Mavericks - power use / service battery

Upgraded from 10.6.8 on MBP13 mid 2010. I always had Snow Leopard never felt any need to change, never even had to format once, I just had it like when I bought it.

Lions passed, and apple came up with this new system supposed to improve performance and battery life. I was ok with the performance, but battery life is always a good adition.

So I upgraded only to find out that my battery time actualy decreased from 9 hours to almost 6. No service alert is showing though.

The one and only thing I wish apple would not lie. The only thing I realy cared for. I guess I'm gonna get my disk mirror backup now.

Ok, a couple of things have happened regarding this PITA battery issue.

1. AppleCare actually contacted me. It was in the middle of the work day and I was immersed in a series of meetings, so I we did not get a chance to actually speak, but it was interesting that they reached out to me. I have attempted to return that call a couple of times since and I will continue to try, until I do talk with an actually person.
   
2. I noticed updates related to Books and Mail and installed them two nigths ago.
   
3. I took my MPB to work with me yesterday and had it active and plugged in all day long. Not closed or sleeping. For the first time in awhile my battery showed as 100% changed. I normally charge it at night while it is closed and sleeping.
   
4. After the battery had fully charged, while the MBP was active (not sleeping) the Service Required indicator disappeared.
   
5. Using my MPB last night, following a day of it being active and charging, the remaining power calculation seems to be back to normal. For the first time since the move to Mavericks my "time remaining" was about 7h 50min with the pertage being 97%. As I type this message it sits at 59% and about 3h 20min remaining it was at abotu 74% when I opened it up this morning about 45 minutes ago. I think that power usage seems normal.
   
6. The Service Required flag is still gone and inspecting the Sytem Report via the System Information util says the battery condition is "Normal."

I am not sure what actually hapened. Perhpas charging while the machine is active and not sleeping permitted some background processes to do their thing. Or did Apple get sneaking and slip a patch in with he recent update to Boks and Mail? I tend to think it was the active charging time the made the difference.

I'll keep an eye on this and post an update in a couple days.

They contacted me as well (twice, in fact), asked to run few diagnostics and send them the logs.

I've also installed th latest updates for Mail/iBooks, but I keep gettint drastically reduced battery life. I doubt they included patches for these issues, since no restart was required by the updates.

I never had a Service Required message for my battery so far.

I just noticed the "Service Battery" warning about a week ago. When I received and installed the updates for Mail and iBooks, my battery finally charged to 100%. Prior to the upgrade, it would only charge to 97%. I will be attempting the battery calibration tonight, but from the looks of things, I'm not anticipating a miracle. I hope Apple get its **** together and sends outa patch or update(s). Until then, we're w/o a paddle!

Cbgny23 wrote:

I just noticed the "Service Battery" warning about a week ago. When I received and installed the updates fro Mail and iBook, my battery finally charged to 100%. Prior to the upgrade, it would only charge to 97%. I will be attempting the battery calibration tonight, but from the looks of things, I'm not anticipating a miracle. I hope Apple get its **** together and sends outa patch or update(s). Until then, we're w/o a paddle!

It's not an issue affecting everybody. A similar issue arose with Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard. Apple released an update for those to address the issue. They will not, of course, release any update until they are sure of the issue and the fix required. So, as with all recent OSXs, just be a little patient, or if you can't, then reinstall your previous system from the backup you made before you installed Mavericks, then just keep an eye out in the App Store to see if and when Apple address the issue.

Cheers

Pete

I have the very same problem with my MBP 13" (mid 2010). Used it about 6 hours without charge on Mountain Lion, but after Mavericks upgrade, the 'Service Battery' warning appered and the battery drains in 2,5 hours. That's really disappointing, I believe Apple should have warned the owners of not very fresh machines that sucj issues might arise. Hopefully they will fix this issue soon!

Same issue here with MBP Early 2011. Updated from 10.6.8 to 10.9 and the battery life dropped from 6+ hours to around 3. Also get the service battery warning.

MBA mid-2012. 288 cycles. Service battery message popped up after Mavericks installation and battery drains like a sieve. Barely doing anything beyond browsing the internet and reading PDFs.

Not that I'm surprised, but I did a battery re-configuartion and not much change. I guess I'll just take the advice from everyone else and wait for an update from Apple.

I have a MacbookPro3,1 that's pretty old, but I got a replacement battery maybe a year and half ago. Before upgrading to Mavericks, the battery was fine and I could get about 1.5-2 hours of use (I was on10.6.8). After mavericks though, I get the Service Battery indicator and the battery lasts about half an hour, it's pretty terrible.

