Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

I upgraded to ML today and noticed the Service Battery

Battery Information:

  Model Information:

  Serial Number:          D8611850163DGDLAW

  Manufacturer:          SMP

  Device Name:          bq20z451

  Pack Lot Code:          0

  PCB Lot Code:          0

  Firmware Version:          406

  Hardware Revision:          2

  Cell Revision:          158

  Charge Information:

  Charge Remaining (mAh):          3262

  Fully Charged:          No

  Charging:          Yes

  Full Charge Capacity (mAh):          4545

  Health Information:

  Cycle Count:          297

  Condition:          Service Battery

  Battery Installed:          Yes

  Amperage (mA):          1974

  Voltage (mV):          12142

I just downloaded a file from the apple store. The laptop became too hot to have on my lap within 30 seconds and the fans ramped up to full speed. The only other app running was Safari. I don't recall it getting this hot before upgrading to ML. I have also noted that I can hear the fans running as soon as the laptop comes out of sleep, which again I do not recall.

This is a late 2011 15" MBP upgraded from SL.

Li-ion batteries have a finite cycle life, typically a few hundred charge-discharge cycles. If your battery has to be charged more frequently becuase it's not lasting very long, then you are getting through the finite cycle life faster, so the batteries operational life decreases. I'm having to charge mine two or three times a day which with ML. With SL I only had to charge it once a day, so my battery will probably only last half as long as before unless a fix comes out soon. Heat also degrades battery life and right now as I type this with only safari running, my MBP is getting seriously hot.

tarpus wrote:

 

Wait, there is no mention of a battery fix?!!!    

The fact that 10.8.1 is still on the stove and not yet out the door should be taken as a positive sign that something is being done and we won't have to wait for 10.8.2 or so. Have a little Zen patience, help is surely on the way.

Anybody heard anything new? Just unplugged my macbook which had a 100% charge and it went to 97% in 2 minutes.  This is ridiculous, I am afraid I am gonna ruin my laptop if I keep running Mountain Lion. 

Same problem here. After installing Mountain Lion 4 days after release, the battery life on my mid-2012 Macbook Pro has deteriorated significantly. With Lion I was able to achieve the quoted 7 hours of battery-life, but with Mountain Lion this has dropped to under 5 hours.

CPU usage is minmal, and there is no difference in usage 'before' and 'after' installing ML. Furthermore, the battery life does not exceed 5 hours with simple web-browsing, so it isn't like there is a strenuous application which is causing the problem.

Glad to know that I am not alone on this- 76 pages of replies suggests the problems is pretty common, and I urge Apple to investigate as a priority.

As with the post directly above my own, as soon as I take the machine off charge, it will immediately lose 2-3% of battery life. Odd.

Just my 2 pence.

Cheers

b4ore,

You are right that the drain is exponential. Indeed it is. If a battery drains too fast, even a Li-Ion, then its health declines. Multiple such cycles then each drain even faster the remaining health. So from 90 - 80 % a defect like this one with ML will drain the battery exponentially faster than from 100 to 90 percent. It all makes for an exponential downward life health curve. But what Apple intended to be... 500 or 1000 cycles, ML seem to shave shortened to just dozens of cycles.

cooldudefil wrote:

 

Anybody heard anything new?

Unfortunately, you won't hear anything till it is done. Anybody in the know is bound by an NDA and can't discuss what's happening behind doors. But I'm pretty sure they're hard at work. I got a call from a guy from Apple scheduled this afternoon. Patience, and the Kingdom of Heaven (or whatever you want) will be ours.

No, Apple does not ban third party batteries, but they simply do not work. having also experimented years ago (before ML) with 3d party batteries, i can assure you that they are.

1. Cheaply made knock offs
2. Not as heavy- an indication of cheaper and less components, resistors, etc
3. Chips that cannot work with Apple's SMC
4. Poor life-maybe a few months with luck.
5. Possibly expired shelf life.
6. Unlikely to survive ML (yes, ML will expose how weak they are). But also ML is mauling the batteries of most of the honorable audience posting here.

Apple guarentees 90 days its 'remanufactured' batteries, which are regular, factory sealed batteries that were returned as unsold originals (after x-tme shelf life, usually 2yrs) or returned units that had been used. 

At the end of the day, a brand new genuine Apple battery cannot work well if not used and mainly plugged for the better part of a year. So a MBP or rMB 18 months old battery with 10 cycles should not perform as well as, say, an 18 month old battery with 100 cycles, as indicated by Apple's battery life maximization tips. Same applies to iPhones, iPads so on. Also checkout the battery university science on batteries.

Sogenuine Apple batteries are good for Apple products, the same as genuine Duracell and Energizer are better than any generic equivalents in everyday use.

Chris

Spoke to a guy at Apple Support today and he had no knowledge that there was an issue with ML and battery life. I told him there was a 70 page thread on this but all he could suggest was having my Air 11 2011 looked at for a possible battery replacement.

 

 

Dear god, they have no idea !! I guess someone didnt get the memo then

guys, welcome to microsoft's world, where WE appear to be the testbed... Indeed, Steve had a fit when Mobile Me failed to work and let his expectations down. If only he was around to see ML drain his laptop... What does Mr Cook think of this? this may very well become his first serious product delivery challenge.

Just a question, if you know:

Does any of the current macbook air/pro sold after july 25th (thus with Mountain Lion pre-installed) have the same battery issue?

It would be funny to try one of them out in the apple store and watching something like "100% - 1h 30m remaining"...

...just wondering...

I have a brand new rMBP. It came pre-installed with ML I did turn off some things: Notification Center and PowerNap.

That's all. I never had these turned on.

My battery time is over 9 hours with light surfing, some editing in XCode, etc,Screen brightness on 20%, keyboard light off. The battery time goes up and down somewhat, but that's to be expected. Last night, I did get the full 9 hours before the laptop turned off.

Software I ran was: II run GoodSync, CoBook, Fantastical, Little Snitch 3, Mail, Office 2011, Xcode and gfxStatus.

This is what's happening, I believe. ML can't read the battery correctly for the upgraded systems, nor the temperature. ML shuts down and stops/starts the fans based on that false information. It also calculates the predicted battery time based on it.

The data that Apple is gathering, probably has to do with getting the algorithms correctly. So, I don't believe there is anything physically wrong with the batteries.

Things that eat battery: screen brightness, WiFi. Limit those, and the battery lime will increase.

He's a production man, doubt he even knows about the issues. Well given the fact that some Apple support guys dont, I think we can assume Tim Cook wont either. I would hope, given the amount of page views and coverage this discussion has, that the software guys doing the 10.8.1 update have moved all their attention to the heat and battery life and shelved the other bits

I believe the technical issues in the Windows world was "The Blue Screen of Death"

Is Mountain Lion to become known as "The Battery of Death"

The report said "...and Apple reports no known issues...". No known issues with 10.8.1? Get real Apple, there is a 76+ page thread listing battery & heat problems. "...and Apple reports no known issues..."

Really???????????