Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

An update from my quarter:

My user has 4 hours battery life after the 10.8.3 fix, but it didn't start that way.

He got 2-3 hours and over teh course of a few weeks it started to consistently deliver 4 hours.

WEIRD!

For people still struggling I'd suggest the following:

Update to OS 10.8.3

Run the Macbook in safe mode (hold down shift key when you hear the bootup chime) to eliminate extraneous software causes.

• If this works (you get satisfactory battery life), you can troubleshoot the startup items and kernel extensions.

If that doesn't work,

You may also wish to run off the Recovery partition or the network image at apple by holding down the command+R keys.

• If this works (you get satisfactory battery life), the install itself may be bad and it might behoove you to reinstall OS 10.8 and immediately update to 10.8.3

If the recovery partition gives crummy performance too,

• The battery may be bad. (It's possible to get bad replacement batteries as well.)

If under warranty, replace it.

If not under warranty, you may wish to demonstrate the problem running the recovery partition at an Apple store and ask whether they would test a new battery in yoru macbook and sell it to you if it works. (Who wants to pay for a new battery that works no better than the one you had?)

I have not heard anyone ask an apple store if this will be okay with them, so it's uncharted territory.

A more open ended suggestion is to bring it to an Apple Store for repair and let THEM worry about it.

Expensive and disappointing, I admit, but at least it becomes their responsibility to get it working before you pay for anything.  Be sure to ask about warranties on repairs they do. Who needs to spend hundreds for a 60 day warranty or whatever the policy is.  Thankfully, I haven't had this happen to a macbook that was out of warranty.

Please help--I am having the same issue. I have brought it to the store and battery is fine diagnostically, but the issue seems to be software related. I used to be getting 7 hours of battery life for a few days ( doing the SAME stuff no different, just browsing in the web browser) and now magically getting like 3. This computer is like a week old or less. It's a Macbook Pro 15'' with Retina. I have called Apple and plan to go into the store again for them to do a "stress" test but I am wondering if it is the OS...I mentioned it but not much thought on if that's the culprit.

I have keyboard lights off and everything down to a minimum. I was getting, as mentioned, 7 hours no problem before. Apple, I am a new customer and I LOVE this computer to death. It's great compared to my pc. But can you please fix the battery life issue? It's a huge problem for when I'm working on the go.

Thanks!

There is definitely a problem here. I am on a new MacBook Air 11-inch (bought Mar-2013), on OS X 10.8.3 and I am getting very poor battery life. I compare this with the 13-inch I was on prior to this under Snow Leopard (10.6.8) where I had outstanding battery life, as advertised.

The 11-inch gives me about 2.5 hours total time if I'm lucky and I can literally watch the battery % count down. The more worrying thing is after an hour of use the bottom of the unit is hot to the touch. Not warm, it's hot.

APPLE PLEASE GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND FIX THIS.

Can't confirm.

mpuk.2000 wrote:

 

There is definitely a problem here. I am on a new MacBook Air 11-inch (bought Mar-2013), on OS X 10.8.3 and I am getting very poor battery life. I compare this with the 13-inch I was on prior to this under Snow Leopard (10.6.8) where I had outstanding battery life, as advertised.

 

The 11-inch gives me about 2.5 hours total time if I'm lucky and I can literally watch the battery % count down. The more worrying thing is after an hour of use the bottom of the unit is hot to the touch. Not warm, it's hot.

 

APPLE PLEASE GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND FIX THIS.

Have you done any troubleshooting at all?

arrrggghhh it's driving me nutso now. My fan ??? / hard drive is constantly running and for every minute i'm on it i lose 1%. i used be be able to get a solid 6 hours work time. now... if i am lucky i get 2.

what can is do?

Same problem here, i´m on a Macbook pro late 2011 and my battery life reduce his performance on about a 50% after I install Mountail Lion 10.8.3. I feel i waste my money. Apple MUST FIX this soon

Lots of advice buried throughout this rather lengthy thread.   But if you're upgraded to 10.8.3 and are still having trouble (or if trouble just found you), then be sure to try the following:

1.  Download Onyx and clean out everything (mostly User and System caches).  Also repair permissions.

2.  Reset SMC and PRAM.

3.  Reinstall 10.8.3 Combo pack

4.  Turn off iCloud and turn off the Notifications

5.  Recheck to see if problem is still there.

6.  If not cured, check the Battery's Current Max Capacity to see if it is dropping between charges

7.  If it isn't not dropping, you can decide to stay on ML or downgrade to SL or Lion, depending on where you came from.  Your choice, really.

8.  If it is dropping, then downgrade to SL or Lion, depending on where you came from.

9.  If you came with ML or you just want to do so, take it to an Apple Store.

At this point, I think the problem is configuration related (mostly) and another problem with the sleep rountine.  Sometimes steps 1 through 3 helps with configuration, but NOT consistently.  Some people have had success doing a clean install, although again, NOT consistently.

But, be warned, if you are getting poor performancing (e.g., dropping 1% every minute or two) it might not only be affecting your battery life (how much time remaining in  a charge) but could affect your battery health (how much capacity when fully charged). 

For people still struggling I'd suggest the following:

Update to OS 10.8.3

Run the Macbook in safe mode (hold down shift key when you hear the bootup chime) to eliminate extraneous software causes.

• If this works (you get satisfactory battery life), you can troubleshoot the startup items and kernel extensions.

this worked, battery life back to normal and no whirring or fan noises..... i have no idea about trouble shooting start up items though???

Scratch SF: thank you.

I think this may have created a positive result and I'm cautiously watching the machine now.

I followed your steps 1, 2, and 4. I could not do 3 (download 10.8.3) since I don't have access to a good enough internet connection to swallow a 1GB download right now.

But somewhere along the way the battery life has returned to decent levels. It now looks like I'm getting in the region of 5 hours per charge.

This is a bizarre problem. I hope Apple will follow through and get a designed and documented fix for this issue because judging by the number of views and posts on this thread, it's plaguing a lot of customers.

Again, thank you and all the best!

Franc_Iphone, thx for your ( and everybody else who isn't using this forum for personal attacks) discussion.

this thread has become so long I just scan for Franc's comments. I am a real newbie.

as I understand it now, 10.8.3 did not fix the issue for everybody so since I'm happy with a clean lion install on SSD I'm staying put. . this is really silly, I've been following so long I've forgotten why I even want ML what's it got over lion?

Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime ... - Support - Apple

Thanks. Trouble shootig startup items and kernal is something I have to research, Great start though, really great start to figuring out the batteries on 3 Macbook Pros.

So started my macbook in safe mode. It is giving me about 2 more hours. I do not have any "runaway" apps as the article suggests when not in safe mode. How do I troubleshoot which extensions or start up items are causing me to lose 2 hours?

Thanks

I did all the aformentioned things and even a clean OS install, and no go. I am still getting the lousy battery life. My battery checks out fine too so Apple store isn't really going to do much for it. This *****.