Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

you suggested I wait for another 8 charge cycles before i get an accurate reading :-). Well Ill obviousy wait and see what happens. At the end of the day- if the battery last longer, then Im happy no matter what the estimate gives me. Ill give it till Tuesday to make its mind up ;-)

Hello,

I confirm what is said by Richadams above : It takes some times to obtain accurate data, as if the system is learning ;-)

This morning, for example, after one night charge, when I disconnect, I got 7h29. But some days ago, it happened I had only 4h in the same scenario.

So, be patient !

Cheers

Jean-Marc.

:-) im trying to be patient - honest 🙂

The inaccuracies are only with the estimates though arent they? The length of the battery usage shouldnt fluctuate. Ill see what I get out of it today

Hello.. it is me again!

Few days ago I wrote that I sent to 4 Capture Datas to Apple. 2 CD with Lion at 100% battery and one after half an hour. Same with ML. In the CD you can clearly see, that ML has 4-5 hours, Lion 8 hours. On thursday I called Apple again, because they want to contact me on TUESDAY.. nothing happend. So I called Apple and got a new technician on the phone. Again.. She looked in her system and saw the result of the 4 CDs and the ONLY thing she could told me: Your battery is well.. lol.. I said, that my battery was 2 weeks ago at 92% now it is 80% and I told her, that another service technician told me, that I will get a new battery, but she said now. Because 80% is absolutly okay.. and the drain in 2 weeks could happen.. lol..

This story is now about 2 months and I don't know what to do. I am not far to sell my MBP and buy another notebook.. can't accept that and Apple is not interrested in the problem, I think. My last try will be, that I say, that I want to have a new MBP or MBA and I will pay the difference, but I dont think that it will work...

Hi Richsadams

Another question if I may 🙂

If my battery life HAS improved after this fresh install (and the jurys still out on that) My next question is how to best get all my content back onto my machine. Im guessing that if I do a total migration of my timemachine backup then the battery problem will come back again, but I was wondering if by only migrating apps and files accross it would negate any issue? What do you think?

I guess the only way to find out is to try. Its' just that its SO easy to do time machine migrations - but I think its going to be a pain in the behind to try and transfer everything individually

thanks again for your feedback

Nickholl wrote:

Hi Richsadams

Another question if I may 🙂

If my battery life HAS improved after this fresh install (and the jurys still out on that) My next question is how to best get all my content back onto my machine. Im guessing that if I do a total migration of my timemachine backup then the battery problem will come back again, but I was wondering if by only migrating apps and files accross it would negate any issue? What do you think?

I guess the only way to find out is to try. Its' just that its SO easy to do time machine migrations - but I think its going to be a pain in the behind to try and transfer everything individually

thanks again for your feedback

There are a number of ways to restore files and apps. Like you said, there's no way to know if using a full Time Machine restoration would cause the battery issue to return without actually doing it.

I outlined how to manually restore folders and files from Time Machine including a link to written instructions earlier:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135250?answerId=20128676022#20128676022

Also, here's a little video tutorial:

http://youtu.be/akwS-tVqUus

So if you don't mind performing a fresh install if things go south again my advice would be to go ahead and do a full Time Machine restoration. That will keep all of your preferences, etc. intact. Afterward I'd run File Permissions Repair (and more here) just to be sure things are as they should be. But if you're willing to take a little more time you could restore individual files and folders manually.

Hope that helps!

hi to all, anyone here knows how to contact apple service singapore? i just want to know the status of my mac i send my mbp last weds here in apple service center in my place (Macau,China) then i call them to check if theres any progress but the lady told me that the battery didn't arrive yet it will come from singapore =( is it really take too long for that? they even took my mbp for just nothing they dont do anything until they have the new battery on hand i told them to order first the battery then just call me if it's arrive before they take my mbp and she said cannot they need to get my mbp... I'm frustrated i miss my mbp so bad =(

There's an old saying..."Absence makes the heart grow fonder." I'm certain that applies to MacBooks. 😉

Here's a link to Apple Support...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57

I doubt you'll have much luck tracking down your battery though.

There's another old expression..."The squeaky wheel gets the grease", meaning that the thing that makes the most noise gets the most attention. I'd call the actual people you sent it to daily and kindly remind them that you're waiting.

The reason they needed your MacBook was to get the exact battery part number. Not all MacBooks use the same battery of course and Apple has even "updated" batteries mid-production, so they need to be sure they get the right one.

Hang in there!

I checked the battery time by the clock and it reached 6,50h, always using internet connection, browsing, downloading files. I guess it's reasonable, but inferior to Lion. What do you think?

