Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

The fix will come just as soon as the battery based on live organisms is in production.

Edit: in form of a new iPhone and MacBook

Apparently MacBook's aren't the only victims of new changes. The new iPhone 4S is making headlines as a battery killer.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-01/iphone-4s-battery-life/510287 30/1

Hello,

Well that update helping was a pipe dream, it's back to the 2 hour range fully charged.

Joe

>>Did you install this :  http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1450

>>I did and the the fully charged meter went from 2.5 hours to 3.5 hours on my 1 month old 17" Macbook Pro.

I'm quite annoyed, I got it and it said the average was around 6 hours, and 10 hours most. now I get around 1 hour 30 minutes. :/

I'm happy to report that a fresh install of Lion is working like new. Voltage is back down, temps and fans down too. Batter life is back to normal as well  My theory is that doing an "over the top" install, or update, is bad. Something at the kernel level got corrupt. Anyhow, do backup, time machine or otherwise, partition the system drive, install fresh, reload from the backup. I'll let y'all know if the dream is shattered, but for now I'm back!

rgnabisco, curious to hear updates on if the normal battery life is continuing for you post reinstall.  Keep us posted.

update:  so i'm back in biz, the migration assistant worked fine, but something is still different. a clean install of Lion was running cold at like 46 degrees C and showing 0.73 Volts on the low side to the CPU. loading it up with apps like seti at home would of course bring those numbers up, but quitting the apps would bring them back down. after using the migration assistant, I'm still running considerably cooler than with the over the top install (upgrade), but not as cool as the freshie (install on freshly partitioned HDD). Now I'm sitting at 1.08 Volts and 64 degrees C when running the basic work day apps. This is fine because the fans aren't running above idle and battery life is acceptable at about 3 hours (the same, if not a little better than SL).

But I have to ask the question, what happened to 46 degrees C at 0.73 Volts I was seeing with the fresh install? Why won't the volts drop below 1.07 now? Like I said, i'm at an acceptable state for the time being, but it's this question that's going to make me do a clean install and rebuild/install all my apps from the ground up (instead of using migration assistant). My theory is that something, even at the user and/or system level is preventing the kernel from being able to drop the volts, or keeping it too busy to drop the volts. Even if I'm wrong and after a ground up rebuild I'm still right where I'm at now, it will be an opportunity to purge apps and archive data. I really don't know the last time I did that. I think it's when I installed leopard. I'm pretty sure I was fine with migration assistant from L to SL. If I'm right, I could have Leopard native, or possibly early apps bugging things up. Anyway, that's getting a bit off track....

I also created another test login account to see if the problem was only brought over with my previous user account. While the system runs much leaner under the test login account, it still can't get below 1.07 Volts. By leaner I mean, there are only about 20 or so visible processes running in activity monitor, and the system only uses 1-2% of the CPU at idle. This tells me if the problem is not in the kernel, which I don't think it is, then it's not in my user account either. It's somewhere buried somewhere between the kernel level and the user level. Probably some app installed system wide that launches at startup.

So, my theory is that something is buried deep within the system that is running and preventing the OS from being able to operate below 1.07 volts. What ever it is doesn't show up in activity monitor, and with almost 100 processes running in the background, it's easier to rebuild than to try to identify the culprit (at least for me it is). The answer to the battery issue lies at the core of the voltage issue I'm chasing. From my view point, if I'm right anyways, it's quite simple: the more volts the processor(s) are consuming, the faster the battery gets sucked dry. Couple that with the fact that more volts = elevated temperatures = higher fan rpms = even more battery drain. I feel a little guilty because I was slamming apple's powermanagement, saying it was poorly designed. Now I do not think that is the issue. While I am an admirer of apple, they are not without faults. I think think that a download-only option for a major OS upgrade was ill conceived. I've been installing OS's since OS 9 and the rule of thumb was to always install fresh. I admit, I got lazy, and I almost paid the price. Whether intentional or not, I'm pleased they made it so easy to make a bootable disk from the download. I caution apple in their new strategy in encouraging the masses to do on over the top install (upgrade) of an OS, which seems to be creating all kinds of wacky problems. Then again, users will probably just get frustrated with their hot machines and just buy new ones. And since most are so in love with apple (i count myself as one of them), they'll probably buy new apples. And then apple says to me, "where's the problem?" :-)

Again, I got off track there a bit. It will be a while before I can set asside the time to do a full system and app rebuild and configuration. For the time I'm at a manageable state - much cooler and far more battery life utilizing migration assistant with a fresh install, instead of the over the top upgrade. Of course there's no garauntee that building from the ground up will solve my problem. But I'm hopeful and encouraged that I'm correct about this. I'll post back with an update when I can do the build.

