Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Relax, Milwaukee B., it's not bickering.  Just an exchange of opinion.

The fact is, as you state, we have a serious issue regarding multi-thousand-dollar machines and it's not being well addressed. 

My sense is that 1% significantly understates the population of Apple customers affected by Lion's design and performance.

Unfortunately, the solution is not available to us users.  We must rely on Apple's developers and engineers to fix Lion's problems, which so far they haven't; or issue OS 11, which we look forward to. 

I'm an Apple loyalist, so far.  Tactics used by snarky types to ridicule customers' call for attention, for reasons we can only guess, need rebuttal. 

All we can do is continue to make the point.  If someone else disagrees, that's fine; just don't make it personal.

That's all.  It's over.  Come back.

Agree. Some of the posts and egos here are absurd and ridiculously off topic. They waste time and focus. I'm out as well. I will check back for solutions - if I can weed through the bickering and off topic ego absurdity.

I hope Apple fixes this problem. It has had a real impact on my ability to work as a mobile professional. Further, it resulted in us not buying a new MacBook for my wife (who is currently a Dell user). That's one unhappy MacBook Pro user and one lost sale/Apple convert.  Not to mention all the discussion we've shared with others about the unhappiness/lost business. 

This is a real problem.

I think you took the word "downgrade" the wrong way.  Lion is 10.7.x, SL is 10.6.x, that's all I meant was downgrade.  Also, with a Time Machine backup created while on Lion, getting everything set up with Snow Leopard took about 5-6 hours, and that was mostly just waiting for things to install and move over from the external hard drive.  If you use Time Machine, everything is there down to the small things like browsing history and bookmarks of Firefox.  I did it, have been perfectly satisfied with my MBP ever since.

You did the reinstallation the right way.  Sadly, I (and several other people I've spoken with) didn't have the benefit of others' experience, having installed Lion the same day it came out or shortly thereafter. It never occurred to us that we would have a better experience sticking with Snow Leopard.  So we lost a lot of "management" -- organization -- that would have made a reinstall of SL easier.  People should follow your example if they want to return to SL.

I didn't mean to excoriate you personally for using "downgrade."  I was trying to make a point that the language we use (or that others, like journalists, use for us) is often determinative of what we consider progress.  "Better" software - that is, software in which old problems have been solved and new features added -- always has a higher version number than "less good" software from the past. 

But sometimes "new" isn't better and even is worse. Then the number game trips us up. What's it mean to "upgrade" when the upgrade *****, as was often the case with Windows and various Adobe products?  We take it on face value that 10.7 is going to be better than 10.6 -- and then when it's not, we're stuck trying to get the linear sequence  out of our minds so we can objectively weigh one version against the other.

Except that computer developers are such geeks, wouldn't it be better if we did away with OS numbers entirely and only went on names?  Then we could be more objective about the actual products.  Is "Lion" inherently better than "Snow Leopard"?  Well, mythologically, yes, so that's a poor example and another problem:  putting out a weaker product with a stronger name.  But what about if we called them Pepper and Salt?  Now, you tell me!

Okay, back to batteries....

Has anyone from Apple officially acknowledged or addressed users who are experiencing this issue by either issuing advise or possible solutions, i have made a report to Apple Feedback and i have utilize forums such as this one in hopes of finding a solution or a way forward. so far most ppl seem to agree its the OS and not the battery but as a first time Mac user/owner who's mac came with Lion and not Snow Leopard and was bought by the company i work for the question of installing Snow Leopard is not that simple. I guess i just have to wait and see what the officials have to say...

Yes, I have received two calls from Apple to participate in a beta test of Lion to fix this problem.in the last call, the tech said they are aware, working on a fix, and that they will resolve this. But it will take time. That's a direct acknowledgmental from Apple.

Bob Jacobson wrote:

 

In its App Store descripton of Lion, Apple claims Lion is user-rated at "4+."  But the stars actually show "3+," which is just better than mediocre.  It's been stuck there for months.  Apple OSs of the past didn't get 3s, they got 4s and 5s consistently, especially as they improved with time.

FYI, "4+" doesn't mean 4 stars. 4+ means it's suitable for users age 4 and up. Click on the "4+" link and you'll see explanations for that, plus 9+, 12+, and 17+.

You could always go back to Snow Leapord by reinstalling it with your recovery disk.

After a failed attempt at installing Snow Leopard, I formatted and reinstalled Lion with a decent improvement in battery performance. After failing to do an SMC reset because I didn't have the power cable plugged in, I successfully reset the SMC and gained even more battery performance, so I'm guessing that doing both of these will help people out with newer macs that come with Lion installed. Also installed gfx card status do use the on board chip 100% of the time gave me even more control over the battery's charge. I now dub this laptops performance as passable (a decked out 15" mbp, almost $3000).

Battery life still crap here. I'm going to wait until the next update and if that doesn't fix the battery life I'm going to visit the local Apple store and shove this expensive pile of junk up their *****.

OK, I told you all, about a month ago, Apple reached out to me after I contacting Tim Cooks office. Nearly a week of them calling me, testing, diagnosis I was so happy Apple were taking this seriously. They were reaching out to others in this forum too. Finally, we all had SOME hope!

However, now I am fuming. After 2 weeks of chasing them, re-emailing Tim Cooks office and the people who called me, I have recieved nothing. They have gone into shut down mode.

What is this Apple. Ignoring problems from people that have worked HARD to help you diagnose YOUR problems.

What kills me the most, is that within 3 days of Iphone IOS problems, they were appologizing and reparing the damage all over the place.

I am going global with this. Apple, ignore me at your peril

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

Apple reached out to me after I contacting Tim Cooks office. Nearly a week of them calling me, testing, diagnosis I was so happy Apple were taking this seriously. They were reaching out to others in this forum too.

 

I am going global with this. Apple, ignore me at your peril

You are a champion to the cause Franc. Did you drop my name to Tim? Might have helped.

Now I'll just wait for the headlines.

Thanks

Can you ALL also post any links you have to other forums or pages in this discussion where this is a hot topic. I will forward them on to someone that might take up the story soon.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1196538&highlight=battery+life

OK, now it's been picked up by Forbes ; http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/12/11/apples-battery-problems-with- osx-10-7-lion-and-what-it-tells-us-about-apple-becoming-a-consumer-electronics-c ompany/

Comment there too if you can. Lets get this global.