Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Just received a mail back from engineers at Apple Bug Report asking me about Power Nap to whether on not my machine supported power nap and if it enabled while running on battery. I've just read an article stating that Macbooks prior to 2011 will have Power Nap support though I believe this was installed as standard as part of Mountain Lion and could well be the cause of this problem for users using macs made before 2011. What does everyone else think?

Sorry need to ammend my last post

Just received a mail back from engineers at Apple Bug Report asking me about whether or not my machine supports Power Nap, which apparently it does not Macbook Air 11' Late 2010,  and if it is enabled while running on battery. I've just read an article stating that Macbooks prior to 2011 will not Power Nap support though I believe this was installed as standard as part of Mountain Lion and could well be the cause of this problem for users using macs made before 2011. What does everyone else think?

I believe it could be related.... My battery drained nearly all the way down while sleeping.

An earlier post I made:

"I'm just guessing but I imagine it's related to how certain applications are handling certain power management options.

In both my efforts I installed only the apps that I must use (neither Carbonite or Chrome was installed) but it made no difference.....

Back on Lion until everyone on this thread starts jumping up and down with joy because the problem has been fixed."

At the risk of beating a dead horse or being from the department of redundancy department, I've long thought that the primary issue here is the System Management Controller (SMC).  Early on when Apple asked a number of us to do various things including installing diagnostic programs, they also had us reset the SMC.  So they were concerned with it from the beginning.

To your point, Power Nap is part of the SMC (which is part of a Mac's firmware, not software).  Mountain Lion initially added Power Nap to 2011 and newer MacBooks and subsequently with 10.8.2 it was added to Late 2010 MacBook Airs as well...again requiring an SMC update. If a MacBook has the Power Nap feature, the SMC was updated.

During the last seed/beta of 10.8.2, among other things, Apple asked the devs to focus on any issues with Power Nap.  More here and elsewhere.  So they've been concerned with it for a while.

So yes, my WAG is still that this is an SMC issue and Power Nap is a part of that.  That said, I also still believe that Apple can resolve this for folks that are still experiencing problems with future updates to the SMC (and possibly the OS).

brianx87 wrote:

 

Sorry need to ammend my last post

 

 

Just received a mail back from engineers at Apple Bug Report asking me about whether or not my machine supports Power Nap, which apparently it does not Macbook Air 11' Late 2010,  and if it is enabled while running on battery. I've just read an article stating that Macbooks prior to 2011 will not Power Nap support though I believe this was installed as standard as part of Mountain Lion and could well be the cause of this problem for users using macs made before 2011. What does everyone else think?

We have the same machine, Late 2010 MacBook Air, and yes, Apple recently added the Power Nap feature for our MBA's.  More here.

I think it's related as well.  Obviously, my Late 2007 Model MBP doesn't support Power Nap, but I have a suspicsion that something related to power nap is causing the issue in my MBP's SMC.  Perhaps I should submit a bug report myself to hopefully help them figure out the problem in older systems.

You should have submitted a bug report already, as should everybody if these problems are every going to be sorted anytime soon.

If it can help someone, here is my experiment.

I have a late 2008 Macbook (Alu).

It had a HDD with Lion 10.7.4, and the battery had a duration of 5 hours.
I changed the HDD with a SSD and made a clean install of Mountain Lion. The drain was huge. I made the update to 10.8.2, nothing changed. I made a SMC reset, nothing too.

Since Mountain Lion, my battery lasts approximately 2 hours.

I have the idea to change the SSD with Mountain Lion with my old HDD with Lion to see if the battery recover its old duration (after an SMC reset). It displays me 4 hours and a minute later it returns to 2 hours.
So, i think this is something changed on the mac and not on the system itself because the problem is still there with the old HDD and the old OS. (But i'm pretty new to Mac so my knowledges about it are not large).

I hope that this post can help a little bit to guide to the solution, even if I think that this is already posted. (I am to tired to read the 167 pages )

Sorry for the possible mistakes, English is not my mother tongue

(I was going to link / quote a previous post of mine, but I can't find a way to show all my old posts... and 167 pages is a lot to look through )

While "PowerNap" isn't available on all models, the "DarkWake" technology has been in OS X for several versions, going back to 10.6 I believe (maybe even 10.5 in some form). ML added PowerNap features to DarkWake. Earlier versions of DarkWake will keep your machine partially awake even when asleep, to monitor changes to ports and such. There is a boot parameter that disables DarkWake, and I found that doing so, cuts down the power drain while asleep considerably.

