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Following Sunday’s report in The New York Times revealing Apple recently cracked down on screen time-monitoring apps on App Store, the company the following day published a detailed explainer on its website.
First, the gist of the Times report:
Over the past year, Apple has removed or restricted at least eleven of the seventeen most downloaded screen-time and parental-control apps, according to an analysis by The New York Times and Sensor Tower, an app-data firm. Apple has also clamped down on a number of lesser-known apps.
In some cases, Apple forced companies to remove features that allowed parents to control their children’s devices or that blocked children’s access to certain apps and adult content. In other cases, it simply pulled the apps from its App Store.
The story asserts that Apple is pulling down these apps because they compete with Screen Time, its own feature available on iPhone and iPad with iOS 12.
Apple spokeswoman Tammy Levine:
We treat all apps the same, including those that compete with our own services. Our incentive is to have a vibrant app ecosystem that provides consumers access to as many quality apps as possible.
She added that Apple removed or required changes to these apps because they could “gain too much information” from users’ devices. She said the timing of Apple’s moves was not related to its introduction of its own Screen Time feature in iOS 12.
What the company found was that some of the screen time-monitoring apps available on App Store use its Mobile Device Management (MDM) technology in invasive ways, to monitor everything that happens on the user’s phone.
And here’s Apple’s statement on the matter in full:
Apple has always believed that parents should have tools to manage their children’s device usage. It’s the reason we created, and continue to develop, Screen Time. Other apps in App Store, including Balance Screen Time by Moment Health and Verizon Smart Family, give parents the power to balance the benefits of technology with other activities that help young minds learn and grow.
We recently removed several parental control apps from the App Store, and we did it for a simple reason: they put users’ privacy and security at risk. It’s important to understand why and how this happened.
Over the last year, we became aware that several of these parental control apps were using a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device Management, or MDM. MDM gives a third party control and access over a device and its most sensitive information including user location, app use, email accounts, camera permissions and browsing history. We started exploring this use of MDM by non-enterprise developers back in early 2023 and updated our guidelines based on that work in mid-2023.
MDM does have legitimate uses. Businesses will sometimes install MDM on enterprise devices to keep better control over proprietary data and hardware. But it is incredibly risky—and a clear violation of App Store policies—for a private, consumer-focused app business to install MDM control over a customer’s device. Beyond the control that the app itself can exert over the user’s device, research has shown that MDM profiles could be used by hackers to gain access for malicious purposes.
Parents shouldn’t have to trade their fears of their children’s device usage for risks to privacy and security, and App Store should not be a platform to force this choice. No one, except you, should have unrestricted access to manage your child’s device.
When we found out about these guideline violations, we communicated these violations to the app developers, giving them 30 days to submit an updated app to avoid availability interruption in App Store. Several developers released updates to bring their apps in line with these policies. Those that didn’t were removed from App Store.
We created App Store to provide a secure, vibrant marketplace where developers and entrepreneurs can bring their ideas to users worldwide, and users can have faith that the apps they discover meet Apple’s standards of security and responsibility.
Apple has always supported third-party apps on App Store that help parents manage their kids’ devices. Contrary to what The New York Times reported over the weekend, this isn’t a matter of competition. It’s a matter of security.
In this app category, and in every category, we are committed to providing a competitive, innovative app ecosystem. There are many tremendously successful apps that offer functions and services similar to Apple’s in categories like messaging, maps, email, music, web browsers, photos, note-taking apps, contact managers and payment systems, just to name a few. We are committed to offering a place for these apps to thrive as they improve the user experience for everyone.
MacRumors reader Zachary Robinson emailed Tim Cook with his reactions to the story and received the following reply from marketing head Phil Schiller.
Thank you for being a fan of Apple and for your email.
I would like to assure you that the App Store team has acted extremely responsibly in this matter, helping to protect our children from technologies that could be used to violate their privacy and security. After you learn of some of the facts I hope that you agree.
Unfortunately the New York Times article you reference did not share our complete statement, nor explain the risks to children had Apple not acted on their behalf. Apple has long supported providing apps on App Store, that work like our ScreenTime feature, to help parents manage their children’s access to technology and we will continue to encourage development of these apps.
