Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

What are the temperatures ?

An update from my earlier post...

Today I made a visit to the Apple Store for some impromptu research.

First, I tried a 13" Air. I disconnected the power and launched a few apps. Battery life started around 5 hours. I surfed the web, played around with Pages and launched iTunes. The projected battery life varied quite dramatically, but didn't fall below 3:30. I do not own an Air so cannot say how good or bad this is.

I then moved to a 17" MBP.

Same routine, disconnected the power and battery life showed 5:15. I launched iTunes and started a video podcast, then Safari, then Aperture and finally Excel. I thought this was a fairly representative array of apps and is less than I would typically have running on my own machine.

Again, the battery life reading seemed to fluctuate wildly, updating perhaps every 5-10 seconds. I don't recall seeing this running SL, it would update, but perhaps only once a minute.

After about 15 minutes of use, the projection had stabilized at... 2:47 with 90% battery remaining. Avoiding unnecessary hyperbole, this is in my view very poor.

I wanted to try another machine, but my better half intervened and I had to go for lunch (!).

The machines in the Apple Store have a pretty controlled load. They don't have Flash and I was unable to install it. I mention this as I was wondering if I had an app on my machine that was contributing to the problem.

I know this is not very scientific. I also don't know the health of the battery in the MBP (I neglected to check), but 5:15 straight off a full charge seemed reasonable, but not exceptional.

If I get a chance, I will go back and try a couple of other machines and report back.

Bottom line, this confirmed in my mind that this is a serious Lion issue.

HippopotamusMan wrote:

jesslorenzo wrote:

Apple needs to improve in its corporate ethical practices. This should have been disclosed when releasing OS Lion. I do not think that Apple would be able to sustain good marketing without eventually being transparent to its customers/stakeholders.

I have had other laptops and desktops before. I can understand system upgrade bugs and even expect it at some length. However, I feel that developers must be forthcoming about these problems.

This is a Transparency issue for me.

Well, Apple doesn't even claim to live by a motto like "Don't be evil." 🙂

And how much transparency, ethical behavior, and customer-friendliness do you expect from a company that recently surpassed Exxon as the most valuable corporation in America?

</ironic facetiousness>

.

My issue has nothing to do with Exxon or other corporations.

To answer your question. I expected them to disclose the bugs they saw during testing and leave it for the customers to decide to upgrade or not. That is very simple.

I think most people in this thread would have waited for a better OS if they had these info.

I have taken most of the steps indicated in this very long thread and the high fan noise and huge CPU usage problems have been serverly cut. The one thing that made the most difference was stopping the mini-backups that are done to your root disc. It seems that these are hourly and always ended up causing problems for me, especially as they initate a new round of extreme Spotlight indexing.

Once I stopped these, the normal Time Machine backups started working as normal. Mostly this is similar to SL except it often retains connection to the external Time Machine drive - in this case a shared Time Capsule - and begins to index the Time Machine backups.

THis just happened. I was doing some programming, concentrating, and the fans started to grow like a jet taking off. It totally broke my concentration and I had to look at what was happening in the system.

I have noticed that the reported battery life is still lower than what was recorded with SL. Perhaps it has improved somewhat from the early days of installation -- it has been a few weeks now - but it is very quick to reflect changes. If I am running on the battery at full screen brightness (I have always done that, even with SL) and during a pause the screen darkens (I don't remember SL doing this as I think I have that option turned off) the battery time estiamate quickly jumps up in response.

When Time Machine backups take place they are followed by indexing the backups. This kills the battery! Please Apple, if you are following any of this, turn off unrequired things like indexing when running on the battery. Finding recent file changes is way less important than having the **** computer still running with power then it is using battery!

I was running Lion for about 3 wks and having similar battery issues. Today I dumped Lion and reverted to Snow Leopard. Going to wait for 10.7.x before I try Lion again.

Am preparing to revert back to SL. I heard from another thread that The time machine backups done under Lion is not readable in SL... Another source of frustration. I'm preparing to reformat my drive. For now I'm researching backup softwares to make this move less painful.

Of all the features of Lion, I will miss the gestures. I have grown to like them, even the inverse scroll. I think it makes sense.

But everytime I am annoyed by memory leaks and battery shrinkages, I feel I am pricked by a proverbial 'thorn in my shoe.' After some thought, I feel my anoyance isnt just that fact that my heavy macbook only lasts 3hrs but that I feel I was dupped.

...and reading this thread just keeps reminding me about that. I'm sorry.

Overall, I may not have found the solution to the problem in this thread. But this gave me a feeling that I am not alone. Somehow that relieves my frustration.

I'll stick to my target of reverting to SL by the 19th. Will prepare for ineventualities.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED: From now on, I will be cautious of what apple releases. I will trust people in this forum more and see their take on apple releases before I adopt.

Thanks for your insights everyone... will unsubscribe to this thread.

@ WK Well, I think it depends how close the component is to the CPU,mate. I could fry an egg on the top left of my MBP 17" and it's sittingon top of a gizmo which gives it 2" of air flow underneath and the fanis ALWAYS on. I rarely ever heard the fan under SL, so infrequentlythat I would instinctively feel around to find if it was hot - and itwas never anything like as hot as it is almost always now.

So, whilst Lion may not be able to fry anything with rogue data, it may well cause damage by overheating.

