Late last week Apple published a software update that purports to help address “performance” problems with batteries in various MacBook and MacBook Pro models. I happen to have two batteries for my MacBook, one of which has been experiencing a problem for some time. I decided to take the plunge and install the update before leaving the office Friday, thinking it might address my problem, or at least give the clear indications of failure I needed to have the battery replaced by Apple.

As it turned out, the battery I have not had any identifiable issues with was in the laptop when I installed the update. Everything appeared smooth after the update. I packed up the laptop to head home not quite noticing one small, but crucial, detail lurking in my menu bar.

When I pulled out the laptop Saturday morning, I was surprised to find it dead. Flipping it over and mashing the small button on the battery indicated what I suspected: the battery was completely drained. It seemed a bit unusual to have packed it away with a full charge only to have it dead overnight, but it would not be the first time something like that had happened so I shrugged it off. I found the power adaptor, hooked up the juice and got to work for a few minutes. After a half-an-hour of other distractions I needed to run in the other room and quickly unhooked the power adaptor so as to de-tether the laptop.

zoink!

The screen went dead instantly. Hmmm… I reattached the power cord and powered up again. After the boot finished, I finally took a moment to pay attention to the battery status in the menu bar. Instead of the normal Shazam!-style battery icon with a percentage of charge, I found the crossed-out battery of doom. A quick check with the system profiler verified that the system was no longer recognizing the battery. I did a quick swap to my other, problematic, battery and found that it was at least still recognized as a device capable of holding an electric charge.

So the the take home point is that the software update itself seems to have turned my normal, no complaints battery into a brick. Now, I am totally willing to accept that this battery was a problem waiting to happen or even had performance problems I had not noticed yet. Still, it would have been nice to have been warned that the update might render an otherwise apparently functional battery, useless. Seeing as this new behavior is exactly one on the list published by Apple, I’m sure that I will be able to get a replacement. Fortunately, I have my other crippled battery to rely on until I can spare the time to schedule a “Genius Bar” appointment.

To all those without a spare battery in the wings, be warned : the update may send you to the Apple Store a little sooner than you planned.

Footnote

For the curious, my other battery is still experiencing its strange problem, even after the software update. For whatever reason, whenever this battery is installed the system is not able to properly go to sleep when the charge is run down to the point that that system decides to put itself to sleep. Proceeding past the warning dialog urging you to plug in the battery always results in a shutdown rather than a safe or normal sleep. I suspect it must be something wrong in how the system is gauging the charge remanning for the battery. I’m thinking if it appears to have more capacity that it really does, the act of flushing-out the RAM to disk for a safe-sleep is probably completely draining the battery causing an immediate shutdown. My other battery always manages a successful safe sleep after it decides to enforce a mandatory sleep. Hopefully the techs at the Genius Bar will recognize the problem without me needing to stage a demonstration.

Update:

I finally found the time to schedule an appointment at the Apple store. After listening to the details and investigating the not quite a brick, but clearly deficient battery the genius on duty sent me home with two new batteries. Its nice to be rolling with more than an hour of charge again!

IronCoder V came to a close last Sunday. The theme for the 48 hour hacking marathon was Life and the required API was the ScreenSaver.framework. Congratulations to Ben Gottlieb for winning with his clever screen saver, WikiPath. Hope to see you at C4 this year!

Oddly, I found it difficult to come up with anything terribly interesting around the theme this time. I’m a bit afraid to contemplate what it means when ‘Life’ isn’t inspiring! When inspiration finally did hit the requirements called for some 3-D graphics, which left me with two obvious choices : Quartz Composer or OpenGL. Having had some previous Quartz Composer experience I opted for this route, rather than a crash-course in OpenGL.

Interestingly, I quickly ran up against some of the more difficult sorts of tasks to accomplish in Quartz Composer. In the end I had something that was close to the original idea, but no where near as dynamic as I would have liked. I’m definitely more conversant in the visual language of Quartz Composer than I was before the contest. I’m also inclined to try and find a nice little OpenGL project to tackle in the near future…perhaps for Iron Coder VI?

Tree of Life is a simple screen saver that scans your Pictures folder and uses the images in it as leaves on a tree. The leaves, sprout and then fall to the ground as the cycle of life churns.

I cleaned up the code and fixed a few problems that I just didn’t have time to address before the contest deadline. I also added the ability to point it to a folder of your own choosing. There are a lot of features that didn’t make it in that might make it more compelling including :

• Choose iPhoto albums as source
• Cycle through all images in folder
• Accent the images with a frame or border ( think green )
• Maintain aspect of original image
• More variety in leaf growth and movement
• Control # of leaves with preference
• Fix falling animation to have proper start position
• Hook up sudden-motion-sensor to ’shake’ the leaves off the tree!

Perhaps someone else will feel like adding features? If so the source code and screen saver are available here.