Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

bartlettpsj wrote:

Not sure if this is related, after disapointments with poor battery life on Macbook Air 13" with ML, swapped to Macbook pro 15" Retina now battery completely died -- after 3 months. Battery is reading 0%, will not charge, Condition: Replace Battery. 25 cycles!

Took it to the Apple shop Sunday after speaking to Apple support, who agreed the battery has failed. It is now Wednesday and still they have not replaced the battery. 3-4 days later!!

I called yesterday (Tuesday), as I have lots of work to get on with, and they said, don't hassle us, we'll call you when it's ready --- how long does it take to replace the battery.

When you find out how long it takes please post back, I've never had to replace one and am curious.

god this is ridiculous, now it won't even charge to 100% it'll get to 99 but not 100 and and i am literally watching it decrease one percent per minute

five minutes ago it said i had 3 hours and 55 minutes of battery left, now it says 2 hours 15 minutes (again i bought this thing in SEPTEMBER)

It's an estimate,

In the end I got it back Thursday evening - after 5 days --- and that was after hassling them and telling them I'll buy another same machine and return it within 14 days for my money back. But again, it's Christmas, so they seemed rather busy in the store. They told me on Thursday that "it will be looked at today". So basically I think it takes 30mins-1hr to replace and test, but 4.99 days to wait till someone looks at it.

Csound1 wrote:

bartlettpsj wrote:

Not sure if this is related, after disapointments with poor battery life on Macbook Air 13" with ML, swapped to Macbook pro 15" Retina now battery completely died -- after 3 months. Battery is reading 0%, will not charge, Condition: Replace Battery. 25 cycles!

Took it to the Apple shop Sunday after speaking to Apple support, who agreed the battery has failed. It is now Wednesday and still they have not replaced the battery. 3-4 days later!!

I called yesterday (Tuesday), as I have lots of work to get on with, and they said, don't hassle us, we'll call you when it's ready --- how long does it take to replace the battery.

When you find out how long it takes please post back, I've never had to replace one and am curious.

im tired of this issue, my battery health is dropping in mountain lion and even i replaced my new battery at genius bar.

my pervious battery turned to service battery with only 14x cycles in 15 months,

and my new battery which replaced last month is currently 93% of health with 14 cycles only..

I hope the 10.8.3 update fixes this.

I also just recently purchased a 15" MacBook Pro with Retina and have noticed my battery life diminish way to quickly and don't for the life of me understand why. I've tried all the tricks that this 198 page post has offered and it still drains quickly. For instance last night I closed the lid with 97% and woke up to 74% this morning. This is unexceptable and needs to be fixed ASAP!! I paid $3,000 for my new computer and hope that an obsessed Mac user like myself might get what I'm hoping for soon. A laptop that will last 6-7 hours as advertised. But I guess I can be a whipping boy a little bit longer in hopes that my new precious will receive some battery life love increase. From an obsessed Apple fanboy!!

Hey,

I do not really believe, that Apple will ever fix this problem and they are not working on it. There was no statement of Apple since months. I think they will ignore it, because there are enough people who do not have this problem or they do not know if they have it. A friend of mine has a new MBP and has 3-4 hours battery life, but when I told her, that this is not normal she said: Ah.. i only use it power adapter.. so that is no problem 😀 Great...

Apple will never fix this. Maybe battery life will increase in the next update, but not because Apple changed something.. only luck 🙂

Update:

I went to the Apple store again and the genius made a decision to send my computer to their "next level" repair center. They are going to do some more hardware/software related tests again to find out what the issue is. Apple keeps relying on what the test says rather than actually using the computer to see what the issue is. My MBP is passing all hardware tests and I know for a fact that this is NOT software related. Most of my friends have a 2010/2011 Macbook Pro and/or the Macbook Pro Retina with Mountain Lion installed and they are not experiencing what WE are all experiencing. So, on top of my short battery life and the hissing noise coming from the top left side of my MBP (when magsafe is connected), I experienced another problem....my battery wasn't charging all the way to a 100%. It stated that it was fully charged on 97%. Once again, Apple needs to actually test out the computer to see for themselves without running their hardware tests! I'm incredibly frustrated because I've been trying to fix this problem since ML 10.8.1 and I wont have my computer for a week or more. If you've read my other post, you would know that I've tried almost everything I could imagine (clean installed ML and Lion, reset SMC/PRAM, replaced battery, etc).

