You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

After upgrading to Lion, my MacBook Pro battery life has been severly affected. After 1.5 hours of light web browsing, my battery has decreased to 40% from 100% after charging all night.


Notes: Spotlight completed indexing the hard drive over night, and the laptop remained plugged in charging. The fans seem to be running normally, not at a higher rate. The backlight is at 50% brightness.


Thoughts?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 7:02 AM

Reply
2,644 replies

Nov 20, 2012 11:27 AM in response to Rbisha

I wondered if I had posted this because - "I have a 17" Macbook pro. Am about to get the battery replaced for the third time in four years. It DID RUN (runs) too hot to touch (hot enough to burn skin), loses 100% of its charge in 1 hour 45 minutes. I have been through this twice before, same problem. This power loss is just doing email, and yes Apple, I follow all of your instructions to maintain battery life. Since owning this computer I also had to have the video card"


Yes even the video card problem is the same!!!

Can this be conincidence!


oh and I am on my 2nd charger cable!!!


Who else has notice a nose dive in quality? My old 2004 MacBook had no battery problems/cable problems and who knows the thief who stole it may still be getting good use out of it.


I am using a 4 year old MBP. And my second battery has just packed up - well swollen up! I upgraded to 10.6.8 (Haven't taken the step up the mountain yet as I still refuse to upgrade my CS3 software) My MBP stopped giving me a battery low warning and just shutdown. Then I notice the charge didn't last as long. Then it indicated it required service which apple told me means "Get a new one". After a longhaul flight the battery began to swell and became so bad I have just removed it and have to run without it. "Coincidence" I here you say. Well it is exactly what happened before.


Scary that it has been mentioned that some of the batteries have been known to cause a fire. The fact both mine swelled up during/within hours of longhaul flights should surely be of concern to apple not to mention the airlines. Anyone else with battery problems see battery detirioration/swelling after flying?


The battery problems are clearly known to apple. There are so many comments here and elsewhere. Buy an MBP for over £1,800 and have to buy 3 batteries and two chargers in 4 years and have the graphics card replaced in two (thank apple you acknowledged that was your problem and did it free!)


How long will apple fly high?

Nov 30, 2012 7:28 PM in response to Michael Ray5

I decided to upgrade to ML recently (even though I went through through two brand new laptops with short battery life) as I needed some ML-only compatible software. Battery life is definitely not as good, however, it's hard to tell since the time left is no longer displayed, and I haven't done a real time clocking yet.


But what I have noticed is that sitting there plugged in, I am losing one percent every 5-6 days or so. So fully charged, it's now reading 97%. Is this Apple's way of showing the natural degeneration of the battery? However, that makes no sense since I rarely take the laptop off of charge...

Jan 21, 2013 12:39 PM in response to Michael Empric

For what it's worth, and im a new mac user (the last mac i had was a performa pc) I have a macbook pro 15" retina and the battery life was awful, I came here hoping for a solution and you guys had a lot of helpful suggestions. Anyway i did the dmc/smc reset, whatever its called, and it worked temporarily but the battery life dropped back down on the next shutdown cycle. This time i did the battery calibration, and turned off location services and **** if the battery life isnt over 11 hours remaining, and 98% after 35-40 minutes of regular internet browsing , email, chat. This combo really seems ot have worked for me! HUGE improvement. Really all i did was let it shutdown from low battery, let it sit overnight then recharged this AM. As well as the location services, which i have no idea if that made a difference, just wanted full disclosure. PS, before this I was struggling to get 3 hours out of it.


Thanks guys!

Feb 13, 2013 1:31 PM in response to Michael Empric

I'm still having poor battery life with my 2011 MBP 15. I'm a fairly early poster in this thread. I've called Apple, written to Tim Cook, posted several times in here, and have never heard anything from Apple. Unfortunately I purchased my MBP because it was advertised as up to 7 hours of battery life for wireless web. I can barely get past 3 hours of half brightness or less, and only having a browser open. I've shut down almost every other process I can think of, except Dropbox. I'm only loading Dropbox because not loading it didn't make a difference. Still Bumming....

Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.