Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

I also have tried all things on this forum.  Both battery and heating issues seemed to have improve after installing 10.8.1 but now the battery dropping every minute and overheating has begun once again.   In fact it told me to service battery this morning.  So what process is being corrupted that the OS actually improves performance initially then with in a week or two goes back to its old tricks.  There has got to be some genius on this forum to explain this problem.   What amazes me is that a company that makes more money then most countries in the world will not admit that yes, Mountain Lion OS X is casuing harm to some people's macbooks and batteries. 

Okay, at risk of somehow rekindling the comments on both sides:

Beisarius, I have a suggestion: your discussion about Apple and its (or any other large corporation's) handling of challenges like the battery/Mountain Lion problem is interesting.

Enough so to start ANOTHER topic/thread in Discussions that deals with it and that can focus on it. Here, in this topic, it's becoming enough of a (slightly off-topic) distraction that some folks who appreciate your dedication and input the to the core issue are getting put off by it.

You have made a major -- wow, lots of major! -- contributions to the back-and-forth on the battery problem. We all appreciate it. The topic of Apple's motivations, strategy, etc. (other than very brief allusions to it) seems on-topic to your mind because that's how you rank things, and it's an interesting proposition, but can you see how, to some other folks, it's beginning to sound a little like a rant and the beginning of a flame? So, absolutely create a second discussion where it's THE topic, and it can be really explored and dissected!

Then don't be a stranger, here, because you move this discussion forward.

Now, on-topic, Beisarius is right in reminding us that we are a self-selected group, here. We either have a problem, or we're looking for one, or we woudn't be reading and posting here.

We either ARE experiencing a battery problem, or we're enough of a wonk to think that we should understand it and perhaps take steps to prevent it. So, just for the sake of "keeping perspective"...

We don't really know what percentage of various MB's are being affected by this issue. There are a kazillion MBP's out there, of various vintages, that apparently are not having (much of, at most!) a battery problem -- yet, anyway! -- under Mountain Lion. For some, the battery symptoms appears, then disappear. Sometimes it comes back, later, as a mild kitty-case, sometimes as a... well, a battery-eater m. lion.

Example: mine. I had a brief period of rapid draw-down, then it disappeared. Each time I reboot, I seem to see less of it. In fact, my total storage capacity is actually rising. Here's my battery readout:

Remember, I have a mid-2012 15" MBP with most all of the goodies, but no major flash storage, and my machine was bought through a 3rd-party vendor (about a month ago) rather than directly from Apple, so its "date of manufacture" is from a few weeks MORE before I bought it than is often the case from folks who bought from Apple stores.

And, as you see above,my MBP's battery dated from even further back, raising a question of possible battery OEM manufacturer- and lot- related issues that haven't emerged or been clarified, yet.

NONE of this lets Apple off the hook. However, my contacts there say that it's very much a big issue right now in Cupertino, Austin, etc., with many engineers trying to puzzle out what's happening and how it can be fixed. And, apparently, there is some commitment to "make it right" where it's clear that something physical was (or is being) irreversibly damaged by the Mountain Lion installation. We gotta keep making noise, but if Apple tries to do the right thing for people who are damaged (not just temporarily inconvenienced),  I'll shut up and go away. Sound right?

For most of us, right now, it's still just an irritant and a seeming blemish on Apple's record of mostly good software powering really (insanely!) great machines. Even then, we are apparently a minority.

I have exactly the same fault. I predominantly use my Macbook Pro off power as I am mobile user (Primary reason I opted for Mac was for the battery life) so this is greatly inconvenient and sense Apple slipping as they have had long enough IMO to sort this out.

Hey Steve,

No need for another thread. I was not defending Apple's strategy, but I rebuked quite strongly the statements that:

- ML is a junk OS- Not true.

- Thats this may be a major problem Apple should deal with - not true

- That Apple is letting its customers down by not issuing a fix - not true

- This may be a problem affecting 1 in 4 or 1 in 10 machines- again, I argued, not true in my view, financially impossible

- That all you folks should try this install, this tweak and so on, maybe it will fix it - again,  myself and a few others who tested, found this untrue. Apple will replace a machine before any such maddening efforts to installs or uninstall 20 times.

- That a fix is coming- I cant say true or not, I went about assessing why I do not believe one is coming.

- That it is software and not hardware- again argued, not possible on new machines. It just works on those 20 000 units shipped every minute by Apple. And if it did not this forum would be at page 5000.

As you all know, I replaced my MBA due to a faulty trackpad. Does it mean I should go:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589804?start=135&tstart=0

.. and  convince or argue that Apple makes bad machines and trackpads so on.. that would be classic groupthink and as you mentioned in your second post, a groupthink bias. And if one of you went inside that forum and argued that perhaps it was bad luck for those trackpad problems, your point would be sound. I bet no one here experienced a trackpad issue on a brand new macbook.

Did a 180- from thinking ML is really awful, to concluding that only so on defective machines. that's it. And those machines are so so few, that Apple will not issue a fix. We will know soon enough with 10.8.2 if these really affected machines will suddenly double battery life. Does it mean I would get 16 hrs on mine? Love to!. But I agree with owners of 2010 or older machines that, on them, ML is just a drain.It pushes the hardware beyond its limits- and you are right to fault Apple for not testing that out more in advance. And I believe there is no fix for that. No more than iOS5 cannot run on a 3GS as it does on 4s. But we should not expect ML to perform on them as SL did. To wish so, another one of my points, was not realistic nor something Apple claimed.

