Apple solves my MacBook Pro battery problem | Hacker News Reader

Apple solves my MacBook Pro battery problem

davidalison.com

10 pointsciscoriordan12 comments

This doesn't seem right:

>Her recommendation was to cycle the battery constantly, running the machine on the battery almost exclusively.

I have a MBP that had to use starting summer half a day on battery exclusively and the other day plugged in. It has reduced my battery life a lot (currently running on a new battery actually, that's how much it got trashed). This on an 1.5 years laptop.

I think that many battery recommendations out there are bogus. I took my MBP to university (nearly every day), ran down the battery, took it home and plugged it in for a full recharge. Isn't this as close to normal laptop usage as you could expect? Something batteries should be good at dealing with? And after 160 cycles my battery was completely trashed. Not a slow decline, even. I was happily using the MBP for two to three hours or so, and suddenly within two weeks, was down to ten minutes. This is the second time that has happend to me. (Apple exchanged my battery on warranty twice.)

What I would like to know is this: is this normal (Do you have my usage pattern and did you encouter something similar?) or am I doing something wrong? I don't think I do, maybe batteries are just not cut out for such heavy (?) usage and you have to replace them from time to time (like ink in a printer, only cheaper).

A couple years ago I was draining my MacBook's (non-Pro) battery daily and it still had most of its capacity (you could squeeze out six hours at minimal consumption) at the end of the year. It might not have been the same model as you, but I think your results are unusually bad (unless their new batteries just suck a lot more).

Actually, my experience with the dozens of Apple laptops I've seen over the past few years tells me that the design or manufacture of the Macbook Pro batteries (up until the recent redesign) was inferior to that of the regular Macbook. The battery swelling / exploding problem was particular to the MBP, for instance.

Incidentally, the battery inside of the laptop I'm currently using (a black Macbook), is the most heroic battery I've ever encountered: At 2 and half years old and 993 loadcycles, it still retains 95% of it's original capacity. It only began reporting consistently under 100% a couple of weeks ago.

In contrast, by business partner's Macbook Pro of similar age (and ~600 loadcycles) can barely hold a half hour of charge. He finds my battery's longevity fairly irritating.

Oh. Wow. That might effect my decision later, thanks.

160 cycles. 14 months old. 5 (or less) percent of original full charge capacity. Replaced without any fuss (only a lengthy phonecall, but I didn't have any explaining or convincing to do - we had to wait until someone higher up the chain, who is allowed to authorize such exchanges, was no more busy).

They say the capacity goes down to 80 percent after 300 cycles. If the battery doesn't make it for that long and they don't replace it on warranty I full well would have made a fuss. What you got was normal service, this is what you should expect, not something to admire.

I don't see why they shouldn't replace the battery. To be quite honest, everytime my girlfriend or I had trouble with an apple computer it was fixed without any cost. I do call tech support myself, I ask the telephone number and take care of it. The way I see it, direct communication leaves out more space for errors.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the fact I live in Belgium and warranty is 2years, I've had issues with my battery a couple of times but batteries don't fall under the 2year warranty so they aren't forced to replace it.

I think my Macbook Pro is about 9 months old. Apple and others recommended that when you unplug, always let it drain down to the point of going to sleep/hibernate and never plug it in before.

So far so good, 277 cycles and I have not noticed a single difference in battery life. I drain it at least a few times per week. Sometimes twice per day.

I did not do this on my last Macbook Pro and Apple replaced the battery for me after about a year and a half because it couldn't even hold a 10 min charge and it had very few cycles, certainly not 277.

Similar experience happened to my friend. Apple is pretty good about replacing batteries when they fail. Although only 48 cycles after a year and a half means this person almost never lets their battery discharge which likely accelerated the failure.

What's so special about macbook pro batteries that other laptop batteries do not have ?

In this case, I think, that it was replaced even though it wasn't covered by the extended warranty.

Found a useful link from the article on how to care for MacBook batteries: http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

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