I will update everyone once they fix my computer...

By the way, I'm sorry If I haven't replied to some of you...I'm just really busy and I don't have enough time to troubleshoot or record data anymore.

I'm not so sure about that. Apple is very aware of battery life as factor in the user experience. That is why they've started to design their own A-processors for the iPad and iPhone for instance: others where too much power consuming in Apple's believe.

One thing I noticed I would like to mention, because I'm not sure everybody knows. When you use iPhoto for instance, my MacBook switches automatically from the Intel HD Graphics 4000 to the NVIDIA GeoForce GT 650M videocard which is far more power consuming. This also happens using Photoshop, Illustrator and probably a bunch of specific programs more. When you quit those programs, the videocard is automatically switched back.

So, if you let iPhoto run in the background the NVIDIA GeoForce GT is used constantly, even if you don't really use iPhoto etc. In my experiance, battery life decreases dramatically if you forget to quit those programs. Or, the other way around: it will increase if you quit those specific programs when they are not in use.

gfxCardStatus is a tiny tool for the menubar which give you insight in this behaviour: http://gfx.io I hope this info may help some of you if you weren't aware.

Hi, I am still facing the battery life issue. Apple replaced my battery a few weeks ago, and its capacity has already dropped to 94% in about 30 cycles, which is a bit alarming for me. I am managing to squeeze a maximum of 5 hours out of it on very light usage (even after the new battery), and with some heavy usage (say watching a movie) I have difficulty even getting 2.5 hours. I used to easily manage 7 hours before on normal usage.

I have tried all other solutions given on this board earlier, including wiping the hard disk clean, and reinstalling Mountain Lion, and keeping software installed on the hard drive to a minimum so as to ensure that there are no conflicts or no "untested" software. Still no luck.

I want to understand how the rest of the people who have had this problem reacted.

Are you just living with it?

Downgraded your software waiting for a fix?

Other than changing the battery, has apple tested anyone's circuitry as to whether there is some unknown conflict on 2010-2011 model laptop hardware components with Mountain Lion software?

I am going to the genius bar again today in an hour, and am planning to get them to downgrade me to the Lion till I see people on this discussion board say that they have seen a solution for this problem. Fingers crossed that I get my battery life back. The difference between 5 hours and 7 hours is a big deal for me. I dont care so much for the things that mountain lion may or may not do for my laptop. I dont like its eating my battery up.

Going to be a bit of a bummer given my desktop will be on mountain lion and air on lion.

Just an update: Went to the genius bar again today. They advised me that since my laptop initially came bundled with Snow Leopard, its gonna give me 7 hours with snow leopard. If I go to Lion I will get 6 hours, and if I go to Mountain lion I will get only 5 hours.

I told them that I really did not see this warning before upgrading to Mountain Lion, and I sure hoped that this indeed was not the case. The chap I dealt with was very friendly.. (he had the same machine as mine, and had upgraded too. He said that he had the same problem.. and is just living with it, as he wants the mountain lion features). I thought, well if a genius bar employee has to live with it, I guess I have no choice.

I am a bit fatigued with all of this too. So, as I had mentioned above, I have downgraded to Lion. First reading shows me battery life of around 7 hours 31 minutes on a full charge with internet on (as I type now). Better than I ever got with Moutnain Lion.

Dont count me on one of those ppl whose problem has been solved. Going to be a silent spectator till I read that there is a solution and that its safe to upgrade. Till then am gonna enjoy battery life the way apple hopefully intended me to. Cheers

I have visited two apple stores and a PC World with apple personal and both said they did not know of the problem. Cannot understand this as some here have had Apple Personal including myself contact them. I was informed to do a re install. This helped with the heating and for a short time the battery life. Now, I am back to 3 hours life and the life of the battery itself is downgraded.

Apple have known this problem and nothing has happened. May be an isolated problem. However, those who have had battery replacements seem to suffer once more.

Why should we have to go back one upgrade to sort out this. We have paid for the new software.

Come on Apple let us see you sort out this once and for all. Or suggest any way to help us.

I have tried all the suggest remedies except the downgrade. This I believe I should not have to do.

Should have mentioned I am in London at present

We can not assume that Apple is reading this thread. If you are having this issue, or any other issue, and want to provide Apple with feedback; do so at their feedback URL which is http://www.apple.com/feedback.