Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Sorry, should have been 1000 cycles....

yantaialec wrote:

 

Courcoul wrote:

 

Wurzel666 wrote:

 

ura172002 wrote:

 

I installed 10.8.2 1231a

..

 

10.8.2? Are you an AppleSeed tester?

He was, I would say. The way the draconian NDA is written and the way Apple is patrolling this thread....

Doubt it. He probably just knows how to type Mountain Lion 10.8.2 into Google...it's hardly rocket science.

Yes, and updates found on torrents and d/l sites are always safe lol.

So is there any decent list or poll anywhere of which models the 10.8.1 update has made a difference on? For example on many forums I've noticed both the early 2011 and late 2011 MacBook Pro 13" seems successful most (but not all) of the time, whereas 15" models are the opposite - very few success stories with 10.8.1.

Is there a pattern emerging?

Umm, indication. Apple (google apple battery maintenance macbook) as well as physics : http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batterie s. Ni-CD die with declining memory, Li ion die due to declining battery health if ions do not circulate. Any discharge cycle contributes to overall health maintenance and a very slow, low delta amperage curve, whereas, with every discharge, Ni-Cd looses some memory. Constant AC forces the battery on 'parasitic power'. Articles explain it. A li-ion battery that is mainly plugged, for a year, will perform less when suddenly unplugged than one cycled 100 times over the same period. So your battery may show 93 % but will loose very rapidly this health figure as it has not been cycled in accordance with specs.

Used to have this battery discharge hesitation, and kept my systems (phones, macbooks) plugged. My batteries were abyssimal in their second year. Now i cycle them up and down, plug them here or there whenever getting too low, rapid charges mostly, and the monthly calibration, same as iphone. Difference was dramatic. No more battery issue until ML came along.

I know one thing is for sure, I better be getting a new machine after this is all said and done, from Apple! I don't believe for one moment that all this heat and HEAVY battery draw isn't hurting my hardware permanently. This is unacceptable Apple! ALL these machines are messed up by Lion, and now Mountain Lion and whatever Firmware updates that were included in both of these OSs. A while back when I purchased my Mac Mini Lion Server Late 2011 there was a EFI update a week into me having the thing. It eventually killed my SSD in the server. What a mess that was. They ended up taking the whole thing back and giving me a new one all together, but I had to wait for it to be built again in China and shipped out. I am expecting Apple to replace my Special Order Early 2011 15" MBP regardless if they come out with a fix in the near future or not. I don't trust the integrity if my components in this system anymore after all this damage!

15 inch, MBP, noted that too. GPU? 13 MBP is very similar to the Air in internal parts and they seem to be doing much better in these posts.

b4ore, have you contacted Apple? What have they said?

They contacted me after my first post here, collected data, and have heard nothing since. I'm a little surprised actually. But after reading this thread, I don't see a cure for this other than one coming from Apple. I have a feeling this is something they are just gonna have to use that 1 Billion dollars they just won suing Samsung to make this right with all of us affected by poor R&D. Something tells me this is more than just a simple update fix to make everything right. It would be just better to replace the units that are effected, keep their customers happy by just owning up, and then dissect each and every computer to see what happened on THEIR time. I surely didn't sign up anywhere to be a guinea pig on my expensive machine....

My white unibody macbook is also suffering battery lost badly!

I just turned ON my macbook after charging all last night, the battery charger light was green.  I unplugged it, turned it on... and right away it went from 100% to 98% batt life n just seconds (barely minutes).  I checked my mail for 1 minute, nothing new so I quit the app.  Right now its been ON for about 10 minutes total, running only safari (looking thru the community here for some hope) I bump into this discussion, and I look up and see I'm down to 90% batt life!!!   That is literally an average of 1% per Minute!  Oh, and I have the brightness low set to 4 bars. 

I can barely finish a full movie in full screen mode.  I use to be able to watch 2 movies in Lion 10.7.4! 

10.8.1 Didn't fix anything!!!

Apple needs to go back to the drawing board.

