Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

thanks apple. they are looking into this issue. I had an unsolicited call based on a post in this thread. I have decided to wait for a fix, so I wasn't much help to them, I have not even installed ML yet. the rep without admitting a problem said they began calling people within a week of the release. he said many are having no problems, but that they had been watching this thread closely..so for what it's worth, they are working on it. I was impressed because I am new to apple and had begun to doubt the value of becoming " all apple ". great that they took time to call. thx

Indeed!  This is the second time Apple has reached out to me personally about an issue (iTunes Match being the first). 

I can't imagine another company...really of any type...being so amazingly proactive.

Just wanted to add that I'm also expriencing reduced battery life. This is on a Mid 2012 MBP 13-inch.

According to some press releases, the next iteration 10.8.1 is being polished as we write. It would behoove all to insist with any developer or Seed Program participant you know that they bring this issue front and forward in their confidential discussions. That would increase the pressure that the issue be addressed in that update and not later. Would also ensure a "two front attack" against the problem: Apple engineers being given the data gathered by all the calls being made directly to the end users AND the beta testers making sure the remedies work.

Well, I just called, and they told me this is "normal and expected" of new, more powerful software. The lady said 3-7 hours of battery life is to be expected now. They did take my battery information and told me my battery is normal.

Gah...let's hope 10.8.1 comes out soon and fixes this.

Hmm...Didn't they (apple) say the battery life should be better with ML @ WWDC?

I concede I didn't read much of the thread first. I do usually, even though forums can be great and cumbersome at the same time to circumnavigate the useful from the not useful. I'm not a huge Apple fanboy so I just wanted to get down to the details, but alas twas my fault for not attempting a more exhaustive search first.

To me this seems to be a more legitimate / significant issue. I read some stuff then the update was first released but honestly I rarely use my MBA non plugged and was in a meeting and was ALARMED at just how precipitous the battery life drop was. I wish the Midwest would see that rate of precipitation.

I was in a mtg with midrange brightness and doing just minor web activity at the time and in < 30min, dropped 25+% which is nothing what it used to do.

I elected to do that notification workaround to see if that helps since it seems innocent enough.

richsadams wrote:

 

transcender wrote:

 

Has APPLE even ACKNOWLEDGED that or is that just pure Speculation?

Is this just limited to any machines? Macbook Airs? 13" models?

 

Before creating a post it's always best to read at least some of the thread first.

 

As mentioned earlier a number of us have been contacted by Apple directly regarding the battery issue.  They've been gathering diagnostic information for a while now so it's clear that they're aware of the situation and that they're working to resolve it.

 

It's apparently an issue with a number of MacBook models.

 

If you're looking for a press release about it, that's generally not how Apple operates.

 

Hang in there!

Thanks clerenlas, that helped.  My mistake was trying to use Time Machine to revert while running in Mountain Lion.  I could get back to a time before the OS upgrade for everything but the OS.  After reading the link you provided I realized that I needed to go into the recovery menu and restore from an earlier Time Machine backup from there, which did revert the OS to Lion as well as revert the state of the machine.

Thanks again.

transcender wrote:

 

I was in a mtg with midrange brightness and doing just minor web activity at the time and in < 30min, dropped 25+% which is nothing what it used to do.

I elected to do that notification workaround to see if that helps since it seems innocent enough.

That's pretty much what others (including me) are seeing.  Hope disabling Notification Center helps...it did for me, although my battery performance still isn't what it was with Lion.  Fingers crossed this will be resolved soon.

Are you kidding me?

They released a system with a major bug and do not officially confirm it.

So I am sitting here on my machine which gets unbelievable hot and noisy and try to do some work.

In the meantime they call some people and maybe work on it... I wouldn't be surprised if we never see a fix and in a few months the thread is dead.

Please don't praise them for doing their job. That is something we can expect as customers.

I apologize if this was covered in a previous post.  I read through some but don't have enough battery life left to read through all 1000+.

Does the battery life issue that is being discussed here have any "physical" impact on the battery?  I have a Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro and, like many others, since I have installed Mountain Lion I have had greatly reduced battery performance.  I am down now to around an hour of life from a full charge.  I was getting 5-6 hours prior to the ML update.

The one thing I am concerned about is that if I look at iStat Menus I am seeing the HEALTH of the battery slowly decreasing over time.  When I installed ML it was at 95%.  The next time I checked after I was noticing decreased batttery performance the health showed at 45% and it has since trickled down to 28%.

Are others that are having battery issues in ML seeing the health of the battery decrease as well, or is it that there is more idle processing happening (i.e. Notification Center) that is causing faster battery drain? In my case, with the battery health dropping so rapidly, I can't imagine that killing a few background processes is going to resolve the issue.

My MBP is under AppleCare so I thing I can take it to the store to get the battery replaced, but I figured I would wait until after the software fix being discusssed here was available so I didn't have issues with a new battery as well.  But if I'm having a different issue than others here are, then I'll go ahead an get an appointment schedule to have it looked at.

Thanks!

Chris

Well, I rolled back to Lion 10.7.4 and after one full discharge, my battery life is back to 6+ hours. *** because I was enjoying some of the new features but battery is more important. Going to wait and see what 10.8.1 brings

what are the steps to go back to lion?

how can I assure that emails and calendar don't dissapear?

did you use time machine to restore lion?

is your machine stable after geeting back to lion?

thanks

Hi Chris.  With respect to actual battery "damage", I had the same exact concern, asked the Apple rep that called me about it and he said no, that it's not a hardware issue.  Steve confirms the same here.  That said, what you're seeing wouldn't be normal either.  I use iStat Pro and although I'm experiencing the battery issues I am not seeing the same thing (yet anyway)...

If you have Apple Care you're certainly covered (likely would be even if not) so you might want to open a ticket.  Others can chime in with their results, but I don't recall seeing similar complaints.

Hope that helps a bit and keep us posted!

I reverted to 10.6.8 via time machine - first the battery life was still at about 2h at full charge.

after doing a smc and pram reset its back to 5:30!