Over the last couple weeks, I've been going back and forth with readers who truly believe that Snow Leopard is reporting battery errors when they have a perfectly good battery. There's even a substantially large thread in Apple's Discussions forums about this topic. I've been notified of that thread many times, accused of not covering real issues, hiding the truth and just plain refusing to believe that it's an issue with the Operating System.

After trudging through all of that, I've determined that it's a whole bunch of hoopla. I'm not saying that some of these people aren't experiencing real issues with the software -- just the sheer amount of complaints in the discussion forums would say there are problems -- but the "Service Battery" complaint doesn't appear to be related to software issues at all.

One of the big differences between Leopard and Snow Leopard is how they report issues with the battery. Leopard didn't report issues in a place where most users would know to check: System Profiler - Power - Health Information. Snow Leopard reports issues directly from your Menu Bar as shown in the picture. This difference caused a real stir in our tips box because many users never knew that their batteries were bad before Snow Leopard. "My battery isn't bad, it worked fine until I installed Snow Leopard" -- Yes, it may have worked fine but that doesn't mean it didn't have issues before the upgrade. Apple just made the problems more noticeable in the OS. In fact, they're helping their users catch them sooner.

Most of the time, people don't realize their battery has issues until it REALLY has issues like 20 minute run-times, random shut downs, the black "x" in the battery icon, etc. All of these are issues we (technicians) use to identify a bad battery. These new battery checks could actually help you find out your battery is bad before the warranty runs out; before it gets to the point of no return.

Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers now have a special utility that actually reads the health information directly from the battery and can determine why the Operating System says the battery needs serviced. Most of the time the problem will fall into two categories: battery failure or depletion. This diagnostic tool is actually a game-changer in the world of Apple's battery warranty: batteries are no longer automatically covered through the first year. If the battery legitimately fails, they'll replace it free of charge. If you happen to deplete the battery within the first year, you'll pay for a new battery.

Take all of this information with a grain of salt. Apple IS helping us by having the OS show us when the battery fails, but they've also made warranty battery replacements a little more fair on their end. Having blanket warranties for a year probably cost them a lot of money considering it's pretty easy to deplete a battery within that time if you don't take care to keep it healthy.

I've had the battery in my MacBook Pro for 9 months now. I have 245 cycles on the battery, 3-4 hours of pretty heavy usage (without the killer graphics enabled), and 99% health rating according to iStat Pro. I'll leave you with a few tips to help maintain the health of your battery:

• Never leave the machine plugged in all the time. Laptops are meant to be portable. Using it as a desktop that never runs on the battery will destroy your battery life.
• Cycles are your friend. Never letting the battery complete a cycle will greatly diminish your run-time. Try to avoid charging the battery unless it's drained past 30%. Any time the battery drains past 50% and charges more than 50% counts as a cycle. The farther you let it drain before the charge - the better its overall health will remain.
• 30 cycles in a year is not a good thing. ;)
• Let the battery drain completely a few times a week.
• Never let it sit for long periods of time without use. Batteries need to be loved or else they won't love you.

For more information on batteries, check out apple.com/batteries

UPDATE -- There have been a lot of opinions expressed in the comments about the proper care and feeding of Apple laptop batteries, especially the newer lithium ion units. I'm happy to see that this article sparked such a healthy debate. To be clear, my tips here are not directly based on Apple's recommendations. They are driven by my personal experience servicing Apple laptops and Apple batteries for customers, and my own battery health history. For a different take on proper battery care for modern gear, we were pointed to feedback from Marco Ament that's worth a look. If we have electrical engineers or battery designers in the audience that wish to weigh in, we'd be happy to hear from you.

"My iPhone's been draining awfully fast since I installed 3.0," I commented to a fellow TUAW blogger just a few days after the release of the iPhone 3.0 firmware. At first, I wanted to think it was my phone. But, my iPhone 3G wasn't even 90 days old at the time of the observation and I'd been able to keep it on standby for several days before it needed a charge. Now, I could barely make it through a 10-hour workday before rushing out to the car to hook it up to a power source.

Aaron Vronko of RapidRepair says that this isn't an isolated incident. The iPhone 3G may now deplete its energy supply in roughly two hours, and the first generation iPhone lasts less than a day. Vronko tells Macworld that the cause is most likely push notification placing a drain on the battery's reserves. The issue has also led to complaints on Apple's support forums.