However, over the last year we became aware that some parental management apps were using a technology called Mobile Device Management or MDM and installing an MDM Profile as a method to limit and control use of these devices. MDM is a technology that gives one party access to and control over many devices, it was meant to be used by a company on it’s own mobile devices as a management tool, where that company has a right to all of the data and use of the devices.
The MDM technology is not intended to enable a developer to have access to and control over consumers’ data and devices, but the apps we removed from the store did just that. No one, except you, should have unrestricted access to manage your child’s device, know their location, track their app use, control their mail accounts, web surfing, camera use, network access and even remotely erase their devices. Further, security research has shown that there is risk that MDM profiles could be used as a technology for hacker attacks by assisting them in installing apps for malicious purposes on users’ devices.
When the App Store team investigated the use of MDM technology by some developers of apps for managing kids devices and learned the risk they create to user privacy and security, we asked these developers to stop using MDM technology in their apps.
Protecting user privacy and security is paramount in the Apple ecosystem and we have important App Store guidelines to not allow apps that could pose a threat to consumers privacy and security.
We will continue to provide features, like ScreenTime, designed to help parents manage their children’s access to technology and we will work with developers to offer many great apps on App Store for these uses, using technologies that are safe and private for us and our children.
Thank you,
Phil.
Former Apple executive Tony Fadell, also know as the father of the iPod music player, offered his take on the situation, proposing that Apple release an official Screen Time API that makers of these apps could use.
Apple’s Screen Time still has many holes and deficiencies. Their v1.0 solution was a rush job and it’s very non-intuitive to use. Apple should be building true APIs for Screen Time so the privacy concerns are taken into account instead of limiting users App Store choices.
Here’s how that might work.
We need complete digital health data. The API should cover both, usage data and controls. Apple should also provide and enforce APIs for app developers to notify users and parents when a new account is created or logins occur.
In his tweestorm, Fadell concluded that Apple shouldn’t discourage entrepreneurs from creating more solutions akin to Screen Time. That, he pointed out, is “the antithesis of what we need and as a responsible technology community we can do better.”
I’m not sure sharing sensitive data— such as our how many times we pick up the phone per day, how many notifications we receive, when we engage with the Instagram app the most and so forth—is a clever idea because once a developer gets hold of this data, there’s little Apple can do to control whether it’s been used properly and not sold to a third-party.
There were some controversial app rejections and app removals in the past, but in this case—I side with Apple. We saw what kind of damage and privacy intrusions are possible when developers misuse enterprise certificates and MDM systems.
Had Apple gone after all screen time-monitoring apps on App Store, it could have been accused of anticompetitive behavior, but clearly they’re cracking down only on apps that specifically misuse MDM, and developers who used MDM technology in their apps clearly knew they were in violation of Apple’s guidelines.
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Customer Experience – This Time It’s Personal!
Customers now demand personalisation and relevance at every stage of the buying process.
It seems as though every report we read has been written by someone with a different name for the business era that we’re in right now. We’re sticking with Forrester’s 2011 term, the Age of the Customer. However, terms such as the Digital Age, the Social Media Age, the Age of Recommendation, the SMART Age, all seem to be interchangeable.
Whatever we choose to call it though, each name relates to the explosion of technology in society, how it is affecting businesses, and how businesses are being forced to adapt to the new demands of this high-tech era. They refer to the effects that technology, social media, and efficient information exchange are having on product development and marketing. In particular, they refer to a period in which businesses are transitioning to become more agile and customer-obsessed than ever before.
We’ve known for a few years now that relevant content is far more successful than generic offerings and we’ve seen countless reports telling us that emails that are personalised garner far better results than batch and blast campaigns. What seems to have come as a surprise, however, is the extent to which customers have come to demand personalisation and relevance at every single stage of the buying process.
In fact, more recent reports seem to show that a tipping point has been reached. A study revealed that 74% of online customers get frustrated with websites that show content that has nothing to do with their interests. Consumers feel as though they have been pretty clear and consistent with their feedback about what they want from businesses; personalised content, delivered in a relevant way, and their data to be used responsibly and transparently. Choose to ignore this feedback and risk alienating your customers.
