Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

What ever happened to your lemon THEROY? Now it sounds like you are conceding to the problem being with hardware/software, which was obvious from the beginning. I am pretty sure Beisarius is an Apple employee, trying to distort reality.

lol fantastic.  all this thread needed was a conspiracy theory.

Ummm, ok,

-My lemon theory is quite alive and well. Am having this MBA replaced. The previous one, although I tested theroughly, had ZERO battery drain issues no matter what I did. Flash videos, sports videos, so on. If  my MBA #1 worked in this configuration (as most units do), and this one does not, then this one is a lemon. Apple agreed 5-6% is wayy off (sleep) hence the replacement. Maybe you would like shots to prove that the incoming one is a new one.

- And the conclusion, if the GPUS fire up on a tiny tiny minority of machines, then it is hardware. Will not reenter the discussion as to why only a fraction of machines are affected. Furthermore, I can assure you, that even with 10.8.2, numerous people who posted are unlikely to have their issue solved. Period. No one claimed 10.8.2 ill take you from a defective 3 hr machine to 8. The best claim they had was what, 30-40% (Ars technica). At 4 or 4.5 hrs, that MBP would still be defective in my view.

- Apple employee-no. think they call that paranoia- unwarranted suspicion and bursts of mistrust.

Beisarius wrote:

 

- And the conclusion, if the GPUS fire up on a tiny tiny minority of machines,

That is indeed the prime suspect for the battery issue on the bigger MBPs that have a discrete GPU, Radeon or NVidia. The CPU you can check with Activity Monitor, but for the average user there is no way to see if the GPU is going for all its worth (even if isn't active as per the gfxCardStatus info).

Can anyone intimately familiar with Developer tools, be it on XCode or separately, indicate if there's any utility that can read what the GPU is up to at all times?

The GPU testing code is beyond my ability. But, as Mr Spock once said, once we remove all probable causes, we are then left with the very likley improbable. Batteries - ruled out. CPUs- rules out. Ram? Impossible to burn 20 watts.. SDD? Also it cannot burn 20 watts. What is left? CPU. What does it burn? 20 watts in medium load mode- and I attached tech links that demonstrate how that works. Am pretty confident that Apple has already identified the issue. Am unsure it can be fixed with OS update in all the cases documented on this forum.

njerisaidhi wrote:

 

lol fantastic.  all this thread needed was a conspiracy theory.

Oh this is just great...my tinfoil hat's at the cleaners! 

Beisarius wrote:

 

The GPU testing code is beyond my ability. But, as Mr Spock once said, once we remove all probable causes, we are then left with the very likley improbable.

While Mr. Spock may have said it, that comes from Sherlock Holmes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_holmes#Holmesian_deduction

Very much so. But it being 45th anniversay of Star Trek, and far better known then Holmes, I opted for the easiest quote.

Beisarius wrote:

 

Very much so. But it being 45th anniversay of Star Trek, and far better known then Holmes, I opted for the easiest quote.

Easier it may have been, accurate it is not.

Ah knew thut pointy ear ET wus a plagiarist!

Yeah, but plagiarism is limited by lack of knowledge

Then it is neither from Homes but Charles Peirce, abduction reasoning, a generation earlier than Conan Doyle. Intellectual roots can equally be found going all the way to antiquity. Conan Doyle attributed to Holmes what he had read from Peirce.

No one palgiarized anyone. The character history linked Spock with Sherlock Holmes. Roddenberry further transmitted the same to Data, whom not only used the same quote, but did so while playing Holmes on the Hallodeck. So it was very much known to the  writers and to the audience picking up the clues to recognize a recreation of Holmes.

Beisarius wrote:

 

Then it is neither from Homes but Charles Peirce,

Do you have any attribution for that please.

read on Conan Doyle and where he got his methods. nothing he attributed to Holmes was a Conan Doyle creation. Not even the word hypothesis. Like Peirce, Whilliam Merrel's hypotetico-deductive model (1830s) as well as inference created the very language Dole borrowed.