I have a mid 2010 17" Macbook Pro. This is actually my first post on this forum, as I was looking for some help with an issue I've encountered since installing Mavericks. Overall, my experience has been very positive, with one notable exception. That exception is a battery issue. Prior to the upgrade, and by prior I mean exactly 5 minutes prior, my battery health as indicated by the program Battery Health was showing approx 85% with a max charge of 11162mAh out of a max of 13000mAh after 3.6 years and 143 cycles. This is consistent with what I have observed for the duration of my use of OS X Lion which I installed on its' release. Subsequent to my Mavericks installation Battery Health now shows the health of my battery @ 74% and a max charge of 9614 mAh out of 13000. I'm also now seeing the "Service Battery" warning under the current charge menu bar icon. This max charge value has fluctuated over the last few days from a low of about 9000 mAh to around 10400 mAh and the "Service Battery" warning has come, gone, and come back again. I've gone through the calibration process three times though it shouldn't be necessary with the built-in battery. I'm still searching for a possible fix, as there is no way this could be a coincidental issue. I have no reason to believe this is anything but a result of the OS upgrade.
Now, with this reduced charge level, I went through the calibration routine again last night. It took 5hr 04min from 100% to 1% when it went to sleep, under what is normal unplugged use for me. Brightness at about 60%, Internet browsing with Safari, some email, reading a book and such. A little music and some video from Itunes. If I extrapolate that out to what my battery charge had been, I believe this is a slight improvement in battery life. At 85% under Lion I was seeing between 6 and 7 hours. Of course use varies from session to session so this is mostly educated conjecture.
All this said, there are some real improvements. My system boots faster, Safari is greatly improved, HD movies with ITunes consumes a lot less power it seems. Streaming with Netflix and its' Silverlight program is still very power hungry, however.
As I said at the beginning of this now long post, the overall experience has been positive. I would like to find a solution to my battery issue. I know that a similar problem occurred with the release of Snow Leopard where many folks saw the same issues that I am experiencing now. So now, I'm wondering what my next step should be. I've thought about reinstalling Mavericks to see if this rectifies the problem, but I'm afraid of making matters worse as well. My other options are to revert back to Lion, though I really don't want to do that; the last option being to wait for 10.9.1 in a few weeks. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Jeff
