Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

I bought 13" MBP mid 2012 as my first Mac. I was very happy with it. With Lion I got about 7 hours of use. Didnt have to charge for a few days (as I use the Mac mostly at night to read news, do a bit of work).

Ever since I upgraded to ML, the battery has drained a lot faster. As I type to this word, I have lost about 2% of battery. Called Apple tech support yesterday, and the guy basically asked me to do SMC reset. That helps a bit yesterday - I used the laptop for about 15 minutes without any drop in the battery percentage. But the problem surfaces again today.

At the moment I'm running nothing other than Firefox, and I dont think it is dedicated graphics card issue - as 13" MBP does not have dedicated graphics card. I hope Apple fixes this problem soon - dont want to get disappointed with my first Mac.

Any other 13" MBP users experiencing the same problem?

Yes - this is a LION problem. Just some people didn't see it. Thankfully, more of the press are on it this time; just 1/2 dozen for the dozens of articles on the subject. I think we'll hear something at least from Apple soon as the jounalists have reached out to Apple to respond;

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230010/Mac_laptop_owners_report_shortene d_battery_life_after_Mountain_Lion_upgrade

http://www.zdnet.com/os-x-mountain-lion-battery-glitch-makes-apple-users-roar-70 00002266/

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/OS-X-Mountain-Lion-s-Prey--Batteries/story.xh tml?story_id=012001C8PPF0

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/apple-investigating-mac-os-x-mount ain-lion-battery-complaints-1091307

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/03/apple-mountain-lion-battery-poll/

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/mountain-lion-mauling-battery-life-macbook-user s-complain-50008827/

http://www.macworld.co.uk/mac/news/?newsid=3374185

adi190!

Yes, I went back to Lion 10.7.4 (from a Lion install stick I made). Now my MBA4,2 is at the shop with the OS that it had originally on it. There were more things wrong than ML doing odd things.

Before you Erase a disk and then install a fresh OS of earlier vintage, make shure you have an accessible TM or other back up reflecting a state of affairs before the update to ML! You cannot use a TM backup of ML to restore to a Lion OS, it works only forward.

I use SuperDuper to make a second back-up on an external drive with GUID partition table to have an external boot drive.

Finally, after having Lion back things looked sorta normal, about 6 hrs of battery usage and when recharging the battery the fans remained quiet. And neither did I observe rapid memory consumption and then the fans going nuts. - Usually I wait for a new system release to get to a version 2 or 3 (say 10.8.2 or 10.8.3) before I install it. New releases have always bugs left which the user qua guinea pig reports back to Apple or a discussion forum. As, however, my MBA showed odd behaviors (like freeze up or not wake from sleep) I thought to give ML in its earliest version a try. So much for that courage ...

Same problem with my MBA late 2010, a huge drop in battery life from 4h to less than 2h. And also i'm experiencing strange behaviors (not wake form sleep, freezing up and bluetooth connection lost). I just hope that a fix from Apple will be avaible soon.

I have the exact same issues with my primo 2011 15" MacBook Pro – Mountain Lion has reduced the battery life with approximately 50% ... Really dissapointing!

Apple, please act fast and fix this issue.

I upgraded from Lion to ML last week on my 13" 2011 MBP. Ever since, battery  life dropped to approx 4 hours as opposed to the earlier effortless 7 hours.

Shockingly so, my battery health dropped to 65% from 85% after the upgrade. The cycle count is only 175 out of 1000. Status indicator reads "Service Battery". Paniced and took it to Apple service expert, spent an hour on the phone multiple times. Though AppleCare India execs. have been very polite and considerate, they insist I have to go on for a paid replacement as the MBP is 1 year and 4 months old.

I know its out of warranty, but just 173 cycles? That's not even 20% of usage. Pled with Apple, bur they claim all diagnostics have been performed and can't help. 173 cycles at 65%?? Really shocked. And this is under very careful home usage.

Please tell me this a software bug. I can't afford to shell out bucks for a new battery just a year after buying a super expensive laptop that is praised for its battery!

