Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

richadams,

like some users, after ML I still saw issues with Lion. but, by then, the batteries had been affected and so on. Like a few other users, I did clean installs, one case proper SL reinstall, PRAM SMC reset a few times AND purchased new batteries, problem was gone. Same on another unit. So I cannto say Ml left some firmware behind,a s I whiped that clean with previosu OS reinstalls.

So I do not know- what is your battery like after ML? if you even lost 15% health that will affect how it operates even with Lion... Have you tried a new battery?

Chris

greghei1 wrote:

 

Beisarius wrote:

 

 

When I reframed my outlook on this issue, I looked hard at those figures, and realigned my perception with reality. If you can somehow link this post with even 1 percent of affected users, i will ask you, where is the evidence.. in this case, the lack of evidence is evidence in itself. no smoking gun = at least 99.999 percent of users out there have no problem.

So, distilling this long post down, the answer to my request to point me to the data is "I can't, I made it up."  Your assumptions (which is all that your post is) may be correct, but you have no hard data. 

 

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence only if you can establish that everyone having this problem has (a) identified the problem, and (b) has complained to Apple or media organizations.

 

All I'm saying is that you don't have any factual basis for asserting that this is not a widespread problem.  At best you have assumptions/guesses.

And that applies equally to you also.

LOL!

I think trying to put a number on this is ridiculous, any attempt is just a total and complete guess.  I will have to side with greghei1 on this one.  A large percentage of Mac users, like the three (yes 3) that I heard opening giving their user names and passwords to a 'genius' at the genius bar on Thursday, will not even realize they have an issue.  Those in that group that do notice that something isn't right, probably won't come here to discuss it.

Does that group make up 1%, 10%, 50%, of Mac users?  None of us know, so trying to put numbers on this problem is nothing more than talking out your behind.

All that being said, it doesn't matter what the percentage is, Apple will (or won't) respond when they are ready.  Don't you all remember the "you're holding it wrong incident"?  It took several months for Apple to respond to that (even though they new all about the issue, as was mentioned in the Jobs biography), and they pretended that there wasn't an issue, but they were giving away bumpers because they were nice.

Don't hold your breath on this one either...

greghei, I will now hammer harder with critical thinking- just so other posters may not end up believing you there is a big problem.

- you are alledging the problem is widespread. Now that is an allegation. May i ask you, where is your evidence? One even three articles is not evidence. Any Sr advisor telling you such is hearsay. Were is your data to support your statement?

- Are there 5000 users posting with a problem? Each a para...? NO

- Are there hundreds or articles detailing the problem? NO

- i used reverse logic to point out that in the absence of data to back your statemnt, deductive logic forces us to admit my numbers as the only alternative.

Your point is at the very least a red herring as well as causal fallacy. You are esentially asking me "prove with numbers that this is not a widespread problem.Where is your data" So you hijack the argument into being about a widespread problem backed with numbers. Secondly, you are using an invalid argument, as it is impossible to prove the statement since you get numbers only if you have a problem- not in its absence. So the burden of any proof - here or a court of law- falls on you. Here is your argumentative error:

P1: numbers can define the extent of the problem

P2: ML produces widespread issues amongst users

P3: We have no data to prove that 99.99% macbooks are error free..

C: Therefore, there must be a widespread problem

C does not match any premise...Hence causal and effect fallacy.

I have extensive experience at this, so should you wish throwing out statements alleging Apple is in the wrong, i will dissect them premise by premise and prove that, instead, there is no problem as you implied, your conclusions are not valid and most posters will find a solution with Apple tech support

Beisarius wrote:

 

richadams,

 

like some users, after ML I still saw issues with Lion. but, by then, the batteries had been affected and so on. Like a few other users, I did clean installs, one case proper SL reinstall, PRAM SMC reset a few times AND purchased new batteries, problem was gone. Same on another unit. So I cannto say Ml left some firmware behind,a s I whiped that clean with previosu OS reinstalls.

 

So I do not know- what is your battery like after ML? if you even lost 15% health that will affect how it operates even with Lion... Have you tried a new battery?

 

 

Chris

Hi Chris,

No new battery, not yet anyway.  My battey's health pre ML (Lion) was 95% at 119 cycles.  It's now 93% at 125 cycles.  So if my math is correct:

5% drop after 119 cycles = .04% per cycle (v10.7.x)

2% drop after 6 cycles = .33% per cycle (v10.8.x and now v10.7.x)

At the current rate my battery will need replacing in another 300 cycles.  I understand there are variables and the curve won't be steady, but I think you'd agree that that's far from normal.

