Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Hey JurePaseKure,

If you are draining the new battery at  a fast rate as well, why would you ever keep doing that...? The whole point of going to lion is if having a problem with ML. Should take you 10 minutes of usage to determine if you discharge fast or not, and then it should be a no brainer.

I have just run battery checks on 10.8 and on 10.7 both running on an external disk.  I included systematic quitting of running apps and a Google Earth session too.

On my 2009 MBP with a 4.6Ah battery life, the run time was 3 hours for ML, exactly the same as for Lion.

LION

MOUNTAIN LION

Note that quitting all apps saves about 0.4A which is 1.4 hours. Then 2.5 watts or 0.2A extra for the external disk gives another hour, so theoretically I could get 5.4 hours.

If your battery is the same as mine, it is using 2.2A which is about what a video or app would use.  I would check in Activity Monitor, what processes are using CPU.

I don't think moving OS's is going to solve your problem, you need to look at what apps and processes are running.

i have an early 2011 mbp, my battery was affected the first time i installed ML, then i tried to downgrade back to snow leopard (lion isn't even an option for me, my average battery life was 3.5 hours) but i lost all my info.  so i upgraded from 4GB to 8GB of RAM, stopped the animations and magnifications on the dock (i've heard it repeated that that eats battery), kept my screen backlight to 50% or below, and clean installed ML.  On a bad day, i get 4.5hrs of life, and on a good day, 6.5. 

its basically up to you; a lot of people with 2011 mbp's are reporting problems, but there are few who are having a good experience. you'll have to decide whether you want to risk damaging the battery for the difference between OSs.

Hey Putnik,

Your experiment does not alleviate the issue for those affected, and some of your conclusions even less.

- If you see no difference between the OSes, no matter the test, then your system is not affected. As such, it does not do anything for those that loss their mobility time or batteries.

- "quitting all apps saves about 0.4A.. so theoretically could get 5.4 hrs." Not pushing too hard the philosophy button, why would a user bother turning on their macbook yet turning off apps...? What is the point of having a portable if you scramble to close apps.. the very point of turning on that machine could be to use web, iphoto and so on.. Am not talking video gaming here.

- "If your battery is the same." read the previous posts...? Hopefully are you aware of the battery capacity of 2010/2011/2012 MBA and MBPs. if you get 3 hrs out of your 4600 means you drain at roughly 1500 mAh per hour. That may be good. 2010 to 2012 systems went as high as 6000, 7000 and even 8000 MAh. Not the same by design, nor the same by problem. So, if one of those users also gets 3 hrs out of their unit, (so 3 hrs for a battery at 7000 vs you, 3 hours at 4600), hopefully you notice the big big difference in performance. Thats is for machines with an architecture more efficient, cooler and lower consuming than yours, designed to run 6-8 hours. My MBA runs, with web and wifi, at -800 to -1200 hence 7 hrs on my 6700 battery. if i got 3, you bet, I would have a problem. So 2009 users that have the problem get minutes to an hour life... So no, their batteries and system is performing nowhere the same as yours.

- "Do not think moving OSes will solve problem." Am wondering again if you reviewd the posts. Not only clean installs solved just about everyone's problems (minus loss of ML mauled battery), but it confirmed that the actual problem lies with ML and their specific hardware.

- "Running apps." We know there is a hardware problem when people's systems idle at 1-2% yet drain at --3000 actual, factual discharge. previous posts listed that in detail as well..  When I got a -4000 mAh reading, all i had was a clean ML install and Safari opened. SL  down to -1200 mAH

Finally, even Apple recommends reinstalls, and heard it with my own ears "yes, it appears to be the OS" - in my case, of course.

In conclusion, I state that your conclusions or recommendations do not reflect the reality documented here and have no technical or documentation to back them up.

I also conclude that you are fortunate to have a consistent, unafected unit, so just enjoy it.

I was replying to Apocrypa, who has the same type and age of computer as myself and I was therefore able to test the two OS's to compare them on the same hardware, to provide "technical" documentation.  Their computer is using 2.2A at idle, so there is obviously some process running that can be identified.

Posting an update with my late '09 white macbook (C2D@2.26ghz & 8GB, 64GB SSD & 500GBHDD).

After calibrating the battery, resetting SMC, and PRam... well you guys know by now the usual trouble shooting list.  Well, on my previous post I had done a test with SL 10.6.4 ran great! Batt Health at 89.6% than fresh install Lion batt health went a little down to 89.4% estimated about 4.44 HRS of internet time.  So pretty much SL and Lion are almost the same, but SL does get a little advantage. 

But this time, instead of upgrading to MTLion, I did a fresh install.  Charged the Batt to 100% and checked the batt.  Batt Health is precently at 88.9% 4847 mAh.  So the Battery did decrease in Life! Which is never a good thing... but on the positive side. 

