We are happy to announce the immediate availability of FruitJuice, a Mac™ application and online service that helps you squeeze as much life as you can out of your Apple™ notebook battery. FruitJuice not only reports the current status of your battery, but it tracks the condition and usage over time for a complete picture of your battery’s health. Whether you have a notebook with user-swappable battery or a more modern machine with a built in battery, FruitJuice has you covered.
If you take the time to read Apple’s page about notebook batteries, you will note the following:
“The built-in battery of your MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is designed to deliver up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity.”
You might say to yourself, “Excellent, that sounds fantastic!”
Then you might ask yourself, “Hey, wait a minute. How do I find out the original capacity of the battery?”
That’s actually a trick question, since this information is not available to you, even with System Profiler! You can probably guess, however, that FruiJuice shows you this information in an easy to understand way on the Battery Information display. We also show you the actual manufacture date of your battery in the Details section.
Plugged in Percentage
Battery information, while great to have, is no match for the unique FruitJuice feature called “Plugged in Percentage”. Any time your machine is awake, we keep track of how much you’ve been plugged in and show you on an easy to read graph.
As you can see, we also show you 7-day, 14-day and 30-day trailing averages so you can see how you’re doing! Can you see how handy this would be if you were, say, at the Genius Bar™ at an Apple™ retail store trying to figure out what’s going on with your battery? Never before have you been able to document your battery usage!
Calibration and Conditioning
For machines with user-swappable batteries, Apple says that you should be following the official calibration procedure outlined here. It is a long, complicated, error-prone procedure that FruitJuice makes simple! We even send you email (and optionally SMS) messages keeping you informed throughout the entire procedure, letting you know when you need to plug-in or unplug your machine. We’ve made this as simple as possible while still making sure that the calibration steps are followed correctly.
Here’s what a typical, successful calibration looks like in FruitJuice.
While machines with built-in batteries do not require “calibration” as outlined for user-swappable batteries, Apple™ still recommends that you use your machine on the battery. We implement a procedure we call “conditioning” which is exactly like a “calibration”, but with reduced rest periods.
You can read more about this if you’re interested.
Oh, we also replace the battery status in the menu bar
In addition to the main application shown in the screenshots in this post, FruitJuice also provides a menu bar application that replaces the built-in battery status menu. At a glance, it shows you much of the same information available in the main FruitJuice application: the current battery information, plugged in percentage for the last 7, 14 and 30 days and calibration (or conditioning) status.
Free 30 Day Trial
You can grab the free 30 day trial at <http://fruitjuiceapp.com/FruitJuice.zip>. We’d be thrilled if you would give FruitJuice a try!
Pricing Information
With server-based notifications playing a central role in the on-going support of the FruitJuice app, FruitJuice is a subscription service priced at $9.99 (US) per year, per machine. As a paying subscriber, of course, you’ll receive free software updates and upgrades.
We’d Love to Hear from You
We’re @fruitjuiceapp on twitter.
You can also email us at: support at fruitjuiceapp dot com
There’s LOTS more in store, so keep an eye on this blog!