Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

MacBook Air Mid 2011 11" battery specs

MMmm.    http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/macbook-air-faq/macbook-air-mi d-2011-real-world-battery-life-core-i5-core-i7.html

It would seem my MacBook Air is giving me around what is specs but I am concerned more with the deteriorating battery health at 6% loos over 30 cycles this is the worry.

eddyr wrote:

 

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 !

FWIW we're in the same boat.  The spec for both of our MBA's is 5 hours (more here).  I know I was getting a good 6 or more hours prior to the Mountain Lion upgrade.  Immediately after the upgrade I was only getting 3 to 4 hours (if I was lucky).  After a clean install of 10.8.2 it's meeting the spec and a little more, up to 5.5 hours or so...but still not as good as it was prior to ML.  Fingers crossed Apple will continue to tweak the SMC and/or OS and get things back to "normal".  However since mine at least is meeting Apple's specification, there's not much I can do otherwise.

If after a few cycles of charging your MBA still shows 4 hours or less at 100% charge I think you have a solid case to escalate the issue to have it fixed.

eddyr wrote:

 

MacBook Air Mid 2011 11" battery specs

Battery Type:

35 W h Li-Poly

Battery Life:

5 Hours

Details:

Apple reports that this model has a "built-in 35-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery" and the company claims that it can provide up to 5 hours of "wireless web" use. Apple additionally notes that it provides "up to" 30 days of standby time.

 

MMmm.    http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/macbook-air-faq/macbook-air-mi d-2011-real-world-battery-life-core-i5-core-i7.html

 

It would seem my MacBook Air is giving me around what is specs but I am concerned more with the deteriorating battery health at 6% loos over 30 cycles this is the worry.

So your battery health is 94% after 30 cycles?  That would worry me as well.  Apple's claim is that at 1000 cycles their batteries s/b no lower than 80% health.  If yours continues at that rate, it wouldn't get close to that sort of use.

Mine is 95% after 132 cycles.  Do you cycle yours per Apple's recommendations?  If you leave it plugged in most of the time, it can foul up the cycle count and possibly the battery itself.

I did see a sudden and continued drop...about 3% in 5 cycles(!) right after upgrading to Mountain Lion.  However after I did the 10.8.2 clean install, etc. it came back up to 95%, so it looks like the early readings were probably flaky.

I use Coconut Battery to monitor battery health.  You might want to do that as well if yours continues to drop.  That would be very good ammunition if you need to have it replaced.  IIRC someone here did just that and received a new battery at no charge even though their MacBook was out of warranty.

Hi all,

Not sure if it's of interest to you all, but I use Skype and it is a serious battery drain.

I had a MBA 2012 with the battery problems, switched to a RMBP without battery problems.  On both machines running Skype in the background eats between 1 and 2 hours from my battery life.

Frustrating as I have to use Skype for work, but might just sit eating my battery all day for 5 minutes of usage!

Regards

Paul

Hey all!

[Macbook Pro 6,2 (Mid-2010) - 6GBRAM 320GB HDD Nvidia 330M]

Just want to report on my progress since the 10.8.2 release. I've had a go at installing ML again, ran the combo update after installing 10.8 from a disc image i made and have been using it for a week or so now. From what I have experienced i am getting very close to the battery life I had before the inital upgrade to ML. My procedure was as follows.

-Clean install SL from disc (My base OS-as in one that came with machine)

-upgrade to Lion from Disk Image

-upgrade to ML 10.8

-combo update to 10.8.2

-ran a SMC reset

-use and cycle the computer for the last 7 days

before my inital plunge installing ML I had a 96% battery health after 240ish cycles and within one week the health had dropped to 85%. It stayed at this level after the producedure i described above until last night. It is now at 90% and I hope will stay here or go a little higher.

What I noticed initially after getting to 10.8.2 is that after unplugging at 100% the battery would drain very fast until it reached 97% and then the drain would slow down dramatically. In this fast drain 3% (which happend every time I unplugged from 100% with the OS booted) the time associated would always be 3:30/3:40hrs remaining and after reaching 97% and from then on the drain slowed down and the time calcs became much longer (around 5:40hrs).

I get just around 3:35/3:50hrs running Windows 7 Ultimate in bootcamp (power saver profile) and around 6:35hrs running OSX in general usage for me(wireless web, music[playing 60% of the time], email & screen 50%, bluetooth off).

With the battery health at 90% now, the fast drain seems to happen still but now only until it reaches 98%.

Has anyone that has fixed there issues with ML by clean installing noticed this apparent fast drain for the first few percents before slowing down?