FYI:

1. I am running on a 120GB SSD (runs cool and quiet) I don't see why my battery should be going down so quickly. 
2. I had checked the battery status before upgrading (cause I heard the talk of poor battery life).  and my battery is at a good 89.4% running at a max of 4873mAh (from 5450mAh max)  Usually last about 3-4hrs.  Not bad for a 3 yr old battery.  I do calibrate my battery from time to time.

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed this but i tend to gett better battery time if the system is under load?? But when im idle the battery seams to drain away, this happens on both ML installs that I have one with my current upgrade and a clean install. For example im on the clean install and with 91% i have 7 hrs 13 mins and all i have open is safari with one tab nothing else running. In this install i have not disabled the Notifcation center or anything else.

Wurzel666 wrote:

 

yantaialec wrote:

 

Courcoul wrote:

 

Wurzel666 wrote:

 

ura172002 wrote:

 

I installed 10.8.2 1231a

..

 

10.8.2? Are you an AppleSeed tester?

He was, I would say. The way the draconian NDA is written and the way Apple is patrolling this thread....

Doubt it. He probably just knows how to type Mountain Lion 10.8.2 into Google...it's hardly rocket science.

Yes, and updates found on torrents and d/l sites are always safe lol.

 

What are you talking about? Lol. Do you know what a hash check is?

Anyway, as of yet ttbomk there is no 'list',.There probably won't be one either. Why would there be? The problem isn't specific to specific models. If it were then a fix which works for one person with a particular model would also work for another. This is not the case. Most reports have this probelm getting better for most of the people affected. There still seems to be a lot of people who haven't run through the basic diagnostics yet are content so jump on the bandwagon. Are you saying that you think the majority of people with the problem have tried:

1. Clean Install (without importing TM prefs)
2. PRAM Reset
3. SMC Reset
4. Disable all erroneous apps
5. Calibrate battery (for older models)
6. Actually 'timing' a full charge instead of going by the indicator
7. Monitoring progress over multiple complete cycles
8. Trying the .plist fix
9. Checking console logs
10. Checking Activity monitor processes
11. Being aware that the 'Time Remaining' fluctuates with usage
12. Testing @ 50% brightness with the backlight turned off

Or any of the other things that various posters in this thread have said worked for them. I doubt it very much. Apple's initial software releases are always buggy. ML is no exception. Even Apple themselves tell us to backup before upgrading incase of issues. I personally suspect that the issue has been improved for more users than it hasn't.

Firmware update isn't going to help me and my mid 2009 MBP. Put it to sleep this morning at 53%. Woke it up after work and it was down to 45%, with nothing running. Less than 20 minutes of use, just browsing in Safari (catching up on this thread) and it was down to under 30%. Now, another hour later, I'm down to 18%, with about 15 minutes of power left.

Apple needs to figure out what they did in Mountain Lion that is draining batteries, and quick! I really don't want to buy a new laptop, just to fix their screw up.

Thanks Beisarius, for your reply.  To your point #1: I completely understand your point on Apple's support model in a holistic sense.  I have had some very good support for my out-of-warranty Macbook Pro that was crashing often - they ran a free hardware diagnostic that confirmed all my HW was good, so I did my own troubleshooting and found out that vestigas of VMWare and Parallels and VirtualBox were screwing up my system and causing these "white screen of death" on a regular basis. I guess I was thinking of the lack of information or maybe hiding of information that seems to occur when you talk by phone with the representatives in Apple Support and lack of meeting spec based on what was advertised, but on the whole, I think I may be overreacting on this.

To point #2: Yeah, actually Apple is now at $675 and I do regret selling the shares I bought a few years back in the $60-70 range.  They have been a powerhouse and execution has still been strong and there is much more stock price bounce on their new upcoming software releases than Microsoft or others experience. I actually am thinking based on what you said - "it is suspicious that so many Macbook Pros are affected" - that perhaps it is in fact the firmware update that occurred prior to the upgrade to Mountain Lion that may actually be causing the issue.  I will say more on that in a separate thread soon...every indication points to a low-level system issue at the root/kext/BIOS/system level.