I only have 141 charge cycles and the full charge capacity seems way wrong, showing only 1913 mah.

After a day of use with a new battery, it's much better, but still not "great". "Service battery" is obviously gone (now having 3 cycles instead of 400).estimate of battery life fluctuates between 4-6h.

So... Probably wouldn't get a new one outside of warranty right now, as I did (paying 190€ for the priviledge). Before Mavericks the battery was about what could be expected of a 1.5-year-old battery, after something like 2.5 5-3 years. Now, a totally new battery "feels" like maybe 6-12 months old.

Of course, this is all quite subjective and depends on usage patterns (And it's possible the old one was really just reaching end of life very quickly, and that happening with ~= Mavericks release date was a coincidence)

experiencing this same significantly reduced battery life. I'm losing percents by the minute. This is very unacceptable for an operating system that claimed to help save battery life. Have a genius bar appt this weekend, let's see what they do as the staff are sometimes not very helpful.

Apple, this needs to be fixed ASAP.

My flatmate and I suffer under the same problems (me on a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro, he on one of the latest MacBook Pros). I've tried a lot of solution proposals but nothing has worked out. So my flatemate went to the local Apple Store yesterday and they've told him Apple is aware of the problem and working on a fix for it right now. So I guess we just have to wait.

Hi everyone,

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents. I've got a MBA mid-2012, i5, 8GB RAM. Used to get anywhere between 5 and 8 hours on 10.8.5, though I've been affected by the early battery problems of ML that some of us had. Upgraded to Mavericks on day 1 because of the promise of better battery life through App Nap, Timer Coalescing and such, although I swore to myself to wait until at least 10.x.2 since what happened with 10.8.0.

Well, my battery capacity went from 86% to 75%, sometimes all the way down to 70%, with the dreaded service battery message, after 260 cycles. Time remaining shows between 5 and 7h, however, even if my MBA is left idling, it runs out of battery in 3 to 4h, maximum. I did the SMC reset, PRAM, so on, nothing worked. Tried restoring to ML, service battery still there, and battery life as horrible as on Mavericks.

I received a firmware update on the day of Mavericks' release, so maybe that's where the problem is ?

Finally, could MBA/MBP users with a i5 Ivy Bridge processor post their wattage ? Mine is -990mA usually, which seems awfully high ? Or is it not ?

I don't mind paying for a new battery, but I'd like to be sure that the problem will then go away and that I can use my laptop for the whole day. And I'm afraid the guys at the genius bar won't be able to answer that...

Sorry for the wall of text, and let's hope for a (quick) fix.

Cheers.

I am also having an issue with the battery since installing Mavericks.

Of the apple products which I own, I have a 2009 Macbook with the original battery, but have never had an issue with it.

I usually keep it plugged in and that is the way it was when I updated from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) to Mavericks. At the last moment that it was running 10.6 the battery icon showed 100% with no service warning. After I install Mavericks it listed it at 97% even though it was plugged in the entire time, so I figured it would be a good time to calibrate the battery which I hypothesized would fix the issue.

I disconnected the power adapter and began to discharge the battery. At some point I walked away and the screen went dark. This was expected based on my Energy Saver settings, but my estimate was is that it should not have yet reached the battery limit. When I went to waken it, I was able to login to see the desktop again for just a second before it suddenly turned off completely. I did not receive any low battery warning as I had in the past, and as mentioned above it did not go into sleep mode but rather immediately turned off.

I decided to investigate a bit. I reattached the power adapter and restarted the machine. I noticed that the battery still listed 10% charge despite the fact that it was just few minutes earlier that it completely conked out.

I also noted that even though I had not heard any unusual fan noise before the sudden power failure, upon restart, and a second restart shortly thereafter, the fan(s) blew at full blast. I turned off the machine completely and let it cool and then finally it worked properly with the third start-up.

This time, when the battery was fully charged it did go up to 100%, however some time later I noticed the “Service Battery” alert. There was no progression from normal status to “Replace Soon” to “Replace Now” to “Service Battery”.

The battery had always worked perfectly. Not even once did it deliver an unexpectedly short power supply or show the slightest sign of fault. It was just a straight jump to battery failure as a seemingly direct consequence of installing Mavericks.

I have not tested the actual length of the current battery life so I cannot comment on that aspect of the problem, but there does appear to be an issue with Mavericks’ battery management that needs to be addressed.

I trust (I hope not naively) that Apple will live up to their promise of maintaining the highest standards in customer experience and satisfaction and will either quickly release an acceptable fix or implement a battery replacement program so that I can continue to support the platform and make additional purchases without hesitation.