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Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

I upgraded to mountail Lion and now my battery life is about half of what it was before upgrading. Shouldn't the update improve battery life? Also, what can I do about this?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 25, 2012 8:39 AM

Reply
3,397 replies

Aug 4, 2012 7:12 AM in response to jpengland96

Hopefully Apple is investigating this issue with battery life. I'm running a 2012 - 15" MacBook Pro, 256 Apple SSD and 8GB Apple RAM with high res (non retina) display. Battery drains really fast and I'm mostly running it on mid level brightness and just surfing the web (not even Hulu or YouTube). Checked Activity Monitor and no runaway CPU eating processes. Another bug I found is that when I have ramped up opening up iPhoto, iTunes, Word, and a few other applications, my MBPRO isn't releasing that RAM. It's holding on to it so I'm having to use the purge command to free it up sometimes. Apple, hope you're reading and look forward to the updates!

Aug 4, 2012 7:20 AM in response to mamadeellis

Same problem here, on battery, less than two hours and down to 35% remaining.


Wish it was the only problem with this MBA 2011/refurbished. (Apples sez about Refurbs that they're as good as new.) This MBA 13" freezes in irregular intervals, can be several times a day, can be after a couple days ok behavior. AppleCare senior tech has walked me thru this and that (Permission repaired, disk ditto, SMC reset). No improvement. And then it eats battery, now that it runs under ML.

... oh, and, yes, firmware updated (SMC Version (system): 1.73f65).

Aug 4, 2012 7:38 AM in response to RenGR

partially replying just to watch this thread. i'm not positive if i'm experiencing the same issue. i've lost about 8% battery life in the last 25 minutes with ONLY google chrome, one tab open.


i left my computer (early 2011, 13" mbp with SSD and HDD (in superdrive location) unplugged, with the lid closed overnight and it lost 6% battery.


i don't recall lion using this much of my battery, but it could just be mental after reading all these horror story posts.

Aug 4, 2012 8:25 AM in response to David A. Gatwood

Early 2011 MBP and Cycle Count is 398. They have been falsely inflated since the beginning. We have another 5 year old white MacBook in the house that has a 244 cycle count. It is used constantly as mine is.


I did make a Genius Bar appt because I think my battery must be bad.


Battery Information:


Model Information:


Manufacturer: SMP

Device Name: bq20z451

Pack Lot Code: 0

PCB Lot Code: 0

Firmware Version: 201

Hardware Revision: 000a

Cell Revision: 158

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 3892

Fully Charged: Yes

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3892

Health Information:

Cycle Count: 398

Condition: Service Battery

Battery Installed: Yes

Amperage (mA): 230

Voltage (mV): 12340

Aug 4, 2012 8:42 AM in response to steelerfox

Same here, 98% is max.


Doing nothing on the MBA, you may observe the display like a countdown, loosing 1% every 90 seconds, without doing anything.


I did all the Mac Voodoo (Reset SMC .....) nothing helps. I thought, that just the calculation is failing, because it doesn't become warmer than normal and there no processes shown in activitymonitor that could cause that.


The book shuts down when the battery is running empty, but that may be based on the calculation of battery status, too.


Model MBA, Late 2010, 11'', 2 Gb, 128 GB; Battery max 4418 mAh, battery status ok

Aug 4, 2012 9:10 AM in response to Ithamar

Ithamar, does your battery condition say to "Service Battery" ?


Here are the battery conditions from the Help section on Apple:


The battery condition tells you whether your battery is functioning normally and approximately how much charge it can hold.


Here are the possible conditions:


Normal: The battery is functioning normally.


Replace Soon: The battery is functioning normally but holds less charge than it did when it was new.


Replace Now: The battery is functioning normally but holds significantly less charge than it did when it was new. You can continue to use the battery until you replace it without harming your computer.


Service Battery: The battery isn’t functioning normally, and you may or may not notice a change in its behavior or the amount of charge it holds. Take your computer in for service. You can continue to use your battery before it’s checked without harming your computer.


Message was edited by: gkygrl - Macbook Pro, early 2011 2.3 GHZ Intel Core i5

Aug 4, 2012 9:29 AM in response to gkygrl

good post but honestly i don't think there is any issue with the battery, because of the amount of people complaining, i hope apple fixes this because, they claim that mbp get 7 hours on safari, and currently im on safari and im only getting 3 hours, and my mbp is over heating. this is a major issue , because apple is claiming false statements about there products


sorry for bad writing...

Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

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