Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

B4ore, what I mean is that when I went to them and told them my problem, they basically shrugged and said "Sorry, since your battery doesn't have a defect and is working properly, we can't do **** for you." But it's not my fault that the new OS X saps the battery, so I think it's BS. If they don't release a fix for it I think they should replace my battery, considering I paid up the *** for applecare...

Wonder how will this cat perform:

http://mac.blorge.com/2012/08/27/could-13-inch-retina-macbook-pro-be-ready-by-se ptember/

I believe he was referring to the extended warranty (i.e. over 1 year)

I want to add another "me too" post and say that my 2012 rMBP 2.7ghz 512GB has taken a big hit in battery life since I upgraded the OS to 10.8. I can't say exactly how much battery life I'm getting right now, but it is definitely much less than when I was running Lion. For the last few weeks, it feels like I've been getting around three or four hours of life during light usage. I can't really tell if 10.8.1 made things any better. I haven't done any testing or contacted AppleCare because I'm hoping we'll hear something/receive a software update from Apple. If there isn't an update in the next few weeks, I'll stop by a genius bar.

I haven't read through the 105 pages of post here, so I'm not sure if a moderator or Apple employee has ever commented or mentioned that they're looking into the issue. If they haven't, it would be nice if they would. I know that in the Google support forums, if more than a handful of users are reporting an issue, sometimes a Google moderator or employee will chime in and let users know that they are looking into the problem. I think the difference between Apple and Google is that Google offers mostly free products, so if they say "we're looking into reports of...", people can't really raise **** because they aren't paying Google for anything. If Apple comes on here and says they're looking into reports of battery problems, a small percentage of their customers would get riled up and throw a fit about how much money they paid and how "Tim Cook is..." or "Steve wouldn't have let this happen".

If Apple would confirm there is a software related issue and that there is a fix coming, I would be happy and patient. Bugs happen, and no software release or company is perfect. I am confident that if there is truely an issue, Apple will take care of it, whether they acknowledge the problem in this forum or not.

Hi Beisarius,  No, I didn't actually sit and measure 7 hours and was only going off of two things: 1) the battery estimates from "Battery Health - Stats" application (free) and 2) watching the change (drop) in percentage / battery capacity.  It was much slower / better than a percentage drop every 2 minutes as when I first installed 10.8, which would translate into 200 minutes of life; of just over 3 hours.

In terms of the mA readings, I was going off of the System Information tool. 

It really seems to have improved after logging out of iCloud and performing the SMC.  But since I did both at the same time, I can't say if it were one or the other.

neocicak wrote:

 

http://scoopertino.com/nasa-taps-apple-to-build-next-mars-lander/

 

Battery will die before it leaves the earth.

Not to mention overheating itself and overloading the heat exchangers, plus rebooting randomly on the edge of a crater. Just in case driving a dunebuggy from a zillion miles away wasn't hair raising enough.

Beisarius wrote:

 

Wonder how will this cat perform:

 

http://mac.blorge.com/2012/08/27/could-13-inch-retina-macbook-pro-be-ready-by-se ptember/

That's not a cat! But may turn out to be a litterbox.......

Hi all,

Unfortunately I'm joining the party. I'm having the battery issues on a BRAND NEW Retina MBP (2.6Ghz) that I received 7 days ago with Mountain Lion pre-installed. I want to share my experience in case it helps others. Screenshots are attached below.

Practically out of the box, my battery registered only 3-4 hours when fully charged to 100%, and would discharge rapidly within minutes (1% per minute at one point). When this was happening, the upper portion of the rMBP body (above function keys to hinge) became very hot to the touch. I found this thread when it was 60+ pages and followed the suggestions - I zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC.

At that time, these actions solved my issues. Battery life began to be reported at 7-10 hours for a full charge. Real-time usage averaged at 5-7.5 hours over the next several days. I upgraded to 10.8.1 when it became available. Everything was still gravy.

