Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

ya, I just installed a ssd and am still running lion, I swear tho, my early 2011 MBP ran faster with snow leapord and a conventional drive, I've been trying to think of all the things id lose and if I care , it would really fly with ssd and snow leapord. but reverting to leapord is another thread , apple called me again about the battery issue , I told them thanks, but I'm not trying ML yet

So far, I had been loosing 1% per minute or two (seems common with most people here). 

But I did just finished calibrating my 3 yr old Battery (late '09 white unibody C2D@2.29ghz on SSD, Battery Health is @ 89.4% 4853 mAh from Original 5450mAh) 

Will test tomorrow how it performs with a full charge.  If problem persist, I'll do a full Install with out restoring from timemachine. 

I'll post results later.   Worst case scenerio, if problem still comes up... Then I'll have to downgrade to Lion.

hey scratch,

I would not doubt that anything that's icloud or forces large wifi transfers would drain a battery faster... makes sense. Glad to hear that it worked in your case.

Yes, I agree.. but why would it still be accessing wifi / iCloud while the system is asleep (lid closed)??

Hi Shelly,

Actually, anything to do with video or wi fi (such as a video over wifi) + time machine, puts your system under load. As such, you are supposed to drop 40-50 percent battery life. An app such as Battery Health will list several parameters. IE Web surfing (7 hrs), video (3.5 hrs), Music (4.5 hrs). So your system, if it dropped when doing skype video, and heated up, it is normal cpu/gpu. You are creating a 720p video, compressing and sending it via wifi. That will drop your life super fast. If you get 3.5 hrs under web surfing, that would be another issue. So hopefully you rest reassured that, from what you are describing, your unit is working normally, under skype or not.

hey JT,

obviously, with Power Nap on new machines, Apple tried to simplify our tasks by having some processes run in the background, such as when in sleep. hence the name Power Nap as if to suggest a kitty that is still hunting while sleeping. I disabled it right away. What none of us know is how or why is the sleep draining some machines so badly, or in actualy usage. but some programs, for example, security tracking software such as LoJack for PCs, go as far as planting firmware in the motherboards, and are believed to work when the system is in sleep or even not connected to the net, and try to report an IP address. This level of access to the hardware makes it easy to figure out why there is no LoJack for macs (would require Apple's blessing), although would have loved it as a theft recovery thing. So am sure Apple is moving forward with some very advanced hardware and software integration, and it has to do with copyright, functionality and security too.

So we do not know why some units loose power when in sleep, so much, and others not at all or barely. I suspect lemons.

That's all well and good regarding Power Nap, but my Mid 2009 ML doesn't / can't have Power Nap. And I don't have any tracking or such applications installed.

after testing the recently calibrated battery, I have the following settings:

• Calibrated: Battery Health @ 85.7% (went down from this afternoons report from 89.4% 4873mA) now 85.7% @ 4670mA 
• bluetooth off
• wifi on
• brightness 50%
• running for only 5 minutes or so... now at 95% battery life.

It is safe to conclude that ... Ahhhh!  just noticed the batt change to 94%... Like I was saying, it is safe to conclude that MTLion is broken.  Take that back, STILL broken!!  They supposed to had a fix with latest update... NOT!

PS- 93% Apple, Please!  From time to time, just take a look at your discussion rooms, you might learn a lot from the "People" using your products and see real life Test.  We really depend on the product we purchase.

Some literally depend meaning, our jobs are affected.

OK... this is ridiculous!!!  Now @ 91%... if my battery keeps it up at this speed (90% that was less than a minute)  How long do you think my macbook will last me???

89%... Ok, you guys are on your own!  I'm out of here.  I know it is not easy, Apple made it impossible... but I will downgrade to 10.7.  There is no way I can wait for Apple to make a fix, test it and send it to us early enough!

10.8.x = &

Wow, we're up to 106 pages on this thing!

I'm on a 2011 15" MacBook Pro that has always had EXCELLENT battery life. However, I too saw an immediate drop in battery life after the upgrade to Mountain Lion. Plus, this baby is running HOT. I could reheat pizza on the bottom panel.

I've reset the PRAM, SMC, let the battery drain down to nothing a few times...nothing helps. I called Apple and they told me to try re-installing ML, which I did, and which again did not help. The 10.8.1 update did nothing to improve things either (it might even be worse). I'm frustrated as I run the Battery Health app and I'm seeing my "Current Max" capacity reading going down the tubes.

One of my favorite things about the MacBooks that I've owned has always been the battery life. This is ridiculous. When I called Apple they told me they were not aware of any issues with battery life on ML. I find that VERY hard to believe. Also, is anybody noticing that the kernal_task process is running at all times, even with zero apps open?

Antennagate circa 2012 I guess.

APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS QUICKLY!

Did it work for you? It really works for me.

New low for me.

Left on battery power at work, not near it for 4 hours and totally drained from 44% to auto shut off in around 4 hours.

No programs running at all.

Very wrong.

Had already logged a call  with Apple support, will get back onto them tomorrow morning as now eveing in the UK.

John

I would guess that the code for powernap is what is killing the rest of us, but who knows.

All I know for sure is that my capacity has dropped 18% in 1 week, with 0 additional cycles.  It was 78% last Tuesday, and as you can see below (I didn't install this tool until Saturday) it has dropped 9% since Saturday, with no cycles.

Well it seems like Apple has made a failed product and doesn't care much... My battery health went crazy after installing Mountain Lion. My battery health dropped by ±80% after a month or 7 cycles. Imagine a full battery which last only for 15 minutes... Had reset the SMC, Calibrate, PRAM and whatsoever but got no solution on this.

I have a mid 2011 MBA 11 and an almost new mid 2012 MBA 13; as with Nguyenb the older MBA 11 has been

crippled by 10.8; I've reverted back to LION on this machine; oddly enough the newer MBA 13 seemingly has

not been affected by this battery drain bug..under LION and ML the battery life seems about the same for my

varied work load; the drain on the MBA 11 is very NOTICEABLE; the MBA 13 seems more normal for battery

life..no attempt at professional well defined and documented testing, however..10.8.1 for me changed

nothing..the MBA11 while in sleep mode would lose a complete 100% charge  over nite running nothing..this

is a really SERIOUS bug as it has rendered my 1 year old machine nearly worthless as a portable device..