The tail is now wagging the dog.People buy from people, as the old saying goes; but the digital revolution, and the meteoric rise of ecommerce, has led to a situation where we have lost the personal touch. As marketers, we’ve been trained to communicate in the languages of B2B and B2C, but this has caused us to lose sight of how to talk to customers like human beings.
The good news is that we now recognise the need for change and H2H (human to human) communication is replacing B2B and B2C across organisations worldwide. And nowhere demands this change happens faster than the world of commerce.
Since brand loyalty is no longer a given, if you don’t delight your customers, they will find somebody that will. In today’s connected world, brand loyalty only lasts until something better comes along; and once a customer is lost, research shows that 68% won’t return.
As we discussed in the last article, a seamless customer experience is no longer a ‘nice to have’; it is critical to a brand’s survival. The age of the customer means that brand loyalty is more competitive than ever, and 54% of B2B marketers said making customers more loyal was a leading business challenge, a 10% increase from last year.
In the B2C world, companies like Amazon and Netflix have led the charge and trained their customers to assume they will receive a personalised browsing and purchasing journey. This assumption is spreading across B2C and into B2B. Now it seems as though customers no longer notice when you deliver personalisation, they notice when you don’t!
Is it worth the effort?Business transformation is costly; some businesses are stuck with legacy systems that would take resource and cross-functional cooperation to integrate. So is this all worth the effort?
Well let’s break down the numbers.
UK retailers took £114 billion online in 2023 with 77% of internet users making a purchase, and an average order value of £78.74; and this figure was set to rise to £126 billion by the end of 2023. This figure equates to 27% of all retail sales. Considering that, at the end of 2014, there were an estimated 650,000 retailers online globally (only counting the ones that are generating more than $1,000 pa in sales), a figure that is rising sharply year-on-year, competition for each and every pound off a customer has never been more fierce.
This growth is driven first and foremost by the rise of mobile, or m-commerce, which grew by a whopping 42% in 2023, with 60% of UK retailers having mobile channels.
So, if customers are buying from machines, but expect the human touch, how are successful businesses delivering that? What can you do to stand out from the crowd and make sure that the customer chooses to spend their money with you instead of your competitor?
If you liked that, you might also like…!We’ve all seen this kind of email appear after we’ve purchased; recommendations for upselling and cross-selling have been part of email marketing strategy for years now – and the tactic still works. So how are businesses capitalising on the success of email personalisation into the rest of their customer experience?
Web and email personalisation topped the list of tech investment in 2023, potentially due to the research showing that in-house marketers who are personalising their web experiences see, on average, a 19% uplift in sales.
When asked by Forrester in their 2023 survey, “What parts of the experience are you personalising?”, 75% of respondents cited website content as their top priority, with promotions and product recommendations being a priority for 55% and 49% respectively.
So have all of these businesses succeeded where others have failed to undergo complete business change and integrate all of their data sources and processes? Hardly! In fact, only 32% of marketers can say that their CMS assists with their content personalisation (eConsultancy/Adobe). Instead, as with the use of marketing automation software to assist with email personalisation, the rise of web content software as an interim business solution has risen sharply, with 60% of companies now using the technology
According to a survey by Harris Interactive, online consumers are “fed up with irrelevant content on their favourite websites.” So think about what a customer sees when they visit your website.
Are you using their demographic data to feed your web content? How about their past purchases, or products that they’ve browsed? If the answer is no, then the chances are your customers are losing patience with you.
Real-time, not rear viewA sizeable 69% of marketers believe real-time web personalisation is crucial, with 80% feeling the same way about real-time email. Marketers are definitely seeing the benefits of integrating these technologies with their available data sources to harvest deeper insights that allow them to create engaging and relevant communications in real-time, rather than after the interaction has passed. These campaigns then feel more like conversations and can be far more contextual; just like an interaction that actual humans would have!