There are also "sleep" vs "hibernation" considerations. The default mode of OS X is to "sleep" such that power is still being applied to the memory, in order to quickly wake from sleep, instead of delaying the wake while memory is loaded from disk (The options are detailed in the "pmset" command:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ man1/pmset.1.html

(Look for SAFE SLEEP ARGUMENTS  )

There is a WWDC 2012 video that goes over Power management and Dark Wake that's pretty informative.

That being said, it doesn't really explain the unacceptable power drain while awake.

I'm doing a full discharge and recharge, with a SMC reset (though I've done enough of those, it's probably a moot point by now), after a fill wipe and reinstall of ML. As I had reported, when first started up in my reload, and fully charged, I saw between 6.5 and 7 hours displayed..I was thrilled. However, that didn't last long. By the time it was down in the 70's, it was sucking power at like 7% per 15 minutes. But, we'll see.

All good points.  And that power drain (approx. .5% per minute) is still too high IMHO.  My MBA was draining 1% per minute (and sometimes higher) prior to 10.8.2.  My overnight drain was anywhere from 15% to 20% prior to 10.8.2 as well.

After the fresh install of 10.8.2 and the SMC update my overnight drain is back to around 2% which is approximately what it was with Lion.  I just close the cover to put it to sleep, however I don't have Power Nap enabled (yet).  All of the other suspects, iCloud, Dropbox and so on are active though and it's still exceeding the advertised 5 hour use by about 10% to 15% under normal use.  It took about 3 to 4 cycles to get to that point though.

Hang in there and best of luck!

Blm79 wrote:

 

If it can help someone, here is my experiment.

I have a late 2008 Macbook (Alu).

It had a HDD with Lion 10.7.4, and the battery had a duration of 5 hours.
I changed the HDD with a SSD and made a clean install of Mountain Lion. The drain was huge. I made the update to 10.8.2, nothing changed. I made a SMC reset, nothing too.

Since Mountain Lion, my battery lasts approximately 2 hours.

I have the idea to change the SSD with Mountain Lion with my old HDD with Lion to see if the battery recover its old duration (after an SMC reset). It displays me 4 hours and a minute later it returns to 2 hours.
So, i think this is something changed on the mac and not on the system itself because the problem is still there with the old HDD and the old OS. (But i'm pretty new to Mac so my knowledges about it are not large).

 

I hope that this post can help a little bit to guide to the solution, even if I think that this is already posted. (I am to tired to read the 167 pages )

 

Sorry for the possible mistakes, English is not my mother tongue

As mentioned earlier, the SMC firmware (and software) was updated on your MacBook.  That's why reverting/downgrading to an earlier OS won't change the battery drain very much if at all...all you're able to do is change the software, but not the SMC version which is firmware.

Have you tried a completely fresh install of Mountain Lion?

How to Clean Install OS X Mountain Lion

It's also worthwhile to try a manual restore after the clean install...re-download apps, drag other files in from backups, etc. rather than using a full Time Machine restore or Migration Assistant.  That will ensure that if there was a problem with your "old system" it won't migrate back and you'll have a pristine installation.

If you do a clean install there are a couple of things to keep in mind.  Since it's a brand new install Spotlight will be indexing for a bit and it uses a LOT of CPU/power (check in Activity Monitor).  So that will account for a good deal of drain initially.

If it still feels wonky you might try resetting the SMC, but you shouldn't need to.

It took my MBA about 3 to 4 charging cycles to start behaving somewhat normally again.

Hope that helps!

Wow. So much for 6 or 7 hours. I just booted up the system after charging up, and at 99% I have 3:30 until empty. And not two minutes booted up, and it down 2%.

So much for clean install, reinstalling apps and multiple SMC resets. Mountain Lion, you are a battery killer.

Well after the last few pages of posts I've been looking into this SMC Firmware changes and I noticed that on the Apple site the table clearly shows my MacBook Air (Mid 2001 11")

But when I installed ML 10.8 the software update after installed Firmware

  Model Name:          MacBook Air

  Model Identifier:          MacBookAir4,1

  Processor Name:          Intel Core i5

  Processor Speed:          1.6 GHz

  Number of Processors:          1

  Total Number of Cores:          2

  L2 Cache (per Core):          256 KB

  L3 Cache:          3 MB

  Memory:          4 GB

  Boot ROM Version:          MBA41.0077.B0F

  SMC Version (system):          1.74f3

That's right what appears to be the wrong SMC versionaccording to the Apple table on the support sight ? Yaeh go figure.

