Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Hi,

I have a MacBook Air 2012 and did notice that the battery life dropped after installing ML.

It was in august.

I would like to try again to install ML but have the problems being solved ?

Did the 8th november update for 2012 notebooks do something ?

Thank you for your answers.

Alex.

MacBookPro6,2 (2010)

Mac OS X 10.8.2

I get to work, turn on my Mac, and by ~10AM the battery is dead. I can charge to full by noon, unplug, and be dead again by 2PM.

I'm not happy with battery life on it. 😟

I've cycled this battery many times (100% -> 0% -> 100%). Coconut Battery says I'm at 94% of my original battery capacity after 184 load cycles and 30 months of use.

NeonGerbil wrote:

MacBookPro6,2 (2010)

Mac OS X 10.8.2

snip

I've cycled this battery many times (100% -> 0% -> 100%). Coconut Battery says I'm at 94% of my original battery capacity after 184 load cycles and 30 months of use.

Cycling your battery to 0% is bad for it, never go below 20% unless there is no choice, and I do mean never, you may have already reduced the batterys performance.

NeonGerbil wrote:

MacBookPro6,2 (2010)

Mac OS X 10.8.2

I get to work, turn on my Mac, and by ~10AM the battery is dead. I can charge to full by noon, unplug, and be dead again by 2PM.

I'm not happy with battery life on it. 😟

I've cycled this battery many times (100% -> 0% -> 100%). Coconut Battery says I'm at 94% of my original battery capacity after 184 load cycles and 30 months of use.

How frustrating! Assuming you've reset the SMC?

The battery health (94%/184 cycles) is decent however. Csound1's advice is sound BTW. More here.

If an SMC reset doesn't do it and you don't want to go through a fresh install, I'd pay a visit to the Apple store or an authorized service provider.

Best of luck!

They gave me a new battery and a new iPod Nano, because they couldn't solve it. So.. i am back on Lion and earned a Nano.. ^^

alitaliano wrote:

Hi,

I have a MacBook Air 2012 and did notice that the battery life dropped after installing ML.

It was in august.

I would like to try again to install ML but have the problems being solved ?

Did the 8th november update for 2012 notebooks do something ?

Thank you for your answers.

Alex.

It's been fully resolved on my Late 2010 MacBook Air (after I conducted a fresh install of 10.8.2), but not for everyone.

After about a dozen cycles my battery life has continued to improve and is now just about where it was with Lion. Battery health is back to normal as well. It was a very painful slog though.

FWIW 10.8.3 betais being tested by developers now so there may be some hope that it will continue to address this. Not sure when it'll be released to the public though.

Can I get some data from fellow sufferers?

Do we see Hardware similarities?

From the Macbook:

About this Mac . More Info > System rRport:

Network > Wi-Fi

Interfaces:

EN1

Card Type: Airport Extreme 0x14e4. 0xe9

Firmware Version: Brdcom bcm43xx 1.0.5.106.98.100.14

The folks that are still having trouble may chime in but it's all been collected/posted previously. You'll have to go back through this thread to review setups, fixes, etc. otherwise.

hi,

After following this thread for quite sometime now, I don't know if still a good idea to upgrade to Mountain Lion as far a battery issue is concern, I'm still enjoying my 2010 Macbookpro 10.6.8 getting 8+ hours of battery time.

Same problem. Late 2010 Macbook Air. Was getting around 7 Hours of battery life. 2 days ago, "Upgraded" to Mountain Lion from snow leopard. Battery life was decimated to around 3.5 hours.

Took it to Genius Bar today. They said there is not problem at all. It is perfectly normal for battery life to drop that much after mountain lion as mountain lion uses more resources. They ran a diagnostic test which showed my battery life to be around 89% of original, so they said that battery also ok, no need to replace. Ah, and they also said that I am not eligible for a battery replacement, even though I am under apple care, as batteries are not covered under extended warranty.

