Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Steve Jolly wrote:

 

Today's The MacObserver reports on their tests regarding MBP battery problems, the one that we've been discussing here. Some users have reported decreased battery capabilities after installing Mountain Lion, and The MacObserver's lengthy tests have confirmed something like them on their test-bed MacBook Pro. In those tests, the problems have disappeared when they installed the current build of proposed update 10.8.2.

 

The MacObserver:

"...The big change came with 10.8.2, which is still undergoing developer testing. Using the latest build, 12C35, we saw a tremendous increase in battery life, to the point where running time was a few minutes longer than even that of 10.6.8..."

 

In other words, that build of the proposed 10.8.2 is giving them even better battery charging / lifetime results -- at least with their particular test-bed MBP and the current build of the proposed update -- than they observed with Snow Leopard. By the way, their test MacBook Pro seems to be a vanilla, fairly average 2011 MBP.

 

It's certainly encouraging that these real-world results on a developer build are making the battery problem, at least the one that they experienced on their test MBP, completely disappear.

Well this at peast sounds promising I hope Apple will release it into the wild sooner than later

Hey Guys!

I finally installed Lion on my MacBookPro.. wuhu

Great battery life..

And the best is, that I could install Lion without my SL DVD. Because Lion was installed on my Mac before, this information is saved in the efi and I could do online recovery. Great!

Steve Jolly wrote:

 

Today's The MacObserver reports on their tests regarding MBP battery problems, the one that we've been discussing here. Some users have reported decreased battery capabilities after installing Mountain Lion, and The MacObserver's lengthy tests have confirmed something like them on their test-bed MacBook Pro. In those tests, the problems have disappeared when they installed the current build of proposed update 10.8.2.

 

The MacObserver:

"...The big change came with 10.8.2, which is still undergoing developer testing. Using the latest build, 12C35, we saw a tremendous increase in battery life, to the point where running time was a few minutes longer than even that of 10.6.8..."

 

In other words, that build of the proposed 10.8.2 is giving them even better battery charging / lifetime results -- at least with their particular test-bed MBP and the current build of the proposed update -- than they observed with Snow Leopard. By the way, their test MacBook Pro seems to be a vanilla, fairly average 2011 MBP.

 

It's certainly encouraging that these real-world results on a developer build are making the battery problem, at least the one that they experienced on their test MBP, completely disappear.

Well now.. isn't that interesting. Sure it's a couple of test machines, but shows that maybe it is an OS issue.  Hopefuly we'll see it on Wednesday with along with the rest of the announcements.

At the risk of being repetitive, here's my WAG as to why downgrading to Lion doesn't improve our battery issue.

Thanks for sharing this MacObserver article!  Ideally 10.8.2 will resolve this issue once and for all.

My understanding is that 10.8.2 will be released prior to the release of iOS 6 as some of the new iOS is dependant on some of the tweaks in 10.8.2.  Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5 which runs on iOS 6 Wednesday with an iPhone release date of September 21st.  So we should expect the public release of 10.8.2 sometime between now and then...hopefully nearer "now".

I have not had much siccess with going back to Lion and so I am wiping my drive including the recovery partition and reinstalling ML on a clean slet to see what happens prior to 10.8.2 release which it is said will eleviate the battery problems.

I f there is permamnant damage I will be requesting Apple replace my bettery and/or MacBook Air if the replacement battery doesn't fix it as my battery is now at 93% health after only 27 cycles.

I will post if there are any improvements after full re install of ML

Richsadams,

I appreciate the reference, however I didn't downgrade back to Lion. It was always there. I added a second partition and did a Clean Install of ML in the newly created partition, which has effected BOTH operating systems battery life and heat of this machine. So wouldn't this have Just updated the SMC on the ML Partition and Not the Lion Partition? Yet it affected Both virtual drives.

B4ore wrote:

 

Richsadams,

I appreciate the reference, however I didn't downgrade back to Lion. It was always there. I added a second partition and did a Clean Install of ML in the newly created partition, which has effected BOTH operating systems battery life and heat of this machine. So wouldn't this have Just updated the SMC on the ML Partition and Not the Lion Partition? Yet it affected Both virtual drives.

Hey B4ore,

SMC isn't part of the OS, it's part of the firmware.  The firmware was updated in conjunction with ML, so it doesn't matter what OS you're running, the SMC will be/stay the same.  Since firmware is flashed there's not a way to go back other than visiting the Apple store, sending it in, etc. 

That said, it looks like 10.8.2 will resolve this issue.  It could either change the OS to address an SMC compatibility issue or it could update the SMC again (although it wouldn't have to change the version).

Not sure which MacBook you have.  If you have Power Nap available (using it or not), you either have SMC 1.5 or SMC 1.6.

So a clean install of Lion won't "undo" the SMC version you're running. 

OR it may be something totally else, but SMC is the only common denomenator that I can find that would explain this issue.

I'm going to sit tight and wait for 10.8.2 and then perform a clean install of ML - downloaded from Apple rather than using the Mac App Store upgrade method - to see if it indeed corrects this as the tests indicate it will.  Fingers still crossed.

