Laptop Battery, the Aftermath

The summer is coming to a close, and so is my internship at MSR. I haven't had much time for blogging these past 3 months, but the few posts I managed to write fared quite well! This included Airports of the World (21k views) and The De-Evolution of my Laptop Battery (114k views).

The Laptop Battery post quickly became my most viewed article (at least in terms of views on this website). At one point it was the top post on Digg, the front of Slashdot, and near the top of Hackernews. This induced a ridiculous traffic spike...

The little code snipped I posted on github got a number of "forks", and the comments on my blog (and other sources) were awesome, insightful, and usually quite friendly (as far as internet comments go).



Lots of funny things happen when your material gets press. For example, one article called me a "Software Developer", another named me as "Jared Davenport". Close enough. One totally unexpected result: people began posting their current battery state. I did a quick scan through them at the time (I'm sure now there are 2X more now) and made a little figure for comparison:

Finally, I received a nice phone call out of the blue a few days after the post started to get some major traffic. It was Apple Executive Relations in Austin, TX.

"It's come to our attention that you're having some problems with your MacBook Air, and we're hoping to make that right."

They were very kind and offered to send me a brand new replacement (had to send the old one to them of course). They also wanted the battery data, which I happily forwarded from my post on github. The ironic thing of course is that this 2013 model of MacBook Air specifically has a much improved battery life over the 2012 model. The laptop arrived new in box (I'm using it now!) and with no strings/stipulations about my blog post or future posts. It was a very nice gesture

Of course, you know I'm recording battery data on this new laptop  now as well.

So I'll put the topic of laptop battery life to bed for now. Maybe in a year I will write another follow-up comparing the 2012 to 2013 performance. I certainly have not mined the quantified-self aspect of the data to its full potential yet!

Thanks for reading, and for all the comments and emails I've received! Look for more new articles soon!