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Mavericks - power use / service battery

Has anyone seen their power use increase dramatically (or their service battery warning come on) after upgrading to Mavericks?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 2:21 PM

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431 replies

Oct 24, 2013 9:50 PM in response to BFOSSEN

Yes, this is what happened to me as well, and I'm seeing a bunch of threads on here that indicate this seems to be have been a somewhat widespread problem with the upgrade. For some reason, my service battery warning came on, and then went away again, but my battery on 2011 Mac Book Air is only lasting 4-5 hours tops. I installed a battery health monitor that lets you see the maximum charging capacity of your battery, and mine has drastically decreased just in the last couple of days after the update. Will be taking it in to the Apple Store to see what's what.

Oct 26, 2013 10:37 AM in response to BFOSSEN

after installing mavericks on my late 2009 MBP, it said service battery. My computer died after 10 minutes unplugged on a fully charged battery. No battery issues before install. I went to apple and they made me buy a new battery ($129) because they said I was the only one with this problem so far. I would say hold off going to apple until they realize they have a real problem!!

Oct 26, 2013 11:22 AM in response to BFOSSEN

I'm also having this problem. Everything was fine before Mavericks on my 2011 Macbook Air, and then after the upgrade it says "Service Battery." If anybody else is having issues, I'd suggest they post here. I have 216 cycles on my battery, and not the 1000 listed here: http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html. Needless to say, I'm not very happy about this!

Oct 26, 2013 5:53 PM in response to BFOSSEN

Just noticed the service battery message in my MBP (late 2008) after Mavericks install. Two years ago I had to replace my battery and my current count is 334 - not great, I know, but far from disastrous.


Turns out that pulling the plug for a few minutes and connecting it back again (my battery went from 100% to 95%) made the message disappear. The system info now is giving me the same cycle count, but the condition status is normal.


As for the original question, the 5% drop happened in 3 minutes or so (I don`t think it was like that before), but now that the status is back to normal, I wonder if the battery consumption will normalize. I will let you know if it does.

Oct 27, 2013 5:45 AM in response to BFOSSEN

Having the same problem with my 2011 Macbook Air. Immediately after the Mavericks upgrade, the Service Battery warning appeared and the charge drops much quicker than before. My cycle count is 406. The warning disappeared briefly at one point, but it's back again.


The upgrade also borked the power/restart button. Pressing it now causes the screen to go blank for a few seconds, but the shutdown/restart dialog never appears.

Oct 27, 2013 7:10 PM in response to BFOSSEN

The power button change is a new "feature" I think. If you hold down the control button at the same time as the power button you'll get the old pop up giving you the option to restart/sleep/shutdown.
As for the battery issue, I'm getting the same problem on my mid 2010 MBP. Here's what I've noted.

Prior to the upgrade, and by prior I mean exactly 5 minutes prior, my battery health as indicated by the program Battery Health was showing approx 85% with a max charge of 11162mAh out of a max of 13000mAh after 3.6 years and 143 cycles. This is consistent with what I have observed for the duration of my use of OS X Lion which I installed on its' release. Subsequent to my Mavericks installation Battery Health showed the health of my battery @ 74% and a max charge of 9614 mAh out of 13000. I'm also now seeing the "Service Battery" warning under the current charge menu bar icon. This max charge value has fluctuated over the last few days from a low of about 6000 mAh to around 10400 mAh and the "Service Battery" warning has come, gone, and come back again. Today, I noticed that the health and max charge had dropped to about 50% and 6200mAh or so. Unplugged the charger and ran down to about 85% charge and plugged in again. My max charge jumped back to 74% and 10200mAh. I think what's happening is the OS isn't seeing the full potential of the battery correctly. Of course, there's a big difference in a 100% charge between my usual 11162mAh and the 6000 I saw this morning. Since the charger shuts off when the charge reaches the point the OS thinks the battery is charged to it's max, there's no way to get past that point. As I was charging again, and noticed that it was indicating a max available charge of 10400mAh, I also noticed that at 99% charge, the time to full charge indicated 0:00, but yet it continued to charge until it reached the 10400 mAh. I know of at least one person who had a similar problem and he indicated that a reinstall of Mavericks may have solved the issue for him. I've yet to try that, but it might be worth a shot.

Mavericks - power use / service battery

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