Next step was to find,download and attempt to install the correct version. Error dialog = This software is not supported by this computer ? *** Apple what is going on with this crap fight and are you going to fix it or update your bloody support site with the correct information really letting customers down or doesent that matter now your company is so overloaded with cash ?

I'm getting really ****** off with this situation now and probably figure the reality of it is those who can't resolve this issue have got either a lemon battery/battery chip and or machine. I'm taking mine back very soon both of them. Ha ha I bought two because I trusted Apple product. Still have my original 64 Macintosh in a box perfect running order more reliable than todays product ot would seem..

BTW:

I have been through all the processes mention by all the good people here 10.8 reset SMC reset PRAM. reformat clean install. Reformat clean install back to Lion 10.7 Reformat clean install ML after 10.8.2 release then updated to 10.8.2 Rest SMC and PRAM before restoring anything else. Finally through all stages the same problem exists. Battery percentage/time left wilts before my eyes whilst using machine. Battery loses percentage/time left whilst machine close and asleep ?? Rang Apple took machine to Apple store for clean install back to Lion even Apple "Genius" claimed no know issues with batteries and mention that the specs for this machine do state battery life is 4 hours. I'll have to look into that one but I got a lot more 6-7 hours with Lion before this update and there IS DAMAGE DONE battery life now down to 94% after 31 cycles whish is devistating if I was using it every day and charging a cycle every day then I lose 6% of battery life every month are you kidding me not a very long life ahead of my Air. I'm ****** Apple !

This software is not supported by this computer ?

Exactly the same when I checked the SMC Version on my Mid 2010 MBP.

I have tried everything to sort out the Battery problem.  However, nothing has improved the Life.  Very

disheartened that Apple has not said anything of this issue.  Several websites have mentioned this but silence from Apple.

eddyr wrote:

 

Well after the last few pages of posts I've been looking into this SMC Firmware changes and I noticed that on the Apple site the table clearly shows my MacBook Air (Mid 2001 11")

(11-inch, Mid 2011)

MacBookAir4,1

MBA41.0077.B0F (EFI 2.4)

1.73f65 (SMC 1.6)

 

But when I installed ML 10.8 the software update after installed Firmware

  Model Name:          MacBook Air

  Model Identifier:          MacBookAir4,1

  Processor Name:          Intel Core i5

  Processor Speed:          1.6 GHz

  Number of Processors:          1

  Total Number of Cores:          2

  L2 Cache (per Core):          256 KB

  L3 Cache:          3 MB

  Memory:          4 GB

  Boot ROM Version:          MBA41.0077.B0F

  SMC Version (system):          1.74f3

 

That's right what appears to be the wrong SMC versionaccording to the Apple table on the support sight ? Yaeh go figure.

 

Next step was to find,download and attempt to install the correct version. Error dialog = This software is not supported by this computer ? *** Apple what is going on with this crap fight and are you going to fix it or update your bloody support site with the correct information really letting customers down or doesent that matter now your company is so overloaded with cash ?

 

I'm getting really ****** off with this situation now and probably figure the reality of it is those who can't resolve this issue have got either a lemon battery/battery chip and or machine. I'm taking mine back very soon both of them. Ha ha I bought two because I trusted Apple product. Still have my original 64 Macintosh in a box perfect running order more reliable than todays product ot would seem..

Assuming you meant Mid 2011 11" MacBook Air?

It's confusing I know, but as explained earlier, the list is not a spec sheet.  It is a list of available SMC updates, not a list of all of the SMC versions installed on all MacBooks.

Not all MacBooks, even though they are the same make, model year, etc., are running the same SMC version.  In other words, there can be more than one SMC version for the same model MacBook.  It all depends on the build, and components. 

If for example the battery being used was updated mid-production, a new SMC might be required to meet the new battery's architechture change.  The core SMC, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and so on may be the same but the version listed in a MacBook's Hardware Overview can be different. 

So if an SMC version is not listed there is no SMC update available.  It would appear that there is not an update for the SMC version for your MacBook is all.