a generous designer’s blog

A few weeks ago I got back my MacBook from the service (mainboard exchange) and now here’s another problem. To be precise, two other problems, but all of them can be solved at home. No hassle with the distributor.

My MacBook is almost always on power adapter, I use it like a desktop computer, so noticing a battery problem isn’t always easy, and maybe never is on time.

But this was hard to overlook when I unplugged: the battery went dead from fully charged in about an hour. In addition, it completely shut down at 16%. And when I say completely, I mean no reserve battery power warning message, and no saving the computer state and go to sleep: just switch off like I’ve teared out the battery. (Yes, I lost my unsaved work.)

There’s some handy guide at Apple how to treat you lithium-ion batteries like “Lithium-ion Batteries” and “Apple Batteries – notebooks” but none of them are helpful solving our problem.

System Profiles says: Check Battery

Actually you need this guide, hidden in Apple support articles. But before that check your battery status in the System Profiler (Hardware/Power). When it says “Check battery”, you definitely need to do this before thinking about the service (btw you need to do this monthly according to Apple’s advice).

Follow these steps to recalibrate your batteries (and put some endurance in it – once a month ):

1. Plug in your adapter and fully charge your MacBook and rest in the fully charged state for at least 2 hours.
   (The power cord’s plug turns green when it’s fully charged. Don’t care about the percentage shown in menu bar.)
2. Disconnect the power adapter and let it use the battery. When the battery discharges, your MacBook will hopefully save your state and go in sleep mode.
   (Or not. Mine just switched off, so I switched on it again, and used it for a few minutes again.)
3. Allow it to sleep for at least 5 hours…
   (…to discharge all remaining reserve battery power.)
4. Plug in again and leave it until fully charged.

That’s it. While you charging and discharging (step 1 and 2) you can use your computer. I’m not sure you can do this at step 4: Apple explicitly tells this in step 1 and 2, but not in 4. (Maybe you can tell me?)

Note: This calibrating only applies to all MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, PowerBook G4 with lithium-ion batteries.

Update: I recalibrated twice, but had no luck. I went to the service where they can diagnose the problem in five minutes. If they get the appropriate error code (or something), they’ll renew the battery for you, like they did it for me.