Web management content software can usually handle a whole host of contextual information to feed into messaging, offers and recommendations, including location, age, gender, browsing history, buying behaviour, abandoned carts, even the weather! Customers are far more likely to be responsive to a promotion or recommendation if it is contextually relevant at the time they see it.
Of course, not every customer that visits a website has been before, so the browsing and purchase data would be a touch on the light side. On these occasions, it’s useful to have this type of software to show crowd sourced information, such as trending products and latest offers.
Another reason why real-time personalisation is critical for customer experience is when offers are time or stock sensitive. Customers don’t have much patience for being shown an amazing offer or recommendation, only to discover that the offer has already ended or the product is now out of stock. These technologies ensure that everything that the customer sees is correct at time of viewing, rather than when the marketer sent the email/loaded the web page.
Abandonment issuesAnother rising trend within ecommerce is basket and browse abandonment, and there are myriad reasons why it happens, but poor customer experience is often a major contributing factor.
More than 60% of shoppers find it appealing when an online store remembers their personal and payment information and a whopping 81% of prospective buyers are frustrated by companies not making it easy to do business with them. Asking shoppers to re-enter details, mandatory registration, complicated or lengthy navigation, slow page loading, and unexpected costs at checkout are the top reasons for leaving items behind. Analysis can identify the root cause(s) and then these niggles can be ironed out; improving the buying journey as part of your ongoing customer centric strategy.
However, what about the customers who are shopping around, still in the early stages of the buying process, new to your site, or were interrupted before finishing the checkout process? These customers are definitely worth keeping in touch with in order to encourage them back to buy.
Triggering a series of emails to a customer that has abandoned a basket is a tactic that allows businesses to target customers with highly personalised and relevant content.
Commerce companies all over the world are demonstrating massive success rates using retargeting emails. But do the figures stack up to make it worth your while implementing this tactic for your business?
According to Business Insider, $4 trillion was left in abandoned baskets in 2023, plus, taking an average of 34 analytics studies, from IBM to Forrester, the average basket abandonment rate (as of January 2023) is 69.23%.
Just take a moment to consider that figure.
For every 100 potential customers that find *your* website amongst all of the others that they could have chosen; browsed *your* product or service selection; selected something of interest to them; added it to their basket; and then….?
69 of these 100 are leaving without completing the purchase. How much potential revenue are you losing for every 100 abandoned baskets? How much additional revenue do you stand to win if even 10% of these customers return to complete the purchase? What about 20%?
According to eConsultancy, 48.1% of basket abandonment emails were opened, and 33.3% of these went on to purchase. In addition, the AOV was 14.2% higher when purchases were triggered by an email, as opposed to direct sales. In fact, the study claims that every basket abandonment email sent delivers more than $8 in revenue.
The first 12 hours offer the greatest opportunity to convert the sale, so your retargeting should start as soon as the shopper leaves the site. According to a survey by SeeWhy, the average time delay between first visit and purchase is just 19 hours.
Meaningful interactions deliver meaningful resultsIn summary, customers demand personalised, relevant experiences. They want you to show them that you know and understand them. They expect the offers and products that you show to them to match their needs and wants. They want you to make their lives easier. Which is why 78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing.
Countless studies show that personalised, real-time, cross channel content increases conversions, builds a passionate and loyal audience, improves lead nurturing, keeps your website dynamic, maximises marketing efforts, and boosts revenue.
You can be sure that if your competitors beat you to the punch with the delivery of this critical experience, your customers won’t be *your* customers for much longer.
It’s Time To Get Over Microsoft
Things were different ten years ago, when the community was a small group of hobbyists unknown to most computer users. Back then, the community was fragile, and might have been stamped out, had any of its enemies noticed it. Nor could you run entirely on FOSS without giving up functionality that users of proprietary software took for granted.
None of that is true today. Now, FOSS is so widely accepted that I can’t remember the last time I saw an IT company that didn’t depend on it heavily on the backend. FOSS has become a fixture in education, and developing countries are using it to jump start their IT infrastructure. Major corporations like IBM and Sun Microsystem derive a large part of their income from FOSS. You can’t quite say that to compute is to use free software, but, when even the average Windows user is aware of chúng tôi and Firefox, that day isn’t far away. The sixty pound weakling who used to dodge the neighborhood bully has grown up and bulked out, and now sports a set of muscles that would command respect in the local biker bar.
