Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
rMBP charged overnight and I woke up at 7am and disconnected it, it is 9:30am and my battery is already at 34%. What ca I do? Only running Safari although a good portion of the morning was youtube videos. Still with some YT video playbacks here and there, should it drain this quickly?
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Flash (which is what Youtube requires) does use a lot of battery and drains is rather quickly.
You could go to 'Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor' and see which processes are using the most RAM and CPU power, as these are most likely the reason your battery is draining so quickly.
I also recommend keeping the brightness quite low and turning the keyboard backlighting completely off, to help save battery power.
If worst comes to worst, pop into an Apple Store and ask the Genius' the same question.
Hope this helps.
Howard,
Oh, goodness, no! Battery power should - in my opinion - be used almost exclusively for email and web-surfing (and text editing - Word - maybe). That's the only way you're going to get the advertised battery life!
Glad for the clarification...
Clinton
Thanks all for the input. I of course need to test in the next few days, with all the suggestions, and see what I get out of this new beauty.
I am noticing however, now a full week after getting the machine, that the battery life is improving. It is not great but better. I have followed some of the suggestions for battery life improvement, like brightness at 50% or less etc, but I will not limit my use or diminish my user experience just to save battery as it would defeat the purpose of such a great machine.
It was helpful to learn how Apple tests the machines to come up with the suggested battery life on specs.
I never intend to use it for heavy design work on battery, when I am designing it's usually hooked to the power cord and to a monitor anyway. So like some of you point out, I mostly use it on battery for small tasks (email, web browsing, Facebook, Twitter etc).
Will post test results in a week or so when I have more to add. Thanks.
also guys make sure you power cycle the macbook before the first use. There are instructions on the apple website that teaches you how to do it, when to do it and how often to do it. It mite help prolong the battery.
Thanks - I tried this and it helped me. Previously battery indicator said I would get 2-3 hours, now between 5-6 hours when browsing and using Mail.
The battery on the Retina is a real disaster especially in compariosn with my good old Macbook Pro 17" which battery still lasts 4 hours plus after almost three years. I am unable to get more than even two hours of battery life out of the sucker.
Nobody dimms the screen to 50%. By the way I am just checking email, I am on the web and I am using daylite from marketcircle. The only thing I can imagine is that flash is using up the battery. I will try to install click to flash and have a look. But in comparison with the old Macbook Pro the batterylife is unacceptable
DeMinister wrote:
Nobody dimms the screen to 50%
For battery use, I dim my screen to four bars - well below 50%. And I get 7+ hours on battery.
Give it a shot. Also use Activity Monitor to see if you have anything consuming more than 10-13% of your CPU.
Clinton
I have never used on any of my 3 MacBook Pros the display at more than 50%.
That is just too bright and annoying to the eyes. 😎
DC
Oh - I get you now - and I agree. I get that 'blinded by the light' syndrome if I go too far. At night, I keep it pretty low anyway. Sometimes, during the day, I'll bump it up to about 50% (for doing color corrections and the like, my color calibrator has me select a 'paper white' and that's about mid-way for me).
Sorry, I misunderstood!
Clinton
I visited the local Applestore and it worked out that my battery was faulty. I received a brandnew machine, so I hope that the issue is settled. Thanks for your input.
Terrific! I love to hear of good Apple service experiences... around here we only hear about the sorry outcomes, it seems. I've never had a problem in my 27+ years of using Apple products, I've become accustomed to top-notch service and it seems that you received the same.
Great - just great...
Clinton
I think I am going to go to the Store.. My battery (After all the suggestions here) show only 3.5 hours life.
Only shows 3.5 hrs or you tested and it gave you only 3.5? Because what it shows may effect by a lot of things. Mine says 4.5 and when I lower the brightness to 5 bars it says 9:30!
So at least test it for once and see how much it gives you.
Best luck.
Yes.. I tested.. it is actually more like 3 hours... Even with brightness at 40%. However, last night I was at a local iOS develoeprs group and did some more work, and discovered that Carbonite had become a runaway background task. Killing that I was able to get closer to 7 hours..
I bought a new Macbook Pro (Retina) and unpacked - and straight away updated to mountain lion. As was expected the battery life came down to 2.5-3 hours. I do not know what the battery life would have been under lion as I never gave it time to run. I had updated the OS as soon as I opened the macbook. I really lost heart seing this less battery and then I waited first for the MOuntain lion update to come - and then for some solution to come online. Unfortunately the Mountain lion update did not help at all. Then I opened the system monitor and started seeing the CPU consumption of different Apps. I saw that WunderList (recently updated) used 100% of one core. I prompltly killed the thread, then used GfxCardStatus to switch the graphics card to integrated while on battery. It seems to have done the trick. The battery is showing 6:57 min.
Here is what I have done. So it seems that the rogue apps along with the card switching on to Discrete is part of the problem. Will wait for a proper update to sort out these issues.
Macbook Pro retina battery drained in less than 3 hours
