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10.2.4 Killing Battery Life
Milanek writes "The iBook/PowerBook battery seems to be permanently incapacitated by the 10.2.4 update.
" I had this problem as well - had to get my battery replaced last week. It was a painless exchange, but still annonying.
The /. summary makes it sound like all Power/iBooks are experiencing battery drainage after updating to 10.2.4 - my 2002 600 mHz iBook updated just fine, and battery life is the same.
I was talking with our computer techs at work about this situation and he told me that since my battery is a year old, that it's normal (for all laptops) that they need to be replaced. If the battery is around a year, I don't see how you can blame the 10.2.4 update.
I swapped my new laptop battery for an older one that was working a-okay. The old one, although reporting full charge, was run down to absolute flat in about an hour. I charged it again overnight and retried and after a few tries it runs flat now in under 30 mts. So i swapped back to my new battery which is lasting me a good 3 hrs or so. I was happy to blame the old battery (it was made in 2000) but it does seem odd that this behaviour should coincide with upgrading to osx10.2.4 - and so many others are also reporting this problem now.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Battery Reset is well-hidden on Apple's Download site Yeah, it's for iBook/PBG3, but who knows ....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I have a 12" PB 867Mhz -- I see no difference since 10.2.4.. I get 3 hours with full brightness and full performance, and upto 4 hours with brightness at 25% and reduced performance. It always charges to 100% and the amber light turns green.
I doubt this is a software issue.
People seem to complain about battery life after every update. Remember how people said battery life is reduced with Jaguar (10.2)?
What model type and age is your powerbook or ibook (and how old is the battery, if different). What makes you think you are not just imaginging this?
Does the energy saver control panel time/% agree with the one in the menu bar?
When your battery is nearly empty, how many lights does the battery show when you press the button on it
How long a life (uninterupted by sleep or screen dims)are you observing when using the stock (not custom) power-saver setting. Is your airport on or off. do you have any accessories plugged in?
is it reproducible or intermittent. have you found a workaround?
Come on folks, if you read slash dot you can do a proper bug report
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My battery is just over a year old, and I haven't noticed anything unusual since moving to 10.2.4. I'm pretty hard on my battery, too - never shut down except to reboot after upgrades, rarely take my battery below 50% charge.
Hope it doesn't happen to me...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
My PowerBook G4 battery won't go beyond '84%' charged now.
:/
:)
While this may well be an 10.2.4 issue, I'm thinking it's very more likely to be due to the age of the battery (I've had my origional G4 'Book for 2 years now and I've been overdue for a replacement for a while).
Now guessing randomly.........
Caution: Just blowing smoke out my ass...
It seems unlikley but it *may* be that 10.2.4 is reporting the charge of the battery more correctly than previous releases? Could it actually be highliting that your battery charge is not as high as it should be if it was a new battery?
Or is that bullshit?
(Don't ask me, I'm just a software monkey
After reading some posts, I was wondering if anyone sees the relationship between the date reset problem reported when people upgrade to this release (10.2.4) and the Power Manager, which when reset causes the date to be reset as well?
thoughts?
Cheers
I just got my PowerBook battery replaced, and this was the situation:
Charge to 100%
Unplug
At about 70%, the battery would instantaneously go to zero and sleep.
Rinse and repeat.
However, what the article *seems* to describe is batteries not charging fully, or batteries with reduced lifespan.
My new replacement battery has a lifespan of 4 hours and 20 minutes
My old spare battery has a lifespan of 3 hours and 40 minutes
The dead replaced battery had a lifespan of about 20 minutes before dropping to zero, even though it reported a full charge.
Is this what others are seeing? The 10.2.4 problem doesn't seem to sound like any of these. The new battery is fine, the spare battery just sounds old, and the dead battery sounds like it was broken.
GPL Deconstructed
I still get 2-3.5 hours off my original G4's battery. I do find the annoying fan noise has gotten louder over the years and the fan seems to run more, but battery life is still pretty close to the day one figures. Most lithium battery tech wants the batttery "topped off" frequently for maximum life (unlike some older NiCd technology). I've only deep discharged (below 20%) maybe 5-6 times. If you deep cycle your batteries, then expect periodic replacements. It is much better today than when 1-2 hours (if you were lucky) was enough to drain a laptop a few years back. Now I hook into the airplanes power when flying, the hotels when I travel, the cars when driving... And obviously the houses when home. As the battery technology gets better look for easily removable ones to disappear. (My cell phone/pda does not have an externally replaceable battery already.)
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
These claims seem to crop up everytime Apple releases a new update to OS X. I remember reading the exact same claims when 10.2.3 was released, in the Apple support forums.
Lithium Ion batteries (the type used in the iBook/TiBook) simply don't last very long. Best estimates I've heard is 300-500 charge cycles. Depending on how often you charge your battery, its easy to go through this problem.
