Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

apple have just called me and sent me an email questionnaire regarding the battery issue.

they are on the case!

i suggest we leave them to it till they issue a patch.

I am continung to work with Apple on this, variois logs sent to them at various stages. This is a tough one to crack because there's so many friggen patterns.

Last night, Apple had me create a new partition with another instance of Mountain Lion on it (I didn't realize this was SO easy). I installed NO software. Just a clean install.

Anyway, whether running in the NEW partition (with NOTHING running) or the original partition the battery life was the same. I tried rebooting both with the shift key at login in held down (no startups) and both was the same.

I then did a PRAM reset, no difference. Both were the same.

I then did an SMC reset and as expected, the battery life extended itself dramitically - in BOTH partitions.

Is the answer, an SMC reset every week I wonder? I wonder if the bug is, somehow, something in the software that is making the SMC reset necessary. SInce it effected the new partition in exactly the same way as the original one, it's obviously not the running programs that's the issue - ALTHOUGH - it could be one (or more) of the running programs that's causing it in the first place. The only way to ever find that out is to run a clean install for a week or two (heck, I'd get no work done so who has the time to do that!!)...

This is all highly strange.... highly.

I suggest we don't leave them to it. I use my computer for work and study, I'm on my computer MOST of the day. It is unacceptable that they promote one thing and I experience something else. My next move is to email TechCrunch Gizmodo etc...

g8production wrote:

[...]

19. I have tryed with a new blank installation of Lion (i have created another partitions, with FileVault disabled) but the battery drain persist.

[...]

Like the point 19 in my long post.

We can only wait for a solution, don't worry, it will arrive.

i thought i did something wrong here with this update. My MBP has been unplugged for an hour and i am at 78%. iPhoto keeps locking up, i cant just shut the computer to hibernate or i know it will die, takes forever to start up, and a few glitches here and there. Ive done all the recommended instructions and i am still in this boat. I hope apple calls me as well to square this away or ill downgrade back to 10.7. At least until they figure it out.

Rob

Epsiloni wrote:

I suggest we don't leave them to it. I use my computer for work and study, I'm on my computer MOST of the day. It is unacceptable that they promote one thing and I experience something else. My next move is to email TechCrunch Gizmodo etc...

we ALL use our computers every day and some of us use them ALL day.
whining about it to the likes of techcrunch is not helpfull to anyone, apple included.

what will it achieve?

do you think for one moment that apple are unaware of this issue or that they will leave us high and dry?

get real... apple is not microsoft!

Stevo_c - I totally agree *and* disagree. First, *now* at last, Apple are finally all over this, I agree going to TechCrunch etc., is not helpful.

Second, this problem has been around for some for a year since LION. The fact that some are just seeing this (and many of us worked with Apple back before and around Christmas time) and it went nowhere! We were told it was part of the new GPU or old programs etc., See this 176 page thread - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3194235 - We shall see, if Apple can get to the bottom of this, this time, before deciding if they are like Microsoft.

If the conclusion is Apples inability to support backwards compatibility of older legacy applications then indeed (something Microsoft has had to do for large enterprise users for 20+ years) maybe they are!

I don't care if they can't even fix it - I just need to know what's causing it, so I can delete the program, change my working ways or whatever. The more I read on "why" there's a need for SMC resets - (it looks like a catch all for many bugs they can't more readily address! (Like a Microsoft registry reset!).

Fingers crossed, we are getting closer.

I was contacted by Apple yesterday due to my post on this thread. Jerry was increadibly helpfull but was just gathering information for their engineers. He didn't actually fix anything but asked a BUNCH of detailed questions about the battery issue, apps used, background utilities, etc. My battery started saying it needed servicing & i took it into the genius bar because of the low battery. They told me it needed replaced and i suggested it was due to ML, which they denied, but after doing the PRAM, SMC reset and repairing the disk permissions the notification went away. On the phone with Apple they were EXTREMLY interested in that nugget of information & when they checked my logs said my battery was still quite healthy (despite being 3 years old). Like I said, they contacted me to get info to give to their engineers. Thus, I think they realize the issue and are working to find a solution. Be patient and hopefully a solution will be found. I NEVER load the new operating system immediately for this exact reason, I typically wait about a month or 2. Wishing I had done that. Oh well. On the flip side, resetting PRAM & SMC and repairing permissions did make the battery life increase, not by much & not what it was, but did help slightly. (15% decrease in an hour vs 30-33%). My brother in law said he allowed his computer to fully drain, then fully charge and said he isn't having the issue any more. I'm gonna try that next... & so we continue to seek the answers.

