Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Nope... It seems like it only shows 3.5 hours for 100% charged battery.

Worked only 3 hours with standard screen saver running almost all the time. I suspect it will be only 2 hours of web surfing, movie watching... Let's see... ***sigh***

So far so good!  This is a follow-up to my post yesterday where it appeared that 10.8.2 improved the battery life on my Late 2010 MacBook Air.

I closed the lid and put it to sleep yesterday at 5:25 p.m.  Opened it this morning at 8:20 a.m.  Here are the readings:

5:24 p.m. - Battery = 82.5%, 5:38hrs

8:20 a.m. - Batttery = 80.3%, 5:19hrs

So during about 15 hours in sleep mode it lost about 2% which is pretty close to what it did with Lion.  With the initial install of ML it would lose 15% or more overnight. 

Battery health is still 96% after 131 cycles.

As Chris and a couple of others have mentioned, it also does seem faster, a little more snappy than before.

I did not reset the SMC since it was behaving fairly normally and it's still completely "stock", just two battery monitoring apps installed.  Today I'm going to activate iCloud, Dropbox, Time Machine, etc. and we'll see how it goes.

Two other things I've noticed (both positive):

1. Free memory is higher.
2. Power usage is lower.  (It would hit 7+ watts at idle previously and now it's generally around 5 to 5.5 watts)

Both of these things make sense particularly since the SMC/firmware was updated with 10.2.8.

I still need to see how it goes after a few normal charing cycles, but all-in-all 10.8.2 made a marked improvement to my machine's battery life.

FWIW this improvement was with a clean install, not an upgrade.  I don't know if it's a majority, but it appears that success for a number of folks came with a clean install and IIRC that was one of the first things Apple suggested to correct this issue.  So for anyone that's still experiencing problems (and didn't perform a clean installation) it might be worth trying.

I'll continue to post results as appropriate.  Fingers still crossed that this does it.

Best of luck to all!

Well, I have tries all suggested solutions.

resettng SMC and NVRAM and PRAM

Still very poor Battery Life

Just it looks likes Apple have fouled up and pretesting of software did not find anything.

I worked in R and D in tyre industry and remembering suggesting giving test tyres to selected members of the

public to see their results.  We did not do it.  Problems that arose did not show up in our testing.

This is the same with the Battery Life and updates with Apple

Thinman

Bummer.    Did you try a completely fresh installation as well? 

If it persists I'd certainly open a case with Apple (even out of warranty).

Best of luck!

Kenji, I apologize for insulting you.  I'm frustrated and I have a hard time understanding people who defend Apple on these issues, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.  I'm upset because I paid almost $3k for a laptop that has been disabled by a software upgrade built by the same people (Apple, of course) who sold me the laptop.  I never meant to insinuate that my $3k makes me more important than you spending $1,500.  And I NEVER suggested that I "invested" the $3,000 to get a profit like that other guy berated me for.  All I meant is that I "invested" much more money in a laptop than I had to (vs. a cheaper windows laptop with similar specs,) for a couple simple reasons.  First, the build quality on MBPs is unparalleled.  Second, the reliability is so much better.  I switched to the MacOS after my Thinkpad crashed on waking from sleep for the millionth time and I lost a few docs that weren't saved.  MBPs wake from sleep quickly and reliably, as just one example.  And last, I bought it for the great battery life.  So it IS INDEED an investment in that regard.  I could have paid half for a similarly performing machine, but I wanted the best so it would be more reliable.  THAT'S an investment.

Anyway...GOOD NEWS.  I think after the 10.8.2 update, a complete drain, reset of SMC and PRAM and recharge, I'm back to good battery life.  And it is so nice to not hear the fans and feel the scorching heat that was between the keyboard and "MacBook Pro" silkscreen.  Whatver was causing the problem, it was obviously causing something inside the machine to heat up and the only source of that heat can be from the battery.  Remove the cause of the heat and the battery goes back to normal.  Awsome.  I only hope my battery isn't permanently damaged by a month of all that heat and high drain.  Time will tell.

