Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Sorry, it's just were emotions )

Update:

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Well, I've been on 10.8.3 for a little while now and it seems to be behaving well on my 2011 MBP. I have observed one interesting thing - that is different between Lion and ML. On Lion, if the machine went to sleep or if I closed the lid, when I started things up again, the battery usage would be at the same level. However, on ML, I noticed that upon starting things again, the battery level has dropped a bit. So, in the short term, I've just set my power setting (when it is plugged in) to never go to sleep. No drop (well, at least if I don't close the lid).

Also, I've noticed that when the power drops during sleep mode (e.g., if the lid is closed or because it went to sleep), the power capacity would drop far greater than if I don't let it fall asleep. I don't know what is going on here, but it does suggest that there is still something going on with the power management / sleep management module in ML. Again, this behavior didn't occur with Lion and I don't have PowerNap.

Lastly, in terms of performance, I'm getting about 6 hours - while sitting in a cafe on the Internet working in MS Word and listening to Pandora in Chrome. OK. I don't know if I really will get 6 hours as I haven't let the battery run down fully. But it started at 6 hours, I've been here 3 and it's tell me I have 3:17 left.

I know some people are still having issues. In some of those cases, it might be due to a battery with diminished capacity. Or, it could be something with ML. I do recommend a SMC and PRAM reset. I've also cleaned out all of the system caches using OnyX. Not sure if that will help everyone, but 10.8.3 seems to be working for me now - where the previous versions did not.

Good luck to all!

I agree, 10.8.3 and helps this Dec 11' 17" custom mod. I'm impressed with the length of time I can use the laptop, as long as no background functions are running. I also have to use "DiskDoctor" (or whatever the name of the app is) to erase the application cache, as I use CS6 Master Suite in full, Adobe keeps a large volume of cache which, in my experience, runs down the battery and slows down my laptop's performance.

I like 10.8.3, thus far.

Emptying the caches slows your machine down while the app(s) have to keep rebuilding them, don't do it.

Csound's concerns make sense.

If you're confident this IS a source of battery drain, perhaps adjusting cache size higher or lower may be a more precise diagnostic step to take?

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e410010 31ab64-7363a.html

If you get a more refined confirmation, it'd be interesting to hear it.

We had a second incident of battery drain, network related:

A user's network logon script called for checking in with a security server regularly.

The laptop kept trying to reach this security server even when the laptop was off campus where it could not get through the campus firewall.

Network Admins are working on gettign the server entry removed from DNS.

Failing that, they can adjust the firewall to allow these "check in"s.

This was found by identifying a CPU process that had multiplied and was taxing the processor, but only when the user was off-campus.

This serves us as a reminder to us to check "Activity Monitor" utility, All Processes, regardless of OS being run.

Oh. That's why they launch slower than usual. Thanks. But d*mn, inefficient battery. Using the iMac 27 is only when I'm ready to go into production so I keep these separatated. I have not updated the 27 to 10.8.3 yet as I thought 8.3 was causing track-pad issues. I figured out that the track-pad issue was related to a newly aquired Livescribe Sky Pen, off topic but that's why only one mac is upgraded. In any case, thanks for that and now i have to figure out different measures for better battery performance.

That's great advice.

Does the same go with Memory cleaners ?

Message was edited by: VoilaMagic to change a mistyped word.

I'll dig into this. Thank you very much. bookmarking this page now.

VoilaMagic wrote:

Does the same go with Memory cleaners ?

Yes.

well good grief. This macbook pro is maxed out with performance enhancement customizations ordered from Apple. If the memory and the space does not cause the lag-(and crash) issue, then what? I also get a ton of crashes, when I say a ton, I mean, Dreamweaver or Premiere Pro, for instance, working right along, Saving right along too, All of the sudden, boom, they dissapear. I report them every single time. This mac is fresh, completely new installs, I work with 3-4 applications at a time as I must, 4-5 desktops, if mail is open. This should not crash. The battery should last longer. If removing cache is not the answer, Maybe reminding myself to turn off airport when I am developing? I don't know what the answer is, Airport is not going to make much difference, plus, I work online. Hmm... I'm checking into the Adobe cache quotas. Thanks.

Remove all 3rd party enhancements (wherever purchased) make a new user and boot into that account. test again.

I'm wondering if others are experiencing the "minor" problem that I am having with battery life / health on ML (10.8.3). The good news is that 10.8.3 seems to have addressed my batter life issues with my getting about 6 hours on a full charge. But I am noticing that when the MBP goes to sleep, even if just for a few minutes, when it awakes it drops in terms of both battery life and battery health. This occurs with the MBP is on battery power and when connected to the AC. Under Lion, there was no drop when running under AC.

I have tried to change the Hibernation state from 3 to 2, thinking that powering the RAM while sleep might be part of the issue, but in my case it didn't make a difference.

Curious to hear what others are experiencing.

Thanks!

is there a fix yet?

I am wondering if anyone has gotten a response on Apple from this as I have had the same issue...twice.

Once with my older Macbook Pro and was told by the Genuis Bar guys that it was the battery, so gave up on trying to fix it and plug it in all the time.

Now it is happening on my brand new Macbook Air! Thing is - right after installing JAVA.

I have tried removing Java, resetting PRAM, repairing disk permissions, have unchecked sharing settings, etc. etc. etc. but the battery continues to drop its charge.

If anyone has had a result with this, I would be great to know!! I will likely just scrub and restart if I don't get a response but would be good to save the hassle...

So I just installed ML on my MBP late 2011 (8.2) from Lion. Running 10.8.3 First thing I did was work on the battery this morning. The battery life is horrible compared to Lion. I think I may revert back. I used to get 5-6 hours, and now I am at 13% after three hours. I hope Apple can fix this, pathetic.

An update from my quarter:

My user has 4 hours battery life after the 10.8.3 fix, but it didn't start that way.

He got 2-3 hours and over teh course of a few weeks it started to consistently deliver 4 hours.

WEIRD!

For people still struggling I'd suggest the following:

Update to OS 10.8.3

Run the Macbook in safe mode (hold down shift key when you hear the bootup chime) to eliminate extraneous software causes.

If this works (you get satisfactory battery life), you can troubleshoot the startup items and kernel extensions.

If that doesn't work,

You may also wish to run off the Recovery partition or the network image at apple by holding down the command+R keys.

If this works (you get satisfactory battery life), the install itself may be bad and it might behoove you to reinstall OS 10.8 and immediately update to 10.8.3

If the recovery partition gives crummy performance too,

The battery may be bad. (It's possible to get bad replacement batteries as well.)

If under warranty, replace it.

If not under warranty, you may wish to demonstrate the problem running the recovery partition at an Apple store and ask whether they would test a new battery in yoru macbook and sell it to you if it works. (Who wants to pay for a new battery that works no better than the one you had?)

I have not heard anyone ask an apple store if this will be okay with them, so it's uncharted territory.

A more open ended suggestion is to bring it to an Apple Store for repair and let THEM worry about it.

Expensive and disappointing, I admit, but at least it becomes their responsibility to get it working before you pay for anything. Be sure to ask about warranties on repairs they do. Who needs to spend hundreds for a 60 day warranty or whatever the policy is. Thankfully, I haven't had this happen to a macbook that was out of warranty.