The Cycle Count is a number that refers to how much the battery is used. A single load cycle is the cumulative usage of 100% of the battery’s capacity. For example, discharging to 50%, charging to full, then discharging to 50% the next day will equal 1 load cycle.

Current: The number of load cycles that your battery has completed.

Factory: The number of load cycles for which the battery was designed. Apple declares that the above percentage should be 80% or greater until the current load cycle count reaches this number.

Percent of Lifespan: Expressed as a percentage, the number of load cycles your battery has completed compared to the maximum load cycles the battery was designed to achieve.

The Battery Condition reported in the Battery Information panel of FruitJuice comes directly from Mac OS X.

It will report one of 5 things: [Read more…]

The capacity section shows you the numbers behind the top percentage on the Battery Information screen. The “Current” and “Factory” numbers are expressed in milliampere-hours (mAh). There is a very technical explanation of what this is over at Wikipedia, but essentially the higher the number the longer a battery will last.

Current Capacity: Shows the current maximum capacity of the battery.

Factory Capacity: Shows the maximum capacity of the battery when it left the factory.

Percent of Original: Shows your battery’s current maximum capacity expressed as a percentage of the maximum capacity when it left the factory. Apple says that for a properly treated battery that this number should remain at 80% or higher at least until the current number of load cycles reaches the factory load cycle count.

Related Topic(s):

About Load Cycles