True, dual-boot machines with both GNU/Linux and Windows loaded are still commonplace, but they’re no longer the norm they were even five years ago. For almost all business and education purposes, proprietary software is no longer needed. I recently went ten months without a copy of Windows on any computer in the house, and the only reason I have two installed now is that my new computers came with them, and they’re useful for comparison articles. But, come the day I run short of hard drive space, guess which partitions get nuked first? About the only possible reason for keeping Windows is for the games I wouldn’t have time to play even if they weren’t all clones of each other.
In other words, Microsoft just isn’t relevant to my daily computing. I don’t need the programs that run on its operating systems; for the most part, I have programs as good or better, and those that aren’t as good are adequate and improving quickly. Similarly, when Microsoft comes up with something like Silverlight or the OOXML file format, I know that if they become widely used, an equivalent will be hacked for GNU/Linux in the next six months.
That doesn’t keep Microsoft from trying, of course. But has anyone stopped to notice that Microsoft’s first success at containing or destroying an aspect of FOSS will be its first? While in many ways, the heart of the movement remains the hobbyist and the community project, FOSS’s support among multi-national corporations gives it more bodyguards than the president of the United States. And that’s not even counting protectors like the Software Freedom Law Center, The Linux Foundation, and the world-wide branches of the Free Software Foundation — to say nothing like less formal organizations like Pamela Jone’s Groklaw site.
If the now-floundering SCO claim to the ownership of GNU/Linux proves anything, it’s that you can’t win against FOSS. You can only waste millions of dollars and create a media circus.
Under these conditions, mustering more than a mild concern about Microsoft is increasingly difficult. If you’re using FOSS, it’s no longer relevant, and no more than a token threat. In many ways, we’ve reached the age of detente, where FOSS and proprietary software have settled into reluctant co-existence as proprietary software either struggles to adopt to a FOSS world or totters towards extinction.
Or, to put things another way: FOSS has won. Maybe it hasn’t yet achieved the world domination that the community used to joke about, but at the very least, it has won the space it needs to exist.
Continued: It’s time to grow up
Fallout 76 The Pitt Release Time, Date & Details
Fallout 76 The Pitt Release Time, Date & Details
What’s the Fallout 76 The Pitt release time?
Fallout 76: The Pitt is coming, but when is the Fallout 76 The Pitt release time?
Fallout 76 has been dragging itself back from the pit since the botched launch in 2023.
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The Pitt is the latest update to try and win back some of the playerbase.
What do we know about the game? What’s included in the expansion? We take a look.
What is the Fallout 76: The Pitt Release Time?
Fallout 76 The Pitt is launching at the following times on 13 September 2023:
10 AM – 12 PM ET
7 – 9 AM PT
2 – 4 PM UTC
3 – 5 PM BST
4 – 6 PM CEST
Or rather, these are the times that the game goes offline for maintenance. During this maintenance, The Pitt update will be installed onto the server-side of Fallout 76. Usually, you won’t have to update the game on your PC or console, but it may be necessary if they’ve changed anything on the player side.
It’s not clear how long the game will be down, but maintenance in the past has lasted for up to 2 hours, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
What is the Fallout 76 The Pitt New Content?
Fallout 76 The Pitt will add a lot of new content to the game. So far, we know about:
Season 10: City Of Steel
Two New Missions Introducing Expeditions, Centered In Union Dues and From Ashes To Fire
A Convert Of The Whitespring Resort into two new sections.
A new currency, stamps
New fast travel locations
Extra supplies for new players
City of Steel is the name for the latest ‘Season’ of Fallout 76. This means the online scoreboard is reset, and people will be competing for a slew of brand-new rewards. One of the most significant rewards is the AUto-Axe, making its Fallout 76 debut as a craftable recipe you can unlock on the scoreboard.
