Comments on: Battery Statistics

By: Paul D. Waite

Paul D. Waite — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:34:35 +0000

I’ve followed Apple’s instructions for recalibrating the battery ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490 ) twice so far, and coconutBattery has reported an increase in current maximum capacity each time.

Not sure yet if the battery life actually is longer, but I’m hoping so. The process is a bit fiddly, but might save me shelling out for a new battery just yet.

By: ricki

ricki — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:48:11 +0000

I actually have the same thing happen:
855 Cycles
4935 mA

on a more than 2 year old MacBook.
It was a result of upgrading from tiger to leopard, that is a least my best guess.

By: tcurdt

tcurdt — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:57:41 +0000

@Aaron: That’s indeed very strange!

My suggestion: contact the author of ibat. I am expecting he might have some clue. And then let us know! :)

By: Aaron Wagner

Aaron Wagner — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:34:54 +0000

Very interesting. My wife was concerned about how she should charge/discharge her new macbook and I wasn’t sure.

I ran this command for her, but the results don’t make sense. How could her MaxCapacity be higher than the DesignCapacity?

She’s had the laptop for about seven months and it’s been on almost 24/7 since then. I was really surprised by these results. It doesn’t seem right, but I know nothing about how this stuff works.

“CurrentCapacity” = 4804
“LegacyBatteryInfo” = {”Capacity”=5167,”Voltage”=12269,”Flags”=4,”Current”=4804,”Amperage”=18446744073709550419,”Cycle Count”=142}
“DesignCapacity” = 5020
“MaxCapacity” = 5167

By: Henning Schmiedehausen

Henning Schmiedehausen — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:36:50 +0000

iStat Pro displays this information, too. And my first generation MacBook Pro with once replaced battery (remember the “we need to replace your battery” recall?) is still at 85% health after 148 cycles.

By: Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot

Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:39:48 +0000

Interesting command line. Thanks Torsten!

Here are the results on my MBP:
$ ioreg -w0 -l | grep Capacity
“CurrentCapacity” = 2579
“LegacyBatteryInfo” = {”Capacity”=2649,”Voltage”=12410,”Flags”=5,”Current”=2579,”Amperage”=0,”Cycle Count”=172}
“DesignCapacity” = 5500
“MaxCapacity” = 2649

These statistics confirm my feeling that my battery lasts only half the time than when I got it, one year and 7 months ago.