Doing a Fresh Install of the OS, did seem to bring my battery life almost up to Lion Standards.  I didn't worry too much about apps and data.  Most of my important data is in icloud or external HDD, so automatically syncs anyways and is separated from the OS disk.

So far I have been testing MTLion far a day, and it seems to behave more like Lion now.  Not leaking abnormally battery life under SLEEP.  Browsing and HD Video (Vimeo, Youtube) runs for a few hours (+3hrs is normal for a 3yr old batt).  I watched an HD 720p movie entirely and had time to browse some more in the net.

Oh yea, the brightness level was at 50%, Bluetooth OFF, WiFi ON (always using wifi no ethernet).

My conclusion for my specific problem is, in my opinion that, installing or upgrading MTLion caused a lot of problem and drained my battery badly!  I quickly reverted back to SL!  But I didn't want to give up until I tried all the options.  So a FRESH Install did make a dramatic improvement in MY case. 

I wonder how many of YOU are still having this problem even though you did a "fresh" install from zero???  It will help a lot the community, if you post more details on your trouble shooting or even your precise problems you are having.

Hope I have been of some assistant to some. 

I still believe, MTLion 10.8.x is a battery resource HOG!!!  There is no Doubt about that, Mail stotters a lot when scrolling thru the side bar (where the names and titles are of the mail)  SL never did that, or Lion not as much... MTLion is really design for modern Macs period!  If your Mac is older than 2010, I don't think you'll be as satisfied with performance as you were in SL or Lion.

You can compare your battery health with other people's data on the MiniBatteryLogger website at:

http://burgos.emeraldion.it/mbl/entry/ec1e7c221c1a4844f94f3ddec29c10ce

My 2009 MBP 5,5 has lost some capacity with age, but falls in the normal range.

I think some of the high current readings reported, will be Spotlight indexing after a new install, which always leaves the computer dead in the water until it is finished.  But I am also wary of iCloud, with document editing and syncing using resources.

I'm watching a WWDC session (Session 711 - Power Management), and around the 10 to 12 minute mark, they talk about "DarkWake". Where the system keeps power to certain systems while the system is asleep. It's not an accessible API (meaning developers can't get access to it), nor, he said, is it generally available to Apple's developers. They've also supressed any sort of notifications that DarkWake is active - as in there will be no sleep/wake notices posted. So basically an application (or system) won't even know it's actually supposed to be asleep. It also keeps power to ports (USB, etc).

So, my semi-educated guess would be - there's a bug in this technology (it's been around, in some form since 10.6). The system is powering wifi, disk, ports, devices, when it really shouldn't be.

While this doesn't count for the cause of the excessive drain while awake, it sure points a finger to the abnormal drain while asleep.

(and if it doesn't post any notification that it's on, or doing anything, it's going to be tough to try and verify it it is the case...)

(edit)

PowerNap is an addition to DarkWake in 10.8

I have also experienced a signifcant drop in battery life since upgrading to ML.

absolutely, all apple owners that noticed the download file size had a tremendous laugh about it... all the phone calls to all of the frustrated owners didn't help one bit

Jimmy Kats wrote:

 

absolutely, all apple owners that noticed the download file size had a tremendous laugh about it... all the phone calls to all of the frustrated owners didn't help one bit

It looks like the OP was confusing the 10.8.1 Mac App Store initial file size with the actual size of the update.  The actual update dmg file is 24.2 MB's and ultimately ends up being 46.3 MB's.

Of course there's no mention by Apple of 10.8.1 addressing the battery issues we're experiencing...although a number of us saw a slight improvement.  I saw about an hour of additional use on my late 2010 MacBook Air, bringing it to a maximum of about 5 hours which is still nowhere near the 7 plus hours I was used to getting with 10.7.x Lion.  The folks at ars techica saw the same thing:

Mountain Lion update can improve battery life for some Mac notebooks

That's odd.... I would swear that mine was 8 mb (eight megs) only. Unfortunately I've dumped it so can't confirm.

I just now go the 'service battery' warning. -.- 4395 mAh vs original design of 5770 mAh. Battery is only 15 months old as my system. I am going to the Apple store tomorrow to get this sorted and see if any of them are honest about the battery drain of Mountain Lion. This is totally ridiculous.

Many may be able to get to Apple stores and see if the problem can be solved.  Here in Ireland I may only ring the support services. My nearest apple store is some 350 Kim's away. 

After these problems that I have had with battery makes me think twice before I would buy another MBP.  I changed over to Apple as Windows was very unstable.  I hope this will not happen to Apple with their batteries.

Wondering if those whose MBP's came with ML installed have the same problems with battery life

Thinman

Wondering if those whose MBP's came with ML installed have the same problems with battery life

 

My macbook pro with retina display (replacement) was preinstalled with ML and hasn't had any issues with battery life. Im getting around 8 hours of surfing.