I don't know how close the SSD is to the CPU on a MacBook Air...

@ Csound1 Maybe Bob is using the word 'jazz' in one of its original, pre-musical definitions, in order to circumvent the apparent autocensorship in these discussions.

Here's a late 2009 MacBook Air logic card with a 1.86GHz processor and 2GB RAM. Note that everything is within spitting distance, CPU, GPU, and RAM. If one gets hot almost all get hot. I hadn't considered earlier that sheer heat might have been an issue in my case. I thought there was a mixup in the computer nervous system But maybe it was.

Just my 2¢. I'm back on Snow Leopard and while it's a bear going through the motions -- and will feel worse if Apple comes out tomorrow with Lion 7.1 or 7.2 -- at least I know my machine's not going to suffer another super-sunburn this week. Jazz is what you make it. Signing off....

I have the same problem, poor battery life doesn't describe it

I don't understand why apple decided to make the "Terminate" button purely for show as Matt Hanks says ...

If a user ends a application, it's because they do not wish to use it anymore ... if they want to use it then it can be re-loaded -.-

I have no idea how and what Apple is doing in OSX but from the old days this type of operation was standard UNIX. Files have permissions and you can set various things like ownership but it also includes things like setting the file as being executable or linked or even a directory. One of those options is to turn on the "sticky" bit.

The sticky bit tells UNIX to keep a copy of the executable in memory after it ends. This saves considerable time when the program is started again at a latter date. It takes up virtual memory - meaning it used real memory unless space is required for other running programs. At that point it migrates to the swap.

I don't think this is anything too special and mimics the operation of OSX on the iOS versions.

I'm two weeks into a new MBP, 17". 23. Ghz, 8ram... and I am getting less than two hours now unplugged.

And yes, this thing runs as warm as my 3 year old MBP did.

This won't fix the issue, but you may find you get some improvement by doing an SMC reset.

This helped my system and has helped others, but some have tried it without success.

Instructions are here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Can you tell us what applications you are running when you see the 2 hour battery life?

Is it the same if you shut down (and uncheck 'Reopen windows when logging back in') fully charge the battery then restart?

Well I have read all of the comments, and different point of views, but I must say that after doing the SMC reset and recalibrating my battery I am doing pretty good. It seems we have lost sight on what this thread was mainly started for and that was to post issues, and we all work together to try and solve the problem and move on. But I see people bashing others, which isn't cool, comparing OS to each other which is okay, but nothing that is new ever comes out perfect. If it did we would live in a perfect world which we don't. And just because people are engineers doesn't mean they are still not human beings. Titles and positions kill me when people truly lose focus and what is most important and that is working together and solving the problem.

I have an early 2011 MBP 13" which was purchased on 7/4/11 and yes in the beginning I was having the same problem everyone else has mentioned... POOR Battery Life... I spoke directly with Applecare and he stated to recalibrate the battery. Some stated since we have the newer ones we don't have to do that. Well in my case you were wrong, It helped.. I did the SMC and that helped too. First off people before you stay something doesn't work make sure you followed the instructions provided correctly. Sometimes it may take doing the procedure more than once to get it right or get it done.

Lastly, I have been working on computers since windows 3.1 and OS 7. Which states I have been doing this for a little while now. Sometimes investing in new HD's are the solution to many problems. Even though you reformat a HD sometimes they never come back correct. So purchasing a new HD is the solution. I unplugged my MBP this morning around 7:30am and have put it to sleep a couple time and it still has 6hrs and 18 minutes left. Now when I am rendering slideshows, editing pic, running bluetooth for my mouse etc. Yes the battery drains faster, but by cutting those items off if I am not using them helps a lot. I hope this helps us get back on track on finding the problem and coming up with a solution. Or just wait for the update from Apple. Lion isn't that bad, some people just hate change... Just my honest opinion!!!

I didn't necessarilly agree with you but thought, okay, he's an optimist. Then I read your last line, "Some people just hate change," and realized, he's into bashing, too. No, we don't all hate change. Change is a given. Most of us welcome change when it's for the better. It's when it's not that change becomes problematic. Think climate change. Now, won't that be dandy?

I'm sorry that the battery problems still recur and that more serious events are taking place unspoken (but they are happening). You're right, though: eventually Lion will settle down. It's the OS that comes next after Lion, which after all is a halfbreed, that will tell Apple's tale.

I'm back on Snow Leopard after not inconsiderable effort. It sure is sweet to be on a reliable platform and able to do all the things I did before, plus new ones I discovered during the Lion melee. I do NOT recommend it if you have a Lion-equipped Mac out of the shop. When you push down on Disk Utilty's "Erase" plunger, the resulting explosion is nuclear. It takes time and a lot of futzing to recover. Live with Lion.

See you at the next interesting juncture. Maybe 3D printing? Full on virtual worlds? A quiet place to reflect online?... Bye for now.

Yes, agree with you... the condescension in the computer world is silly, at best. Funny what people will say when they can hide behind a forum.

I tried the SMC twice, as directed, to no avail on a new MPB. Glad it's working better for you....

Bob... I bought this MBP a couple days before Lion came out, and they unfortunately shipped it with Lion. Do you know any way that I can get Snow Leopard loaded up on this? All of the convention methods are simply not working.