Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

I have this problem on a MacBook Pro Middle 2010. It comed with Snow Leopard but after 6 months of use I upgraded to Lion the first day it comes available through App Store. No problem on that upgrade. Maybe the start and the shutdown is longer but all works good and battery longs 7-8 hours with no problems.

The problem was the day I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion, form that day I have 3 hours of battery...

CPU: Intel 2.8Ghz Core i7

RAM: 8 GB 1067Mhz DD3

HDD: 500 GB SATA2 7200rpm

Graphic Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB

I thought this was due to the graphic card switching capabilities of higher end mbps (Mac OS can switch the use of graphics between onboard chip and video card) and if this was the case it should be easily fixed with software update. However seems MBPs and MBAs which use only onboard graphics have the same problem, this might not be the case. Those of you who have new MBPs I really feel sorry for you guys, I think apple is responsible to give you guys an exchange program, its just ridiculous.

Horrible battery life here as well.... went from 6-7 hours to 2-3.... hope they fix this asap.

And, Ladies and Gentlemen - in case you haven't noticed, leave the lid closed over night and watch the battery go down by 10% or more in 8-10 hours doing (apparently) nothing. Apple cannot even tell us what's it's doing differently. Pretty sure you'll see this same symptom we "old-timers" have been seeing too for a year or more..

I think this is because the laptop continuously refreshes and saves a copy of the contents in your ram while you close the lid, this effect is even more apparent if you have larger rams. but you can change sleep mode though. http://danwarne.com/how-to-turn-off-slow-sleep-hibernate-mode-on-a-macbook-pro/

I just bought a MBP 13" a week ago, and the battery life is horrible as well. I was on the phone with Apple for 3 hours and they told me to reset the SMC fully recharge the battery and let it be for an hour without using it, it went down to 88% without me doing anything. Surely this cannot be right? And if it is just the way they are now, can I get a refund?

You have 14 days from date of purchase to exchange your computer for another or get a full refund. If the problems is the battery, just exchange it - few questions asked - or get a refund.

Your choice - just don't wait too long.

Clinton

Oh okay thanks for that!
I'm not sure if I should exchange it though, won't this battery problem be the same with all Macs? Or is the Air considerably better?

You could just have a defective battery. It happens. If you're in that 14-day grace period, though, I'd just exchange it for the same model (MBA specs between 5 hours for the 11", 7 hours for the 13"). Just tell the Apple folks that you're not satisfied with the battery life and that you want to exchange it for the same model. As I said, few questions will be asked.

Good luck,

Clinton

Franc_Iphone wrote:

And, Ladies and Gentlemen - in case you haven't noticed, leave the lid closed over night and watch the battery go down by 10% or more in 8-10 hours doing (apparently) nothing. Apple cannot even tell us what's it's doing differently. Pretty sure you'll see this same symptom we "old-timers" have been seeing too for a year or more..

And put in a 16GB RAM update if you want it to go down some more...

chiaihuang wrote:

I think this is because the laptop continuously refreshes and saves a copy of the contents in your ram while you close the lid, this effect is even more apparent if you have larger rams. but you can change sleep mode though. http://danwarne.com/how-to-turn-off-slow-sleep-hibernate-mode-on-a-macbook-pro/

For the life of me, I can never understand why laypeople think they can outthink trained engineers when it comes to operating the systems said engineers designed and built, just for the sake of a few instants of silly "convenience".

Back in the days of the PowerPC, where "instant" sleep was all there was, the powerbook forum was filled with people b!tching & moaning on how they had lost it all when they either forgot to recharge the battery or had some random power failure and all memory content was cleared. Comes the Intel era and Apple engineers breathed a sigh of relief in that they would finally be able to lick the problem and make users happy. No way, Jose, now they're b!tchin' & moaning cause the computer is taking "too long" while it valiantly tries to preserve THEIR DATA thru the sleepimage security measure**. Once data is safely copied down to disk, it is shut down and consumes no more power.

The contents are already in "your ram". When the lid is closed and the pilot light breathing the processor is OFF and the battery is used to preserve the contents of RAM, that is running in an ultraslow speed low-consumption quiesced state, in comparison to the regular state at {666/1067/1333/1600, pick your model} GHz speed. Just like when you leave the trunk light on in your car, it will eventually run the battery down. And if you installed an unofficially supported 16GB RAM update, just like leaving the trunk AND the hood lights on. And with modern high speed RAM, instead of a 5W bulb on Grampa's car, it now has a 15W bulb. Don't like it? There's always the Shut Down option. Ah, but since you keep on filling it with junk, soon there's much b!tching & moaning cause it takes "too long" to power up! GAD!!!!

** Yeah, SECURITY measure. Computer Security strives to fulfill three goals: data confidentiality, integrity and availability. Thev sleepimage mechanism addresses the last two.

I agree, once you choose apple because you don't want to deal those **** of pc any more. but its about choice, if you want to tweak, tweak at your own risk. And I believe not all apple users are laypeople

Besides there's actually problems arises as technology advances we used to have only 1 or 2 gigs of ram which would be ok for safe sleep. but rams nowdays just double and double, ultimately they ll need to find out some other ways to sort it out. that's how technology advances isn't it?

Could try changing the check mail frequency from 5 minutes to an hour. Hope it helped!

Just Upgraded my hardly used late 2011 Macbook with SSD from Lion to Mountain Lion, previously the battery life was fantastic, now its terrible. I have have checked activity monitor and nothing is really standing out.

So to summarise my Macbook was working fine but now after the Mountain Lion upgrade I can watch the battery level go down as I surf the internet

Thanks Apple

I think that is a part of the problem. I just read this comment and quit Mail app. My battery was at 36% showing '1:27 hours left' with Mail running. Once I close Mail app, battery shows 3:34 hours left. I will test it out with a full charge and see how many hours I get.

I used to get 6+ hours on Lion, now hardly get 3 hours on Mountain Lion.

MBP 13 Late 2011 2.4 i5, 256 Crucial M4 SSD, 16 GB Crucial Ram. Hopefully Mountain Lion is not causing my hardware to use more battery, worked so great on Lion!

I would like to suggest this is not connected to certain Applications whatsoever. I don't use Mail or Safari.

With a 100% charge, half brightness and keys completely off. I am estimated 1:36. This is even worse that the 3 hour estimate I had 2 days ago. This was with no apps running.

Before ML I could run Firefox, iTunes & uTorrent. Same settings in terms of brightness and get about 6 hours.

HUGE PROBLEM.