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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

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3,397 replies

Jul 30, 2012 2:17 PM in response to jpengland96

Okay, I would like to say something, I went with the suggestion of sticking it out a few days. With absolutly know changes I am getting a 6 hour battery life while running multiple tabs in safari, typing up a document in microsoft word, playing music on itunes and I have textedit running to keep open a few things. I have done nothing to solve the battery life problem and it has sorted itself out, I'm going to place the problem on what JoeyR said

If you've just upgraded, there is a lot going on. Give your system a little time to "settle down" first. Battery performance under Mountain Lion should be similar to what you were getting with Lion. Also... some people use real-time virus scanners. As an OS upgrade replaces a significant percentage of your files, a virus scan can also be quite intensive... especially when it happens along with indexing.

I should also mention: I never had snow leapard, I got my Macbook Pro with Lion and it worked great, as does Mountain Lion now. Also, Activity Moniter showed nothing out of the ordinary when I was having the problem.

Jul 31, 2012 1:04 AM in response to beken911

Just a thought. Has anyone with this issue tried to completely and totally obliterate all the myriad caches found in these systems, and see if that cures it? The freshly released v2.6.0 OnyX should be able to do so in its Cleaning section.


http://www.titanium.free.fr/


Me? I'm sticking with the old Fat Cat for now... But I have lots of confidence in you guys! 😉

Jul 31, 2012 3:14 AM in response to jpengland96

I am not sure I like the idea of changing my usuage pattern from before to conserve battery life suited to ML. Apple didn't issue any warning (maybe in the fine prints) that installing the new operating system could invalidate a few of the machine features stated at the time of purchase.


For me it is a serious flaw, and I would be holding back from updating my second mac until a patch is available.

Jul 31, 2012 4:26 AM in response to jpengland96

Here's a simple explanation.


If you haven't done a clean install, some programs may still be on your Macbook. Those programs may not be compatible with OS X Mountain Lion. I would update all of them first to see if it's a problem with your incompatible files.


If and only if the issue continues to happen, do a clean install. If at that point [after clean install] the fans are still running crazily and the battery life is terrible, I would continue bothering Apple through the telephone to make sure that they come up with a fix.


Many users on other discussions have found that the problem with fans and battery is linked to incompatible programs [namely Skype, ESET Antivirus, among many other apps]. Download the latest version / update.

Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

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