Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Indeed, downloading 10.8.2 is really slow right now.
Guys, please post if you notice any difference in battery life.
btw, do u recommend a clean install or an update ?

I am on a late2010 Macbook Air and have no 4+gb usb stick nor any dvd drive.

ANy ideas on how to perform a clean install ? Can I do it fro a new partition?

tnx.

Steve Jolly wrote:

 

So far, the 10.8.2 update is only available through the Software Update feature (the App Store).

If you purchased or somehow officially acquired rights to the Hillside Feline, you can re-download the full installer thru the purchases section of the Store, rather than just the combo patch.

And we all know that we can concoct a standalone bootable installer USB stick from that....

I was also surprised that 10.8.2 wasn't available from Apple's Support/Download page.  Can't recall when software update release and the combo download availability didn't coincide.  This wouldn't have happened if SJ were still alive!  Kidding...I kid! 

I'm going to try both ways on my Macs, but agreed, the combo update is a proven way to avoid glitches sometimes.

I've been using Lion DiskMaker recently (works with Lion and Mountain Lion).  It's a great little app and creates a USB installer very fast.  However the dev stopped stripping content for Mountain Lion so it does require 4.44 GB's of space.  It's free but I donated some money for saving me the time to manually create the disk.

Richadams,

1. if you purchased 10.8 and you are back in any previous version you can download 10.8.2 from app store (I have to restart app store).

2. You can donwload  10.8.2 combo from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1581  if you are in 10.8

3. or http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1580  to download the update from 10.8.1

My battery life had been 7+ hours after some changes early in the process (removing a startup script that was using tons of CPU), but I had fallen back to 4 or fewer hours after some recent updates.

I finsihed the update this morning. I then charged my rMBP to 100%, pulled the plug.

Currently running on battery, screen brightness 1/3, and the battery life remaing is 7+ hours.

So it looks to me like either 10.8.2, or the included firmware update, fixed my problems.

Just finished updating. Mine went from ok to far worse. maybe i should cycle through a charge?

Yep...they just updated everything.  That download button the wasn't available when I first posted plus they also just added it to the Support/Download page.  I've already downloaded it from the Mac App Store for my iMac. 

I was waiting for a full version of ML 10.8.2 to do a fresh install on my MacBook Air.

Downloads are still crawling.

Off to do a "scrape and pave" on my MacBook now...fingers crossed!

Jury's still out on what exactly 10.8.2 is doing to my battery life--I just installed it about 20 minutes ago.  But one this is definite: the fans, which have been blowing like a tornado since I installed 10.8.0 when it first came out, are now silent again!  That, in and of itself must equate to better battery life.  I'm very hopeful here!  The 50% decrease in battery life was AGONIZING for me.

I updated mine as well, not sure yet on the benefits

It was showing 98% and 3:26, but it keeps climbing.  It went to 3:43, now 3:53 with 98%h

Bluetooth off, wifi on, backlit keyboard off and brightness at 4 bars.

While typing that last line it went to 3:34 and now up to 3:51 and then 3:56

I was connected to an external monitor, I disconnected that and am up to 4:13... I think the auto change from discrete to integrated is having an effect now 5:56... now up to 6:17

Hmmm, and 6:02... this all happened within 2 mins...  ok, hold on, I was looking at the iStat numbers, which show 5:16 while the apple number is 4:56
... and now  we are down to 4:27

Definitely all over the place

I strongly suggest using the Combo updater (it renews certain System files, and long experience among "pro" users shows that it's the safest way to go on a System version update). It assumes that you're updating from 10.8, not 10.8.1, but, again, experience in the past by many folks, including my own, has indicated to me that there is measurably less risk and measurably more chance of a very stable update when you use the Combo updater version. Your mileage may etc. etc. etc.

It's been posted in

http://support.apple.com/downloads/

along with updates for Lion.

I misspoke earlier.  The 10.8.2 update (at least the combo update) is 697.7MB's - and ultimately 1.23GB's total.  I was downloading the full version of 10.8.2 ML @ 4.37GB's.  Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Looks like 10.8.2 generates a 1.14GB update to iPhoto - v9.4.  More server load. By my count here that's 15 updates released today (iOS 6 being the big one).  Some are included in combos, but I wish they'd stagger these things.  I'm trying to download a full version of Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and it's taking forever!

EDIT: Great...just noticed that Apple also released updates for almost all of their iOS apps (to coincide with iOS 6) today as well...

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/19/apple_issues_major_ios_6_updates_for_n early_all_of_its_apps

No wonder their servers are crawling.  Sheesh!

Message was edited by: richsadams

10.7.5 is also out. Since I downgraded to Lion, I'll first try this one before upgrading again. I'll hear here if it really solves the issue, for most of us.

Fingers crossed!

1.23Gb downloading, extremely slow!

So far, no good. Before, battery life was depleting at 1% for every 2-3 minutes. Now with the update, its going down 1% per minute. I am at 65% with 2:23 left.

My MacBook Pro is late 2011 so battery health is still good. So mine got worse with the update.