It seems like Bethesda is trying its hardest to add enough content to keep players going until the Holiday update launches towards the end of 2023.
What Are Expeditions?
Expeditions are being added with this expansion and will be story-driven missions that are also repeatable. It’ll add infinite replayability to the game, meaning that you can get brand new rewards, talk to new NPCs to get these quests and make the entire world a lot more alive for players.
READ MORE: Metal Hellsinger Release Date, Pre Orders & Artists
Fallout 76 was lambasted at launch for having a lack of content and for being broken, so it’s good to see that even years later, Bethesda is dedicated to adding more missions, rewards, and content for the game itself. This isn’t the first content update that the game has seen, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Fallout 76 2023 Roadmap
The 2023 Roadmap for Fallout 76, which you can see above, reveals that the Expeditions: The Pitt update will mark the third of four updates hitting the game in 2023.
We already received Invaders from Beyond on March 1st and Test Your Metal on June 14th. These updates saw significant content added to the game, including many public events to spice up the struggle of the day-to-day wasteland.
The year’s final update, Nuke-World on Tour, will be adding another round of new content, this time themed around the titular theme park. Nuka-World is a parody cross between Disney World and Coca-Cola featured in DLC for Fallout 4.
Fallout 76 The Pitt FAQs
What is the Fallout 76: The Pitt Release Time?
10 AM ET
7 AM PT
3 PM BST
What is the Fallout 76 The Pitt New Content?
Season 10: City Of Steel
Two New Missions Introducing Expeditions, Centered In Union Dues and From Ashes To Fire
A Convert Of The Whitespring Resort into two new sections.
A new currency, stamps
New fast travel locations
Extra supplies for new players
What Are Expeditions?
Expeditions are being added with this expansion and will be story-driven missions that are also repeatable. It’ll basically add infinite replayability to the game, meaning that you can get brand new rewards, talk to new NPCs to actually get these quests, and make the entire world a lot more alive for players.
Finding Windows Xp Now That It’s ‘Officially’ Cancelled
So here we are in late July and it has been nearly a month since Microsoft “officially” stopped shipping Windows XP. However, lukewarm response from end users to Windows Vista and the grassroots “Save XP” movements have softened Microsoft’s stance.
Therefore, to appease the masses and the OEM’s, Microsoft has offered a downgrade option to users who purchase Windows Vista Business or Ultimate. Purchasing either version from an OEM will allow a user to get a Windows XP license and have the downgrade installed from the manufacturer.
Okay, problem solved, right?
Microsoft gets the sales of a Vista product – and not just a Vista product but a Business or Ultimate license. The end-user can ask the manufacturer to install Windows XP Professional on their new hardware. Sounds like a win-win situation. Everyone gets what they want.
But not so fast. Yes, there’s a small problem.
That problem is trying to get that downgraded Windows XP license. Come on, you didn’t actually think it was going to be easy did you?
I have been involved in the Windows side of the technology business for over a decade. If there is one thing that has always frustrated me it was the Microsoft licensing piece. If you thought it was crazy and convoluted before, in the words of Bachman Turner Overdrive: you ain’t seen nothing yet.
You see, it seems that neither the manufacturer’s Web sites – or their sales reps, if you try to phone in the order – are clear on what the program is exactly.
It exists… you can get it… but it’s not easy. At all.
Of the Web sites that I’ve checked none seems to offer the ability to downgrade for Home users. So, if you are a home user looking to get XP Pro installed on that new system all I could say is…sorry.
Calling the sales center for the Home & Home Office users is no better. It seems most of the sales reps are not aware that you can downgrade. If your level of frustration has been low lately, and you have the need for unnecessary stress, try convincing one of these reps that you have the right to purchase the Vista license and get the XP downgrade license.
It seems they haven’t been told the same things you and I have. As a result, it’s almost impossible for a home user to get XP shipped installed.
I did find one manufacturer who offered Vista Ultimate installed and then gave the option of getting a Windows XP restoration CD. So, you get that brand new PC with everything installed and then you need to wipe the entire system – including a drive reformat since XP uses NTFS and Vista uses the new NTFS5 file system.