I had awful problems with my iBook battery, after only 5 months. In a matter of weeks, it went from 4 hours of battery life to under an hour. But when I did the math out, my estimated charge cycles in those 5 months was around 400.
Nothing to do with the OS update...just a battery at the end of its life. Good thing it was still under warrenty...after a few calls to Apple tech support I got a new battery.
This is how inventory works in retail-service shops.
/not./ If sales and service are pulling from the same pool of stuff, things will get hosed quickly. Some might say, "Why not talk to the service manager, too?" Well, that's great, if they can say, "We'll need X units from App--oh, shit, yeah, our ordering process is completely different, sales goes through a distributor and we don't, and we can't stock exchange parts. Never mind."
/streamlined for service./
/streamlined for sales./
/Slashdot./ ;-)
The regular Slashdot "I know more than you, here's how it should be" people will chime in, but I don't give a shit. I've been doing this for years.
If my ordering guy orders twenty PowerBook G4 batteries to put on the shelf, I can't just take one and stick it in someone's machine and call it a day when I need to replace a battery.
Doing so adds extra fucked-upedness to my ordering guy's inventory system, and DOES NOT integrate with Apple's Global Service Exchange system for tracking and completing repairs. It's not meant to.
Apple has its own DIRECT channels--that's right, kiddies, most of the stuff you see in the store comes not from the manufacturer directly, but a wholesaler like Ingram Micro--to get service parts to service providers.
By using the in-place service system and channels, the customer gets:
1. Service that's integrated tightly with Apple.
2. The ability to track their own repair on Apple.com.
3. To avoid middle men like Ingram Micro. They suck. Hard.
Doing it the "give me one off of the shelf, you stupid lackey" way gets you:
1. Nowhere.
2. Absolutely no record of your computer ever having been repaired by a service provider; your machine won't have any history with Apple. This is a BAD THING, because if you start to have stranger issues down the road, and tell Apple you had X problem before, and they don't have a case or dispatch number to look up, you're "S.O.L.", as they say.
3. Charged for a battery, 'cause the service provider can't send a battery to Apple for no reason. (Think about it: You get a battery off of the shelf, and they send the defective/failed battery back to Apple. Apple didn't send one out, but they just got one back for some unknown and inappropriate reason. Apple to service provider: "WTF?")
Also, here's something else to consider which might not be apparent unless you've worked in retail-service situations before:
You order your stuff for the showfloor, FOR the showfloor. You order your demo units FOR the demo counters. You order service stuff--you get the point. You can always say, "I ordered twenty iBook power adapters for the shelf," and know that's how many you're going to have until people start buying them. You know how many you have to order, because a smart ordering guy will conference with the sales manager (and staff, depending on the size of the operation) and find out he needs to order another dozen because demand is trickling off as of the past month.
Service is a different beast. Sometimes, it has patterns similar to sales, most times it does
No, not all places go through Ingram. Some go through Apple directly. Not all. Even the ones who do face the rest of the other problems.
Efficient customer service requires an efficient, right-method-for-the-job, organized back-end.
I need service parts, I go through service channels
I need to sell someone something, I go through sales channels
I need to get flamed, I post to
Anyway, those are my dual shiny, copper discs. Flame on.
-/-
Mikey-San
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
You forgot:
'Doing it the "give me one off of the shelf, you stupid lackey" way gets you:'
4. Your new battery, in hand, with which you can walk out of the store and be up and running
While,
"By using the in-place service system and channels, the customer gets:"
4. A multi-day (or multi-week) wait for a part that they can see sitting on the shelf in plain view!
This is called annoying customers who will go to another provider the next time they need a machine.
Retailers need to choose how highly they value customer loyalty vs. the ease of using the aforementioned channels. If a retailer makes me wait days to replace a defective item when I know that they have it in stock "for the showroom", I can personally guarentee I would never, ever use that retailer again, and tell all my friends about the experience.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Don't have time to register, hence the anonymous thing...
s .
I work for a school district as the Apple Service technician, and I've seen a sudden upsurge of batteries needing to be replaced of late... I've noticed a few things:
1) Our batch of iBook (dual USB) batteries seem to be slowly giving up the ghost after being in service for about 14 months - for example, my own personal machine from this batch will work fine till about 50% (with brightness all the way up) or 30% (with brightness down to 1 bar) before it suddenly drops into sleep mode - no warning whatsoever. Other problems seen include a battery that will only charge while computer is shut down or in slee and one battery that registered 100% charge but would completely die after 10 minutes of use.
2) Our newer iBook (16VRAM) machines are doing similar things but much quicker. These machines have only been in service since September!
3) Except my own personal machine (which is 10.2.4), all these iBooks are running under 10.1.5.
