Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

The Camino browser has a "Web Features" panel that enables blocking of Flash animations.  The Chrome browser has a page of extensions in the Chrome Gallery for various ways to block and control Flash. 

A problem is that Flash is used for more than just animations.  It's also how most video is featured (at least in these two browsers) and also some directional graphics.  Whether Flash makes a difference in the lifespan of batteries or overdriving CPUs, etc., is problematic.

I feel completely ripped off.  The ONLY reason I bought this new MacBook Pro 15 with SSD, was for the promise of "up to 7 hours wireless web."  The guy at the Genius Bar told me these new MBP's have such good batteries.  I told him that I was nervous about the battery because all batteries get weaker and weaker as time goes on.  He told me how it was rated for so many cycles that I would never feel it.  I admit it...I fell for it. 

My MBP 15 from 2008 gets about 2.5 hours of battery time and I was looking for more.  That's the ONLY reason I bought this new MBP. 

Right out of the box I charged my new MBP and got less than 2 hours.  I let it run all the way down, charged it back up, reset the SMC, put it at half brightness (who uses half brightness?), and did nothing but surf.  No videos, no music, no nothing.  I had nothing else running (no skype, no nothing) except a browser.  I got 5.5 hours. 

I charged it back up to 100%, then started using it again and after 50 minutes, it says I have 56 minutes left.  I did a bit of iTunes previews (maybe for 5 minutes) and the rest is web surfing.  Just since I started typing this it has dropped to 44 minutes left.  This is absolutely pathetic, and I'm going to take this baby back.   This is a $3900 machine that I don't need if it can't last longer than a couple hours.

OK EVERYONE SOLUTION IS HERE

Go here
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191543?start=0&tstart=0

• Read post #2, put the command into your Terminal (Found inside launchpad)

       - That command is the following "sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.citrix.agadminservice.plist"

• type password when asked ( you wont see any characters but it will be accepted when pressing enter)
• Restart, battery, heat and noise issue is completely solved, lion is fixed.

You now have a very high quality product, that functions like it should. Macbook Pro still owns.

Little bit of digging always pulls up a solution.

I know, you love me long time...haha.

Hope this helps everyone out.

htmanning wrote:

 

The ONLY reason I bought this new MacBook Pro 15 with SSD, was for the promise of "up to 7 hours wireless web." 

Not much of a reason really. My three nieces and a nephew got 13" MacBook Pros for Christmas and around 6 hour battery life with all 4 of them. But they wanted the Macs because of the OS features as well, not JUST the battery life. I get about 700 hours wireless web until I unplug it, but battery life is only around 5 hours and thats on a 2007 Macbook Pro. So as I said numerous times, either machine specific (not showing in about 12 brand new Macbook Pros I service, or else just dead unlucky. If it requires a fix, then just give Apple time. They don't usually release a majr update for just one issue, but usually adress all issues they can in an update.

Good Luck

Hi MittWaffen,

we had this "solution" already somewhere at the beginning of this thread.

This only helps for a minority of folks having the battery issue.

Most of the others do not have Citrix running at all

Thanks anyway.

MittWaffen wrote:

 

OK EVERYONE SOLUTION IS HERE

 

Go here
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191543?start=0&tstart=0

 

 

Old news and only helped out a minority with battery issues.

After only getting 2.5 hours last night from a full charge, I let my MBP 15 charge all night.  When I got up this morning and opened the lid, it said I had 6.33 hours of battery remaining.  That is more than I've ever shown before.

I'm thinking that Lion is too quick to show a full charge. If you only charge it for 2 hours it says you're "charged" but then you only get about 2.5 hours of use.  If you charge it longer, you get more.  Perhaps Lion's meter is simply off and is making us think we're fully charged when we're not.

I just played a video for 5 seconds and the batter meter dropped down to 4:55.  I think the meter is too sensitive, but I'll take 5 hours of battery life over 2.5 any day.  I'm going to run this on battery until it dies again, to see how long I can go on an overnight charge.

when your battery is like you better update softwear and see what is going to happen if there is sth wrong with the lion they would fix it you can get unless you updated so please update to 10.7.2

I was doing a little more thinking on this...

Looking through Activity Monitor for culprits I thought perhaps Photo Stream Agent might be draining the battery (if it's doing that incessant checking). It could all be wishful thinking, but when I shut off "Photo Stream", "Bookmarks", and "Documents & Data" in iCloud, I felt like it improved battery life. I still have "Mail & Notes", "Contacts", and "Calendar" on.

Can other people experiencing this issue report on their iCloud preferences while posting other information about performance and use?

