Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

I just upgraded to 10.7.5 ... my battery life is now dire. Gives me 'Service Battery' message and capacity is down to 427mAh from 6900mAh.

I've tried the SMC reset to no avail. I noticed that within an hour or so of updating, my magconnector light went orange while my MBP (15" early 2011) was plugged in - so something isn't right.

I have 27 minutes from 'full charge' to power off

CoconutBattery reports power usage as 14.9 Watts

Andy

Since I went on to Mountain Lion, my Battery life is ok again. With 10.8.2 I am approx. at the level of Snow Leopard (MacBook Late 2008 2 GHz C2D / 4 GB with 256 GB SSD + 1TB HDD optical drive replacement)

I have all most the exact same problem. I have seen my battery health in the last week drop from 43% to 22%. I was on Mountain Lion but I have since downgraded with a fresh install of Lion with no change. What ever this is It needs to fixed. I never had these issues until I updated to Mountain Lion.

I was having these problmes with Lion ... same kinds of rapid battery drop issues ...

I was running VM FUsion occasionally... and the institution pushed McAfee to teh Windows 7 64 bit install .. this was killing Win-7 .. i got this permanemtn removed.  Windows was much better .. but battery life still was bad.  Then i noticed in the activity monitor that there was a VM process taking a lot of clock ticks .. turns out, i had said "YES" to the VM fusion prompt to install MacAfee during the original install of VM fusion ... i killed this ... you have to google "uninstall McAfee under VM"  to get teh program to remove this.  The MacAfee app for VM-Fusion runs even if you are not running VMware !!! ...

When reseraching this i found a post that said to tell the Mac to use the graphics card and not automatically decide when to use it ... am not sure exactly where i found this .. but i changed the setting.  it didnt seem to matter ...

Removing MacAfee solved teh batttery problem... my battery life returned to normal ... 4 to 6 hours .. under Lion ...  when i upgraded two weeks ago to 10.8.2 Mountain Lion,  the battery life is still the same ...   So, i do not think the bad battery life everyone notes is intrinsic to Mountain Lion.  I think it is other apps running.

I also went into teh Genius bar and they removed all un needed apps from the start up.  Prior to all this, i bought CoconutBatter.app ... to confirm my battery was good ...

I do note that ML seems to continually update teh battery life .. so if a process starts, teh batter prediction will drop by an hour or two while the process is running, but will go back up when the process quits. 

Hope this helps ....

Tom

I am running a MacBook Pro 2.3 GHz I7   with 16GB ram .. 1333 MHz DDR3 ... the machine was purchaced in July 2011

I have never had 4 hrs out of mine its a 2009/10 model

I have only ever got 3 hrs ish

when running Lion I got 3 hrs and it charged to 100% no service message.

I did  a clean install with a new Hard Drive (needed more storage) with Mountain Lion.

As soon as I ran it the Service message came up, I only get 2 hrs life and it only charges to 98/99%.

I have booted from the other drive with Lion and another external with snow leopard with now the same result

The OS obviously writes to the batteries ROM ... Im just hoping someone comes up with a battery reset ... its normal to get less of a charge, I understand that, but it was fine until I upgraded ... £150 to take into apple as per the apple store price ... seems like either a glitch or a scam ?

when mine eventually dies I will replace and run the mac into the ground, I wont be buying another macbook pro as they no longer do the 17' screen, which I have become accustom to. Seems apple have traded off their core users in favour of roping in the pc laptop market ?

has anyone installed windows 8 on one yet ?

Apple told me the OS manages the battery

I called apple today after my battery fell another 5% and they agreed that my computer had a defective battery and made an exception to get my battery exchanged. I have 149 cycles and 965mAh on full charge. My MacBook Pro(7, 1) mid 2010, is getting 20mins of life on the battery. I still do not know if Mountain Lion caused the issue or if it was shipped with a defective battery but I am glad Apple is going to replace my battery. Try giving Apple a call, they might feel for you and help you out.

well done, mine is now down to 1hr 50 mins ish and has done under 700, they basically as stated above ^ told me to whistle as thats acceptable ... the fact ive never got what people have said around 4+ hrs didnt even raise an eyebrow with Apple ... £2500 I would to be honest have expected a better service, but hey ho one lives and learns at least they sorted yours out

  Health Information:

i installed a new hard drive in my mid 2009 15" mbp and decided to use that as an opportunity to upgrade to mountain lion. (so read that again, fresh install ..not an upgrade) and have patched to 10.8.2. I have reset the SMC a few times.

My battery indicator immediately shows a "service battery" warning and battery life has tanked. so what am I to do? all of the suggestions out there on the net include a fresh install, updating to 10.8.2, etc. Will the problem persist if i replace the battery?

I have a MBP 15" Late 2011 model - no battery life problem.

System Information -> Hardware -> Power -> Battery Information

  Model Information:

  Serial Number: XXXX

  Manufacturer:          SMP

  Device Name:          bq20z451

  Pack Lot Code:          0

  PCB Lot Code:          0

  Firmware Version:          406

  Hardware Revision:          2

  Cell Revision:          158

  Charge Information:

  Charge Remaining (mAh):          6787

  Fully Charged:          Yes

  Charging:          No

  Full Charge Capacity (mAh):          6932

  Health Information:

  Cycle Count:          58

  Condition:          Normal

  Battery Installed:          Yes

  Amperage (mA):          0

  Voltage (mV):          12447

Same here, battery is running out of juice too fast. I have tried every possible trick in the book and i mean every trick. I took my macbook 13 mid 2012 to apple they tried their best but the issue remains the same. It is some kind of OS issue which apple needs to address immediately.

Same problem as well. Brand new macbook pro 13" after upgrading from a 2009 model. The battery life in the 2009 model was better than my new macbook pro. Definitely a OS issue. You can just tell.

Can't confirm.

But then again I run ML on a 2011 and a 2009 MBP (13"), battery life is 6hr + on the 2011 and 4hr + on the 2009 (340 cycles)

ML is faster and uses less battery life than SL did for me, is this a bug?

 

 

ML is faster and uses less battery life than SL did for me, is this a bug?

No.

This is a bug:

Snow Leopard was far better on my early-2011 MBP 13".  I got nearly 8 hours.

Now with Lion (after reverting on a replacement HDD), I'm at 6.25 hours.

ML 10.8.1 was between 4-5 hours.

Same computer.  Same model HDD (Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive).