Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

The more i understand this problem (and we all have progressed in a few weeks), the more I realized that this is a limited, small problem, affectig very few machines of the millions shipped last quarter.

Not so sure about that. My mid 2010 i7 MBP has worked great from the day one. For web browsing I had 5-6 hours with Lion. After upgrading ML, I just can't get more than 2 hours. So something really is different in ML big time. Yep, it's a lemon now.

Zane,

Aple techs are answering the issue best they can. If I were you, I would call Apple tech support and ask for a Sr advisor. Start your case.

Yes, 4% drain/hr while the machine is asleep is the clue. you got a lemon. An expensive one. I would never ever bother going back an OS while in warranty, easier to have the machine replaced with a working one.

So if I agree with you that yours is affected. Geniuses are missing the mark, but they ar also not sr advisor support. Your rMBP should not have dropped even 1% while in sleep that hour..

There is but one solution for you: get it replaced. Use it, call, explain, let them do the tests, you have one year to get your replacement. And your replacement one will really work.

kammari,

I am attaching an image of a 2008 I just reconditioned after Lion nd ML. Was getting 40-50 min in ML.

If you look above, will notice the age of the battery: 6 months. Cuddos to Apple, they never sell old expired batteries. So clean install, genuine Apple battery (0 cycle) - second new one I got, and it runs awesomely. 3-4 hours at 75% brightness. Sharp, cool, super fast (on a customized HD too). Clearly, that 2008 hardware could not run ML. In Leopard got close to 5 hours, but that is the point. SL was a bit more demanding, (3-4) as was Lion or ML. Santa Rosa could not run Lion or ML as well, and it heated up- even in Lion but I often did not notice it as I had my machine on the desk, slightly raised.

If your 2010 cannot give you more than 2 hours it means it cannot due to an inherent hardware limitation. Of all the millions that downloaded ML, extremely few experience the issue- including those that upgraded. Al this means that if you desire your former mobility, you must revert back an OS as myself and others did.

Those with 2011 or 2012 affected units, clearly got out of the box lemons. Their architecture should have ensured a good battery life. But 99% of people out there, apparently, did not.

If your 2010 cannot give you more than 2 hours it means it cannot due to an inherent hardware limitation.

Maybe you are right. But it would be easier to accept, if the drop wouldn't be so huge. It's hard to believe that difference between Lion and Mountain Lion could be this big. But maybe it is, because everything is running much smoother in ML with my dated i7. That's also the reason why I won't go back to Lion.

Hm, lemons?

Why should my MBA be a faulty machine? When it came with Lion in mid-June, the battery life was just awesome. The horror started when I updated to ML, so I still cant see this being a hardware issue. Maybe with some rMBP, but not the airs. They're bulding the same laptop for years now, only replacing the mainboard with the latest intel tech.

ApocalyArts wrote:

 

Hm, lemons?

 

Why should my MBA be a faulty machine?

Seriously, why not?

i just came back from apple store; they gave me a brand new battery, and said that if I was still having battery issues that i should come back in and they would run some diagnostic tests and see what (they actually said 'if') there was a problem. 

losing 17% charge while asleep for 10hrs and having a 4.5hr battery life is a bit problematic.

kmmari,

could be the gpu, the battery. Ever tried a new battery see if it solves? you have 14 days to return if issue not solved. Only thing is, the cost of these (even if it works) balanced vs using that money to get a new machine that would be blazingly fast.

Apocaly, here are some reasons why your machine is a lemon.

- Unlike 99.999% of upgraded 2012 June machines, yours does not work with ML as the other 99.999% do.

- Industrial standard for errors, even with Apple, has to be 1-5 % lemons. Out of the factory. If you do believe me that my MBA, superb battery life, came with a faulty trackpad, you should believe that also some come with faulty logicboards or some faulty other component. At the end of any production line, they have special multimeter and software testing (an engineer designing that usually makes $ 200 000 a year). That test is about 1 in 1000 or 10000 accurate. Well, that means that out of millions of logicboards that pass the tests, those 1 in 1000 or 1 in 100 will still be faulty even if passing the tests. Yours is one of them.

- Industry standard for aviation is far far more precise. So a component for Boeing 777 is made  under conditions that reduce failure rate to 1 in millions. But also a bolt or nut in aeropace costs $ 100 to 200. To get all Apple machines at that standard, it would cost thousands more in testing and pricier components.

