Battery-No warning

sparkk,

When I was having numerous battery issues (shut down without warning, light switching from amber to green and back every five seconds), Apple first replaced the power adapter, then the battery itself. So far things are looking good, but I've left it operating off the AC most of the time, so I've probably only had about 20 cycles of the battery.

I don't think Apple has sent any physical documentation to MacBook owners regarding the battery warranty extension -- it was only announced on the page describing the battery update. If the new battery does the trick, you might try calling / contacting Apple and seeing if they would reimburse you for the bad battery if you ship it to them.

Fahrwahr

I just spoke with Apple Care, since resetting PMU and PRAM didn't remedy the situation. They refused to exchange my battery because its full charge capacity was too high (what the heck?). I'm just wondering what I have the ACPP for.
This is utterly pathetic.

I got the same message, then the guy said that I could call back if I got some of the known issus like x over battery and so on.

Not very satisfactory.

MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

I have had this problem for a month or two and thought it was due to System 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 update. Not so!

I reinstalled Tiger and went up through three updates: 10.4.6 combo; 10.4.8 combo; and 10.4.10 combo. After the reinstall I got back my battery warning (Hello, old friend!) at about the '9 minutes remaining' mark I let it run down and, at somewhere close to '0 minutes remaing,' my MacBook went to sleep. After each update, I let the battery run down. Battery warning always came up, MB always went to sleep. So, what did I do differently?

On that last update--10.4.10--(which came up through Software Update) I was shown a Battery Update 1.2 option ( http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305256 ; use this article to see if you already have it installed.) On a hunch, I DID NOT install it (I de-selected it in SW update)

This solution has absolutely worked for me. I have had my MB since 10/13/06. Original battery, Coconut Battery tells me I'm still at 80% current battery capacity, so I have no (apparent) need for the battery update.

If you were as upset as I was at losing work and having to restart and recreate the work, then this is definitely worth the effort. Go from the reinstall to Combo Update 10.4.10 via SW Update and de-select battery update. It even seems to have fixed my intermittent Bluetooth situation (which you can read about elsewhere on these boards.)

Good luck!

I had this exact same issue just over a month ago. Take your MacBook in to an Apple Store, if you have one near you, otherwise, call Apple. Although I was under warranty at the time, Apple replaced my battery no problem and the tech indicated this is a well known problem and asked me if I had read about it on the web. So Apple should be aware of it. Pretty nice, to use my battery for 11.5 months and then get a new battery at no cost to me.

Do you know how many cycles your old battery had?

Ich have the same Problem 😟
The MacBook turned off by 4-5% ...

Looks like i have to call Apple ...

I went to the Service Provider today and they were aware of this kind of issue with the MacBook batteries. They asked me to call Apple Care to get an authorisation for exchage and I had to call Apple Care thrice until I eventually got a representative who had an interest in pushing this to resolution. Now the exchange has been authorised and I will get a replacement when the Service Provider has received a shipment of batteries and I will have the discolouration taken care of at the same time.

Nix my posting...I'm back in Never Notice Land again. If I don't have 'Show battery status in menu bar" turned on, I don't get any notification. With it on, I get that I am on reserve power...but it then shuts down and doesn't sleep/save my work.

I guess I now have an excuse to go see the iPhone at the Apple Store....

Oh, Genius......

I think my Macbook is "fixed", I tried to reset the PRAM for a couple of days ago, which didn't help... but yesterday I tried once again, but because I looked away for a second the PRAM was being resetted twice... You know, saying the startup sound twice, since that, the problem have been fixed :S

I've had the same problem. Sometimes my computer will give me a warning before it shuts off, but other times it doesn't, and it never shuts off at the same time (going by the battery status in the menu bar).

I took my MacBook in to the Apple Store a few months ago and the Genius had me quit all non-Apple programs and it went to sleep with no problem, so he said it was because of some program that I was running. Last night I noticed my battery was running low, so I quit all of the non-Apple programs, but it still shut off instead of going to sleep.

Coconut Battery says my battery is at 75% health after 141 cycles, which is far less than Apple's claim of 80% health after 300 cycles.

I'm going to call AppleCare and see if they'll replace my battery. I'm not sure if that will help with the shut down problem though.

MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.10)

I have the sudden shutdown problem, too.

Coconut Battery says 64% health after 74 cycles. And the battery meter in the menu bar says 99% (rather than 100%) even though the MacBook has been plugged in overnight and is on AC right now.

As I type this, I am on the phone (on hold) with AppleCare. I called about 20 minutes ago; the announcement said the wait time was 15 minutes. Then after 15 minutes, an operator came on and asked me why I was calling; I told her I had a problem with my MacBook battery and she said she would transfer me. The next thing I heard was the same announcement saying that the wait time was 15 minutes. Apparently, all she did was take me out of my spot in the queue and return me to the beginning. Gee, thanks a lot.



MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

So I called AppleCare and the lady had me reset the PRAM/NVRAM and the Power Management. She said that should increase the battery capacity and solve the shut down issue.

This helped the battery charge a little bit (I'm at a whopping 77% now) and I'm draining the battery to see if it will go to sleep or not.

She said to call back w/ the case number if what we did didn't solve it (which it probably didn't, I'm not going to be satisfied with anything near 80% since I haven't even reached half of 300 cycles yet). I'm going to wait a week to see if it changes at all before I call though.

MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Update: finally got through to tech support at AppleCare. But it took 50 minutes on hold and two conversations with the "Call Director" who picked up my call twice to ask me why I was calling. (You would think one such conversation would be sufficient!)

It was worth the wait, as the two technicians I spoke with were very nice and very helpful and I am getting a new battery.

MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Hi guys,

I had experienced the same problem being discussed herein for the first time yesterday. My MacBook is nearly 1 year old. For the first time, it shut down without warning. I therefore searched this site and found this topic. I followed the advice to reset the PRAM without success. So I called up Apple Support this morning and explained my problem to them. They suspected the problem has to do with SMC and advised me to reset it instead. Just to let you guys know it solved my problem. I left my Macbook on for like 3 hours until the it warned me of low battery and that it would be soon going into sleep. And it did go into sleep. I hope this is also the cause of the problem for some of you. Anyway, here is the link to the SMC reset: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303319

Regards,

Roderick

iMac Intel Duo Core + MacBook (both 2GHz) Mac OS X (10.4.10) Both with 2GB RAM