Finally, battery charge can be very subjective and time consuming to trace down... I saw a link to a little app, X-Charge, which simply graphs your battery charge - very handy for charting your battery life. Link is http://www.pol-online.net/index.php?page=freeware
Anyway, that's my 2 cents, hopefully it helps a bit.
Jeff
For the record, I'm getting less than 5 min of life on my battery (which I now use only because it still works for sleep). Now that I think about it, it has been progressing this way since after upgrading to 10.2.4.
Any hope for a software fix? My trusty Wallstreet never had this problem.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Dumbass. As this guy points out, 10.2.4 fixed a VERY critical bug for many of us, which caused kernel panics fairly often upon logout. I don't know about you, but I like software upgrades that make my machine more usable. Thankfully I wasn't affected by the battery issue, but for anyone who was affected by both, your snotty 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' attitude certainly isn't the solution either.
I'm typing this from my iBook dual USB (2001 500 MHz) on the original battery. I was about to buy a new battery until I saw this article because of recent rediculously short battery life I've been getting (30 mins or less) Well, I tried something after I saw this article and, lo and behold, I've been running on 0% battery life (incl the green LED's) for the past 30 minutes. I'd be curious to know how many of those who report very short battery life have tried going beyond the system warning... cause mine is still running.
okay. i'm seeing several comments about battery life and that liion batteries should be treated differently from nicad and nimh batteries.
i know in nicad days, it was best to let them run down and then charge them fully. from my experience with cell phones and nimh batteries, that's a relatively good idea there with them too, although their propensity to develop memory was weaker.
but, what's best with modern liion batteries? should i keep my laptop on the charger whenever possible? let it run down to xx% and then charge it? is there a difference in how i should treat them in my cell phone vs. my laptop?
geek friendly VPS's and free API enabled DNS : zerigo.com
Let's do it your way:
..."
/those./"
/that/ stuff.
/complain to the source of the delay./ Getting uppity with the local shop puts an extra step in between that and your complaint getting to the manufacturer (yes, a good shop will bitch to the manufacturer when they can't get parts on time, don't worry about that ;-)) ... It also will get you an annoyed sales or service department.
;-)
Guy: "My battery isn't working right."
Dude: "Okay, lemme check it in and check it out for you."
Dude does his diagnosis. Battery is hosed. Replace battery, Dude says. Guy comes back the next day.
Dude yanks one off of the shelf.
Guy goes home.
Dude's internal service report reads: "Replaced battery with one from the shelf."
Dude: "Hey, Ordering Man, I replaced that Guy's battery with one of the twenty you ordered from the distributor instead of getting one specially shipped in from the manufacturer."
Ordering Man: "Okay, I'll pay our distributor with the reimbursement from the manufacturer."
Dude: "The manufacturer doesn't reimburse us for the warranty repair when they don't send us warranty parts. I mean, who would? They don't have any way to know for sure that we actually ordered something and did a repair."
Ordering Man: "So how do I pay our distributor?"
Dude: "Normally, we don't pay for the batteries we replace under warranty."
Ordering Man: "Where do you normally get your batteries?"
Dude: "The manufacturer. Is that a problem?"
Ordering Man: "Not as long as we pay our distributor."
Why does this sound like an episode of Bastard Operator from Hell? Because your "high and mighty, the customer should never understand that there are real people with real logistical problems on the other side of the counter" stance is just the kind of mindset that spawns classic BOFH stories.
Let's look at the scenario a little higher up the ladder.
Ordering Man: "Hey, Distributor Guy, we used three batteries as warranty replacements."
Distributor Guy: "What the fuck are you smoking? We pay the manufacturer for those! Where's our money for those!?"
Ordering Man: "You mean the manufacturer--"
Distributor Guy: "Of course not, you asshat! Do we look like a service provider? Where. Is. Our. Money."
Ordering Man: "We're keeping our customers irresponsibly happy!"
Distributor Guy: "And you're making our lawyers happy. Money, please."
Or from another angle:
Distributor Guy: "Here's our monthly invoices."
Manufacturer looks over the NET-30s.
Distributor Guy: "These ten thousand batteries here, they're warranty replacements. Please give us that money back."
Manufacturer: "You were talking about smoking crack earlier
Oh, wait!
It doesn't always work that way in retail! Sometimes, the person above you doesn't get paid until you sell things! (See Bungie's old Rant on how video games get shelf space for more goodies here.) So you might think that this solves the problems itself, right? On the contrary, it causes more!
So we have this scene instead:
Distributor Guy: "Here's our monthly invoices."
Manufacturer looks over the NET-30s.