I have been following this discussion for a while and decided to post my concerns, regarding MPB battery life.

• MPB 13" 2.50ghz, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2
• 2 weeks of usage

My battery does not reach 7hrs of battery life when fully charged as advertised. Yesterday I turned Wi-Fi off, closed all open applications and reduced display brightness to the lowest level, even then It was not showing the right amount of battery duration (7hrs).

Any recommendations?

pedrogarcia wrote:

I checked the battery time by the clock and it reached 6,50h, always using internet connection, browsing, downloading files. I guess it's reasonable, but inferior to Lion. What do you think?

FWIW I've had the same experience. With Lion I would get about 15% longer battery life than with ML. However Lion's battery life on my MBA was a good 20% over Apple's spec. So with ML I still get about 5% over their spec.

I think it's pretty clear that Mountain Lion uses more resources than Lion. I guess I was spoiled with having more battery life than Apple had advertised for a time. Now that it's still above spec I guess I can't complain.

So for an MBA that's going on two years old I'm happy with how things turned out but it was certainly a very rocky and frustrating road to get there!

Mac4Life2012 wrote:

I have been following this discussion for a while and decided to post my concerns, regarding MPB battery life.

• MPB 13" 2.50ghz, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2
• 2 weeks of usage

My battery does not reach 7hrs of battery life when fully charged as advertised. Yesterday I turned Wi-Fi off, closed all open applications and reduced display brightness to the lowest level, even then It was not showing the right amount of battery duration (7hrs).

Any recommendations?

You didn't say how old your MacBook is, what the battery life shows after charging or how many cycles are on your battery...or if you're certain that it was hitting 7 hours on a full charge previously. If it's showing 100% at 4 hours at 2 cycles, then there's certainly a problem. If it's 6.5 hours at 150 cycles, probably not IMHO. Keep in mind that all of the readings are estimates. Your actual usage will determine how long a charge will last. See notes above regarding a slight decline between Lion and Mountain Lion's battery life as well.

You could try resetting the SMC to be sure everything is as it should be.

That said it sounds like you installed Mountain Lion two weeks ago. If so I'd give it some more time to stabilize...at least another 3 to 5 charge cycles. If in another 30 to 45 days it still won't hit 7 hours @ a full 100% charge, then I'd probably head back to Apple to have them run some diagnostics. But again, those specs are for new Mac's. I wouldn't expect one a couple of years old to perform exactly the same.

It's easy to get obsessive about the battery life. Rather than staring at it repeatedly, you could install MiniBattery Logger, a nice litte app to track it for you (and compare you MacBook's battery life to other's)...

http://www.emeraldion.it/software/macosx/minibatterylogger.html

BTW, don't leave it plugged in unless you need to charge it and try to avoid charging it until it's under 40% or so. Also (if possible) when you charge it try leaving it plugged in for another two hours after the LED on the MagSafe connector has turned green. That will ensure a completely full-charge.

If you follow these guidelines you should be fine...

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

Hope that helps, best of luck and enjoy your new MacBook!

apple service just contacted me a while ago and she said that the battery will not arrive this week she said i need to wait until next week and i cannot wait for until next week because next week was my flight... why the service of apple is like this very slow... when i have the same problem with my battery for my asus laptop before they change for only 5days i was so dissappointed with apple ... apple product is expensive but the services are poor T_T i really wanted to cry...

i will just go there later to get back my mbp and maybe return before my first warranty ends... =(

Me again..

Apple told me to let run a power consump. logfile. For this i need 2 fresh installs of ML and one of Lion. I did and this install of ML has 7 hours battery time.. lol.. I installed ML 10 times exactly THIS way and I had 2-3 hours and now 7.. What the ****? That can't be! I don't believe in this.. don't understand what has changed, but okay.. we will see, maybe it is 2-3 hours tomorrow.. i will check it.

This is ridiculous. i bought a brand new 13" macbook air 3 months ago and ever since upgrading it to ML i get about 3 hours of battery life. ive done a fresh install and SMC reset, and now the apple customer service people are just ignoring me. I loved apple up until this point. i did not spend 1300 dollars for a computer that gets less than HALF of the advertised battery life. ALL IM DOING IS BROWSING THE INTERNET. ridiculous. i am already talking to a family lawyer about a possibility of lawsuit if they do not fix this or at least let me refund my mac. cant believe i am saying this but i might go back to PC because of this stupid battery problem and especially because of the way apple is handling it #bringstevejobsback