Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Thanks Beisaruis for your summation of my situation.(I think you have a good point)

Before the 2nd SMC reset, it was draining at around 1% per minute and the battery readings were all over the place hence

my participation in the this forum.

I will closely monitor my Mac. If anything it's been a great experience and i'm learning alot about OSX after 20 years of Windows.

The main driver for to go down the OSX route was my family's iToy collection and the thought of the Mac to unify this so to speak.

Cheers Paul

Beisarius wrote:

 

Richsadams, just so you know, you are draining as much as I am (around -1000) so with your max charge around 4600, that gives you just abit more than 4.25 hrs... So from what you are telling me, your machine runs.. normally. I get 6+ hours as I have this new processor and a 6500 battery.  However your unit was draining under MLion/Lion, your figures seem on par with mine- just for a smaller battery...

 

to give you another reference, 2008 and 2009MBPs I tried were between -2000 and -3000 mAh, so no wonder 2 hrs tops.

I get what you're saying and that would be true if it was getting 4+ hours under a normal load...that reading was without anything running.  Open even a minimal amount of apps, Safari, Mail, Calendar, etc. and that reading immediately jumps to -1300 or so and usage drops to 3 hours tops.  Previously I was getting upwards of 5 to 6 hours under a normal load.

Not sure if it has anything to do with our battery issues, but...

Apple working to improve Power Nap feature in latest 10.8.2 beta

One odd thing is that Power Nap is available on my late 2010 MacBook Air after installing Mountain Lion (I disabled it to see if it would help battery life - it didn't seem to).   But according to Apple it shouldn't be...it should only be on mid 2011 and later models.  ???

In any case, hopefully there is more to 10.8.2 for us.

I find myself wondering if the problem is memory-related - as in the type of memory (voltage, manufacturer etc.). The memory module on my macbook is the part that gets really hot and these issues with sleep seem to me to indicate that it's the memory itself that is draining power during sleep.

I believe the 2012 models shipped with different voltages of memory: some people got 1.5V DDR3 while others got 1.33V DDR3L. It'd be interesting to know if there's a correlation with battery drain issues.

Anything is possible I suppose.  In this article they speculate that 10.8.2 will be released to the public prior to iOS 6...which is rumored to be available by Sep. 21st, when the iPhone 5 is due out (announcement to be made Sep. 12th).

A comment indicates that 10.8.2 is 300+ MBs...a great deal larger than the 10.8.1's 46 MBs.  I don't know if that's good news for us or not...hope so.

Don't know if this will help anybody, but after struggling with battery life on my rmbp with ML, installing 10.8.1, disabling the notifications center, and setting my background to the default picture I noticed a minor improvement. Then I stumbled upon an article yesterday that had 2 tips, which after applying seems to have increased my battery life a considerable amount:

http://www.ijailbreak.com/how-to/improve-battery-life-macbook-pro-retina-display /

To clear your RAM and NVRAM

1) Shut down your computer.

2) Turn your computer on.

3) Before the grey screen appears, hold the following keys: Command-Option-P-R.

4) Hold down the keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound

The second method is to delete a corrupt file in Terminal. This method worked for the thread starter Kdamghani and supposedly boosted the battery life from 2.5 hours to over 8 hours. The advantage of Kdamghani’s method is that it does not require a reboot.

Open Terminal:
Type the following, hit enter after each line:

cd ~/Library/Preferences/
rm com.apple.desktop.plist
killall Dock

Well hope these instructions help others! I'm now easily getting 6.5-7 hours of battery life on each charge with medium-high brightness settings viewing powerpoints and taking notes in class.

That or something like it has been floating around for a couple of months.  (See here.)  It's apparently a fix for someone that used Migration Assistant during their ML upgrade and ended up with a corrupted file.  Folks have also tried resetting the SMC, PRAM, NVRAM, etc. without any success unfortunatley.  Wish it worked though.

Hi Beisarius...

I actually just notice that Apple doesnt claim 30 day stand by for regular MBP (13" & 15" non retina). It only does so for retina & MBA. So.. your MBA might lose 1% overnight - which is performing according to what Apple advertises. Where as mine, a 2012 13" MBP loses ~ 5% overnight while sleeping (around 6-7 hours). This might be normal for MBP.  I dont know. Any others who are willing to share their experience? By the way.. I have downgraded to Lion. I vaguely remember the battery was worse on ML while sleeping.

Thanks in advance again.

To clear your RAM and NVRAM

1) Shut down your computer.

2) Turn your computer on.

3) Before the grey screen appears, hold the following keys: Command-Option-P-R.

4) Hold down the keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound

The second method is to delete a corrupt file in Terminal. This method worked for the thread starter Kdamghani and supposedly boosted the battery life from 2.5 hours to over 8 hours. The advantage of Kdamghani’s method is that it does not require a reboot.

Open Terminal:
Type the following, hit enter after each line:

cd ~/Library/Preferences/
rm com.apple.desktop.plist
killall Dock

Well hope these instructions help others! I'm now easily getting 6.5-7 hours of battery life on each charge with medium-high brightness settings viewing powerpoints and taking notes in class.