- Warranty is an industrial standard as well.  95 or 98% of units out there will last, error free, one year. Hence your Apple machine is designed for one year usage, everything else is a bonus. If intending to use a unit for 3 years and pay for no repairs, one must get Apple care. Yet based on my experience with Apple, their units are far superior to any other brand out there: Acer, HP and so on. I would bet anything on that. Just go by a store and see they cheapo imitations, keyboard keys coming off, or bending typing surface. That ultrabook at $ 799 will probably last 1/5th or 1/10th of the time any Apple machine will. To produce an ultrbook of MBA quality, it actually costs Acer and Samsung nearly 1000 per unit at a low low profit margin.

- When Apple pays $ 250-280 for each iPad components (that is a known figure), you can only imagine the difference between their quality and another manufacturer that pays $ 100 for 'similar' specs... Apple gets bulk discounts for its nuts and bolts, and buys top quality.

So end result, you were unlucky as you got a lemon. but you are extremely lucky as you noticed it right away and have a warranty. I would use the steps and get it solved/replaced. And would buy Apple Care in 2013 unless using the $ to get a discount on another machine.

Saidhi, this is a great step. Either way, you will know very soon. No worries, if this fails as well, you will get a logicboard replacement. Also if you open a case with Apple, Sr Care handles things a bit more hands on then stores. Will contact you for feedback, emails, so on. But your issue will be solved, am sure of that.

Beisarius wrote:

 

Stcraw,

 

The more i understand this problem (and we all have progressed in a few weeks), the more I realized that this is a limited, small problem, affectig very few machines of the millions shipped last quarter. If this was not the case, this forum would have evolved to thousands of pages. But it did not. A small percentile of Apple fans got defective machines, and they always did for each generation going back 6+ years. If oyu search the forums and archives, you will find some issue affecting even the G4 or whatever it was called. that is credit to Apple as they ship lots but have extremely few complaints.

 

Sorry, I do not think this is the case. My Mid 2009 Macbook Pro is just as affected. I can watch the battery percentage tick down minute by minute (in the two minutes it took to write this reply, it dropped 2%). And it has a horrible drain while the system is asleep. It will drain 10% while asleep, in about 8 hours. It NEVER drained before Mountain Lion, and if it did, it was a couple of percent per days of being asleep. Mountain Lion did something, some low level process that is consuming battery power, mostly while awake, some (a lot) while asleep.

I am irritated. Why is Apple changing ur battery, when the problem is Mountain Lion? Easy to test: Install Lion battery time up to 7 hours, install ML and it is 4 hours. That's exactly my problem.

The Apple store team wanted to give a new battery to me, but why? I explained them the problem.

I am not a programmer, but i don't understand why apple isnt able to solve this problem!!!

You are right. It isn't a battery problem or something like that. Just software!!!

Hey JT,

To not confuse the issue, I am not saying that 2008 or 2009 units with poor battery life are defective when drained by ML. But saidhi's 2012 unit, that drains MUST BE. It was designed for ML...

If the progression Santa Rosa, Penryn, Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge is understood (or matching GPUs), then your problem would be seen in a different light. I do not believe your machine should run better, faster, or as efficient under ML (vs SL) as that architecture (likely Penryn) is not meant to. It can run, but should drain. ML will use and impose specific parameters, and your 2009 machine was not designed for that. My 2008 or 2009 machines were not and I would never expect it. Some people ran G4 in Beta Lion, yet no one should be able to install ML on a G4... It cannot be done. The fol link will elaborate the history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro

Can also click each architecture and note their differences in performance. When Ivy Bridge is designed to be 30 t0 40% more efficient than Santa Rosa, that is a huge difference...

Current WWW did not exist back in 2009 either. Today's web HTML language, and flash requirements, are more demading on hardware than in 2009... = less surfing time for older machines, perhaps 20 to 30% less.. Hence why Apple did not add Flash on iOS (ipads) as it would slash battery life significantly.

So you are right- processes, ML itself drains your unit, but it is supposed to. A 2011 or 2012 machine (Sandy and Ivy Bridge) are NOT meant to. And evidently, Ivy Bridge is even more efficient then Sandy. So 7 hrs on the MBA 2011 will drop once upgraded to ML, whereas a 2012 unit will work as specs, 7 hrs ML. Next architecture OS will likely drop battery endurancee for all 2012 machines as well. 2011 will be left further behind.

your machine works great just not in ML, and technically, should not have the same consumption in the first place. Apple could have added a warning ref older systems, but the technical limitations of your architecture are what they are.

Wullew,

Apple is following standard troubleshooting steps.  First step is the free software diagnostic. Second, the least expensive troubleshooting replacement test is battery replacement ($120 to $150). If that fails, replace the logicboard, $ 1000. It is  typical troubleshooting, it escalates progressively. In some cases- it happends, bateries may very well turn out defective. Once that is ruled out, logicboard is the next logical culprit.