Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

I Ran It, And I Hot This:

Processes: 81 total, 5 running, 2 stuck, 74 sleeping, 373 threads      20:46:50

Load Avg: 0.71, 0.76, 0.82  CPU usage: 16.19% user, 8.57% sys, 75.23% idle

SharedLibs: 12M resident, 2952K data, 0B linkedit.

MemRegions: 13096 total, 638M resident, 44M private, 300M shared.

PhysMem: 297M wired, 1118M active, 172M inactive, 1588M used, 459M free.

VM: 174G vsize, 1118M framework vsize, 650742(2) pageins, 338(0) pageouts.

Networks: packets: 415741/509M in, 270877/29M out.

Disks: 81680/3302M read, 56771/2093M written.

PID   COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH  #WQ  #PORT #MREG RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE

1744- Google Chrom 18.1 04:38.98 6/1  1    100   950+  167M+  50M    194M+

2000- Google Chrom 8.9  00:10.45 7    2    102   720   79M+   50M    105M+

168-  Google Chrom 8.8  17:29.18 26   2    1593  713   100M   94M    164M

2009  top          4.8  00:03.60 1/1  0    28    29    896K   216K   1600K

0     kernel_task  2.9  07:08.24 64/2 0    2     717   12M    0B     240M

73    hidd         1.4  01:41.62 5    3    64    51    748K   240K   1764K

1659- Google Chrom 0.8  00:50.17 9    1    232   1081  26M    55M    63M

2003  Terminal     0.5  00:01.88 5    1    123   157   6900K  22M    25M

244-  RealPlayer D 0.4  00:59.86 3    1    82    76    1216K  5620K  3844K

96    WindowServer 0.4  06:26.69 5    1    247   808   11M-   48M    61M

225-  BBLaunchAgen 0.3  00:41.48 6    1    96    82    868K   5660K  3584K

242   VMware Fusio 0.1  00:18.35 6/1  1    222   163   10M    6780K  28M

66    mds          0.1  00:41.01 6    4    136   187   31M    13M    43M

172   Finder       0.0  00:39.03 5    2    205-  732-  16M-   66M    6

Looks Ok To Me. Allthough I Still Get 3hrs On Battery, And It's Runnung Hot.

MacbookPro 15" 2008

Here's some evidence that if the issue is acknowledged widely-enough, Apple will admit to a problem and begin working on a fix: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/02/ios-5-battery

And some people say that Apple doesn't admit to problems ahead of time, only when they release a fix sly-ly..    

It seems we have a lot more work to do to bring this issue to Apple's attention. 

Anybody have any ideas?  All ideas are welcome:

* blogs we can contact, with editors' names

* newspaper journalists to contact

* a template for a letter to Apple about the issue -- possibly a petition

* how to make better use of our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/mbp.battery.life

Let's start doing something to really bring this to Apple's attention on a large scale.    

RBbeachbum wrote:

 

(You can't see Daemons from the Activity Monitor).

 

Since when?

Edit: What are all those processes with a "d" at the end then?

Redarm wrote:

 

RBbeachbum wrote:

 

(You can't see Daemons from the Activity Monitor).

 

Since when?

 

Edit: What are all those processes with a "d" at the end then?

It seems also that there are users not aware of the possibility to sort processes by CPU usage in Activity Monitor.

BTW I'm experiencing a huge loss of battery power when the system is in sleep mode (laptop with a closed lid). I had a drain of about 4% to 5% of battery in about 8 hours. I don't remember experiencing such a bad performance with SL, but I could be wrong.

No, you are not wrong.  I've noticed the same.  Leaving it overnight loses ca. 5% under Lion and 1% to 2% under SnowLeopard.  If I had to guess I would say it's the wireless connection being on standby, but what do I know.

Redarm wrote:

 

No, you are not wrong.  I've noticed the same.  Leaving it overnight loses ca. 5% under Lion and 1% to 2% under SnowLeopard.  If I had to guess I would say it's the wireless connection being on standby, but what do I know.

Ok thanks. I'd probably try to test this out with a few different changes in settings before letting the laptop go to sleep ("wake up on network" on and off and setting wifi off prior putting the mac to sleep overnight).

What aabout fans speed too? Is there someone exeriencing them spinning at faster speed rate on regular basis since installing Lion? Mine are constantly at around 2000 rpm even if CPU usage never goes up at all (I use menumeters to keep an on it). Again I could be wrong but to me under SL they were spinning at a lower speed on a regular basis.

Rayced wrote:

 

What aabout fans speed too? Is there someone exeriencing them spinning at faster speed rate on regular basis since installing Lion? Mine are constantly at around 2000 rpm even if CPU usage never goes up at all (I use menumeters to keep an on it). Again I could be wrong but to me under SL they were spinning at a lower speed on a regular basis.

Strangely I haven't noticed any increase in heat or fan speed.  But that would definitely ask for more battery power.

Redarm wrote:

 

Strangely I haven't noticed any increase in heat or fan speed.  But that would definitely ask for more battery power.

Can you check and post your fan speed too? To me my laptop temperatures are higher than before, but I could be wrong and I should investigate more about that.

Rayced wrote:

Can you check and post your fan speed too? To me my laptop temperatures are higher than before, but I could be wrong and I should investigate more about that.

Not at the moment.  I'm checking something else for which I needed a "clean" system.  I don't really want to intall anything on my internal one right now and I guess on an external one it doesn't make sense.

Edit: can't hear them at all on light load if that's any help.

Csound1 wrote:

 

di1in wrote:

I get 5:51 while running Chrome (too many tabs to switcto safari), Mail app minimized, half dim, active Bluetooth DUN and bluetooth USB mouse. Hi-res screen and i7 processor. OS is 10.7.2. Graphics is discrete.

Then you need to actually test the estimate, because it is only an estimate. At the moment you do not know how long your battery life is, only what the estimate thinks it is.

The actual battery life is 5:10. I think it improved after updating to 10.7.2.

Csound1 wrote:

 

di1in wrote:

 

I get 5:51 while running Chrome (too many tabs to switcto safari), Mail app minimized, half dim, active Bluetooth DUN and bluetooth USB mouse. Hi-res screen and i7 processor. OS is 10.7.2. And graphics is discrete.

Then you need to actually test the estimate, because it is only an estimate. At the moment you do not know how long your battery life is, only what the estimate thinks it is.

I got 5:10 on the test with gfxswitcher on dynamic, the update to 10.7.2 has made a difference.

You got 5:10 actually or is this a changed estimate?

Csound1 wrote:

 

You got 5:10 actually or is this a changed estimate?

Actual 5:10, the estimate changed by a huge margin every minute - it's useless.

di1in wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

di1in wrote:

 

I get 5:51 while running Chrome (too many tabs to switcto safari), Mail app minimized, half dim, active Bluetooth DUN and bluetooth USB mouse. Hi-res screen and i7 processor. OS is 10.7.2. And graphics is discrete.

Then you need to actually test the estimate, because it is only an estimate. At the moment you do not know how long your battery life is, only what the estimate thinks it is.

I got 5:10 on the test with gfxswitcher on dynamic, the update to 10.7.2 has made a difference.

Have you been using Chrome still to browse? Probably with Safari you can achieve something better cause it won't launch any flash content.

di1in wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

You got 5:10 actually or is this a changed estimate?

Actual 5:10, the estimate changed by a huge margin every minute - it's useless.

Yup, the estimate is not accurate, but 5:10 is a reasonable time,