ssteiner

What does the “Battery Time for Today / Target” mean?

April 17, 2014 by ssteiner

A couple of days after you first start running FruitJuice, it begins to calculate a “target battery time” for each day.

This is the recommended amount of time to run off of battery power for the day.

It looks at the average usage time (on battery or plugged in) for the previous 7 days and then takes 20% of that average to generate the daily target.

The target is a minimum amount of time to spend on battery. Beyond that, you are free to run on battery or plugged in as your situation dictates.

The “Battery Time for Today” is just that: a running total of time spent on battery today.

Filed Under: FAQ

FruitJuice 2.1 on Mac App Store

January 3, 2014 by ssteiner

What’s New in Version 2.1:

By popular demand, this version is now fully black and white and has an optional display mode to take up as little space as possible in the menu bar (10 pixels!).

Also included are:

Major re-working of the look of the menu:

Removed the FruitJuice icon in favor of battery meter.
Additional configuration options to minimize the menu bar space taken by FruitJuice.

Fixed bug preventing notifications from playing the notification sound.
Mavericks compatibility fixes.

Filed Under: Battery Blog, New Releases

Mac Roundtable Mention for FruitJuice 2.0, “App Pick”

October 18, 2013 by ssteiner

FruitJuice 2.0 got a very nice mention on the Mac Roundtable Podcast.

http://www.macroundtable.com/?p=805

Feel free to zoom up to about 0:58-ish.

“This is the application that you need if you have a Mac and you want to keep your battery in tip-top shape and also to know what the heck your battery is doing.”

“[FruitJuice has] replaced three different applications.”

Thanks, John!

Filed Under: Battery Blog, Reviews

FruitJuice Manages The Mac’s Battery Better

October 17, 2013 by ssteiner

Why yes, yes it does!

One correction to the article — the bug regarding dedicated graphics chip usage has been corrected in 2.0.2 (submitted but not yet available on the Mac App Store).

http://mac360.com/2013/10/fruitjuice-manages-the-macs-battery-better/

Filed Under: Battery Blog

FruitJuice on MacObserver

October 17, 2013 by ssteiner

FruitJuice has gotten a very nice mention in MacObserver’s podcast.

We’re mentioned on the Mac Geek Gab on this show:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/podcast/macgeekgab-469

It starts about the 44:25 mark.

Filed Under: Battery Blog

Wired Article on Battery Usage

October 17, 2013 by ssteiner

We Couldn’t Have Said it Better Ourselves

While FruitJuice is a very cool app, that does a very cool thing (helping you keep your Mac laptop battery in tip-top shape), its recommendations are based on some pretty sophisticated methodology.

While the article below doesn’t encompass everything FruitJuice takes into account when making its recommendations, it does cover a few basics about the effects of battery usage patterns vis à vis battery longevity.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/09/laptop-battery/

Please hit up and let him know how much you love FruitJuice!

Filed Under: Battery Blog

FruitJuice Updated to 2.0.1 on Mac App Store

October 9, 2013 by ssteiner

What’s New in Version 2.0.1:

By popular demand, add a preference to always show black and white icons and text in the menu bar.
Fix issue of the Maintenance Cycle sometimes getting stuck at 100% and not notifying the user it is time to unplug.
Fix edge case that would cause time to be accumulated in the Power History even when the machine was asleep or off.

Filed Under: Battery Blog

Announcing FruitJuice 2.0, available exclusively on the Mac App Store

September 27, 2013 by ssteiner

We are extremely proud to announce the immediate availability of FruitJuice 2.0 on the Mac App Store!

FruitJuice 2.0 is a new concept in maintaining OS X laptop battery health, providing monitoring, notifications, guided maintenance, and full battery diagnostics. It is a completely reimagined, groud-up rewrite with a more universal, practical focus. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Blog

About Factory Capacity and Lifespan

September 23, 2013 by ssteiner

To quote the Apple notebook battery page, “The built-in battery of your 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.”

Apple does not tell you how to find out what your current percentage is. FruitJuice can! We report “Factory Capacity Percent” as relative to the battery’s “original capacity” (as noted on that Apple page).

The FruitJuice Lifespan indicator (filled pie) shows how many charge and discharge cycles your battery has seen relative to the “1000 full charge and discharge cycles” noted on Apple’s page. For some machines, like first generation MacBook Air’s, this number is less than 1000. If you hover over either of these items on the Battery Information screen, you can see the actual numbers.

FruitJuice 2.0 has been submitted to the Mac App Store for review

September 20, 2013 by ssteiner

We are pleased to announce that FruitJuice 2.0 was submitted to the Mac App Store yesterday.

It is both thrilling and nerveracking as we wait for the app to go from “Waiting for Review” to “In Review” to “Ready for Sale”. We’ve spent nearly a year re-architecting, re-working and re-imagining FruitJuice to make it both more modern and more useful.

We’ll be blogging more about the new version in the days and weeks to come, but, suffice to say, we are incredibly proud of the new version and can’t wait to get it into everyone’s hands!

Filed Under: Battery Blog