It is all good greghei. I did not take it that personally, although am sure at times all have our pig headed moments.

eddyr wrote:

 

I have not had much siccess with going back to Lion and so I am wiping my drive including the recovery partition and reinstalling ML on a clean slet to see what happens prior to 10.8.2 release which it is said will eleviate the battery problems.

 

I f there is permamnant damage I will be requesting Apple replace my bettery and/or MacBook Air if the replacement battery doesn't fix it as my battery is now at 93% health after only 27 cycles.

 

I will post if there are any improvements after full re install of ML

Been there, done that and no change, at least for me and several others here.  I've outlined the reason why I think this is above.

FWIW my battery health dropped from 95% after 119 cycles on Lion to 93% after only 6 cycles with ML.  The one ray of sunshine is that after switching back to Lion my battery health (reading at least) went back up to 94% and has remained stable after five additional cycles.  So in my case at least, I don't think there was any "permanent damage".  It appears others may not been as fortunate however as some have had to replace their batteries.

Hang in there!

richsadams wrote:

 

B4ore wrote:

 

Richsadams,

I appreciate the reference, however I didn't downgrade back to Lion. It was always there. I added a second partition and did a Clean Install of ML in the newly created partition, which has effected BOTH operating systems battery life and heat of this machine. So wouldn't this have Just updated the SMC on the ML Partition and Not the Lion Partition? Yet it affected Both virtual drives.

 

Hey B4ore,

 

SMC isn't part of the OS, it's part of the firmware.  The firmware was updated in conjunction with ML, so it doesn't matter what OS you're running, the SMC will be/stay the same.  Since firmware is flashed there's not a way to go back other than visiting the Apple store, sending it in, etc. 

 

That said, it looks like 10.8.2 will resolve this issue.  It could either change the OS to address an SMC compatibility issue or it could update the SMC again (although it wouldn't have to change the version).

 

Not sure which MacBook you have.  If you have Power Nap available (using it or not), you either have SMC 1.5 or SMC 1.6.

 

So a clean install of Lion won't "undo" the SMC version you're running. 

 

OR it may be something totally else, but SMC is the only common denomenator that I can find that would explain this issue.

 

I'm going to sit tight and wait for 10.8.2 and then perform a clean install of ML - downloaded from Apple rather than using the Mac App Store upgrade method - to see if it indeed corrects this as the tests indicate it will.  Fingers still crossed.

Richsadams,

Ok, I can see what you mean now and appreciate the clarification. I'm running an early 2011 MBP 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 750 GB drive and the High Res Upgraded screen with just 4 GB or RAM. Guess all there is to do is wait indefinitely till Apple hopefully releases a "working" version of this madness.

Mine has SMC 2.5f7. Tech support also initially speculated that "if the SMC does not work, you are out of luck." Of course, there was no talk of an SMC upgrade a few weeks ago. But SMC and power management have been notably weird in ML. you open a flash web site and slash 30%. Play a video? slash 50%. it is worse then battery efficiency under Leopard or even SL, when I could watch a 2 hr+ movie/dvd on a plane, unhindered by battery issues, on a 4800 mAh. But 2012 macbook, Intel 4000, efficient processor, 8 hrs life, yet if you turn on a video, suddenly 3 hrs tops. That is not at all impressive.

The bottom of the Ars Technica article says "the study shows that users experienced a similar but smaller effect on battery life with the introduction of OS X Lion, an issue that was not fully resolved until the release of OS X 10.7.3 over six months after the public debut of OS X Lion. " Always believed that even Lion began affecting battery health on my older macbooks, and despite 10.7.3, I went thought batteries at a pretty fast pace with Lion.

My take on 10.8.2 is urging cautious optimism. Also Ars found 30 extra minutes in 10.8.1, but, with the exception of one forum member, that update did nothing for the rest. Ars is also using a retina MBP, so that may not be representative of the affected units out there particularly, 2009-2010-2011 models.

If you are loosing 1% every 2 minutes, that is 200 min or just over 3 hours. Applying Ars' metrics, (35% gain from 10.8.1) if you are getting 3 hours now, 10.8.2 will merely bring you to 4, still, short of the spec. Ars was already getting 300 min for 10.8.1, or 5 hours, a far higher figure than that of some esteemed forum members with affected units.

So cautious optimist and, for those with really drainy units, perhaps continuing with Apple support, as if nothing else is coming, may be the best option.

10.8.1 gave my late 2010 MacBook Air another hour...tops out at about 5 hours on a 100% charge vs 7+ hours with Lion.  Actually usefulness is only about 3.5 hours with normal use...no videos of course.  Miss the "old days".

Indeed, cautious optimism.  Fingers crossed...when they're not drumming the desk. 

SMC = 1.69f3

Not sure if that matters to anyone.  15" Early 2011 MBP

he saw that they didn't work properly as the second and the fourth was working hard and the first and the third working few, but running as well.. nothing was running apart the activity monitor window.

here's how is now with the wifi on, browser on and i'm writing this.

now i'm with 29% battery with 2.34 left..

i will see, once i'll recharge the battery again, if it's still like this.

i really hope that 10.8.2 will be like the article says. not only for my mac, but also because, in a world that always work hard to be environmental friendly, it doesn't make sense to release a new os that burns batteries so fast.. it means thousand of used batteries to dispose of...