Mavericks - power use / service battery

I just did that, and unfortunately it didn't work. I even tried an SMC reset after cleaning the system cache with Onyx and it also didn't work. Thanks for the suggestion though.

My Mac Book Air 2012 , after the Maveric update, started showing service battery.
I ignored it, assuming it to be a software fault. But after 2 months, I realized that the battery life was also draining. So i checked online, but could not find much related to the issue back then. I found a post where they suggested me to do a battery calibration by Completely Discharging it and then charging it back to 100%. The warning went away for a while. Another month went by and I realized my Battery full capacity had dropped down to 71% after 260 charge cycles. And also noted that it was going lower after every charge cycle. ( Used coconutBattery for this).

Apple service center were of no help as usual. Told me to pay Rs 11,000 (200$) for a new Battery. I refused, thinking to buy it when my capacity drops down to somewhere around 20% in the future.

Until then I decided to try everything else.

So I started with the Battery Calibration again. But this time did the following :

1) Charged the Laptop to Full 100% and then waited another 2 hours while plugged in.
2) Removed the Charger and worked on it till the battery dropped to 0% and went to sleep.
3) Waited for another 6 hours without the charger.
4) With the Lid closed (Laptop still in sleep), plugged in the charger and waited for it to full charge (Until the LED went Green).
5) Waited another 2 hours with the charger plugged in, without using the notebook.

Once all that was done, I opened the notebook. And the service Battery is gone.
The Battery capacity is stable again. 5-6 hours battery backup with safari and 35% brightness. (Decent for an 18 month old Laptop)
The Full charge capacity is now stable at around 78-82 %. Maybe if I had done this sooner the full capacity might have been higher. But I guess the damage was already done.
To keep the battery alive for as long as possible, I dont keep the charger plugged in beyond 100% for too long. Neither do I let the Battery go below 25%.
Its been 2 days, no Service battery till now. Everything is stable.

unfortunately it didn't work 😟

thanks for the suggestion anyway !

How come your Macbook Pro Mid 2009 cycle number starts with 8 (1 or 6 - depends on your screenshot) in your screenshot from Coconut? Your macbook pro has been plugged all the time until last Fall?

Just to note an added wrinkle: I bought a brand new new Air battery 2 weeks ago prior to upgrading, since my old one had 1000+ cycles and had only 60% original capacity The new battery (I installed it nmyself but it is 100% OEM) worked great, for a week with 100+% capacity, but after upgrading to Mavericks my Air now says service battery (after 11 cycles, 3 of which were futile calibration). The capacity fluctuates between 47-70%, and nothing seems to have an effect. When this started happening I contacted the battery seller, thinking the battery was failing, and they are sending me a replacement, but now that I have read this thread, I am convinced the battery is not at fault.

You are right... some days later here i am... the message comes back again. Clean the caches is not the solution. 😟

I find that the battery level of my mac decreases even when it's sleeping. It might be normal that it uses some energy to keep the content of RAM. But even for the shortest time, it definitly consumes more that it should.

For example: at home, I close the lid and wait for it to go to sleep, unplug it, then I take it to another room about 10 meters away, I open the lid and battery is at 99% already. The other day I took my mac to school, from the time it entered sleep to the time I woke it up, lost 3% of battery!

I got booted from another thread for reporting the same problem. Seems this is an issue for a lot of people that's not getting resolved. I'm going to try the techinique above and see what happens.

For the record I have the mid 2013 13" MBA which as far as I was concerned was working fine up untill Mavericks. Right now I have 297 cycles and 78% capacity. I remember clearly when I had the SSD swapped out, the guy at the Apple store checked my battery with their service tool. I asked him what's normal for an MBA like mine, he said he'd seen them with over 1000 cycles and still going strong.

Having read everything there is to read on the issue I'm still no closer to solving the issue myself (the reason I always check the community first before visiting a store).

If anyone else reading this also has a mid 2013 13" MBA who's got similar usage to mine, had the problem, and been able to resolve it, I'd love to know. Then maybe I can go through the same steps and fix it myself.

You got booted from the other thread for breaking the Terms of Use you agreed to when you joined these forums.

Pete

Can you explain how, so I can avoid this in the future? All I did was post a legitimate complaint and ask for a solution, then got accused of trolling. Is posting a problem and asking for a solution not allowed?

You will be in receipt of an email.

Pete

MBP 2011 EARLY,,,i got same problem here "service battery alert"

still can not fix it ...after update to the new OS"Maveric"

I went to the genius bar...well...only answer " change your login board and battery"

OMG...are you crazy? are you genious??? do some reaearch Genious...

Lots of people have same issue? Apple shall consider about it may cause by OS / software...not hardward..

i have mbp mid 2009 13" model. had mavericks installed for about a month and noticed the service batt msg when i moved my mac whilst moving house. it was the first time its been unplugged for a longer than a few mins since the upgrade. i notice that after being asleep for a day or so it ran the batt completely flat. after charging up i had the service batt msge. and now my batt life ***** an is down to 2 hrs max.

kinda considering taking it in to apple store but then i know its likely pointless as theyl jus try to charge me for a new batt etc n claim its old an well due for a replacement etc.

is there even any word from apple yet on a fix?

i jus didnt wanna have to read through 19 pages or so to find they still have not aknowledged the issue yet.

thanks

Just took my MacBook Air into the Apple Store after installing Mavericks. Had the same problems as the posters above-Will run on power adapter, but no charge happening and no lights at all on the magsafe connector. Went into the Apple Store and they gave me a new power cord--it lit up right away--and the tech thought my problem was fixed but I showed him that my computer was NOT charging and the message on the computer under the battery icon said 'battery is not charging'. They told me it might be an issue with my battery--and that they would look it over today and give me a call tomorrow (thankfully its still under warranty). The strange thing is I have NEVER had an issue with my computer or charger so its odd that right when I downloaded Mavericks this would happen. Will let you know what they end up doing.

So still no resolution regarding the battery issue?

It's almost March. First post was October.

I don't know about anyone else but my battery is not getting any better and I've seen some very wild swings in performance.

My battery will bounce around the 80% mark(+/- 5%) with the Service Battery alert coming on and off and then every now and then, like today, it suddenly drops to 55%. Fingers crossed it comes back up to 80% tomorrow.