Mavericks - power use / service battery

This has been happening to me in Yosemite as well, so I actually think something might be physically wrong 😟

mariotheplumber wrote:

worse in Yosemite!!

If battery is anywhere near 50% charge when turn off at night, odds are that when turn it on in the morning it won't start because battery is 0%.

It's another brand new battery.

1hr+ for a 100% charge to 0% on moderate use is ****.

I guess when there's a safety incident related to the battery and charging then Apple may eventually pay some attention to what appears to be (judging from number of posts) a wide problem.

...what's with the 'search' on communities - most of the top level results returned are years (decade) old, unless you see 'all results' - my guess is not many are interested in problems/advice sought from 5-6+ years ago.... the hardware, yet alone software isn't relevant!

Is it an Apple battery or a knockoff.

Late 2012 13" MacBook Air with around 150 cycles has service warning. Apple want to replace - at my cost. 😟

and its no better with another new battery - clean OSX install on a brand new SSD HD.

I guess a guru will tell me it's a logic board issue and I need a new one or replacement computer.

Funny the issue only arose at same time as Mavericks upgrade.

Anyway, not a chance I'll buy another MB whilst they insist on sticking shiny screens on them. I need to work not practice bobing and weaving in front of a screen.

Let's see if El Capitan manages to resolves battery issues.

mariotheplumber wrote:

Funny the issue only arose at same time as Mavericks upgrade.

Yes, that is funny.

Pete

I have this question too, I get "service battery warning" recently
My notebook is MacBook Air 2012(13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)And after updating the newest OS version yesterday, this issue still is there.

1. Try hardware test as long press D during bootup, it shows no hardware issue
2. And also try shift+control+option+power key, not fix😠

It appears that the battery is decreasing fast than before
And view the cycle couter, just 159 times, it is far away from the 1000 times as Apple said.

I can't figure this out.

Give us some solution please, Apple.

Since update to 10.10.5 the "service battery" message seems to have vanished. The battery performance is still really poor - about 2 hrs from full charge just using mail & web browser.

I'll jump in here. While I didn't have any battery issues, per se, upgrading to Mavericks did change the charging behavior of my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013). However, on a firmware level, power management was changed in Mavericks.

Using Apple genuine chargers, no problem, everything works as it should. Now, see, since I'm paranoid of losing expensive Apple accessories, I bought a cheap knock off MagSafe charger to carry around while the original stays home. Why? Because who cares if I leave a $15 charger somewhere or it gets swiped. YES, I KNOW IT IS WRONG and the APPLE POLICE are coming right now to seize my Apple products AND I'm also aware that I risk burning my house down, murdering kittens, and "officially" must be informed that it will immediately destroy my computer. Moving on. (No, seriously, I don't want or need a lecture about knockoff products. I chose to be willful and use one. I know the risks.)

See, Apple official OEM charger, charges, no problems. Before Mavericks, I was able to use this cheap knockoff charger, no problem. Charged like a champ. Once I upgraded to Mavericks, my knockoff charger IMMEDIATELY ceased to charge my MacBook, leaving me with a "Not Charging" message. This occurs both while the machine is on and off. It's worth noting that I can get the charger to work sometimes by resetting the SMC, but after unplugging, will go back to "Not Charging". During this time, my battery level does not drop while plugged in, it just remains exactly the same.

My guess is that somehow, the firmware was reprogrammed to recognize genuine Apple chargers AND batteries. Not being an electrical engineer, I'd guess the "genuine" products either have a different circuit resistance or tighter voltage variances than their cheap knockoffs. After all, the "genuine" chargers never caused AM radio interference, while the knockoff charger did.

Perhaps the batteries in some models, while perfectly fine, are falling slightly out of this "acceptable" variance and is triggering the firmware to declare it broken. Knowing Apple programmers were likely writing code with the newest models in mind, they wouldn't have found any problems with the code as the newer hardware met the "acceptable" variances (or they wrote the code to match existing variances in the newer hardware).

I'd guess that Apple sources the batteries from multiple manufacturers. I'd be interested to see if this "Service Battery" error could be matched to a specific battery manufacturer that just happened to not be as "tight" on their power readings, knowing at the time of production that it didn't matter.

whilst your theory sounds plausible... it doesn't explain why those folks who are using genuine Apple products (purchased at considerable expense ) experience a whole host of battery / power charging issues! The symptoms of which for many folks continually change.

Let's face it, it would appear that in the race to stay ahead with technoilogy and release of software features (many of which are actually useless in the real world, outside of the heads of 12 year olds) that hardware and software testing has fallen by thw wayside. After all why pay your employees to find development bugs when your customers will do it for free?!

I'm saying it's plausible that only the latest and greatest technology was deemed within specifications AND, given the variety of manufacturers of varying parts, many manufacturers were probably already making stuff within specifications HOWEVER, there was probably that one or two lone hardware manufacturers that made stuff out of specification, because at the time of manufacture, it didn't matter.

See, if Apple uses Company X, Company Y, and Company Z to make their batteries. Companies X and Y probably made their stuff within specification. Company Z may not have, because at the time it didn't matter. But what about people that bought the replacement parts and STILL got the errors? Let's assume only a handful of companies made batteries.

Let's make up a person, we'll call him Joe. Say Joe gets this "service battery" error AND perhaps the genuine OEM factory battery in his 2011 MacBook was made by Company Z. So, being the good Apple customer Joe is, he follows the Genius Bar's advice and buys a new battery. NOW, because only a handful of manufacturers make GENUINE batteries, it's highly probable that this new battery, the one he replaces his "defective" one with is, yet another one, from Company Z. Keep in mind, we're only speculating here, so Company Z has not changed anything in their batteries for that 2011 model laptop and in 2016, they're still making these 2011 model year batteries the same way they made them in 2011. Since Joe replaces his "defective" battery with an identical Genuine Apple battery from Company Z, in fact, this battery may have even been installed by the Genius Bar themselves. Since this Genuine Apple product inside his 2011 MacBook is nearly identical to the "defective" one replaced, maybe not immediately, but within a few boot cycles, it also registers as "defective".

My example is just stating that while running Mountain Lion, my MacBook didn't seem to care whether it was being charged by a genuine Apple charger or a cheap Chinese knockoff, it reliably charged the battery either way. Once I upgraded to Mavericks, my MacBook can no longer be reliably charged by the cheap knockoff charger, implying that a firmware update gave my MacBook the ability to detect power variances and subsequently care about them. Some differences between my genuine Apple charger and the cheap knockoff, the genuine one is three pronged and the knockoff is a two pronged AND the knockoff causes radio interference where the genuine charger does not, indicating that the knockoff clearly has grounding issues. Perhaps something with the grounding along the whole circuit, which obviously includes the battery, is causing issues? It's subtle, but not something Apple is going to chase around.

Simply, perhaps just a correlation of "service" error codes to manufacturers of the parts triggering said error.

This theory I'll buy. What I will not buy is another battery (genuine or otherwise) for my 2009 MBP.

The "service battery" message is back - just sometimes, not all the time, just when it feels like it. Battery life from full charge remains **** (i.e.: not very good).

Oh for the days of SL when hardware & software just worked.