Hello!
I've had no luck at remedying this weird problem my mid-2012 MacBook Air is experiencing, so I thought it was worth a shot to talk about it here.
I just started school again and don't really have the budget to buy a new laptop, and this 2012 MBA is enough for me at the moment. I've installed Mac OS Monterey 12.6.8 using OCLP on a new OWC SSD so no compatibility issues with programs, and even though it has 4GB of RAM, it still mostly does the job fine for me.
Only saying this because when I tried asking for help from the r/Apple Discord server, they figuratively spat in my face and told me it wasn't worth the effort to save the laptop and I should just buy a new one. Mind you, this was coming from the same Discord where someone asking for Apple Care help about iPhone rear glass damage was told to throw their phone against the floor since Apple Care only covers front glass repairs. Diabolical.
Enough about that, though... the issue I'm having:
Recently swapped out the battery in the laptop for a third-party solution, the one in it before was also a replacement not made by Apple. Everything seemed fine out of the gate until the battery ran out in a peculiar way - once percentage hit 50%, it started dropping 10-20% per minute and turned off at 12%. After turning off (presumably the battery had discharged by then), the laptop doesn't boot but gives out 3 recurring RAM failure beeps at boot attempt.
I've attached a battery percentage graph to better illustrate the drop.
My first solution was to open the laptop, disconnect and reconnect the battery, and that worked, it booted up again.
Now I ran into this issue another time, this time I didn't have access to screwdrivers, so, grasping at straws, I reset the SMC after shutting the laptop down mid-beep. This worked, too.
So at the moment, I have a fully functional laptop that is sort of a ticking time bomb that I can't let discharge under 50%, otherwise I have to jump-start it by resetting the SMC and hearing some beeps of death.
Has this kind of problem been reported before and is there any chance it's not due to a faulty replacement battery? Even though the beeps indicate RAM problems, everything is detected properly after an SMC reset. The international Apple support line agent told me that it could be a software issue, but I don't quite see how that fits in anywhere.
What could the SMC reset be doing to fix the problem and is there a way to apply it permanently so maybe the beeps go away?
In other words, what is my new course of action?
Waiting in anticipation,
Sass
Edit: 2012 in title
I've had no luck at remedying this weird problem my mid-2012 MacBook Air is experiencing, so I thought it was worth a shot to talk about it here.
I just started school again and don't really have the budget to buy a new laptop, and this 2012 MBA is enough for me at the moment. I've installed Mac OS Monterey 12.6.8 using OCLP on a new OWC SSD so no compatibility issues with programs, and even though it has 4GB of RAM, it still mostly does the job fine for me.
Only saying this because when I tried asking for help from the r/Apple Discord server, they figuratively spat in my face and told me it wasn't worth the effort to save the laptop and I should just buy a new one. Mind you, this was coming from the same Discord where someone asking for Apple Care help about iPhone rear glass damage was told to throw their phone against the floor since Apple Care only covers front glass repairs. Diabolical.
Enough about that, though... the issue I'm having:
Recently swapped out the battery in the laptop for a third-party solution, the one in it before was also a replacement not made by Apple. Everything seemed fine out of the gate until the battery ran out in a peculiar way - once percentage hit 50%, it started dropping 10-20% per minute and turned off at 12%. After turning off (presumably the battery had discharged by then), the laptop doesn't boot but gives out 3 recurring RAM failure beeps at boot attempt.
I've attached a battery percentage graph to better illustrate the drop.
My first solution was to open the laptop, disconnect and reconnect the battery, and that worked, it booted up again.
Now I ran into this issue another time, this time I didn't have access to screwdrivers, so, grasping at straws, I reset the SMC after shutting the laptop down mid-beep. This worked, too.
So at the moment, I have a fully functional laptop that is sort of a ticking time bomb that I can't let discharge under 50%, otherwise I have to jump-start it by resetting the SMC and hearing some beeps of death.
Has this kind of problem been reported before and is there any chance it's not due to a faulty replacement battery? Even though the beeps indicate RAM problems, everything is detected properly after an SMC reset. The international Apple support line agent told me that it could be a software issue, but I don't quite see how that fits in anywhere.
What could the SMC reset be doing to fix the problem and is there a way to apply it permanently so maybe the beeps go away?
In other words, what is my new course of action?
Waiting in anticipation,
Sass
Edit: 2012 in title
