Has anyone noticed a decrease in battery performance?

Question

Has anyone noticed a decrease in battery performance?  Is this covered under the Apple Care Warranty?

Answer 1

Hi Dominick,
The charge capacity is definitely inline with manufacturer's specifications. I will say that the charge cycle is a little high, though.
129 cycles / 8 months = 16 cycles (per month)
That's about one every other day. It sounds like you use the machine frequently for short periods of time. Is this machine at home or in an office? Or are you mobile with it to where you don't have access to A/C power or can't be "tied down" to a specific location for any period of time?
There's no reason to run the machine off of battery power if it's sitting on your desk. Matter of fact, I probably use my "portable" at my desk more than I use it was a portable. You could be racking up unnecessary cycles otherwise. On one of my machines it's plugged into power 98% of the time, I'll run it down and give it a full recharge once a month per Apple's recommendations.
As AussieDJ recommended, check Activity Monitor to see if anything is consuming unnecessary amounts of CPU usage.
If this is an 11" MBA, approximately 4 hours of run time is well within reason (based on usage), but that's a little low if this is a 13" MBA. Again usage is important here, web browsers and flash-heavy content consume a surprisingly large amount of battery.
I'd also be curious to see a consecutive usage test versus these 10-30 minute usage intervals throughout the day. Give the machine a full charge, use it as your normal would for a 2-3 hours and see how that goes.