Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

My daughter received a MacBook for Christmas 2010. Early on she started having battery issues and eventually would n't hold a charge properly. She talked to someone at the apple store who told her the battery would be $200 - $250. We couldn't afford that. Now the dang thing doesn't charge at all and she has to keep it plugged. Has anyone experienced something similar. Wasn't sure if our issue was related.

Sure sounds like something that should have been covered under the warrany to me, if it was within the first year. If you have documentation of the Apple Store visit, I'd try to get the thing replaced under the warranty.

From what I've read, the issue here isn't that the battery won't charge at all, but that for some reason it's not holding that charge as long as it should. Yours is the first post I've seen saying anything about the battery being completely useless, though someone else may remember something I've forgotten.

Hi salis

I`m with alto2 on this. Not so much a battery issue I don't think. You sound like you have a bad battery.

I have downgraded to SL on my machine (partitioned drive and install 10.6.3 from dvd). Reset SMC and rebooted into SL. And......... Battery life 4:30. So, not a lot better, if any better to be fair. Brightness 50%, Spotlight finished indexing.

So, I wonder whether it was the last fireware upgrade? Or something ROM based that Lion installed? I`m guessing of course. I will watch with anticipation.......

Hi icrazy89 and others!!!

Did you find any practical solutions or atleast temporary fixes to alleviate the heat and battery drainage problems?

Its such shame that I got an Apple custom made 15.6 inch for nearly 2 grand for work and the battery doesn't last for more than a couple of hours with minimum brightness and no audio/video playback. Can't even use the machine during train journeys. Really frustrating and disappointing.

Eagerly waiting for a remedy!

Tia,

V.

I haven't posted in awhile. I talked to a senior tech at Apple yesterday who was unaware of this problem. I pointed him to this thread and he was extremely apologetic, and promised to escalate tthe issue to the most senior engineers.

Since then I completely ran my MBP 15 until it shut off, recharged, and now I'm getting some decent battery time. Even if I charge for several hours, if my laptop is simply asleep I can only get a few hours of use. It seems that shutting all the way down and charging makes a difference. We'll see if it lasts. So far I've gone 3 hours straight and it says I have 4:15 remaining. I'm usually almost all the way down after 3 hours.

As one of the early posters on this problem after buying my MACbook Pro in June 2011, I have worked with Apple (CEO's office, engineering etc.,) for months. We swapped test programs and system logs/dumps. However in about January, APPLE told me they can not fix this problem. It is as a result of the firmware and O/S consuming more battery when running certain applications that have not been rewritten for the new GPU code under LION O/S. Theire words were "some older applications are not efficient with the new GPU". I found nothing online and even asked Apple, where on line, advice for developers around hor to make their GPU code / interface efficient, and they couldn't tell me. Makes me wonder if it was all lies. They DID however admit the problem and DID say a fix will not be forthcoming.

For some reason, not everyone is unhappy with their battery life but I like many others, get little over 3 hours on a good day.

What was the most amazing for me is that I can nearly always get about 50% MORE battery life IF I run GFXcardstatus. Even after telling Apple this, they said there is no fix forthcoming from Apple (it's been a year now so don't bother trying). With GFXcardstatus running, you can tell this program not to let any programs switch to the Discrete GPU processor! Apple hired the GFXcardstatus developer around Christmas but it hasn't made any different. Those with battery problems have also tried the new MOUNTAIN LION didn't make any difference either 😟 😟 😟

Looks like we have two completely contradictory accounts here of what Apple is saying. I thought we had people who have tried the ML beta and seen an improvement?

Also, "some older applications are not efficient with the new GPU" is a cop-out, Apple. If that's true, tell us which ones so we know what to avoid, or know we're going to have trouble if we need to use them. This inspecific blanket nonsense is no use to anyone. That said, I've only been installing software as I need it to avoid having a day where I do nothing else, and I don't think I've got anything particularly old on here. Again, a list, or delineation of how old is "older" would be helpful.

(Yes, I know they don't read these forums; I'm being rhetorical here as well as hoping that someone who's actually in touch with some of these people may point out that a list would be **** handy. Of course, if you're happy to sell hardware that's defective with certain software, or vice versa, I suppose I should not be hoping for much. This approach really is a cop-out on Apple's part and makes me think a great deal less of them.)

alto2 wrote:

Looks like we have two completely contradictory accounts here of what Apple is saying.

Fortunately coins have 2 sides

Csound1 wrote:

alto2 wrote:

Looks like we have two completely contradictory accounts here of what Apple is saying.

Fortunately coins have 2 sides

And your point would be...?

alto2 wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

alto2 wrote:

Looks like we have two completely contradictory accounts here of what Apple is saying.

Fortunately coins have 2 sides

And your point would be...?

If you need that explained I can't help you further

Franc_Iphone wrote:

As one of the early posters on this problem after buying my MACbook Pro in June 2011, I have worked with Apple (CEO's office, engineering etc.,) for months. We swapped test programs and system logs/dumps. However in about January, APPLE told me they can not fix this problem. It is as a result of the firmware and O/S consuming more battery when running certain applications that have not been rewritten for the new GPU code under LION O/S. Theire words were "some older applications are not efficient with the new GPU". I found nothing online and even asked Apple, where on line, advice for developers around hor to make their GPU code / interface efficient, and they couldn't tell me. Makes me wonder if it was all lies. They DID however admit the problem and DID say a fix will not be forthcoming.

For some reason, not everyone is unhappy with their battery life but I like many others, get little over 3 hours on a good day.

What was the most amazing for me is that I can nearly always get about 50% MORE battery life IF I run GFXcardstatus. Even after telling Apple this, they said there is no fix forthcoming from Apple (it's been a year now so don't bother trying). With GFXcardstatus running, you can tell this program not to let any programs switch to the Discrete GPU processor! Apple hired the GFXcardstatus developer around Christmas but it hasn't made any different. Those with battery problems have also tried the new MOUNTAIN LION didn't make any difference either 😟 😟 😟

There's something here which doesn't fit the situation of Laptops origiannly shipping SL as OS X version, which will get better battery life performance —if kept or downgraded to 10.6.7— than with Lion.

About ML I don't have any clue cause I won't install it till it's gonna be delivery ready.

Csound1 wrote:

alto2 wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

alto2 wrote:

Looks like we have two completely contradictory accounts here of what Apple is saying.

Fortunately coins have 2 sides

And your point would be...?

If you need that explained I can't help you further

I'm fully aware that your point is just to be a nudge. I had thought maybe--just maybe--you might have an actual contribution to the discussion. Thanks for making clear that you don't.

Unlike you I understand that 2 contradictory posts add no contribution. Toss a coin.

Csound1 wrote:

If you need that explained I can't help you further

Careful Csound1 or Heckle and Jeckle will attack you with cheese! This is their thread as you can tell by they alone keeping this thread going while most have gone out and actually done something about their problem and numbers in these threads have fallen away dramatically. But they can't see through the cheese (whatever that means in their part of the world). This comment will no doubt be followed by a page and a half of more immature rantings.

Good Luck

Pete

Csound1 wrote:

Unlike you I understand that 2 contradictory posts add no contribution. Toss a coin.

If you have nothing to contribute, why are you still here? Two contradictory posts DO contribute to the discussion, as they offer two possibilities to consider. One may be true. Neither may be true. Or each may be true for some, especially in this case where we see people reporting differing phenomena and potential solutions.

So I ask again: if you have nothing to contribute, why are you still here? If you can't add anything, don't. (Also? Aassuming what I do and don't comprehend is further proof that you're only here to cause trouble, so thanks for clearing up any remaining doubt.)