seriously, what are you still doing in this discussion????? You're helping NOBODY.

triber wrote:

I have an older (2008) MBP. I upgraded to Maverick since it was free. I noticed my fan running at full speed continuously. I checked the activity manager and was geting several MDS related programs that would reopen after I forced them closed. Perfroming a search on that problem found that spotlight was the problem. It was indexing in an infinite loop. I had to shut off spotlight to stop the problem. Yay. Wish I had never updated.

Has anybody else tried this? Is it working? I want to do this but I'm not a computer expert at all I'm scared of doing something wrong.

actually its pretty easy. just go to system preferences -> spotlight ->privacy tab -> add your main hard drive to that list. I dont recommend it though.

There's another post in MBA forum regarding the battery drain.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5471323

I did a lot of tests and research and it seems like there's no fix for now. Looking forward to have 10.9.1 ASAP.

Anyone found a solution to this yet?

I am getting the same problem too..
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5497155

So frustrating!

Cheers, Stu

After Mavericks install, your "time remaining" will very likely be inaccurate until you do a SMC reset in many cases

SMC reset

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
3. On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
4. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
5. Press the power button to turn on the computer.

There is a HUGE distinction here about someone getting less batt. life in actuality .......or are they just reading the "time remaining" and using that as a true indicator which is certainly is not.

Ive seen 3 notebooks after SMC reset jump 4+ hours in "time remaining" and slowly climb after 3+ full charge cycles.

Until things settle down, nobody should trust what the 'time remaining' says until the computer has been on for many hours for spotlight to index everything

spotlight has got to index a lot of stuff, and its going to take a while for batt. 'time remaining' estimates (and thats all it is) to level out to accurate.

We expect any computer operation to solve an issue: "if you do X, then Y will be fixed instantly", but in the case of battery estimation time, its not so simple and quick.

recommend download the FREE little APP coconut battery

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

tiny little informative APP

*Mavericks not only increases a single charge cycle for longer battery use off a full charge,… but also prolongs the overall long term life of the LiPo battery in a Macbook by reducing the load conditions the battery experiences from heavy peak-use.

PlotinusVeritas, please stop with the color underlined fonts on every single page. I'm getting headeaches every time when i have to read it, every single time.

I've done all of those tips, hints and stuff. When I firstly installed mavericks I was very happy with a battery life of 8 hours. Then went through the PRAM and SMC reset, the battery showed up with 4 to 5 hours. For a mbp with 282 cycles is still enought.

Now after like leaving my computer uncharged for 8 hours. I got a call from my girlfriend and had to leave the computer closed lid for 8h with a battery charged like 12%. In the morning I had to use the computer, tried turning it on and it was dead. After plugging the charger it went on with battery about 4%, but now I'm expericing a battery life of 1,5-2 hours. The coconut battery, showed it's capacity to 78%, after the highest amount was 86% even 88%.

I tried lot's off stuff here, pram, smc, disk utilities and it doesn't work at all. Any advices?

I had a long session with Apple technical yesterday and the chap whom I spoke to said this was the first case he had been presented with.

He asked me to charge it upto 100%, unplug, then run it until it shut down, timing it at the same time. I had already done this but went along as he asked me to call him back if I did not get an improvement, and he would book me into Apple Aberdeen.

I got the same 3hrs which was the increse from 2hrs that I got the other day after going through a SMC and PRAM reset.

My main puzzle is that battery life seemed normal after installing Mavericks, it is only in the past few days that it has dropped to 2hrs.

I would also like to make it politely clear that there is no point in continual statements that it depends on the usage of your Macbook, that is obvious. Most of us are using it exactly the same as we did before Mavericks, which means that it is a no brainer where the cause lies, and it does not take Einstein to figure that out.

tut

Hi tomblack90

Please start a new Discussion so that your unique circumstances can be addressed. Thanks!

You have to give John 10/10 for perseverance........😝

tut