Again, apologies to Kenji.  But I will add, Kenji, as a someone probably twice your age, with three kids and a very full time job, things like this become far more burdensome and problematic and your tolerance for dealing with it goes way down.  (Ahhhh, to be a college student again!)  The fact that Apple never acknowledged the problem leaving us all wondering, I think, is lame.  But that's business, I guess.

Hey there.

Thank Apple for 10.8.2. It worked for my retina MBP.

After the update, a complete drain, reset of SMC and PRAM and recharge, I'm back to good battery life.

6:20h. Last week it was 3 max...so, I'm happy with the update. Hope you'll too.

P.

yeah me too mine is i think ok now.. after updating last night to 10.8.2 first after the update i check the battery from 55% it only gives me like 1:25hr and it drains really so fast and i was like wt.. is this serious so i go like crazy thinking that it becomes more worst so i read all the post in here and i try to do the PRAM and SMC reset i dont know how so i look for a guide and found one but i dont know if i do it correctly then i leave it like charging i waited until it gets 100% then after now im seeing 100% for 6:35hr I'm expecting like 7-8hr but atleast i'm happy with not seeing 100% for 3:35hr so i gues my mbp 13" mid 2012 is now ok but still i need to see if its drains fast still need to check on that.. but i'm hoping it will not.. please =)

and one more i like most in the 10.8.2 update is the imessage and facetime i saw them both on my iphone and my to my mac really enjoys it..

and thanks for the update APPLE =)

No offense taken, I was a bit harsh on my end also so I apologize for that. And I see your point, no harm done!

I just backed everything up in Time Machine and I'm going for a fresh install and see where that takes me, I do it once every 3 months in order to keep only my necessary files on so that should be interesting! I'll report back in a few hours, I'm just going to finish charging up to 100% and see if there was any improvement (96% as we speak ahah)

Well, I did the combo 10.8.2 upgrade and reset the SMC and PRAM, now I get great battery life. Over 7 hours and no battery drain during sleep. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lucky people ...

After combo installation of 10.8.2 and rseting PRAM and SMC, mine MBP 2010 just shows nice numbers like now 74% - 3 hous.

But... it keeps draining 1% per 1 minute...

I guess It's time to give up and downgrade to Lion.

2% drained while writing this post.

Also, MPB lost 9% of battery for 8 hours of sleeping.

Nice...

After some waiting and using, the battery life only improved a little bit. from about 4h it went back to 5:30h-6h, which is slightly more than I had with Lion after downgrading from 10.8.1.

Anyone has an idea what I could do to fix this? I mean 8.2 worked for a lot of people, so just wondering...

I took the plunge and downloaded the update from the app store. I was delighted when i first unpluuged the power and saw 7h57m remaining!!

My joy was short lived as it dropped to 85%, 4h15m in the space of about 1 hour of real use (email, safari and MS Word only).

I think the numbers at the top should be ignored. They are only estimates after all. I have to use my laptop away from power today, so I'll see what I get in real world use and report back. Looking hopeful though...

PS I'm using a late 2011 Macbook Air 13" i7 with 256gb SSD.

Fingers crossed everyone

Hello slego, I experience the same problem, nothing has helped my mbp mid 2010, not PRAM, not SMC restart not even battery reconfiguration, I'm thinking as well about the downgrade. Actually I have former harddrive with Snow Leopard ( some older stuff on that as well), do you think it is possible to just change the harddrive and go on ? May it help the battery, since it is running Snow Leopard ? Many thanks.

husticik, I think hard drive changing trick should work. At least I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work.

Also, I'm still testing my MBP in terms of letting him to normalize all processes after resetting PRAM/SMC as it was mentioned here.

Just charged my battery second time after last PRAM/SMC resetting. For 100% it showed me 4:57, after 1 hour of idle (screen is open and screen saver is running) - it shows 80% and 3:32.

mine too i thought its already fix last night when after i full charge and saw 6:35hr i was happy then but now i'm crazy again showing 3hrs and it gets even worst **** i'm not happy at all with what im getting please apple fix the battery issue please please please ... T_T mbp 13" mid 2012 =(