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New Macbook pro retina with 21 battery cycles????

Hi people,


Today my Macbook Pro Retina (late 2013) 15 inch 2.3 Ghz I7, 16 gig ram, 750m was delivered by UPS. I arranged an upgrade with Apple because of a faulty maxed out Macbook Air (2013). After opening the box of the Macbook Pro showed a missing screw of the backplate at the left top corner??? I am planning to go to the Genius bar for a new screw. But there is more...


The thing is when I opened system preferences and I looked at the battery health I saw that it already has 21 cycles????!!!!


Is this normal?


Do I need to calibrate the battery first or what? My previous Macbook Air came in with 0 cycles.


Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Feb 25, 2014 3:01 PM

Reply
19 replies

Mar 2, 2014 2:41 PM in response to sharky114

you do NOT calibrate batteries on new type macbooks


There is no calibration of current Apple portable Macbooks with built-in batteries.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1490


There is no battery calibration with current Apple portable Macbooks with built-in batteries. Lithium batteries have essentially a 0-‘memory’, and all such calibration involve the estimations fed to the system controller on the SOC (state of charge) of the battery over long periods of time as the battery degrades. The software based battery controller knows the battery's characteristics, or SOC and adjusts itself. This is why there is both no need and purpose to periodically deeply drain your macbook battery, since it doesn’t affect the characteristics of the battery, and further still deep discharges are something you should not do on purpose to any lithium battery.





Battery cycles dont even mean anything except in the old age of the battery.



misuse / bad treatment short term is the battery killer, nobody should worry about battery cycles



➕If the massive amount of data that exists on lithium batteries were to be condensed into a simplex, helpful, and memorable bit of information it would be:


1. While realistically a bit impractical during normal everyday use, a lithium battery's longevity and its chemistry's health is most happy swinging back and forth between 20% and 85% charge roughly.


2. Do not purposefully drain your battery very low (10% and less), and do not keep them charged often or always high (100%).


3. Lithium batteries do not like the following:

A: Deep discharges, as meaning roughly 10% or less on a frequent basis.

B: Rapid discharges as referring to energy intensive gaming on battery on a frequent basis (in which case while gaming, if possible, do same on power rather than battery). This is a minor consideration.

C: Constant inflation, as meaning always or most often on charge, and certainly not both in sleep mode and on charge always or often.




A person who has, for example, 300 charge cycles on their battery and is recharging at say 40% remaining of a 100% charge has a better battery condition state than, say, another person who has 300 charge cycles on their battery and is recharging at say 10-15% remaining on a 100% charge. DoD (depth of discharge) is much more important on the wear and tear on your Macbook’s battery than the count of charge cycles. There is no set “mile” or wear from a charge cycle in specific. Frequent high depth of discharge rates (draining the battery very low) on a Lithium battery will hasten the lowering of maximum battery capacity.


All batteries in any device are a consumable meant to be replaced eventually after much time, even under perfect use conditions.

New Macbook pro retina with 21 battery cycles????

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