I have reset the SMC and PRAM more than a few times but no change.  Draw is still about 1% per minute under the same load as with the original Lion install and about 4% in sleep state overnight.

As I posted earlier, here are a couple of interesting articles/polls on the subject.  A bit dated now and totally unscientific of course, but still interesting.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/03/apple-mountain-lion-battery-poll/

http://9to5mac.com/2012/08/03/mountain-lion-causing-battery-life-issues-for-sele ct-users-poll/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/mountain-lion-update-can-improve-battery-li fe-for-some-mac-notebooks/

There are a lot of assertions in this thread and I thought I’d offer of a few thoughts and suggestions.

Background:

1. Mountain Lion affects the batteries of some MBPs, rMBPs, and MBAs.   The symptoms range from a rapid drain of battery life (dropping 1% every 2 minutes) to a drop of battery health in a very short period of time, sometimes resulting in a “Service Battery” indication.  While Apple has release 10.8.1, it has not fully addressed this problem.
2. While we do not know how many people are affected by this problem, we do know that informal polls have put this problem at around 18%
3. While some people have complained on the “Developer” community site at Apple.com, we cannot assume that everyone affected by this problem will post to this forum.  As such the size of the thread is not indicative of the pervasiveness of this problem.  
4. We can factually say that this ML battery tread is already larger than the Lion Battery issue thread.

Potential Causes:

1. File mismatch. It is possible that there are remnants of the old operating system, or that, for some reason, all of the files that should have been copied by ML were not copied.  This is one possibility because some uses have found that their computer works after performing a clean install of ML.   So, this suggest that the problem might not be entirely hardware related.  (It still could be hardware related due to tolerances or configuration issues; which get corrected by a full, clean install).   To find this, all the Apple engineers need to do is take a machine that is misbehaving and compare the file system with that on a machine where everything is working.  If there are missing files between the systems, they would need to dig into why.
2. Incorrect configuration.  Similar to #1, a file may have the incorrect setting in it.  This might occur if a file wasn’t replaced in the ML Update process, but is replaced when a clean install is performed.  This is suggested because some people who have performed a clean install of ML and then recovered using Time Machine still report the problem. Someone has already found that fan RPMs (3000 versus 2000) as an issue, which I speculate is what was corrected in moving to 10.8.1 – but this isn’t a full explanation.
3. Battery Issue. Not likely (excepted for the case of tolerances, mentioned previously).   If it were a battery issue, solely, we  would have seen it for the same machines before ML.  Similarly, for those who have reverted back to SL the problem does not persist (with the exception of lost Battery Health where it is not clear that it improves).
4. GPU or other Graphics issue.  Certainly could be a cause.  But, if so, it would somehow be associated with #1 and/or #2.
5. iCould or Notification Center.  Certainly would lead to a bit of drain, but the apps – unless they are really poorly written – should not cause the amount of drop we are seeing.
6. ML just requires more power because it’s doing more.  This could be the case.

Additional ideas are welcome.

Beisarius wrote:

 

greghei, I will now hammer harder with critical thinking- just so other posters may not end up believing you there is a big problem.

 

- you are alledging the problem is widespread. Now that is an allegation. May i ask you, where is your evidence? One even three articles is not evidence. Any Sr advisor telling you such is hearsay. Were is your data to support your statement?

 

- Are there 5000 users posting with a problem? Each a para...? NO

- Are there hundreds or articles detailing the problem? NO

 

- i used reverse logic to point out that in the absence of data to back your statemnt, deductive logic forces us to admit my numbers as the only alternative.

 

Your point is at the very least a red herring as well as causal fallacy. You are esentially asking me "prove with numbers that this is not a widespread problem.Where is your data" So you hijack the argument into being about a widespread problem backed with numbers. Secondly, you are using an invalid argument, as it is impossible to prove the statement since you get numbers only if you have a problem- not in its absence. So the burden of any proof - here or a court of law- falls on you. Here is your argumentative error:

 

P1: numbers can define the extent of the problem

P2: ML produces widespread issues amongst users

P3: We have no data to prove that 99.99% macbooks are error free..

C: Therefore, there must be a widespread problem

 

C does not match any premise...Hence causal and effect fallacy.

 

I have extensive experience at this, so should you wish throwing out statements alleging Apple is in the wrong, i will dissect them premise by premise and prove that, instead, there is no problem as you implied, your conclusions are not valid and most posters will find a solution with Apple tech support

Good luck "hammering harder" on that critical reasoning with your "extensive experience." 

