My 2017 MacBook Pro is acting up at a critical time finishing up my dissertation, and I am trying to determine if I need a Genius Bar appointment or possibly a new computer or hopefully neither. The internet speed goes down dramatically during the day and gets better if I shut down and power back up, but then it can overheat and drain the battery quickly. I had a new battery installed about a year ago, by the way.

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017 is getting pretty old for a computer. The battery is likely gone. No rechargeable battery can be recharged an infinite amount of times. My rough number is around 450 charge cycles. Once a battery has reached up in to that number of times of having been discharged and recharged fully, it’s time to move on. To find out how many cycles your computer has gone through, you can go to “About this Mac” under the Apple logo in the corner of your computer. Select “More Info” System Settings should open. Select General. Scroll to the bottom and select System Report. A new window will appear.

On the right side, select Power. You’ll find the number of cycles there. As seen below:



New batteries can be a little sketchy. The problem with new batteries:

1. If you had the battery replaced by Apple, you bought a very old battery that was manufactured when the computer was built. Apple has to stock pile enough parts for a certain number of years. They don’t have to continue to produce fresh batteries.
2. If you had the battery replaced by a third party, then most likely that company got the battery from China, and those batteries are usually pretty crappy.

Either way, battery replacement on laptops is rolling dice.