When I don't have my mac on the adapter, my mac shuts off without warning when the battery drains, and I loose all my work. It used to give me 15 minutes warning or so, so I could save my work.
I've got the same problem. No warning of a shut down and when I connect the power cord or turn the mains power on the battery charge indicator shows about 25% charged.
I'm using a MacBook from the first phase of 2006, so its only just over a year old.
I've got Battery Update 1.2 installed. I haven't reset the anything else yet, but I'll do that when I have a moment and see what happens.
I have the exact same problem as Robert. My MacBook (with all the latest updates) shuts down when the battery reaches approx 25%. I installed an app called CoconutBattery and it says that the battery's capacity is 77% of its original capacity (its 13 months old, approx 160 charge cycles). The MacBook doesn't seem to know this as I assume the battery runs dead before the MacBook thinks it will. No battery warnings appear and it doesn't go into sleep mode, just shuts down.
How do I recalibrate the battery? The normal method won't work as the computer doesn't go to sleep before the battery runs out (as it used to).
My computer is less than a month old and it all of a sudden turned off on me. When i connected the power cord it turned on and when i took it out to see if it would give me a message it turned off. Maybe its just a one time thing.
bought a macbook in early june of last year, had serious heat-sink/temp problems, and after it spent two months at apple's support center, (and after they had completely lost track of its whereabouts), i was given a brand new macbook. fast forward to a month ago: the computer has not only been running unbelievably slow (despite having upped the ram to 1 gig - get spinny rainbow when i am running only firefox!) and will not stay on when not connected to battery power (despite having installed battery updates, firmware et. al). also, i have gross blue discoloration on the case, the mouse button gets stuck *all the time*... i use my computer quite a bit, but this is a nine-month-old notebook. it should not be this erratic, right?
I'm having the exact same problem, my macbook just shuts down when reaching between 5 and 10% af battery life. My macbook started doing it for around 1 - 1,5 months ago and have using the time testing, and at the same time the shutting down have increased from doing it around every third time of empty battery to now every time.
I called Apple support (Denmark) yesterday and he asked for my specs for the battery, which is:
The supporter looked some things up in thier database, and then said that it looked normal so my batteri wasn't valid for an exchange :S? But he couldn't give me any help of the shuting down problem...
I think I'll call them back, it can't be normal that the laptop just shutsdown.
Well my Mac just turned a year old, so whoopie, the warranty just expired.
Anyone know how to fix this yet? Like I said, the initial reply solved the problem for a time, but now it's doing it again. It's really frusterating. It just shut down with 55 minutes left on the battery.
Your battery's warranty is extended to two years (all MacBook and MacBook Pro models with Core Duo processors have a two-year battery warranty per the battery update site).
Already downloaded this update. It helped for a couple days, and now my computer is back to the turning off thing. And I was never informed my battery has a longer warranty. I don't think I have any documents for it.
But so you think it's just the battery? I purchased a new one and I'm going to try it, to see.