To paraphrase the great Inigo Montoya: You keep using these words - I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

My posts (and many others) only said that there is clearly a problem with some users, and that the scope of that problem is unknown.  Although the scope is unknown, we do know at bare minimum that there are more than 120 pages of posts on this forum in which people (myself included) describe problems.  I never suggested that a certain number of users are reporting the problem, although anecdotally this has been suggested to me.  As we all know, however, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

You, in response to such posts, have alleged that the problem is isolated, and that 99.9999% (and 99.999% and now 99.99%, depending upon your post) of users don't have a problem.  I asked you to support your allegation with data, not supposition based upon flawed assumptions such as that a material percentage of users with a problem post on online fora.  We still haven't seen it, and so we still don't know what the proportion is, but we do know that a relatively large number of users have posted here on this forum, and a number of authors have posted articles.  As you point out, that gives us no concrete data, but it tells us that the number of users with problems is >0%.  You alleged that it was 0.0001% and I asked for proof for your assertion.

My post acknowledged that you may have such data.  I still hope you do have such data, as it would establish that only a few people are, in fact having the horrible time that many of us here are having - I personally have spent nearly 6 hours on the phone with various departments at Apple and with a Genius, and run four separate rounds of diagnostics.  Unfortunately, since the number of users whom you proffer as not having problems keeps changing, and you haven't presented any such data, I'm guessing that you don't have it.

I'm simply asking you to validate your >99.99% assertions "just so other other posters may not end up believing you" that there is a small problem.

greghei1 wrote

 

We still haven't seen it, and so we still don't know what the proportion is, but we do know that a relatively large number of users have posted here on this forum,

No we don't, unless you can define what this large number of users is 'relative' to. All we know is that some users are reporting issues, and some are not. The data required to assign a value whether it be .000001% or 100% is not available.

I was at an Apple store on the weekend in Vancouver BC, and they didn't even try to "fix" anything. He just downloaded technical data from my computer, and said hopefully the next 10.8.2 or 10.8.3 will improve things. He said there is no official word from Apple, but those "Genius" are recognizing that there is "a problem" that they are "seeing", but they have no way to fix it.

Beisarius wrote:

 

greghei, I will now hammer harder with critical thinking- just so other posters may not end up believing you there is a big problem.

 

- you are alledging the problem is widespread. Now that is an allegation. May i ask you, where is your evidence? One even three articles is not evidence. Any Sr advisor telling you such is hearsay. Were is your data to support your statement?

 

- Are there 5000 users posting with a problem? Each a para...? NO

- Are there hundreds or articles detailing the problem? NO

 

- i used reverse logic to point out that in the absence of data to back your statemnt, deductive logic forces us to admit my numbers as the only alternative.

 

Your point is at the very least a red herring as well as causal fallacy. You are esentially asking me "prove with numbers that this is not a widespread problem.Where is your data" So you hijack the argument into being about a widespread problem backed with numbers. Secondly, you are using an invalid argument, as it is impossible to prove the statement since you get numbers only if you have a problem- not in its absence. So the burden of any proof - here or a court of law- falls on you. Here is your argumentative error:

 

P1: numbers can define the extent of the problem

P2: ML produces widespread issues amongst users

P3: We have no data to prove that 99.99% macbooks are error free..

C: Therefore, there must be a widespread problem

 

C does not match any premise...Hence causal and effect fallacy.

 

I have extensive experience at this, so should you wish throwing out statements alleging Apple is in the wrong, i will dissect them premise by premise and prove that, instead, there is no problem as you implied, your conclusions are not valid and most posters will find a solution with Apple tech support

I really prefer to stay out of these discussion, since we have no idea as to whether you are a 15 year old kid or someone with actual experience and knowledge...

I am going to assume that both of you realize that neither of you can be proven right or wrong, this is a waste of everyone's time.

gmc74 wrote:

 

I really prefer to stay out of these discussion, since we have no idea as to whether you are a 15 year old kid or someone with actual experience and knowledge...

 

I am going to assume that both of you realize that neither of you can be proven right or wrong, this is a waste of everyone's time.

Very true, and my apologies to all for such - my conference calls today have been particularly dull.  I hereby tap out.

I received a call from someone from Apple on August 10th regarding my post on this forum and my battery issues. He sent a utility that gathered information on my system and Apple Engineers would review it and hopefully solve our problems in an update. I think that OS10.8.1 was released two weeks later, hardly time for a reliable solution to the bugs in the OS. I went from 3.5 hours to under 2.5 on ML, so I understand everyone's frustration. I am only mildly confident that Apple corrects this and a bit skeptical that iOS6 is worth downloading for my 4S. Perhaps I'll let someone else beta test it before I commit to it.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4268043?tstart=0

That is my post and will fix all battery problems with mountain lion. Enjoy!

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19475780#19475780

will fix your problem, enjoy!