I'm not sure what we'll do with the four-year-old MacBook Pro that will sit idle now with Diana's new 13" gem, but wow is the battery not in good shape. At 190 charge cycles the health is 42%, which isn't good at all. And that's surprising, because the battery I replaced was at around 75% health after 250 cycles. I theorize that it hasn't been "exercised" enough, where you let it drain to nothing now and then. The theory goes that the self calibrating "brain" of the battery then understands what its limits are. I try to be religious about doing that, but I don't know what Diana's charging habits are.
This does seem like a somewhat solved problem though. At ten months with the newer 17" model, battery health is still 100%, with 150 charge cycles. Again, I tend to religiously drain before charging, and it's supposed to do some kind of charging where it considers each individual cell, not just the aggregate. Apple says that's supposed to extend the life significantly. So far, I believe that's true. Diana's new one has a similar batter, probably with a "street" charge of six to seven hours. I've had no problem pushing mine past eight, with some compromises (dim screen), but even with all out resource intensive stuff, six is no problem.
The evolution of batteries is pretty amazing, though certainly not fast enough. God knows the auto industry sure would like more bang for the buck right now.
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