Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

That would show up that Notifications uses too many sources.

I did your first step, with turning off Notifications, et voilà!

5:50 remaining with 86% of battery level.

I would say that's the actual problem.

I have just bought my new macbook pro 13" 2-3 weeks ago. It first had Lion and on that I had about 7-8 hours battery life just as apple had advertised. But after installing mountain lion I have noticed that the battery life has halved. I have been following this forum for a while now. I haven't done any reset (SMC, PRAM, etc.) But I have noticed that coconut battery has been showing that my battery has degraded and only has 94 percent capacity and the laptop is taking around 1:30 to charge which I think is way too fast. Is there any way that whatever glitch there is in the software is causing the hardware of the computer to degrade which is causing battery issues instead of the glitch using up resources? Just giving in my input to you guys and maybe apple if they are following this forum. If this is at all possible I hope that apple will replace my laptop free of charge.

I keep hearing over and over again praise for Apple engineers contacting people, trying to find a solution to the battery issue. Why didn't these engineers put that much effort into finding the source of the problem before it was released to the public? As Franc_Iphone points out, this is not a new issue. They still haven't solved the problem for people that upgraded to Lion last year! I find it hard to believe that Apple didn't see this in testing before ML was released.

I will close with an example that I believe to be closely related to the engineers reaching out to people: When I was in the military, we were expected to work during the day if you didn't have watch or other duties. Most of the work was just busy work like cleaning, paperwork, etc. Well we found a way to work the system to our advantage. In the morning, my friend and I would load up our arms with tools and random parts and make a point to walk past our supervisor. Sometimes he would ask what we were doing, but most of the time he just let us walk by, looking at all the stuff we had. We would go and dump all that stuff in a corner, out of sight, and do what we wanted for a couple hours. We then would come back, grab the tools, walk by him again and put some stuff back and get new stuff and repeat ever couple hours. It made him happy that we were "working" and he didn't catch on for quite a while!

I do hope the engineers are working as hard as they appear to be and find a solution to the battery problem!

I have notifications running and I don't have any battery life problems in Mountain Lion.

Looking at Chivvy's post, I also have Java and Flash installed and running, and I have Dropbox running, and none are causing any problems.

However, when I first installed ML, Java was of course not installed. SugarSync kept forcing the "Do you want to install Java?" prompt all the time, so I removed SugarSync from my Mac to get rid of that annoyance. (Eventually, I had to install Java becasue Photoshop required it.)

So the only thing the Chivvy removed that I also don't have running is SugarSync -- which uses Java. How many people with battery life issues are using SugarSync?

Im starting to believe that camp that is arguing graphics switching is a major cause of the battery life issue (at least for those people with discrete and integrated graphics). Using gfxCardStatus, Chrome tends to use discrete graphics significantly more often. Usually, it switches to discrete graphics once a flash video is played. However, chrome doesnt switch back to integrated after the page with video is closed. For me, Chrome continues to use discrete graphics for the entire duration of browsing until I close the app. Safari on the otherhand doesnt switch to discrete nearly as often or for as long of a duration as chrome.

That being said, I don't think this is the only issue causes the ML battery life problems. But I think its a major contributor.

I have a new retina MBP and have experienced many issues including lower battery life.

Im also experiencing issues with bluetooth wanting to always repair when trying to use my iphone for tethering. Very annoying. I have to repair everything from scratch in order for it to work, and it is NOT possible to delete a previous paired device. The button is available to remove it from the list, but it does nothing. Big issue for me.

The backgrounds seems to revert back to what was used previously. It does not save the current settings. Stupid.

guys call apple about the issue, i did and its fixed, i think all you have to do is reset the battery ! look il show u b4 and after

Yetben. Yes, many of us have seen it "fixed" like this, give it a few days or a week and it'll be back. This isn't a FIX... and what works for some doesn't work for many. SMC works for me for a while, little else does. I can show you screen shots where my battery shows me 14 hours!

The truth is, Apple are working on what's causing it... Fixes are not good if they are temporary, a day, a week, or a month. What's annoying is there are many things that "appear" to fix it but this "problem" is consistent in it's in consistency. Go search all the other threads.

Just got off the phone with Eric K., a 10-year Apple Care vet.  He called from CA to me here in Europe. 

Went thru a ca. 10-question checklist, then installed a diagnostic tool, then had to do a 5-fingered command to gather system data, then sent 10MB in 3 data files to him to pass on the Apple Engineering.  He was polite, pleasant, apologetic, empathetic, and patient. 

Was a good call, took about an hour** and I have no real doubts that as Apple, with the support and cooperation of folks like you and me, will get to the bottom of the issue and solve it. 

In 30 years, I never saw support like this from either HP or Microsoft; I'm glad I made a total move to Apple last Winter.

**actual call time would probably take 20 to 30 minutes, except for my asking questions and giving additional feedback (answering questions that were not asked.)

some problem here; battery life dropped to 2 hours.

I'm using a mid-2010 mac book pro 13'' (2,4 ghz, 4 gb ram)

  Boot-ROM-Version:          MBP71.0039.B0E

  SMC-Version (System):          1.62f6

about battery (sorry, it's in german):

  Informationen zum Batteriemodell:

  Seriennummer:          W003951JBD3LA

  Hersteller:          SMP

  Gerätename:          bq20z451

  Pack Lot Code:          0

  PCB Lot Code:          0

  Firmware-Version:          201

  Hardware-Version:          000a

  Zellen-Version:          165

  Informationen zum Ladezustand:

  Verbleibende Ladung (in mAh):          4762

  Vollständig geladen:          Ja

  Batterie wird geladen:          Nein

  Volle Ladekapazität (in mAh):          4762

  Informationen zum Batteriezustand:

  Anzahl der Zyklen:          317

  Zustand:          Gut

  Batterie ist installiert:          Ja

  Stromverbrauch (in mA):          233

  Spannung (in mV):          12522

How do I unsubscribe from this post?  I have gone into my settings in my account and turned off all notifications but still get an email for every reply. I have gotten 400+ emails the last few days. Obnoxious!

on the top right corner ->

Actions

• Receive email notifications

or in your case not recieve or something, because I have already turned it off

My hero!

Same here!

New MacBook Air (Mid 2012, 11 Inch) and the Battery Power ist out after 2 hours.

Waiting for updates :/

Same issue.  I was about to go to the Apple store and buy a new battery, but I think I will wait to hear what Apple has to say.