This is working!

7.30 hours with WLAN on, 6.30 hours with WLAN!

I know I shouldn't be writing this down, as I'm probably jinxing it, but removing this plist file has improved things on my early 2011 15" MPB with hi-res screen, I'm watching my charge staying at 94% much longer, it displays a remaining 5:23 using mail, chrome and at 80% brightness.

I'm having hope again, I should be able to use it again without it needing to be plugged in... It's losing 1% of charge every 4 minutes instead of every 2, although the remaining time is going faster than displayed.

I was done with it and was going back to lion this evening (as it is the first evening on which I have the time to revert), I will stay on the Mountain Lion for a bit longer, unless it screws things up again.

Fingers crossed.

You are welcome Paul.

When I test these machines, I run and do not much other than surfing initially, first 1-2 cycles. If one jumps into installing office, patches, updates, more software, wifi downloads, that will be a 40% reduction right there, from processor usage and wifi activity followed by indexing. So the only way to get accurate readings, most people know, is to do one constant thing, wifi surfing reading, mail. No video news though, thatis also a 50% drop.

You will grow to love the more predictable and efficient macworld. I do not miss Windows a bit- only ever use it here or there for the rare gaming thing.

Ok, voltage thing, that is a very good one and earlier posts described how it must be voltage/amps somewhere- the basis for any electrical current. Battery? Logicboard?

What I know for sure, sure sure, is that not all components are created equal. I remember building systems that were 'allergic' to Samsung, Infineon, or Crucial. Some only liked Kingston (Macs tend to like Kingston). then quality of RAM, so on. Quality RAM with higher tolerance and own heatsinks are almost double the price. Cheap or defective RAM almost always overheats, becomes a resistor and essentially drains current. On PCs, incompatible memory often caused issues such as slowdowns or freezes. HOWEVER, most PC users that customized also were very good at setting their RAM specs (cycles so on), manually in the BIOS. Or advanced BIOS software allow to select specific RAM performance.

As we all know, this cannot be done on a mac. So if different RAM modules were installed, with different voltages, yes, one could get different performance for two otherwise identical systems. As well as, like all RAM from different suppliers, potential for lemon or trouble RAM.

If Apple got drain reports from people with , say 1.55V RAM, it would be easy to isolate- yet, as I wrote in an earlier post- back to a problem no one may want to touch or solve. Why? Most macbooks now RAM fused to the logicboard. So a RAM related drain is still a lemon logicboard and a $1000 replacement. Apple would likely solve this case by case, under warranty, and would make no sense for them to do a general recall or fix. Too expensive and bad PR. I would not if I was the COO.

I see the question: why would it work under Lion but no ML? Simple answer. If ML came with firmware tweaks that alter the RAM clocks and match specific CPU architecture and timings (Sandy or Ivy), then you can see how different RAM, or less able RAM (earlier systems) could not handle it and become a bottle neck drain. Saving in sleep could become an issue (hence the hybernation experiment someone was working on earlier) In a new system, it may only be explained by defective or substandard RAM, and we can easily remind readers that Apple has not been immune to faulty suppliers along its chain. they are pretty good at correcting it and replacing it under some warranty.

crossbytje wrote:

 

I know I shouldn't be writing this down, as I'm probably jinxing it, but removing this plist file has improved things on my early 2011 15" MPB with hi-res screen, <snip>

wullewuu wrote:

 

This is working!

 

7.30 hours with WLAN on, 6.30 hours with WLAN!

Interesting...because the desktop preferences problem was an issue with rMBP's before Mountain Lion was ever released publicly (pre-July 10 vs July 25).  AFAIK it doesn't seem to help other models though, but really glad it's working for you guys!

Curious though...did you both or either one notice the battery issue before upgrading your rMBP to ML or was ML already on your machines?

TIA!

Beisarius wrote:

 

I see the question: why would it work under Lion but no ML? Simple answer. If ML came with firmware tweaks that alter the RAM clocks and match specific CPU architecture and timings (Sandy or Ivy), ... <snip>

That's where I've been headed for a while, this being a firmware vs software issue.  I've no idea if it has anything to do with RAM or something else...seems as plausible as anything else. 

I know this is where we part company theory-wise, but I'm still banking on Apple being able to resolve this with an update.  Fingers crossed here also...only time will tell.

Mine is not even a retina model.

The battery issue only started after upgrading to mountain lion. I did not notice a drop between snowleopard and lion, but i never had snowleopard for long.

In the last few hours, the battery has been holding up according to the estimates it shows. Now it's asleep, but i forgot to look at the % before i closed it. I really hope that it is solved for me.

But it is strange that this has no effect for others. It clearly went wrong after the ML upgrade. However, the week before, I swapped my 7200rpm drive for a solid state (OCZ Vertex 4). If the problem comes back, I'll try using the regular drive again, with mountain lion. Using a clone, not a clean install.