UPDATE - already. So get this, as soon as I unplug the voltage drops to 0.77, and stays less than 0.9. Turns out, it's not even the power adapter doing it. it's Firewire devices that are causing the voltage jump. I've got an external sound card D/A converter, and a couple of HDDs. But here's the rub, they weren't causing the spike under the clean Lion install. It only happened after migration assistent brought over my account from a time machine backup. So randomly, I've stumbled upon the culprit. There's some little driver for FW devices that I've "collected" along the way that is causing my issue. The good news in terms of battery life, which is what this thread is about, is that unplugged my voltage is as low as ever (0.7 to 0.8 V) and the battery is up to 3.5 hours (better than under 10.6 SL).

As a test, I just completed a clean install of Lion on my MBP using cmd R and downloading the complete latest version.  No migration of users, files or anything.  I was getting something like 1.5 to 2hrs typical use prior to doing this. Now, as I work in Safari typing this, the monitor is reporting just over 6hrs use!!  I have been monitoring actual use so I will do this same and report back.  If this holds true, those who downloaded the original Lion release and then patched it may benefit from a clean download and install from Apple?

lesliefromstockton-on-tees wrote:

 

If this holds true, those who downloaded the original Lion release and then patched it may benefit from a clean download and install from Apple?

Since there are users experiencing battery drain with a fresh Lion install on laptops originally shipped with Lion I don't think the problem resides there.

Moreover there are users that started to experience this problem since patching SL to 10.6.6.

Finally at Apple are admitting that there is a problem with battery drain for iOS devices with iOS 5, which makes me think that soon they'll start a serious investigation on MacOs too.

Cross your fingers, touch wood and twist your seat.

I for one, with a brand new LION installed MAC had these issues BUT I did do a Migrate so what I've been readining about a clean install seems, whilst painful, a good place to start.

This Apple problem is sounding more and more like my days with Microsoft technology every day. i.e. support the "legacy" stuff was the hardest part for MS so my guess is Apple is going to have these issues.

What annoys us all more is Apples silence. I can reproduce the problem from 6 hours to 3 hours with the launching of 1 app. Now Apple, that is not hard to diagnose.

I too believe it's firmware / software related! SInce after you fiddle for a bit, carefully you get 6-8 hours until something fires up (God knows what) and we are back to 3 1/2 hrs again).

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

I for one, with a brand new LION installed MAC had these issues BUT I did do a Migrate so what I've been readining about a clean install seems, whilst painful, a good place to start.

 

This Apple problem is sounding more and more like my days with Microsoft technology every day. i.e. support the "legacy" stuff was the hardest part for MS so my guess is Apple is going to have these issues.

What annoys us all more is Apples silence. I can reproduce the problem from 6 hours to 3 hours with the launching of 1 app. Now Apple, that is not hard to diagnose.

 

I too believe it's firmware / software related! SInce after you fiddle for a bit, carefully you get 6-8 hours until something fires up (God knows what) and we are back to 3 1/2 hrs again).

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

I for one, with a brand new LION installed MAC had these issues BUT I did do a Migrate so what I've been readining about a clean install seems, whilst painful, a good place to start.

 

This Apple problem is sounding more and more like my days with Microsoft technology every day. i.e. support the "legacy" stuff was the hardest part for MS so my guess is Apple is going to have these issues.

What annoys us all more is Apples silence. I can reproduce the problem from 6 hours to 3 hours with the launching of 1 app. Now Apple, that is not hard to diagnose.

 

I too believe it's firmware / software related! SInce after you fiddle for a bit, carefully you get 6-8 hours until something fires up (God knows what) and we are back to 3 1/2 hrs again).

Sorry my edit to last reply never went trough.

Franc I did a fresh install of Lion originally on my MBPro 15" early 2011. I never used migration assistant (don't like it) but rather I copied all need files and also re-installed applications fro scratch.

That is the situatiuon in with I'm experiencing the battery drain issue. No flash installed, maill.app opened and minimized, Safari to surf the web on a wifi connection, screen lumonisoty dimmed to 50%.

I can get 4 to 5 hours of battery life. The laptop always uses the integrated GPU, as stated by both gfxCardStatus and system information.

Therefore, in my experience and opinion, doing again a fresh install of Lion will only lead me to the actual situation again.

However I might try a downgrade to the SL version that was originally shipping with the laptop, which is also a fallback to system binaries coming out from Apple, thus "secure ones" (they are on a phisical support).

The problem is that I've done those two firmware updates released in these past months, and I don't know if I can get back to the original ones (the battery issue might be related to those too).

This operation will make more sense to me, cause it would be a real "fresh" starting point.

BTW I don't think consumers are the ones deputated to do this sort of diagnosis, I'd rather wait that people who are paid to fix it will find and fix the issue, as they're doing for iOS 5 devices (developers who are beta testing iOS 5.01 are stating that the battery drain is fixed).

@Rayced

Can you tell us what you launch at login?

You can determine this in Settings>Users and Groups, select your account and then click on the 'Login Items' button

@lesliefromstockton-on-tees

Did you reinstall Sophos?