Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Like many, I don't have and won't have a FaceBook account. I'll start a twitter campaign if you like. I have been beating up on business contacts in the stores who don't seem to have any say thought

MacBook pro 13" 2011

Tried the SMC reset and it still showed battery fully charged with time left 5.40min.

Was getting recent lists for apps I turned off so I read some reviews that say I should log off then start again. I did that and I turned off LCD font smoothing in general settings. Now I'm seeing battery life at 10hours left and two min later it now shows 11:21 remaining. Not sure which setting did it but seems to be ok for now.

Also turned off the restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps. In general settings in system prefs.

Never mind the last two posts... My battery just went from 11hrs to 5:50 in just a few min. :(

I think we can all agree that none of this little tweaks are acceptable substitutes to a real solution.

I have a macbook mid 2010 white and was experiencing the same problems.  I picked this macbook not only for its cheaper price and comparable performance but also for the extended battery life (9+hrs).  Lion sucked up my battery life, now I don't have the dual graphics card, but still problematic, just figure that the more advanced OS just uses more juice (my ram usage went from around 1.75gb to around 4) and I really only use mail, chrome, preview and then iworks stuff.  I decided to go back to OS 10.6.6 (10.6.8 is a battery sucker too so don't do the combo update unless you Google for 10.6.6 specific update (software update goes automatically to 10.6.8. I miss some of the new features I had with lion (do lots of reading with preview so liked its full screen mode) but I love that my charged battery now says 9:30 at 99% and the percents are not burning away.  Make sure you back up stuff, as simple as just dragging your user folder to external HD, most of the apple apps from 10.7 wont work on 10.6 so idk what everyone is so keen on this carbon copy thing.  The app store recognizes you have purchased lion so if there ever is a fix for this the upgrade won't cost you 29.99 again which is nice.  The people at the apple store will be of no help with the battery issue so don't waste your time.

PS I just did some surfing before posting  (97% 9:02)

Facebook page that covers our issue (if you didn't notice before):

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Apple-MacBook-Pro-Users-Getting-Only-3-4-Hours-of- Battery-Life-with-Lion/275951899104964

totally agree - come on Apple, do something!

Dear moderator. Since you are visiting these forums and deleting posts that do not follow your rules etc., (which we are fine with) can you please explain why this dsicussion is being ignored.

I have been to the genius stores and your own staff are frustrated with this issue (I was in a store in London last week and one of your employees said they had the same issue).

I spent $4500 on a 15" MAC  that the battery life is less than a 3 1/2 year old 17" MAC. PLEASE HELP US rather than CUT us off. PLEASE.

I don't know if this link has been posted before, but here is a fix that at least a couple of sources have said really worked, along with an explanation as to why the problem occurs (apparently, it is an issue with switching between the discreet/integrated graphics cards – again, apologies if this has already been posted):

http://www.thepunditreport.com/2011/08/revealed-mac-os-x-lion-battery-drain.html

I've already intstalled it and, along with an SMC reset, will report back any changes.

Right, so after following the instructions from the link I posted above, and doing an SMC reset, I've seen my indicated battery life jump by 50%, though it still fluctuates quite a bit. Am going to run my MBP from a full charge to really see what the difference is...

After talking to a Carbonite, since Apple tech tells me that the Carbonite program is eating up my CPU and battery, Carbonite tells me they are aware of the Lion issue, but it is an Apple issue, however, Apple and Carbonite are working together on a patch to correct that problem. It was nice to have an acknowledgement of a problem.

If Apple would just come out and say, "We are aware of the CPU and battery issue and are working on it, please be patient", instead of pretending that it does not exist. I am a long time Apple user/fan (and hate Windows) and will be patient if they would just stand up and admit what we all already know. The thought of having to switch to Windows gives me much angst. I have it on parallel for one software program, and hate every time I have to use it.

Come on Apple. Be a stand up guy - admit the error, then fix it.

terifromwinchester wrote:

 

If Apple would just come out and say, "We are aware of the CPU and battery issue and are working on it, please be patient", instead of pretending that it does not exist. I am a long time Apple user/fan (and hate Windows) and will be patient if they would just stand up and admit what we all already know.

As a long time Apple user, you know Apple almost never does that; they (in general) announce problems only by way of announcing an update that fixes them.

That having been said, Carbonite is a great example of a background process that eats CPU cycles, and thus you battery, and this is one reason why you should never do backups (Carbonite, Time Machine or any other method) while on battery, only while connected to a power source.

Apple would likely state this isn't their issue, as (in your case) if you weren't running Carbonite, you wouldn't be seeing this.

...and Royal Appleness is back! Guys, prepare your self to take notes, don't miss any word of wisdom from his Royal Appleness

Forget your computer, forget your money and time you waist on this issue. Take all of you clothes and run naked towards nearest Apple shop and show the how much we love them and that we are ready to accept anything from them, because we love them and we belong to them.

Due to very restrictive standards set by moderator of this forum I'm not allowed to use any name because my post will be deleted immediately. Even in this form it may happen since I'm not contributing to the solution like someone just above me!!!

Benchmark:  I'm running Snow Leopard on two Macs, a 2009 MBP and an early 2010 Air.   I run Synk Pro on both machines; it runs in the background in real-time.

With battery capacity down to 79% on the MBP -- these things happen over time -- I charge to 5.5 hours and get probably 4.5 hours real-time battery-dependent use.  If it was 100% (it never is, even on a new battery), we can extrapolate to 6.6 hours reported charge and 5.4 hours real-time use.

With battery capacity on the Air stil 95% -- bless those little SSDs, there are no moving parts to eat power! -- I have a reported (Coconut) charge of 10.5 hours, with real-time use probably around 8 hours.

What will happen to power consumption when people become dependent on cloud-computing services, all that negotiating, uploading and downloading over and over again of what can otherwise be stored more conveniently and/or efficiently (not to mention bandwidth consumption, causing conflicts with carriers' bandwidth caps)?  I can only imagine that power usage will go up precipitously, thereby reducing real-time battery-dependent use.

I was never a big fan of Lion, still don't see advantages over SL's tried and true OS and select ancillary services (like Box.net instead and Synk Pro or Chronosync instead of iCloud ), but the power situation in any case would have me give Lion a wide girth.  Why go to all that trouble just to be "modern"?

Nevertheless, I remain confident that 10.8 will be something much better.  It has to be, or serious questions will be raised regarding Apple's strategic direction and how it impacts Apple's customers, for better or worse.  Why not for better?  Is that so hard?