MacBook Pro Retina Battery Time Left

I think you guys that are mentioning hovering over this or download that are missing the point of the post. The purpose of the post is that we want the OPTION to have the time diplayed AS BEFORE. We don't want to hover over anything, we don't want to click on anything, we don't want to download anything!!!! WE WANT TO GLANCE AND SEE THE REMAINING BATTERY IN TIME!!!!!

Sorry to be so forceful, but people have a tendency to be so passive that they are willing to allow these changes to occur and not speak their mind and then take the discussion off topic.

The problem is not limited to MacBook Pro Retina. The new MacBook Air that I've just bought also doesn't give me the option to display the remaining battery in time in the menu bar.

I purchased two new 13" MBAs as soon as they were announced. One of them had a manufacturing defect so I returned it for a new one. Oddly, both of the old (and by old, I mean purchased 2 weeks ago) MBAs had the option for time remaining. The newer one that I got this past week, however, does not. I have two theoretically identical MBAs (13"/i7/256GB/8GB) sitting right next to each other, and one lets me see the time remaining in the menu bar while the other does not.

I totally agree. Even though we know the "time remaining" is inaccurate, it tells us the RATE at which the battery is draining. A 4 hour time remaining on a relatively full battery probably means the video card is powered on and an indicator for me to figure out what's draining all that power.

Even if apple wants to shy people away from staring at the time remaining on the battery, it should NOT be removed from the OS completely. An hidden option key should be implemented to revert the ability of this option.

I use this feature to know if there is a process running that is reducing my battery life. The actual time is not that relevant to me, as it is so highly dependent on what the machine is doing. If it drops from 6 hours down to 2 though, I know somehting is up and can remedy it.

Try downloading "Battery Health" from the App Store - it's free and will give you all the info you need with one click.

Good luck,

Clinton

Again, that isn't really all that helpful. Having the previous option was very useful for the above stated reasons and the motivation for removing it is unclear. Possibly it has something to do with the new battery types?

Pulseone: I would be curious to see if checking the system profile under battery displays the same information for both MacBook Airs.

use SlimBatteryMonitor. Free and works

http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/downloads.html

Thanks Oliver, but like Clinton, a third party solution doesn't really address the issue.

I am curious to see if it's a limitation of the SMC though.

It is clearly a software issue. The Time Remaining is displayed when you click on the battery icon to pull up the menu. It just seems like Apple disabled the Time Remaining feature from being displayed on the bar.

The battery time left is a big hit and miss. I discharged the battery once yesterday and it showed 14 hours left, then 11, then 9 then 4 back up to 11, then 8, etc. This is on Lion.

This polling obviously happens at a rather short interval which makes it very meaningless.

I've always found the time remaining to be quite helpful. If you're not changing power situations a lot, it gives you a very accurate time remaining. Much more helpful than percentage. Also gives you a better idea of when your power draw changes suddenly (like opening firefox).

Bummer that it appears to be missing.

Hi,

I booted up my Retina Mac's HDD on a 2011 MacBook Pro 17" via thunderbolt target disk mode and found the option to be there. Selected it, booted it up on the Retina and found the option to be missing again. I'm assuming there's something in the Battery.menu file that disables this if a Retina system is detected.

Hey evilZardoz, good info! So it looks like Apple is screwing those of us with the Retina Display. Does anyone know where this battery.menu file is located?

I loaded my profile from my MBA before the Ivy Bridge updates and the time view is not available on the display.

I noticed a post about finding the file to enable the option. Good Idea.

Mark