I am an early 2011 MBP 15 higher-end user. When I had my mac, the pre-installed OS is SL, so I applied for the Up-to-date program and got my copy of Lion. After I did the upgrade (SL- Lion), the battery life decreased from 8 hours (SL) to 4 hours (Lion).

I did the SMC reset, and it didn't work for me. I had 8 hours of estimated time right after I did the SMC reset, but it dropped to 4 hours after 5 or 8 minutes after I powered it on. And I don't have Citrix running.

Then I had gfxCardStatus v2.1 installed and realised it is the the MBP using ATI card for the entire time, even though I have "Auto switch graphic card" box selected. And when I forced the system to use integrated card, I managed to have 3:20 on 45% of battery.

Then I found something interesting: When I used gfxCardStatus forced my MBP to use the integrated card, Twitter cannot show a single thing in its window! Then I saw something in gfxCardStatus's dropped menu, it's listing twitter as a program that related to the ATI card. That's strange, it looks like twitter is using ATI card to run the program.

Then I tested twitter with auto switch. I turned on twitter and gfxCardStatus only, nothing else was opened, with auto switch. gfxCardStatus showed that when twitter is on, the ATI card is on, when twitter is off, integrated card was on. Which means, the system is still capable in switching cards, it is just certain apps kept it using ATI card.

Similar situation happened to an App called QQ, it's an instant messenger widely used among Chinese, this app will make Lion use ATI card as well, but the different part was, when you switched to battery, you restart QQ and it no longer using ATI card.

So it seems that some apps will use the ATI card even it's not a heavy graphic app, and that drained the battery life in Lion.

Hi , I have a same a problem my macbook is 10 months old battery is always been very good.

Since I upgrade to Lion my battery is droped down 75% .

I try to find an apps where I can found out what is using my battery but I cant found a right one.

If anyone can help me it would be very greatfull, thank you

These are good intutions and it seems like we need to think about what has changed in the Lion from SL upgrade.  I just test my macbook pro yesterday with a fresh user profile (all others logged out).  Battery has less than 20 cycles and calibrated prior to the test.  Test was safari open, half brightness, keys lit, nothing sleeps (not even hard drives).  Just sitting in this state and running arabesque screen saver I almost got 3 hrs.  This mac is rated for 5 at least. 

To your point on isolating iCloud services, that is a great idea, however I did that by creating a new user profile and not setting iCloud up. Or at least in theory I did.

Cheers

These new services with Lion - has to be where this problem exsists. Twitter integration, iCloud, - something. How they are using the hardware is good place to look.

Hello. I have a same problem(MacBook Pro Mid 2010) .Previously i could get between 8-10 hours after i install Lion i get only 3-5 hour. I'm not happy !!!! I expect that Appel finds a solution!!!  I reset SMC yesterday and my battery life is same 3-5 hours ..Its not working for me 

Hugo Ning wrote:

 

I am an early 2011 MBP 15 higher-end user. When I had my mac, the pre-installed OS is SL, so I applied for the Up-to-date program and got my copy of Lion. After I did the upgrade (SL- Lion), the battery life decreased from 8 hours (SL) to 4 hours (Lion).

I did the SMC reset, and it didn't work for me. I had 8 hours of estimated time right after I did the SMC reset, but it dropped to 4 hours after 5 or 8 minutes after I powered it on. And I don't have Citrix running.

 

Then I had gfxCardStatus v2.1 installed and realised it is the the MBP using ATI card for the entire time, even though I have "Auto switch graphic card" box selected. And when I forced the system to use integrated card, I managed to have 3:20 on 45% of battery.

 

Then I found something interesting: When I used gfxCardStatus forced my MBP to use the integrated card, Twitter cannot show a single thing in its window! Then I saw something in gfxCardStatus's dropped menu, it's listing twitter as a program that related to the ATI card. That's strange, it looks like twitter is using ATI card to run the program.

Then I tested twitter with auto switch. I turned on twitter and gfxCardStatus only, nothing else was opened, with auto switch. gfxCardStatus showed that when twitter is on, the ATI card is on, when twitter is off, integrated card was on. Which means, the system is still capable in switching cards, it is just certain apps kept it using ATI card.

 

Similar situation happened to an App called QQ, it's an instant messenger widely used among Chinese, this app will make Lion use ATI card as well, but the different part was, when you switched to battery, you restart QQ and it no longer using ATI card.

 

So it seems that some apps will use the ATI card even it's not a heavy graphic app, and that drained the battery life in Lion.

After reading back 40 pages of this thread, I think what I'm posting here isn't the real cause.