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The excellent coconutBattery utility showed that the battery’s capacity was still at 95 percent of its theoretical maximum. Its battery at the start of the tests had 159 cycles and was considered healthy by OS X. Our test MacBook Pro, which readers should note is a different computer than the one used in our first tests, has been lightly used during its life. #MAC TEST BATTERY COCONUTBATTERY PRO#Our test computer is a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro at 2.0 GHz with 8 GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 6490M GPU, and two internal drives: an OCZ Vertex 4 64 GB SSD and a Seagate Momentus 750 GB HDD (we used an Other World Computing Data Doubler bracket to replace the MacBook Pro’s optical drive with the Seagate hard drive). ![]() We hope that our tests will answer some questions about a Mac’s battery life “journey” though the many iterations of OS X over the past few years. In an effort to provide a comprehensive look at battery life, we decided to take one of our test Macs back to Snow Leopard and test each build of OS X from 10.6.8 all the way to the current build of Mountain Lion on both an SSD and an HDD. Other readers wanted to know if there would be a significant difference in battery life if the tests were run on a solid state system drive (SSD) versus a traditional hard disk system drive (HDD). #MAC TEST BATTERY COCONUTBATTERY UPGRADE#In response to our reports, we received many questions and suggestions for further testing, with some readers telling us that they experienced a similar loss in battery life after the upgrade from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 Lion. We were able to demonstrate that the upgrade to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion caused a significant reduction in battery life and that Mountain Lion’s first update, 10.8.1, only partially restored the lost running time. ![]() #MAC TEST BATTERY COCONUTBATTERY SERIES#Last month we performed a series of battery life tests on three Mac laptops: a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro, 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and a 2011 13-inch MacBook Air. We have put those builds through the same test and the results can be found here. coconutBattery’s dropdown includes time until empty, state (percentage) of the battery’s charge, its temperature (a higher temp can decrease battery life), cycle count, health, and condition.ĬoconutBattery is available as freeware, and the developer accepts donations if users are so inclined.Update: The final builds of 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 were released by Apple on September 19. The customization isn’t as easy as iStat Menus’, but it’s essentially a set and forget configuration. Similar to iStat Menus, coconutBattery has a customizable menu bar icon that also provides a dropdown for stats. coconutBattery is lightweight, so I had no qualms with continously running it, and liked the cleanliness it provided all around. I’ve continued to use coconutBattery over the years, and paid even more attention to the stats it provided after replacing my MacBook Pro’s battery with a new one myself. With the app I was able to quickly tell that my battery was actually doing really well considering its age, and it was hitting about 80% of its designed capacity. I first came across coconutBattery a few years ago after discovering that my 2010 MacBook Pro’s battery was potentially dying, I figured a third-party app to easily keep tabs on the cycle count would be a good idea. With the battery menu bar option, iStat Menus provides seven different styles to pick from, (I’ve stuck with the default). Once installed, iStat Menus will add different icons to your menu bar, all of which can be enabled and disabled at will. What we care about today with iStat Menus is the ability to see detailed info on your battery’s current state. Want to watch your memory and memory usage live? You can do that with iStat Menus. ![]() The app allows users to add different bars and graphs to their menu bar to help keep an eye on different services and components. IStat Menus has long been a staple in a pro user’s OS customization toolkit. Let’s take a look at some alternative third-party apps that can bring this feature back and make you feel back at home in your own system. A feature long used by macOS customers all around, the removal of the time remaining may line up with the iOS battery experience but it will leave some users a bit frustrated. #MAC TEST BATTERY COCONUTBATTERY UPDATE#One of the casulaties in today’s 10.12.2 Sierra update for macOS is Apple’s decision to remove the inaccurate time remaining on battery estimation built into the system’s battery menu bar icon. ![]()
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