Distributor Guy: "These ten thousand batteries here, they're warranty replacements. We don't need to pay you for
Manufacturer invoices Distributor, who is $100,000 short because of warranty replacements. Distributor, meanwhile, invoices all of those local shops doing replacements with store stock for that $100,000. Well, the local shops can't/don't/won't/shouldn't pay because the customer didn't pay anything--it was under warranty each time.
Local Shops say to Manufacturer, "Give us this money, so we can pay Distributor, who can then pay you!"
I won't even get into lines of credit and all of the messes that come with
How is this remotely good for you, the end-consumer? Is it really so hard to understand these kinds of logistical concerns from that side of the counter?
Seems like it. I have to explain this more and more these days, as people want EVERYTHING IN TWO SECONDS FLAT. They can't hold on to their machine while the new battery arrives and eliminates all of these problems (and thus, reducing your beloved shop and manufacturer's internal costs and troubles, IN TURN making your shit cheaper in the long and short run), because that just "isn't good customer service". I can't tell you how many times a loaner computer has been demanded of me because of a dispatch (mailed-in) repair or I'm repairing a machine that isn't functional. By your logic, I should just give the guy a new computer off the shelf!
Part of good customer service is the good customer. Someone once told me that, and it's the complete truth. In this world, you get what you give.
If you're upset with a shop's service, they DO have an obligation to make it right. If you're an asshole, making un-thought-out and unreasonable demands, they have the right to be human and watch you walk out of the door.
Instead of acting like a toddler and taking your toys home, if it takes more than a few business days to get that battery,
We're humans, Goddamnit. Treat us like we are, and understand that we don't like waiting a week for a part we should get overnight or within two business days, either. "Just give me one off of the shelf" is a more complicated imperative than it seems.
-/-
Mikey-San
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
While I haven't had this particular issue with my iBook, its logic board promptly ate its self this weekend when I plugged in the AC adapter(no it wasn't surged.) I got an email from a freind with a similar experience this weekend also. While the iBook is a great laptop when it works I can't help but think in the PC world if batteries acted up like this, and logic board randomly failed we would be talking class action lawsuit not discussing it calmly on slashdot.
-sonic
My mother's iBook 2001 500, 10.2.3 -> 10.2.4, what appears to be a problem, the problem persists but seems lessened after resetting PMU.
I think I'll perform a clean installation and combo upgrade on the iBook tomorrow. :-[
For those who posted above "you're totally wrong" or talked about battery cycles or whatever, this is an actual issue.
I have three PowerBooks (TiBook, Pismo, Wallstreet). The batteries of the three vary and at least one is, in fact, very new. After upgrading each to 10.2.4, I saw the exact same behavior, which was previously present in none of them.
- The reported battery life is about half what it was before the update was installed.
- If you work through the low power warnings, you'll be rewarded with a fair amount of life in them as the power meter reads 0%.
- At some point, the book will just sleep with no warning. No, this point isn't quite where you would have expected timewise -- it's not just the reporting of the available power that's at fault.
I've had a stack of powerbooks going back to the Powerbook 100. I still have a 520c -- if you want to talk about battery cell lifetime issues, that's the one to start with.
This is totally new behavior for each of the affected systems. The recent system update makes it a culprit, although it's very possibly something else.
I got a 15" PowerBook G4 a couple of months ago, with 10.2.3, and it had battery problems from the beginning. It would not charge above 96%, and the battery meter would report that it was calculating the time until it would be fully charged. I usually have the computer plugged in, so it went for weeks like that.
I started trying different things: draining the battery to near 0, resetting the PMU, booting into OS9, and charging with the machine powered off. I also upgraded to 10.2.4 around this time. It's maximum charge started to drop. First in the 60s range, then 30s, and 20s. When I finally drained the battery completely, it would not go above 0%.
I called Apple and had a replacement battery sent, which seemed to work fine at first. After a few days, the charge was at 97% and had been plugged in all that time. Before I called up Apple again (this time fearing the computer itself was defective), I decided to look it up in their online help database, and came across this, which says that in OS X, the battery is kept charged between 95 and 100%, and charges back up to 100% after going below 95%. This is for various PowerBook and iBook models running Mac OS X 10.0 and later.
I don't trust this very much, since I have never noticed this type of behavior on other laptops. It seems to work fine now though. If I power off, it charges back up to 100%, otherwise it seems to stay around 97%.
I tried something like that too. When my iBook dual usb 2001 battery was starting to run down faster and faster, I lowered the screen brightness to minimum and turned off all programs except bbedit. Lo and behold, it ran for hours even after it reached 0%.
My theory is that the battery is somehow not providing enough voltage to run the computer (or the computer is requiring more voltage than the battery can provide) which shuts itself down, even though its capacity is not terribly diminished.
I tried that again recently (now that my comp gets about 2 minutes of battery life) but it didn't work. My battery only shows a green flashing light on the bottom indicating it is empty.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?