To your point #3: I do see you have had success.  I think you are having a solid experience, and would love to see some wiki or other place where people could document their issues based on Make/Model/Year, etc.  This would help Apple & help us.

To your point #4: I appreciate your perspective on staying with Snow Leopard.  I am actually still thinking that I might upgrade to Mountain Lion, without upgrading my firmware, once 10.8.2 or 10.8.3 is released.  I cannot go with a Macbook Air unfortunately, as I really want my CD/DVD drive.  I watch my various movies on a second monitor and also use CD/DVD burning of ISOs as I keep current with an MSDN subscription that I have with my company.  I was rather bummed that the Retina laptop had no DVD drive either, but I guess it needed the extra battery space to power the workhorse.  I had been most excited about seeing Retina Macbook Pro since it was released for iPad.

Thanks for your patience overall in answering these points...I will now try to contribute to the troubleshooting effort, for the sake of the users here and Apple's.

To Apple (or Cuppertino)

If even Arstechnica picked up an issue ont heir sample machine, it must not be as rare as this post may sound.

I think that Mac OS should have a hardware monitoring function, and a rapid change should also give the consumer the option to send feedback. So "Service Battery" within 10 cycles of an OS upgrade, should raise flags and give the user the option to "Send technical data to Apple." Then a confirmation email (why not automated). They do it on military hardware and in aviation, as well as most high tech software, I would expect Apple to be at the forefront of such options. That way, data can be collected on a broad scale, rapidly, and narrow down the decision or troubleshooting cycle. And having the consumer spend less time calling, getting data, resending, wondering, and so on.

Also think that Apple should have a broad tester clientele, end users, which should include old systems. i am not aware if current developpers tend to use newer or older machines. In general, avid aficianados always get new machines. But if thousands of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 units were tested for ML, this issue could have potentially been avoided.

And, finally, if units are affected by an OS upgrade, Apple should have a better technical/Sr adviser handling procedure. It took a week for staff to come back and admit that evidently, ML battery drainage was surreal when compared to Lion or SL, therefore it is the OS. As such, what is Apple's decision? letting the user know it can be the OS (or actually is), but too bad, the hardware is outside warranty, falls short of a resolution for most users. Especially if the user must now experiment with OS and $ 150 battery replacement. If car manufacturers recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles for glitches most people do not even experience, why could Apple not recall units affected by a substandard performance... Just a PR thing, staying at the top. Letting consumers know what they should  do given the specific problem. ie, have SL or Lion reinstalled.

Still think that a smart technical data reporting, built into an OS, would go far to help Cuppertino diagnose, early on, potential issues. Even more ingenius if such an option would enable the user to send the problem directly to Apple techs (especially on warranty machines), and reduce the phone tag game. it would save Apple millions and millions $ in call time and work hours. Plus makes it more tempting for users to buy warranty. Could be a function right there in system preferences : Warranty and technical troubleshooting.Plus a reminder a user that his warranty upgrade option is coming up (if not purchased initially). Sort of like iTunes applied to hardware maintenance and upgrades (iMaintenance lol). If a user is likely to call anyway, might as well have him or her just send everything directly from the machine. Then the calls or so on.

Thoughts anyone? Anyone thought of a website where affected users can list their machine make, serial number (a must to prevent double listing), and loss of battery life?

Beisarius, that is very well written.  I would sign my name to this, both as a user and software developer!  It would also be neat to give users who request it the option to beta test a new version on their older machine ahead of time, with a preview version that would expire in a few months.

Note to all: please use this wiki I created to post your results.  I will organize it very shortly so you can update right there:

http://applebatterystats.wikispaces.com

Well I'm doing an experiment. I had another user set up on my system. I logged out of my regular user and logged into the other user. That user had pretty much never been used. I then closed the lid, putting it to sleep, at around 10% power. I'll check it later to see if a practically brand new user makes any difference.Will report later.