Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

yes, Apple released a new firmware for the rMBP.

Heeeelp! I lose 50% of my battery life after install ML in my MBP late 2011. I did a clean install. Now I have less than 3 hours of battery.

What i have to do???

I don't see a firmware update when I do a 'sofware update'.  How do you get this?         

Update. I received a call from Apple support today and I provided logs and data from two MBA's - a mid 2011 and a mid 2012.

Hopefully this can get resolved soon.

edit: oops. replied to wrong person.

here's the download page. choose your machine and download the firmware.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5394

Any firmware upgrade for MBP late 2011?

Too bad, this firmware update only address > 2011 MBP models. For my mid 2010 model, the battery life is stuck with 2.5 hours max (that's with 93% health, 30% cycles)

The battery life does improve (up to 3 hrs) if I use gfxCardStatus to force integrated mode. Skype + Chrome + Adobe Digital Editions are just some of the culprits that kick off discrete NVidia graphics

No, that link is for the PowerNap feature - if you have a MBA with Apple supplied flash storage made in 2011, then you can use it.

Clinton

Clinton, can you verify if you were running integrated graphics or discrete graphics? 6 to 7 hours on discrete graphics seems a little hard to believe even on Lion.

I have Dynamic Switching turned on via Cody Kriger's gfxCardStaus, so I'm usually running on Integrated while on battery. When I open Photoshop to edit a quick screenshot, I'll switch to Discrete, but I always change it back (well, usually - I have PS CS6 open right now using Intel 3000). I've been on battery power for 6 1/2 hours now and have 53 minutes remaining.

Clinton

At 53 min remaining, what is your percentage remaining, please?    

15.2%.

Clinton

@antonywu : The firmware upgrade they are talking about is to enable the Power nap feature, not to improve battery life.

On my mid-2010 MacBook Pro, Mountain Lion has actually INCREASED my battery life, almost doubled it from Lion. Whatever is affecting the majority of people on this thread luckily isn't affecting me, and since ML is smarter about when to switch from integrated to discrete graphics, I'm seeing better battery life. I'm getting close to 6 hours if I try to keep away from any apps that force it to the discrete graphics (Chrome, Transmit, Espresso are some of the apps that force it to discrete, so I keep those closed when possible). My battery has 1061 cycles on it and a health of 88% from new.

Also, I use both Mail and Dropbox, a couple of the possible culprits cited in earlier posts in this thread, so I don't think those are the problem.

I hope Apple is able to solve this quickly for you folks that are seeing issues, because I think when you finally get back to "normal" you will actually see a little better battery life in normal usage compared to Lion.

EDIT: by the way, I'm at 80% and 5:03 left right now, for comparison. I have Safari, Mail, Reeder, Tweetbot Alpha and Pages running right now, along with a bunch of menu bar items like Meterologist, Dropbox, Evernote helper, 1Password helper. gfxCardStatus, Caffeine.

Oh, one other note: I try to keep the widgets on the Dashboard from running when I'm on battery too... I issue a "killall Dock" from Terminal that will shut all the widgets off. I noticed back when running Lion that the Dashboard widgets I run tended to use more battery.

Message was edited by: corsa

This is a shot in the dark, but maybe after 25 pages of pain, it's worth taking.

If I had to guess, I'd say that what's happening here, is that Time Machine is getting confused by the process of updating to Mountain Lion. I'm wondering if that's what the troubled users have in common, is using Time Machine.

If I wanted to create this kind of problem, that's how I'd do it. Turn Time Machine on, update my OS, connect an external HD to access my previous data, and watch quietly as my system slowly went nuts.