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
I know that this thread is a bit old, and I'm not sure if this will help anyone else, but I figured I would pass on what I went through just in case. I've had my 13" Macbook Pro for about 2 and a half years now, and a few days ago, I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion via the App Store. I've never had battery issues before, but I immediately noticed a significant drop in my battery's life (it lost 1% every 2 minutes or less.) I scoured through forums and articles trying everything I could think of to fix the issue. I even tried reverting back to Lion (which unfortunately doesn't work.) I spoke to Apple Care, and made an appointment with the Genius Bar, and when they ran diagnostics, they said that my battery was perfectly normal, and suggested a fresh install. So I made sure that I had backed up all of my personal files and third-party apps to an external HD (manually, NOT via Time Machine), and then they completely erased my mac's hard drive and reinstalled Mountain Lion from scratch. As soon as I took it home, I followed their advice and calibrated the battery as well. I don't know whether the issue was a corrupt installation (which seems likely, given that the installation time began to count negative minutes) or whether my mac was trying to run both Lion and Mountain Lion systems at the same time (also likely, given the weird glitches I experienced), and as much of a pain in the *** it was to erase my HD and start over, having to recopy and reorganize all of my files, app icons, and bookmarks, it was kind of worth it in the end, because now everything is working as it should be. As of last night, I am now getting over five hours of battery life (and that was with constant file copying and organizing, running several apps at once, internet browsing, and movie streaming.) So, I hope my situation can help someone else experiencing similar issues. Maybe a fresh installation and a battery calibration is all that's needed in certain cases.
Glad it helped.
The new OS indexes and does a bunch of things, and noticed any new installation burns more power initially.
The advantage of a clean install is that it can reveal some battery hogs: Microsoft running in the background; firefox, etc. But this forum has had little to no postings recently and I presume most people resolved their battery issues by replacing them with a new Apple battery.
Not a lot of activity here lately, which I hope suggests that people aren't having this problem on the latest build of ML.
I recently suffered a HD failure and decided to replace it with a Samsung 840 EVO SSD. I can say that my battery life, which was hovering between 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 hours on a full charge now gets about an hour more. I'm at 93% with an estimated 6:51 remaining on a 2011 MBP. So, not only is my machine faster (which I would expect on an SSD), but the battery life has improved - which I suspect is related to the low power usage in this specific SSD!
Looking foward to the Mavericks reports when it gets released and hope that things remain fast and battery life gets even better.
yes I have been following this thread since the beginning , was going to post a reply similar to ScratchSF. since the activity has slowed down, is the consensus that the new ML builds are finally OK to install? (yes I'm being lazy, but I did read the first 175 or so pages) thanks all
I'm still experiencing crappy battery life.
This is the second battery
@88%
Approx 154 charges (or so)
Late 2011 MBP
Battery was replaced early this year
During any given day battery will last 3-4 hours
That is from regular regular usage - no spectacular computing going on here!
This has been too anoying for words!
Me too, very poor battery life still on 11 inch MBA late 2010 running 10.8.4.
Lucky to get 2 hours with wifi on while browsing witih Safari and using Mail and Word.
Battery health at 87.9%, 300 cycles.
I did a clean install, didn't install Flash, which certainly helped, but it's still miles off the original battery performance.
Looking forward to seeing whether Mavericks makes a positive difference!
The battery life never improved for me as I never got anything more than 90 minutes on battery with wifi off so I downgraded over the summer to Snow Leopard and you can really tell the difference. Not only has the battery returned to a normal state but the overall performance between SN and ML is incredible. I'm not going to bother anymore with ML as Mavericks is out in the next several weeks and it's noted that it has been designed specifically with battery consumption in mind, suggesting that Apple are aware of the current issues with battery life under ML and are possibly incapable of doing anything about it. ML was a dissapointment compared to SL and Lion so let's hope Mavericks does us all some justice.
CT wrote:
Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime ... - Support - Apple
Not sure which 'runaway applications' are causing the battery to perform terribly after a fresh install. Multiple installs of each version of ML, none of which produced a different result than the last.
qn fiber, do you run your MBP plugged?
after install ML runs indexing and learns usage. Battery is lower initially. However, I never had a fresh install with battery to last less than 6 hrs but it is not 7 either until after it settles in.
I think we can all agree to stop wasting our valuable time with ML and wait to see if Mavericks does us any better. I only use ML on my Mini now so this terrible issue doesn't affect me anymore. Beisarius I never got more than 90mins on a late 2010 Air after more than a dozen installs of 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 and after many restarts, SMC resets and normal and heavy usage nothing improved for me and so I gave up on it, back to Snow Leopard which has been more than happy to accomodate my needs. I'm out of this conversation as I have little to offer for it, I just can't wait to have the new osx on both machines
Brianx87,
That is the best suggestion. Let us forget the issue at this time. Many posters have come up with ideas, some have worked for some, but not others.
I have tried them all. Let us hope that Maverick helps. Not too sure about that. What I cannot understand is with all that has flowed on this forum. Apple from apart from a few enquiries has never commented on our issue.
Did it only effect a very few or what ?
Some time ago, I had a problem with iTunes and they came back very quickly and sorted out the issue.
Sounds that you had a lemon. One of the three (3) defective MBAs I received between Sep and Oct 2012 had the battery issue, but it was lemon hardware. Genius Bar confirmed it in 5 min looking at the battery drain (following the fresh install) then got my third defective MBA (defective LED screen). That battery issue unit was also slightly, ever slightly bent, turns out the swollen battery had bent the bottom by half a milimiter, enough to raise it when closed. 4th MBA had no hardware defect and is my current one. As one genius tech pointed out, besides defective battery lot, one could get an overheated battery that becomes defective right then, or a bent battery (esp in new MBAs as they are located by the bottom. I never played ultimate fresbee with my MBA, no matter how much the name suggests one should, but the vast majority of MBA MBP owners do not seem to have issues. Been running ML on a 2008 MBP as an experiment and it runs very well (2-3 hours), 88% health, one year now. That battery health dips faster (but within spec) than a new MBA battery, but then all those A1175 were renowned to have poor life. If anything, Apple should improve battery design and QC. Interestingly, Iphone batteries do not have such notoriety, however, have any of you noticed that come the end of the first year you actually are getting somewhat less battery life than initially? the difference is there is no 'battery life' indicator, and most of us use them on a rapid charge base, which is the best way to maximize battery life.
Play games, watch videos on any laptop and that battery life wears out faster due to heat.
Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.
