Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

carlfromhayden wrote:

i have the same problem. really *****!!! on a full battery i'll get about 4-6 hours of surfing the internet or watching Nutflix.

what the **** Microsoft.... i mean Apple

4-6 hours most people would be happy with. What's your point?

Pete

It's a new battery from Apple. And sorry, my MBP is a mid-2009 non-removable battery. I service computers and it isn't hard to replace the batteries in this version. You have to have the 5 start torx tool only.

But the point is, there is a problem with Lion 10.7.2 and up. I didn't have this problem with the version of lion in beta and the final version release. This could be an indicator why they are trying like mad to get out Mountain lion. I think the architecture was built wrong and the cores are set wrong. But that is just a guess. I just want enough people out there to state the problem because, heck (I'd prefer a stronger word), we all know how all of us are the beta testers and takes Apple ages to admit a problem.... let's all look back at Snow Leopards first release that froze many systems.

Now don't get me wrong! I'm a staunch mac man. I probably own more macs than most in this forum. My company mostly uses macs as well as all my employess have company iPads and iPhones. All of our servers are Mac minis (many of those) as well as our Mac Airs and MBP. I love macs. But that doesn't mean that mac isn't flawed. And no one better say, "Go back to PC then!" Windows are a nightmare!!!

I'd love 4 hours!!! ahahahah

As I get 4 to 6 hrs consistently (13" MBP) I don't see an endemic problem, and I don't get carried away by estimates usually.

Wake on demand doesn't work properly anymore since 10.7.3. Screen sharing has problems either. Battery life ***** on laptops. Time Machine has some problem too.

Just a little reminder: 3 updates for 10.7.3, each of them was supposed to correct something broken in the previous one.

If this isn't a mess never seen with Mac OS X, then cows can fly.

My hope is for 10.7.4.

Just for the chronicles: I've reinstalled from scratch Lion on my laptop, there's no battery life improvement.

I've also discovered that while recharging and when at around 90% of battery capacity, the built-in indicator says that it lasts 25 more minutes to get the full charge, while iStat pro says it'll take 45 minutes more.

This could be a problem. For what I know these batteries are usually charged with a fast cycle till a certain percentage, then they shoud get a slower charge cycle to get to full charge.

But I'm ten years behind, as Csound1 stated a few months ago. And he has so many points.

I am not a computer genius but I am also kind of annoyed by the battery life on my macbook pro 13''. I am wondering how the OS affects the battery life that much. How do they fix it? I am sorry for asking what seems a ridiculous question.

Ok update. Had my battery replaced by apple free of charge after a year and 115 cycles and after hamemring it in Brazil where the random current fluctuations dont help anything electronic. Complete fresh clean install of Lion with NO time machine backup done this time. New EFI firmware installed and battery life is greatly improved averaging 6 hours light web browsing multiple progams open and with flash on as normal and 60% screen brightness, but sometimes acheiving 8 depending on use. Now.....

The biggest difference i can now see is the fact that when i close the lid and put macbook pro 2011 to sleep shes hardly consuming any power in standby mode...Before i would leave it off for an hour and loose around 4-5% per hour now im loosing under 1% an hour so something has definitley changed there.

Im pretty sure its the combination of a clean install and not using time machine to restore my data along with the EFI firmware update thats contributed to this as the new battery i have got has actually got less MAh life that my last one at 8300 my previous was on 115 cycles at 8690....maybe another calibration may sort this out or maybe not.

Anyway a lot happier now....Just to note: i use Sky Go for watching internet tv on demand and this absolutley destroys the battery even more than iplayer...Like literally il get about 2 to 2.5 hours out of it max before it goes into shutdown, just a heads-up if anyone is using this.

Glad to hear things have improved for you. Alas, my MBP came this way (and I did do a clean install the first week I had it, thinking perhaps some of the extensions that came over through the Migration Assistant were the problem and deciding to reinstall it all myself instead), and I haven't used Time Machine on it yet. So while it seems to have helped you, it doesn't look like a likely solution across the board.

I have the same experience on my 13" MacBook AIr. Used to have 7 hours on my battery with Snow Leopard. Upgraded to Lion and battery life went down to 3.5 - 4 hours. Horrible!!!

+1 battery life terrible on my MBP after Lion and it continues even with 10.7.3

Seems every apple update be it for OS X, iPhone or iPad comes with massive battery drain problems. Nothing else can explain why the same MBP which gave me 7 hours battery life on Snow Leopard, now gives me only 3-4 on Lion.

Doesn't appear that Apple are doing anything to fix the problems in Lion as they seem 100% focused on bringing out Mountain Lion within the next 6 months or so. Mountain Lion WILL come with its own problems and we'll probably be led down the same path waiting for the next OS X with 500 new features and more bugs.

Maybe soon it will be called OS X "Elephant" because it's going to be so bloated with thousands of features that many don't want or need.

Sad to see such a great OS falling into the same rapid development and chasing version numbers that many other software companies of late have fallen prey to.

Sad to see such a great OS falling into the same rapid development and chasing version numbers that many other software companies of late have fallen prey to.

Sorry, what software companies? Can you please back this up? Thanks. Also the battery life will forever be shortened when trying to do tasks such as a Time Machine backup or watching movies or and other major drain. Has always been like that on my Macs, which is why a warning has always come up when doing a major installation that you should connect to power.

Anyway this thread is making no progress

Pete

petermac87 wrote:

Also the battery life will forever be shortened when trying to do tasks such as a Time Machine backup or watching movies or and other major drain.

True, but everyone knows that and it's not what we've been discussing here. That sort of battery drain should not happen when you have a brand-new computer and you're only surfing the web or downloading a small (<50MB) file.

I was not replying to you if you check the details in the post.

Good luck

Pete

Yep, you are right! I have read all 162 of the threads. Seems like a lot of folks are unhappy with the battery life. All of whom have upgraded to Lion. Apple do noty care! Plain and simple. When you are big you are big and so what if a few folks have some issues with battery life..... Why I hated Windows!

I have followed everyones advices, I have "re-conditioned" the battery by draining and re-charging. Still only getting 4.5hours vs. the 7hours I used to get. Lion *****!

I still have the memory stick with SL so I will have to downgrade. Battery life is important to me, more so that the "nice features" added in Lion.

Shame on Apple for doing this and pretending there is no issue!

I guess I'll add my tale to this thread. Used to have a Feb'08 MBP running Leopard but logic board died suddenly and was forced to buy an Oct'11 MBP. Naturally, it came with Lion preinstalled, so I never had a before and after and never ran the snowy cat in a production environment. So I start getting used to Lion's new quirks and eccentricities, having migrated all my stuff using Setup Assistant. Haven't stress-tested to the bitter end to see how long it will last, but have been able to go for up to 6 hours, with 35% charge still remaining.

The interesting point in my Mac's story is how the battery has behaved and how it seems to be degrading. This is the maximum charge capacity, as reported by Coconut Battery:

At first, I didn't save the report very often cause I figured it was a new computer. Then I started seeing all the threads of woe and desperation on low battery performance. Interesting how the max capacity peaked about 2 months after I received it, and is now firmly going down.