This forum grew fast those first 3 weeks, but it has ... levelled off. The more units shipp out there with ML, yet pages are now going up in slower and slower numbers. If there was a problem, should be the reverse. With all the 'kazillion' shippments as you called them, posting here should explode exponentially. Yet they just flatten.

My answer is simple. If new, replace. If old, revert one OS back till you get battery life back.

Hey Steve, ref your MBP:

- Apple began producing the retina many months before shippments. the same way it has been producing millions of iPhones 5 well ahead of end Sep store arrival and they are waiting in storage as we write this. After the announcement, this coming week (invite sent to media), those millions begin moving.

- Battery manufacturers equally produced these months before. But in general, never a 1 yr old battery in one new system. So your battery is under that 6 month magic figure  Apple is so good at ensuring for its clients. Longer storage begins affecting the battery health.

Genuine or not? That 3d party vendor, such as a university campus store, would loose their license if found doing that. I find it very very unlikely. A quick trip at Apple's store will reveal if it is genuine- diagnostic. And you know what to do next if not genuine- report the vendor. But why would a vendor put a third party battery? Not even a thief would do that to a brand new stolen machine.

Your battery is defective. I only saw that problem in the rare, defective, or especially fake batteries. I do not believe yours is fake, nor that the ML reader or SMC is defective- though also a possibility. First glance, defective battery. It should not charge one miliamp beyond 6900, that is the max. And after 18 cycles you should be in the 97-98 max health.

Keep the pics, take it to Apple and they will replace the battery. There is no such thing as a 102 % battery health. If the problem repeats, they will replace the logicboard, ie new MBP on the assumption that sensors or SMC are defective. Like all odd problems, the store will ship your battery at an Apple center for further testing but that is no longer your worry.

If just the battery fix does it, let us know.

Chris

so, after having the battery replaced by apple (about 5 days ago), i called apple this evening and told them that the battery life still *****.  they check battery health and tell me that even though i got the brand new battery on 9-3, that 93% health after 4 cycles is "perfectly normal".  she told me that she could tell the engineers that "a couple" of people were having battery problems after upgrading to ML, and that they could try to include some kind of fix in the next upgrade, but that she couldn't guarantee anything.

the only truth in her response was the last statement she made.  If i get 4.5hrs while listening to music while typing a paper (25% brightness, no internet browser open), while other macbooks (older, same age) get around 7hrs, something is wrong.  And if it isn't wrong with the battery, then the problem is elsewhere.
lying to already disgruntled customers doesn't seem to working very well, cuz all this makes me want to do is laptop shop.  this was the worst first laptop experience EVER.

So I put my MacBook Pro to sleep for 2 hours and lost 8% battery drain. I checked the logs and nothing was happening at all for those 2 hours, nothing was recorded in the logs so I have no idea why the battery would drain 8% in 2 hours. Seems strange to me.

9/7/12 5:24:36.634 PM configd[18]: 

com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.wifi.timeout.xpc

com.apple.message.signature: Success

com.apple.message.signature2: SC_CHANGED_EVENT

com.apple.message.result: pass

com.apple.message.value: 10.000000

com.apple.message.summarize: YES

9/7/12 7:24:12.039 PM configd[18]: 

com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.wifi.timeout.xpc

com.apple.message.signature: Success

com.apple.message.signature2: DRIVER_EVENT

com.apple.message.result: pass

com.apple.message.value: 1.000000

com.apple.message.summarize: YES

As you can see from the time stamps, nothing was going on between 5:24 pm and 7:24 pm according to the logs.

May I suggest you try this again, to see if during that 2 hr period, the fans were running?  Is there any noise at all if you put your ear to the case?  Just a long shot, but maybe it is forgetting to turn of the fans when it goes to sleep. As far as I understand the fans run all the time, but quite slowly and pretty well silently, but of course during sleep they shouldn't need to .

Ikaika777 wrote:

 

So I put my MacBook Pro to sleep for 2 hours and lost 8% battery drain. I checked the logs and nothing was happening at all for those 2 hours, nothing was recorded in the logs so I have no idea why the battery would drain 8% in 2 hours. Seems strange to me.

 

Does anyone know why battery life is messy even though I went back to OS X Lion? I thought that it was clearly not a hardware issue but I'm not so sure about that anymore.

Hey steve, how do we get this Battery readout? My MBP 2011 bought in May2012 has also battery problem.

How did you go back to Lion, did you have a clone of the original or did you install 10.7.4 and then transfer your user account back?  Some things have changed substantially apart from the OS, such as iWork, if it were to be migrated back.  Settings may also have changed and Lion Lockfiles are not used in ML, so may be missing in the latter case.

I deleted the whole mac partition and installed Lion with internet recovery. Since I bought my MBA 13 Inch Mid-2012 before ML came out, this was possible.

@ApocalyArts

&

@putnik

Hi, I have done the same thing. I booted from my old hard-drive (external usb drive now) with Lion because I thought that it would give my battery a break from the drain and heat ...

But now I think the problem persists with Lion, although it seems to be not so extreme like under ML.

I also have to say that I´m starting to get impatient. My MBP is not usable for almost a month now, and apple seems to do nothing. Apple is not replying my mails after they got the powermon-files they wanted.

How can I buy in good conscience more products from apple after that?  

My battery is almost empty. Looks like I get about 4h with ML and 5 1/2h - 6h with Lion.