I've definitely noticed the difference. If I leave myself logged into BeeJive IM while I'm at work, my phone drains much faster than it does if I'm logged out. Regular push mail notification from MobileMe doesn't affect the battery level all that much, even with the high volume of e-mail I receive through TUAW. So, to save on the battery for now, I'm avoiding the push applications as much as I can if I don't have a charger within reach.

Vronko believes that the 3.1 release will solve the battery issues.

[Via MacNN]

Once again, it's time for another edition of Ask TUAW: the place where we try to answer all of your Mac and Apple-related questions. This week we're taking questions about recovering pictures from corrupted compact flash cards, Twitter for the iPhone, extending iPhone battery life and more.

As always, we welcome your suggestions for this week and questions for next time. Please leave your contributions in the comments for this post. When asking questions, please include which Mac and which version of OS X you're running. If you don't specify, we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac.

Okay, let's get to it!

Nick F. asks:

I've got some pictures I need to recover from a corrupted Compact Flash card. What's the best, preferably free, software to do it on my Mac?

This is one of those questions that can get frustrating if you're a Mac user. On the Windows side, there are a few good (and free) pieces of software that can help you accomplish this task. For the Mac, you're choices are mostly limited to pay applications -- at least if you want good results. Fortunately, these pay applications are very good.

For my money, the piece of software that works best when you want to recover pictures from a bad CF or SD card is Klix ($29.95) from Joesoft. I've used it quite a bit with clients, and on my own bad cards, and each time it performed flawlessly, recovering every lost picture from the card. Other alternatives for the Mac include CardRaider ($19.95), PhotoRescue ($29.00) and Data Rescue II ($99.00).

I realize that $29.95 for a piece of software might seem like a lot to some people. But if the software is easy to use and works as advertised, I think it's a worthwhile investment in the long run. Besides, it would cost far more to go back and take those vacation pictures you lost on the card again when you could buy Klix and recover them from your bad card instead. Given that, a program like Klix is actually a bargain.

If you've got Windows running on your Mac (either through Boot Camp or virtualization) and you've had good luck with one of the tools from the other side of the fence, let us know in the comments.

You know from reading a lot of my earlier posts that I am a real fan of iPhone GPS apps. I regularly use RunKeeper, TrailGuru, and Geocaching to keep track of my wanderings or find geocaches, but I've found that those apps usually suck my iPhone batteries dry very quickly.

Jason at FitnessKeeper let me know that one of their forum users, Valter, had tweaked various settings on his iPhone and was able to get a tremendous amount of battery life while still keeping both the iPhone's A-GPS and EDGE connection active. Those are the requirements for most GPS apps. What were Valter's secret settings?

• Wi-fi: off
• Push: off
• 3G: off
• Bluetooth: off
• Brightness: set at minimum (Note - I also turn off Auto-Brightness)
  
• iPod: off

Your mileage may vary, but the RunKeeper forum users found that they were able to improve battery life drastically. One reader had 70% of battery capacity after a two hour run with RunKeeper tracking his run, while Valter's personal tests showed 50% capacity after a 2 hour 45 minute run. For other GPS apps like Geocaching, your battery life will most likely be less as brightness will need to be set so that you can actually read the screen.

What are your optimum iPhone power settings for uses other than GPS apps? Leave a comment below.

While Guy Kawasaki might be able to get 36 hours of standby life out of his iPhone 3G, many of the rest of us are struggling with having enough power to make it through a day.

Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine in Seattle, came up with a great idea for any iPhone developers in the TUAW audience. He'd like to see an iPhone power miser application that could turn off 3G, location services, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and push e-mail with one tap (low drain mode), then turn on all of the same services with another tap (full power mode).

Davidson explains that it currently takes him 15 steps to disable the power-hungry features of his 3G, and another 15 steps to turn those features back on. Whether or not those features are something that the average NDA'd iPhone developer can actually control is one big question; if they aren't, this would be a great app for Apple to develop -- quickly!

Me? I'm waiting for "The Clapper" version of the power miser app -- "Clap On! Clap Off!"

Fellow propeller-head and all-around nice guy Joel Evans over at Geek.com let me know that they had published a short post about a couple of iPhone 3G extended battery options. Since the 3G has a tendency to suck battery power like a vacuum powered by a Pratt & Whitney PW-4000 jet engine, several vendors have come out with plug-in battery extenders to make sure your App Store browsing isn't cut short by a lack of juice.

I've got one more to add to the list -- the RichardSolo Backup Battery for iPhone / iPod (pictured at right). If you are using your iPhone 3G as much as I am, you either need one of these extended batteries or have a really long extension cord.