Mavericks - power use / service battery

2012 MacBook Air 13". Says "service battery" with only 194 cycles. Apple says I need to purchase a new battery for $129. This happened when upgrading to Mavericks. I went back to Mountain Lion and the problem persists.

I also have the same issue. I have a 2012 MacBook Air. Got it back a couple of weeks ago after having the SSD replaced. Upgraded to Mavericks, now I have the 'service battery' warning. The guy even checked my battery before the SSD was replaced and said it looked fine as it only has 260 cycles and he said they were good for up to 1000. Current capacity is 67%.

Tried resetting the SMC, that didn't work. Will try the full discharge/recharge thing and see if that helps. Let's hope Apple has a solution to this!

Something just happened here. I constantly checked 'software update' ever since the service battery appeared but did not see any updates from Apple. Today, the service battery warning disappeared. I don't know why it took so long for my battery to normalize after the Mavericks upgrade.

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 5509

Fully Charged: Yes

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5509

Health Information:

Cycle Count: 168

Condition: Normal

Battery Installed: Yes

Amperage (mA): 0

Voltage (mV): 8250

FWIW, my service battery indicator disappeared for about 24 hours, but came back. I'd been following the "let it drain all the way until it shuts off, then charge it all the way back to 100%" method outlined earlier out of desperation, and it seemed to have some positive effect, but it was shortlived, apparently.

When I had my RAM updraded a few months ago, the technician adviced me to let the battery drain down to at least 50% and then charge it back again every now and then to preserve the battery's life after noticing that my battery online had 90++ charge cycles in 2 years. I rarely let the battery drain even after that, having the laptop on most of the time, and I never had the "Service batter" problem until an hour or so ago, and I had Mavericks installed a few days after it was announced, holding back till I verified if it was okay to install. I was playing a graphic-intensive game (something I have have been playing even with earlier X OS X versions) when my screen went blank, and the battery LED turned orange.

I restarted and saw the "Service Battery" message. My battery's charge was down to 40% when I restarted. I immediately went online to check if others have had the same problem. Instinctively, my first thought was resetting the SMC, since it is a battery problem. After checking a few links, I tried the SMC reset and it worked. Having read a some of the comments here, the battery's life and health may or may not be directly connected to the battery drain after Mavericks, since I did have it a few weeks before I noticed anything. It is also possible that Mavericks, because of its new power management, is simply pointing out the problem that ealier versions of OS X weren't showing.

Anyways, I'll monitor my early 2011 15" MBP's battery's condition and post here if there are any changes.

(ADDENDUM): When I restarted after my MBP's screen went blank and shutdown, I got a message saying that my clock has been set to Jan 1, 2008. New MBPs no longer have separate internal button batteries for the system clock.

I thought I was out of the woods when the "Service Battery" item disappeared from my menu. But then it came back. For me, it seems to be related to a capacity threshold of 77%. I was at 77% (according to CoconutBattery) and it was gone, but then it dropped to 76%, and the message came back. If I can get it back to 77%, I'll see if the message goes away again.

Doesn't 76% seem a tad bit high to issue a service warning?

The max capacity is all over the place. In one day, it was anywhere from 4173 mAh to 4217 mAh, mysteriously rising and dropping. My machine is over 4 years old, but has only 346 cycles.

I tried this and got the same results. The capacity climbs up when the battery gets drained to about 10% after a full recharge, then charged again. The climb and fall will vary depending on how the battery is being drained, either gradually, or quickly (with power intensive apps).

But I guess, the capacity is not the bigger issue. I'm more concerned of how long the battery can run without the Magsafe plugged in, even when the laptop is simply running idle since ernel tasks still run on a high thread count even when there are no other apps running.

Has anyone found a remedy or tried contacting apple? This is terrible, I walked into my room to see my MBP still charging after a full day of charge and when I opened it after the OS X Maverick install I had the Service battery indication. I have never had an issue with batter life until now.

Also, should I just unplug the charge cable at this point? 😟

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 4610

Fully Charged: Yes

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4698

Health Information:

Cycle Count: 189

Condition: Service Battery

Battery Installed: Yes

Amperage (mA): 0

Voltage (mV): 12184

Full charge capacity has dropped from 5199 to 4698 in 9 days. I hope the issue gets address soon or my battery will be toast. Also I have been on Mavericks since day one and didnt have issues till weeks later so can asume my battery was in the 6000 to 5800 range after install.

Apeck0002 wrote:

or tried contacting apple?

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Cheers

Pete

Yeah I filled out the report thanks

I was replying to Apeck0002

Pete

full charge capacity is now down from 5258 mAh on Nov 3rd to 2886 mAh!!!!

about 2300 mAh decrease in a bit more than a month...

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 2841

Fully Charged: Yes

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 2886

Health Information:

Cycle Count: 58

Condition: Service Battery

feedback posted, bug report filed,...

but the more people will do so, the better it will be

and hopefully there will be an update (just wouldn't hope for 10.9.1 as it looks at the moment...)

so we can all go an buy new batteries... yay...

I bought enough stuff from apple..

I had my battery die after only 240 charge cycles right after I upgrade to Mavericks. Bought a new battery for $129. They escalated my case to engineering and ran a lot of tests on the machine and as far as they could tell, the battery failed at that time coincidentally.

I pointed them to this thread, and they said that there are so many ad hoc issues with such a small percentage of a large userbase that they can't investigate unless enough people start actually bringing their computers in for repair and making sure the case gets escalated to engineering so it doesn't just look like a few people with battery failure.

Call apple! Take your machine in!

What is the best way to file a report with Apple? Not that they're going to react immediately, but the more people file complaints, the faster Apple will realize there are serious issues with this OS.