Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

I have a brand new MBP, 17", 2.3 Ghz, 8 Gig ram... and battery life is just awful—under 3 hours (overheating and lots of full throttle fan too). I called Apple, and they insist that it's a "bad battery." I think we all know here that's likely not the case. Anyway, they're sending a new MBP out. So be it. It's their dollar.

For my part, I would gladly roll back to Snow Leopard (the new machine comes with Lion, unfortunately). I really don't see Lion's new features as anything that new; kind of like the dock and desktop shuffled and re-dealt.

Perhaps worst of all is the instability of Lion. Adobe Premiere 5 is crashing, along with Motion 5 (a lot!); Final Cut Studio's utilities such as Cinema Tools won't even open; and I find overall that programs are opening slower. After two weeks of use, I guess I can say that Lion is really good at email. :-/

The release of Lion in its present condition is somewhat surprising. In the end, if this isn't fixed in two weeks, I'll just return the laptop and wait for Silicon Valley to glue itself back together.

The Apple has fallen pretty far from the tree this time around....

I don't know what's up with Cinema Tools, but somehow you believe Apple is at fault when your Adobe applications misbehave?!?!

Contact with Adobe support is what's called for here; they had over six months' worth of seeds to get their programs working with Lion but apparently didn't do so.

I have a new MacBook Pro i7 2011 17 inch model and I did a clean install of Lion. Battery life about 7-9 hours but if I'm using Final Cut Pro X then I get less than 4 hours. I heard that if you using Adobe flash than your battery life is half. Adobe flash only support certain graphic cards. Also if you surfing the web than computer should be using integrated graphic card instead of disgreet.

I also see the same high-temperature/running-fan/low-battery-life symptoms with Lion on my MacBook Pro:

Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB

Software: Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (11A511)

I'm not using Flash, Silverlight, nor Time Machine at all, and my total CPU usage hovers in the 5-10% range.

I did not see any of these symptoms in Snow Leopard on the same machine running the same software, and with the same usage patterns.

Just adding my feedback to the list.

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To raise Apple's awareness of our displeasure with decreased battery life (and increased heat), please offer feedback at: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

@Creative: Thanks for posting that.... I'll surely let them hear my opinion and feedback

THX Creative: i send my copy to Apple. I´m surprised that they are so silent about this issues!

I've had the same problem as I posted before and today I finally called Applecare.

A little background info first. My Macbok Pro i5 13'' is 5 weeks old, its currently holding a full charge but iStat Pro states the battery health is 92%. When I'm on a full charge like now I'm getting about 4 hours out of my battery. Even when I am only surfing the net. It fluctuates and sometimes says 7 hours, but I never get 7 hours out of it. I'm currently on 21 cycles.

i rang Applecare and the lady on the phone was very helpful. I said all the above and that I have tried calibrating my battery and tried resetting the power cycle thingy. She has now set me up a genius bar appointment is expecting them to replace the battery. She seemed to think 92% battery health was not good after 5 weeks, and feels that 4 hours from general use was not good enough. So we shall see what happens tomorrow.

Sigh... I did post my feedback to apple. Dam' It doesnt' have direct match feedack topic though.

My 2.2MBP's battery life is severely affected from Lion upgrade. Not to mention the slightly HOTTER even in the normal usage. Meanwhile my MBP now become 'a temporary' desktop machine given that 1.30-2 hr battery is too weird to carry around and use it as its intended purpose to be 'a high performance laptop'.

My friend did laugh at me for the upgrade.... sigh... ...

I'm pretty sure that the problem with it, it's not your battery. But certanly 92% is not normal after 5 weeks.

Did you try to instal coconut battery? it's a good app to check your battery.

If you have the Snow Leopard CD instalation you can downgrade. I did 2 day ago. and everything comes to normal

I installed coconutBattery and that also showed the battery health at 92% It sometimes goes up, but never about 93% and it has dropped as low as 87%. That is why I called them, I was certain the battery life was down Lion, but the battery health surely must be higher after 5 weeks.

See this article for a hack that I came up with for improving this fan/temperature issue until (unless?) Apple does something about it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3248102?tstart=0

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My 6-7 hour battery turned into 2.5. I am an avid Apple fan. I started with a 2E and haven't looked back. Apple, you need to seriously come out with a firmware update like likaty split. At the very least Time Machine, the backup solution you came up with should be able to handle a downgrade. Who knows whether the application support folders will take. This is not funny. I used to be able to do a full days of work, and I can't even carry around a second battery like I used to; well I can, I just need a 00 too. FIX THE PROBLEM, not like the entire internet is flustered about this. Vista's issues are minascule compared to this.

Hi William,

It's not just Adobe, but Apple's own applications are crashing! Motion 5, Final Cut "Pro" X, Cinema Tools... It's been a looooong time since I've seen such instability. But the very same programs are working just fine under Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro.