Technical Notes

The Apple system software, in the form of the Power Manager, constantly monitors your battery voltage.  As your battery voltage drops, the Power Manager will perform the following actions:

1)  First warning.  The Power Manager will issue an initial warning, and cut the backlighting by half to help conserve power.  The initial warning states "You are now running on reserve power and your screen has been dimmed.  Please plug your power adapter into an outlet, and then connect it to your PowerBook to begin recharging the battery."

2)  Second warning.  If your battery voltage continues to drop, the Power Manager will issue a second warning, and cut the backlighting by half again.  The second warning states "Very little of the battery's reserve power remains.  Please plug your power adapter into an outlet, and then connect it to your PowerBook immediately."

3)  Final warning.  If your battery voltage drops even lower, you'll get the final warning.  This warning states "No reserve battery power remains.  Your PowerBook will go to sleep in 10 seconds to preserve the contents of memory."  As the warning says, in 10 seconds your PowerBook will go to sleep.

4)  Hardware shutdown.  This is never supposed to happen - the software warnings should be sufficient to prevent you from letting the battery get too low.  However, BatteryAmnesia prevents the software warnings from occurring, so the hardware shutdown kicks in when the battery gets very low.  This is both good and bad:  it's good because it thoroughly drains your battery.  It's bad because the hardware shutdown is not graceful - any unsaved changes in documents will be lost.