Another curious thing - Apple computer related.

Not a complaint as such, but an observation.

Since changing to OSX 10.8 the Macbook battery was 'odd' in that it wouldn't charge fully, only reaching 80% or 90%, then very gradually increasing over a couple of days. Then up came the message 'Service Battery' when I checked it's condition in the system report. Pretty poor considering it's only done 100 cycles and I'm careful about discharging & recharging fully on a reasonably regular basis.

A quick google told me lots of people who did the update had the same issue - perfectly good battery suddenly entered failure mode, but that was supposed to have been fixed in an update 2 updates back. A quick reset of all the odd hidden controlling firmware (SMC and NVRAM/PRAM) appears to have fixed the issue, which is good. But it's annoying that this kind of thing needs to be done, and would be so much better if Apple sent out a general advice email (since this is a common problem on completely controlled hardware) suggesting users do this.

Not that they'd really want scads of 'upgraders' buying replacement batteries, oh no. Even I'm not *quite* that cynical that I'd actually believe it was deliberate corporate policy. Much more likely someone just made a dumb mistake and didn't want to take steps to fix it and risk exposing themselves. I hope. Map app anyone?