I did not really buy thier answer, specially after having read through the problems faced by all other users. Thankfully managed to convince them to at least look into it. They did a clean reinstall of the software. That did not help. SMC did not help. After around 6 hours, they finally agreed to get me a new battery.

Unfortunately, the new battery did not help either. So I am stuck with low battery life (around 3.5-4 hours of usage). A clear drop of at least 2 hours. Only basic net surfing or excel usage. No youtube kind of stuff.

I just hope Apple sort this out. I hope that it is not a problem with the computer. I love it. But I love my battery life too. What do I do?

Can I just confirm that there are actually SOME people who are getting 7hours plus out of their laptops (specifically retina) under mountain lion? :)

HOW I REVERTED TO LION W/O DOING A CLEAN INSTALL

After several months of trying to get Mountain Lion to play nice with my 2011 MBP, I decided to revert back to Lion last night (using steps I will describe below). The main reason for returning to Lion is because I think that ML negatively affects Battery Health, which you'll still see is a key problem in other posts thought this site. I've already noticed a few improvements after returning to Lion.

If you're not on ML and on a MBP or MBA, I cannot recommend upgrading; at least not until Apple comes out with a release that explicitly says they have addressed the battery life / battery health issue. If you're on ML and want to revert to Lion, I was able to do it in a rather straight forward way. I did it as a straight upgrade and did not have to make a backup (although you probably should) nor did I have to reinstall my apps again.

Steps to revert from ML to Lion (perform at your own risk):

1. Watch the YouTube video that explains how to downgrade from ML to Lion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uveAyGlEK-U

1.1. Tell your computer that it is running an older version of OSX (10.7). (Note: Editing the file will require you to make a "duplicate" and then copy it into place.)

1.2 (Re)download Lion from the App Store.

1.3 Install Lion. (Note: You can (re)download Lion from the AppStore from ML, but it will not install if you haven't told your computer it is running 10.7 or older)

At this point, I thought Lion was installed properly. But I was unable to run certain System Preferences (e.g., Desktop Preferences) and I noticed that my Dock still looked like it did under ML. So, I was 99% there, but something wasn't right. After doing some research and some additional trial and error, I installed the 10.7.5 Lion Combo Pack, which took care of my remaining problem. Both the problem and the solution are described in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3816802?start=0&tstart=0.

A summary of the steps to correct the missing System Preferences – from the thread just given (perform at your own risk):

2. Download the Lion 10.7.5 Combo pack: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1582

3. Rename the iLifeMediaBrowser.Framework file (as described in the above thread)

4. Install the Combo pack.

For someone willing to do an experiment if you're having the preference problem, you can see if you can just install iLife Support - http://support.apple.com/downloads/iLife_Support_9_0_3 . (The URL says 9.0.3, but the file is 9.0.4.) I didn't try it, but it is a 67MB download and not a 2GB download.

Total time: about 8 hours; where almost all of that was time either downloading Lion (about 5GB) from the AppStore or downloading the Combo pack (about 2GB). There might be a way to do it faster and with fewer steps. But this worked for me and I didn't have to do a clean install in order to revert back.

Nickholl wrote:

Can I just confirm that there are actually SOME people who are getting 7hours plus out of their laptops (specifically retina) under mountain lion? :)

There are millions of them in the wild. If they weren't working properly we would certainly know about it. 😉

ScratchSF wrote:

HOW I REVERTED TO LION W/O DOING A CLEAN INSTALL

<snip>

I believe yours was one of the few (or only?) model that didn't receive an SMC firmware update along with ML. So you should be good to go.

Otherwise, "downgrading" to Lion won't change the SMC firmware and as many have posted earlier, it won't help if there are still battery life issues.

Best of luck!

Since my MBA is performing flawlessly now (after a painful slog and finally performing a fresh install of 10.8.2), I'm going to wish everyone well and unsubscribe for now.

I see that 10.8.3 beta is going out to the devs this weekend. Hopefully that and/or another SMC update will resolve this issue for any folks still stuffering. Hang in there and best of luck to all.

Cheers!