How I Fixed my MacBook Pro

Last Christmas, my loving wife gave me a copy of Snow Leopard.  After upgrading, my computer started running so slow that it was pathetic.  My hard drive died, and I thought that maybe that was the issue.

It wasn't.

I started surfing through the forums on 9to5Mac and Apple Support Discussions and found very little that I liked, most of it blaming coreaudiod (the core audio services).  I had tried defragging my hard drive before I had to replace it, and I wasn't satisfied with the results.

So, I tried a few things.  First off, I reset the SMC controller (on my MBP, you do that by shutting down the computer, unplugging it and removing the battery, and holding down the power button for 5 seconds).

Then, I booted up, shut down, and reset the NVRAM (on my MBP, you do that by starting up and holding the control+option+P+R keys and holding them down until the second startup sound).

It certainly feels faster.  Time will tell if this is a real fix.

The Next Steps

I a going to boot from my SL CD and Repair Permissions and Verify Disk.  Since I'm fearful that this could have had something to do with my last hard drive's death (although I think my fears should be unfounded), I am going to make sure I'm backed up first.

The 64 Bit Lie

The big issue I have is that my computer supposedly won't support 64 bit.  Until today, I was unaware that I had 32-bit EFI (firmware).  I'm somewhat annoyed by that, since I'm pretty sure a Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit processor.  It seems to me that Apple was a bit short-sighted when they did that.

10.6 falsely reports service battery? ... POSSIBLY!

Ref: 10.6 falsely reports service battery? ... I think not.

This is another example of piss-poor tech writing.  This retard author tries to claim that there is no way that Snow Leopard can cause battery problems.  There is proof on the Apple discussion thread that he could be incorrect, and even in my case, with my 3-year-old MacBook Pro with a 14-month-old battery, it appears that those that claim that Snow Leopard could be causing battery problems may be on the right track.

Consider this:

15 minutes ago, I checked Coconut Battery against System Profiler.  They match.  I'm only bringing this up to establish that Coconut Battery reads correctly.

Then, I read the life in Coconut Battery... 37% (2087 mAh)

Then, I shut down the computer, reset the SMC, and re-read the battery... 41% (2287 mAh).

Proof:



Now, if the battery was indeed going bad, I shouldn't have gained an extra 200 mAh by just resetting the SMC.  A bad battery is a bad battery, and its capacity would continue to decline.

That being said, I'm not pleased at all with the quality of Apple Laptop Batteries.  The battery currently in my computer was acquired around 2008-11-12.  In the 1 year and 2 months since then, the capacity has dropped from 95% to 41% (or 37%, hell, I don't know anymore).  Who knows, maybe Snow Leopard EXACERBATES an existing battery problem.  Maybe it CAUSES a new battery problem.  Regardless, the 48 pages of comments on Apple's own discussion forum are probably a lot more than what happened after Tiger and Leopard were released, and since the last comment was today, I'm willing to guess that there is a problem in both the batteries and in Snow Leopard.  We should expect 3 years or so out of a battery, not a >50% loss of capacity after 1 year.

As I was writing this, I saw my remaining time jump from 40-something minutes to an hour.  Maybe Snow Leopard isn't eating the battery, but it certainly is confused by mine, and probably many others.



Cupertino, we have a problem.

Getting back to the reason for writing this, 10.6 Falsely Reports Service Battery?  I think so!  Whatever is going on, SL is obviously not doing something right.  I imagine that it isn't eating the batteries (as is suggested by some of the posts on Apple's discussion board), but it definitely is flawed in the reporting of the information.  I don't buy the thought that it was intentional by Apple to do something to cause batteries to go out to get more revenues from batteries.  I imagine that there is some very questionable manufacturing (after all, these are Sony batteries, which have been known to catch fire in Dells) and that SL can't read it right.  Probably a combination of the two.

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