After the mountain lion update my early 2011 mbp get about an hour of batterylife and it gets to about 92 c even though im not using anthing demanding and activitycontrol says that one program is using no more than 5% cpu and the others are using 1-0% cpu. any ideas on what to do?

Wanted to add that although I'm enjoying decent battery life after shutting down SugarSync, DropBox & Mobile Mouse Server, etc. I told the fellow who called from Apple that in the process of seeing just how much time I really got out of my machine... the last time I was at about 5hrs which isn't too bad, but I also was showing 1:45min left. So, since it was late.. I shut the lid and went to sleep. When I woke it up in the AM, my machine showed only 45mins left. The Apple fellow said my MBP should not have used up that much power just sleeping.

I then launched AirPlay which almost instantly drained the battery down to about 6mins left (which isn't surprising) but I just wanted to add the bit about the battery draining significantly while it was merely sleeping.

Still watching this thread since I'm not 100% convinced that my own battery usage problems have been resolved. I also have a few days left to return this brand new MBP 13 i7, so I may just back up and return it. Then consider buying something after this all gets finally resolved.

I'm using a MBP Retina and noticed the dramatic drop in battery life after updating to Mountain Lion. After looking at my Activity Monitor, I noticed that Mail was taking over the CPU. As soon as I quit the app, the battery power issue resolved.

I'm also having the same issue.

I have a mid-2010 model 17" MBP, and prior to upgrading to Mountain Lion, my battery would last upwards of 7 or 8 hours. Now that I've upgraded, however, my battery life seems to be about half (~3.5 hours or so).

I noticed a big difference in battery life, especially after I enabled Power Nap both while on and off a power adaptor. It certainly makes sense there would be at least some decrease in battery life while Power Nap is enabled, but I noticed increased battery usage even while I was just using the computer normally.

First guess as plausible reasons (and variability) of the problem(s). Read this and if you can try the SMC reset.

I have done an SMC reset a number of times but for the first time, actually started to read some of the detail of what an SMC reset actually is!! http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

You could interpret, after reading this as a "catch all" of "bugs" or things going on, messing with the internal abilities of our Apple Macs to manage itself properly. Apple promote the SMC as a last resort really but many of us found - for a while at least, it can provide a serious increase in battery life. Some find the SMC reset a more permanent fix whilst others see it's a real-short term improvement.

So, on this basis, my plausibility theory is that something going on, with certian machines, with certain enviroments that's causing the system to screw itself up in a way Apple say we need the SMC reset at all. i.e. they don't know enough to catch the cause but here's a solution that minimizes the symptoms. Make sense? It'll explain why this is soooo hard to diagnose!

i.e. for some, not all, going from Snow Leopard *OR* Lion to Mountain Lion, or running some app, or some sequence throws ours sytems into one of these "faults". Creating this same condition *would* therefore be fair to conclude, it's throwing the same "faults" to require the same "SMC reset fix".

My latest reset of SMC has helped quite a bit, although the last 3 times I did this, my battery life crept down quite quickly after a few days. If this conclusion is correct, if I "stay" in my newly segrated Mountain Lion partition, after an SMC reset I probably won't see it get worse. However, if I go to my existing ML partition, I suspect something I do, is causing the problems creating the symptoms in the above link.

Anyone else up for trying the SMC reset a few times over the weekend?

In my case the battery drain looks to be strongly correlated to this issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4154209?start=0&tstart=0

Once I kill CalendarAgent, everything is back to normal. Of course, I have to constantly monitor for that process going out of control, and manually kill it. I can usually tell when it's going on, though, because the MacBook Air (2012 model) gets pretty hot. Would be easier to notice if I could also see Time Remaining in my menu bar ...