Battery Life, 6mo Checkup

My new 2013 MacBook Air arrived 6 months ago, after a fascinating discovery that the battery performance on my 2012 Air wasn't keeping up with my previous 2009 MacBook Pro's stats.

This finding was the result of a detailed stats keeping, taking a sample of my battery's status every minute I use my computer. Of course, as soon as I unboxed my new Air I installed the battery-logging script and started passively collecting data once again.

I'll certainly revisit this again in the summer once I have a full year's data to compare with, but with 6 months logged I can already point to some intriguing differences...

1. My sleep patterns have changed a little

I am waking up about 30 minute later than I was last year. You can see this in the figure below. (the big daytime gap from day 300-400 was my summer at MSR) I'm not really sure why this is. My productivity level has been high (IMO), and I'm much happier with my job/career now than I was last winter. Maybe a little more sleep is a good thing

2. The 2013 MacBook Air is holding up better than the 2012!

My computer usage hasn't changed much during the day, with the exception of spending a few weeks traveling this January. In the figure below it's clear the 2013 machine is performing more like the 2009, which is great news. I have nothing but positive things to say about this 2013 Air, and it's encouraging to see the "11 hour" battery (one of favorite features) is holding up!

3. The battery's decay is more discontinuous

You can see the red data jumps suddenly several times, including a weird flattening out at ~95% recently. These kinds of jumps were seen in the 2012 model, and somewhat in the 2009 data, but they're more frequent so far in the 2013. These may be due to software updates, or possibly changes in usage/charging that I'm not noticing. I would love more information on why I'm seeing this, and I'll definitely be studying it more in the next 6 months.


In other news, I'm prepping for a couple talks in Boston, MA later this month. Check out my new "Talks" tab above for some videos/links to presentations I've given in the last couple years.