Today (Day 7) the battery issue returned after my first Time Machine backup and a Skype Video Call. I noticed the rMBP starting to heat up before even noticing the battery indicator drop. I then opened up Activity Monitor and didn't see anything out of the ordinary expect a process called "kernel_task" that was only using 5.4% CPU but 1.49GB of Real Memory. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if this is unusual or not. Maybe someone can weight in here?

The most interesting thing is that the problem actually resolved itself this time. After about 35 minutes, the laptop began to cool down again....and the battery indicator has returned to it's previous "normal" readings. Currently I'm at 60% charge with 4:13 remaining. My overall battery health doesn't seem to have been affected yet - it remains at 100% with only 14 cycles.

Same issue here with a MBA 11' mid 2011 i7. I had over 5 hours of light web surfing with Lion 10.7.4.

I was very excited to try the new OS X 10.8.0 but got immediately disappointed seeing my battery life falling down to 2+ hours. Even while sleeping the battery was drained.

Resetting the dock fixed the draining issue while sleeping, but the battery life was still rubish, even with notification and iCloud disabled, or multiple PRAM or SMC resets.

Then I realised that my battery health was getting battered, going down from 96 % in Lion before (140 cycles) down to less than 90 %. The bummer is now after reinstalling Lion (from a clone) i still get 90 % of battery health, even after few cycles of complete charge-discharge.  The battery may really have been damaged because of ML.

I can still get 4h30-5h of light web surfing using Lion so I won't complain. My warranty is running out in 3 days so I'll just keep it this way but it's a bit frustrating. I was pretty please with Apple until this bug. 

Now reading this thread, it sounds to me that the firmware update activating Power Nap may be one of the culprit, I am quite reluctant to try 10.8.1 until there are more evidence that ML functionalities actually work as advertised. An ultraportable laptop with just over 2 hours autonomy is pretty useless, sorry...

If some people had a good experience of 10.8.1 running on a MBA 11' mid 2011, please let me know I may have a go but until then I wait and see.

Just sent off my second lot of diags to Apple - the first one "Capture Data" did not reveal anthing so run the more intensive "Powermon" which generates a huge log file of data (300Mb!) - lets hope it shows something - will keep you posted. My MBP Early 2011 original battery was 5770 mAh and currently has 4883 mAh (84.6%) after 229 cycles (being only 15 months old) doing the test on battery the machine only lasted 3 hours 45 mins from 100% to 0%.

I jusy called Apple Support (my machine is nearly new - June 12) and they said calibrate the battery, then If that does not sort out the problem then bring in to get a battery replacement.  I'll let you know in 15 hours time :-) if it made a difference.

Ive noticed something else weird!

When on 10.8.0 my battery, with its original life of 5770 mAh, was showing 4760 mAh (82.4%) (after all the resets/drains etc). When I upgraded to 10.8.1 (reset/drained again etc) it was showing 4883 mAh (84.6%). After doing the test today and draining again, it is now showing 4913 mAh (85.1%). Still drains bad under ML, but howcome the current max (from OS/Battery Health/Mini Battery Logger/coconutBattery) is increasing! (not that that is a bad thing). Does this show the firmware and the battery managment in the OS ML are just broken!

5 weeks, 29 cycles and already 97% of Battery Capacity... Pretty quick, no ?

i signed off of iCloud and began preparing my mbp for a clean install of snow leopard, decided to check the battery meter just because and found it said 6:03 at 97%..the initial battery life estimate was longer, and i have itunes, multiple tabs in safari, notes, reminders, mail, calendar, and even the ever glitchy iPhoto, but i'm still losing about a percent every couple of minutes.  iCloud does seem to be a battery hog

Agreed. I also tried the sign out of iCloud on my mid 2009. While I may have seen slightly less drain,  I could still sit and watch the power drop percent by percent. What I haven't tried yet is signing out of iCloud and putting the laptop to sleep, to see if that stops the power suckage while asleep... though I doubt it.

Same problems here.

Early 2011 MBP with mountain lion. Also the percentage is dropping really rapidly. Even when I charge it fully and then close the lid, after i opened it the battery is drained to 40% in 4 hours!

Would be very strange to close all programs and icloud, this will make u lose all the usability of OS X