Else this is my last bit of loyalty for Apple.

Everybody need to rate this one star in the app store and make it clear that is drains the battery. I am going to go back and request a refund as not fit for purpose. Their advertising of up to 7 hours battery life is not true, not even for new MBP's. Love Apple and Apple proudcts - hate ML and the lack of response on this - very poor Apple. Stsve Jobs would be turning is his restplace with such a poor product of Microsoft quality. Bring back old Apple.

I just made some tests... This were made at home. I used a clock to mesure time. No geeky tests. Just normal user mesuring time.

A)My MacBook Pro Mid 2011 (not the glossy one).

B)My sisters MacBook Pro Mid 2011 (also not the glossy one).

This is how they used to roll:

Lion:

Watching Lord of The Rings with full Bright: A) 4 hours and 13 minutes B) 4 hours and 15 minutes

Playing AC3 - best configuration available: A) 2 hours and 21 minutes  B) 2 hours and 1 minute

Internet Browsing: A) 6 hours B) 6 hours

This is how they roll now:

Montain Lion:

Watching Lord of The Rings with full Bright: A) 2 hours and 10 minutes B) 1 hours and 50 minutes

Playing AC3 - best configuration available: A) 40 minutes  B) 1 hour and 10 minutes

Internet Browsing: A) 2 hours B) 1,5 hours

Apple: I want my money back!

neocicak wrote:

 

 

.....Any other 13" MBP users experiencing the same problem?

Plenty. Exactly the same as your. Read back a few pages and you'll find them. Sorry I can;t post links. Too busy with work.

Just adding my name to the list. 13 inch, early 2011 MacBook Pro. Had great battery life in Lion. Mountain Lion has all but killed the ability to use the computer for any meaningful work with the terrible battery life I now get!

I feel for you guys, really do, and I'll think twice before "upgrading" both our late 2011 Macbook Pro's to ML, but to be fair I'm having zero problems with a new Retina Macbook Pro, battery life is exactly as advertised, a little better even (getting close to 8 hours on ML).

Really hope Apple will get to the bottom of this A.S.A.P.

I am having the same problem. My late 2010 MacBook Air always had great battery life (around 6-7 hours depending on what I was doing). Now it is about 2.5 to 3 hours. Even when I dimmed the screen, turned off wi-fi, and only ran MS Word while working on a long flight this past weekend, that's the battery life I had. It is a tremendous inconvenience and we need a fix ASAP!

Mee too, my new MacBook Pro 13´ is having problems with the battery life

Hey guys,

I got a mid 2012 MacBook Pro and like everyone else the battery drain is ridiculous. Yesterday I had my MacBook Pro in sleep mode with 98% charge, I came back 4 hours later and it was at 68%. In sleep mode? So today I did a test and turned off Bluetooth and put it in sleep mode at 98% and looked at it 4 hours later and it was at 78%. I'm not sure what exactly that means but I just wanted to share that with you. Thanks for reading.

same issue here after installing ML. Time on battery dropped from about 6 hours to 3 (if i'm lucky and don't perform any major tasks). I have a MBP 2011 model, bought in december last year, 70 cycles on the battery. After installing ML, the drop was immediately visible, I've waited a couple of days for things to "settle" as some users suggested, I also corrected the permission errors and rebuilt the Spotlight index. Afterwards I even tried resetting the SMC, none of these have solved the issue. I just rebooted my mac and now nothing is running on it but Safari for me to write this post, but I've still dropped 10% in battery in the past 10 minutes. If i look at all the processes running on the mac, there is nothing that's running at above 5-7% of CPU time.

Please fix this Apple, and urgently, i want my battery time back! The time that was promised to me and advertised heavily when I bought my mac. It is unacceptable that we have these hiccups with every sw release. I am a very heavy user of macs, have several laptops, ipods, ipad, routers,etc., would really not want to start getting disappointed in apple.

Waiting for that magical patch! Thanks.