MacBook Pro Battery Health Waning Quickly – But Why?

I usually leave my MacBook Pro sitting on my desk connected to a power adapter. Since I had the battery replaced back in October 2008, my guess is that I may have cycled through a power charge at the most 10-15 times.

However, this past week I had my MacBook Pro out and about around the house way more than usual. I would use the computer on battery a bit, then recharge it when I was done. Stuff like that. But, most of the time, even this week, I would still use the MacBook Pro connected to a power adapter.

So, yesterday (4 April 2009), I used iStatPro (highly recommended widget) to check the health of my battery. It was at around 96% after about 20 cycles. I didn’t think this was too bad. Before I went to bed, I noticed my batter was down to about 35% as I had been using it untethered to my power adapter. So I shutdown the computer, plug it into the power adapter and then went to bed.

This morning (5 April 2009) I woke up to the strangest thing. I noticed the light to my power adapter was *off*. No green light to mean the battery was charged. No red (or is it orange?) light to mean that the battery was charging. Nothing. So I removed the adapter from the MacBook Pro and plugged it back in; then the light went on as to indicate it was charging.

When I booted the computer up, I noticed the battery still had only 35% charge. What the heck? I had it plugged in all night. So I brought up iStatPro again, and here is what I found :-( (except replace the 100% with a 35% because I just took this snapshot right now)


69% health after only 21 cycles!!!!! No way that is normal.

Then I opened up System Profiler and found corroborating evidence.


I tried resetting the SMC, but that didn’t help.

So what is going on here? I must be doing something wrong, right?

Will calibrating the battery help me or am I just screwed and going to have to bring the battery back to the Apple Store again for replacement?


3 Comments

MaxMay 27th, 2009 at 8:16 am

Got the same thing going on today too. i think im just going to take it into the apple store. the light on my power adapter is gone. i charged it all night, yet my battery still reads 1%. system profiler tells me that the adapter is plugged in, but is not charging. huh?

chrisJanuary 30th, 2010 at 8:17 am

I have the same issue here, only that my macbook suddenly shut down (like a hard power off) and then automatically tried reboot 3 times while directly shutting down again…

now the battery is showing 1:22 time to load, but it was on the charger for the whole day. weird.

Did you get any hints of the Apple Store?

Joel MarceyJanuary 30th, 2010 at 10:50 am

chris,

Funny you bring this up. In April, I got a new power adapter and everything seemed to be working fine. I don’t take my MacBook Pro off the power adapter much at all. When I did the other day, I noticed my computer lasted only like 20 minutes on battery. I lost some work because it just shut down at 65%. I am getting a new battery. I think my lack of cycling the battery, bringing it off the power adapter more often, might have contributed to the battery becoming dysfunctional.

We’ll see. I am going to follow these guidelines every month with my new battery.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

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