One the business side it is less impossible but still just as frustrating. Using the business Web sites, you can get the “downgrade” but be prepared to pay. Some manufacturers are only offering it with the higher end business machines. Others will charge you a premium for installing XP on the system for you. Some offer the downgrade only with Vista Business, not for Vista Ultimate.
How To Tell If It’s Time To Replace Your Macbook’s Battery
Compared to other laptops, MacBooks are known for their longer battery life. Even with extensive daily use, you can work on a Mac for hours without worrying about your battery dying.
However, even the best tech loses performance over time. As your Mac ages, you’ll notice the need to charge it more often. For some people, having to be next to a charger all the time isn’t a problem, but others might find it more difficult. Not to mention how annoying it can be having your Mac unexpectedly die on you in the middle of an important task or an online meeting.
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If you’ve been using your Mac for a while and are worried that your battery’s worn out, there is a way to tell whether it’s time to replace your MacBook’s battery.
Does Your Mac Need a New Battery?Before you decide to replace your MacBook’s battery, here are a few things that you should pay attention to.
Your Mac Keeps DyingThe first (and the most obvious) sign that your Mac needs a new battery is when your computer keeps dying even though you charged it up not so long ago. When you first bought your Mac, you could spend hours on it working, watching videos, and playing games on a single charge.
If it seems like you now constantly have to look for a charger to keep your Mac working, there’s a good chance your computer needs a new battery.
Your Mac Is OverheatingThere can be many reasons why your Mac is overheating. Sometimes it’s just the result of daily use. But sometimes overheating might be a sign that your Mac’s battery is faulty and you need to replace your Macbook battery soon.
You Get a Service Battery WarningThe worst and also the most reliable sign that your Mac’s battery needs replacing is if you get a service battery warning. If you get a warning in the drop-down menu where you normally see the percentage number in the top right corner of your screen, it means there’s no extending your battery life and it’s time to get a new one.
How To Check Your Battery’s ConditionEven if you haven’t got the battery service warning yet, it’s worth checking your battery condition before it’s too late. Your Mac has a utility that can help you understand better when you can expect your battery to die.
However, if you get one of the following messages, it means your battery isn’t as good as new anymore and it’s time to start looking into replacement options.
Replace Soon.
Your Mac’s battery is functioning normally but holds less charge than it did when it was new.
Replace Now.
The battery is functioning normally but holds significantly less charge than it did when it was new. You can continue to use the battery until you replace your MacBook’s battery without harming your computer.
Service Battery.
The battery isn’t functioning normally, and you may or may not notice a change in its behavior or the amount of charge it holds. Take your computer in for service. You can continue to use your battery before it’s checked without harming your computer.
Unless you get the Service Battery warning, your computer is in no imminent danger. Moreover, Replace Soon status means your battery will still last you a while before you’ll have to replace it.
How Far Is “Soon” Exactly?If your battery condition says anything other than Normal, it’s no reason to panic but check the current cycle count instead. Cycle count means the number of times you use up all of your Mac’s battery and then fully recharge it.
According to Apple, the modern-day Macbook’s battery can last through 1000 cycles before it starts aging. Past those 1000 cycles, your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original power.
That means you can continue safely using your battery past 1000 cycles, it will just gradually lose its power. You can use Your Mac’s System Information tool to find out the exact number of cycles that your computer is at.
How To Check Your Current Cycle CountHold down the Option (Alt) key.
Select System Information from the top of the drop-down menu.
From the left side menu, under Hardware, select Power.
At my current cycle count of 1482, my battery is in the Replace Soon condition. That still gives me time to figure out whether I want to replace my battery or get a new MacBook later.
Is It Time To Replace Your MacBook’s Battery?Replacing your MacBook’s battery might seem like something unimportant at first. However, a good battery is what makes your Mac portable and ensures its best performance.
In some cases, it might be worth looking into replacing your Mac altogether. Yet a new battery can go a long way and save you a decent amount of money. In case you’re not ready to spend at the moment at all, check out our tutorial on what you can do to extend the battery life on Mac without replacing it.
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