I believe that my battery issue has been sorted by what I've done, outlined above.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for posting as well. Its been a fun (and annoying, frustrating and at times ridiculous) ride and I will be keeping an eye on this thread but I'm going to unsubscribe from updates now (All the push notifications are affecting my iPhone battery life, lol!! ). Goodbye for now and I wish everyone the best of luck for the resolution they want in the end!

I found Skype using about 2A and then the iSight camera uses another one, so on a 4.6Ah battery as in my 2009 MBP, such use will not give much time at all.  I use MiniBatteryLogger to look at usage and compare with other people.

Glad to hear things are getting back to normal!

My MBA has always experienced the "fast drop" from 100% charge to 98% or 97%...within a few minutes of disconnecting from mains...and then leveled out.

It took 3 to 4 charging cycles before mine stabilized...and even now I see some odd swings up and down.  That may well have been the case prior to ML and I just never noticed it, but 10.8.2 is certainly much more stable that with the initial install of 10.8.

Hope all continues to go well...and improve.

Enjoy!

Thanks very much for the tip about MiniBatteryLogger putnik!  Just installed it...nice little program with lots of great info as well as the ability to track things over an extended period of time.

I really like the sharing feature that allows you to compare your battery's capacity/cycles to other's too.  (I saw mine show up on their charts almost immediately!)  That's a great resource for anyone that wants to see if their battery's health is better or worse than hundreds of others with the same MacBook.

Quite honestly if I watched any process or application on my MBA as closely as I've monitored my battery since this all started, I'm pretty sure I'd be very alarmed at some of the "unusual" activity.  Having something that will average things out like this is probably much more valuable, not to mention practical, than watching it minute-by-minute.  You can really develop an OCD if you're not careful.

Cheers again for that!

Well folks... 10.8.2 has screwed me.

I was one of the lucky ones seeing INCREASED battery life with Mountain Lion, but 10.8.2 has put me in the ranks of everyone else having problems.

Here's a summary:

* MacBook Pro - mid-2010, 1146 cycles on battery, 84% health on battery.

* With 10.7.x I would get about 4 to 4.5 hours of battery life with my normal usage.

* With 10.8.0 and 10.8.1, I would get 6 to 6.5 hours of battery life with the exact same usage. I believe that 10.8.x's ability to keep fewer of the programs I use off the nvidia card was the main factor.

* With 10.8.2 installed, and after giving it a couple of weeks to make sure spotlight tasks were done and to put a bunch of charging cycles in, etc., I can report my battery life is now horrible. Put it to sleep with 100% charge, wake up to 80% charge, and running just two or three programs, none of them using the nvidia chip, I get about 2 to 2.5 hours of battery life.

I'm going to try all the SMC resets, etc. to see if that will help.

Corsa,a did you install from the App Store or via download?  I upgraded from 10.8.1 to 10.8.2 form the App Store and noticed things acting a bit strange.   I then performed another SMC reset after reinstalling using the Combo image download.  http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1581

That made things better for me.  So, this seems to agree with my speculation that there is some file, or some settings within a file, that are not being upgraded properly.  There could also be a firmware issue as others have speculated, but since my MBP early-2011 didn't receive a firmward update with ML, that isn't a factor in my case.

FWIW Power Nap required a firmware update.  So if your MBP has the Power Nap feature (introduced with ML) it received an SMC firmware update.

richsadams, I experienced the problem early one with 10.8.0 and it improved with 10.8.1.  With 10.8.2 it fell between 10.8.0 and 10.8.1 in terms of battery life and behavior; until I re-downloaded it using the Combo version and performed yet another SMC.  Now all seems about where it was previously with Lion, perhaps better (as I'm typing this message, my batter health is indicating between 6 and 7 hours remaining at 98%).

I do not have PowerNap and did not receive a firmware update with ML.  So, while firmware may certainly be one of the many things that Apple needs to chase down, it isn't the only thing at play here.

After going back to 10.6.8 with Time Machine because the battery life on my MacBook Pro 13 inch mid-2010 went down dramatically I gave it another try with 10.8.2. Still no improvements here. Battery life from about 5-6 hrs cut down to 2 hrs. Just like 10.8.0.

It looks like I found a solution for my mid2012 MBP. Upgrading to 10.8.2 didn't have any effects, but I found out that the bash process consumed ca. 10-15 CPU on my machine. Everytime That I quit this process, the battery life recovers significantly. I am now back to >6 hrs after killing that god **** process after every restart. What do you guys think of it? Comments are highly appreciated.

ScratchSF, all updates were from the App Store.

After resetting the SMC yesterday, I got just over 5 hours on a full charge on the first cycle, so better than I was seeing with 10.8.2 before the reset, but not back up to what I was seeing with 10.8.0 or 10.8.1.

I'll give it a few more cycles before making any judgements.