A gift from Apple to your MacBook battery

If you were having problems with your MacBook or MacBook Pro battery, today is your lucky day. Apple has issued Battery Update 1.2 to fix a performance problem with the batteries inside its Intel notebooks sold from February 2006 to April 2007 (in other words, all MacBooks and MacBook Pros). Note that this problem only affects performance, not safety.

The update should show up in Software Update, and it’s also available from Apple’s support website. Better yet, if you’ve installed the update and you’re still having problems, Apple is offering to replace your battery free of charge, provided it shows at least one of these symptoms:

Battery is not recognized causing an “X” to appear in the battery icon in the Finder menu bar.

Battery will not charge when computer is plugged into AC power.

Battery exhibits low charge capacity/runtime when using a fully charged battery with a battery cycle count (as shown in System Profiler) of less than 300.

Battery pack is visibly deformed.

If it does, you’re eligible for a replacement at your local Apple Store or service provider. Enjoy your new performance, and feel free to tell us if the update fixed your battery life issues. Maybe this is related to the problem Dan and some of you had a while back?