Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

One thing I've noticed is that Microsoft Office apps are a huge battery drain.  In particular, Powerpoint is a monster.  Word ***** it up too!

jonathanfromscotts valley

That's good to know. I don't use Microsoft products frequently on my Mac, which is why I have a Mac. Though, I do use them. I don't think they are just Microsoft products causing thise issue, though. I'm pretty sure it's any products that uses more than a minimal amount of system resources. In fact, many people are noticing major issues when just browsing the web. The following things have been mentioned as possible temporary fixes.

-Delete SMC Fan control and associated files.

-Leave your computer on, and don't let it sleep for half a day to let it index.

-Disable notifications.

Another problem could be a BIOS update that is causing weird problems. It's rumoured --as well as expected-- that Apple will be releasing 10.8.1 very soon in the future.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Macintosh fan and prefer it FAR MORE than any other OS. However, until some solid solutions are found, I may back up and install a Linux Distro until the stability of Mountain Lion has been taken care of. Maybe even just until the first 10.8.1 update. I hate risking the longevity and lifetime of my battery cycles.

Not sure I'm comfortable diabling fan controls.  I use my computer constantly so it should be indexed.  I may try disabling notifications tho...I don't really use it that much anyway...

Deleting the SMC fan control will not hurt your MB (it's a third party app).  PLUS, it's not updated for ML.

jonathanfromscotts valley

About indexing...it may only index with the computer is sitting idle. Therefore when a program is requesting files, it has to try harder to find those files. I'm currently at work, and my computer is at home with sleep disabled, screen brightness all the way down, and plugged in. When I get home, I'll give it a go on battery and will be sure and let everyone on this discussion know how it worked out for me. Hang tight, and in the mean time, just give it a try. It won't hurt anything.

Here's a combination I'd like to see if it works for anyone else. It "seems" to have made a considerable difference to me now for about 3 days! Coincidence? Who knows?

1. Shut down, on full charge.

2. Do an SMC reset - 3 times in a row (watch the connector light flash). Wait 10 seconds between resets

3. Reboot but at the login screen, enter the password BUT BEFORE hitting the enter key, hold down the SHIFT key. This does a reboot with no start up apps.If it logs in without prompting for password, just logout and login again from the login screen.

4. Once logged in, play with the machine for 5 mins.

5. Shut down and unplug.

6. Reboot one more time with the SHIFT key held down and boot up. Do you get better battery life?

Then reboot and let everything come up normally. Any improvement?

BTW _ if this DOES NOT work - the only other thing I did before doign the above,  was to run the computer down to < 3% before doing a full recharge.

SMC on it's own has never done it before. Something together or combination of above gets me much better battery life. I still think something is coming along screwing up SMC data in the first place but lets start somewhere!

Any way to disable indexing?  That would be a quick way to see if that's the culprit.

rcmcfe

I wouldn't disable indexing. Then the disk has to work harder to find things, and you still end up with shorter battery life because the disk spins so much longer to do a search.

Franc_Iphone

What are the keys used to do an SMC reset. There are so many reset combinations, that it's hard to keep them straight. Thanks.

@rcmcfe if it was indexing you would see MDSWORKER eating up your CPU. It isn't. Mine, also has the battery drain wilhe the processor is completly idle. I bet it has to do with something in the kernel and not a 3rd party process.

Also, I use SMC fan control, no issues with it.

@dark_sat,

Thanks, I didn't know the file name to look up in activity monitor for indexing....Guess that isn't it.

I've been using SMC with ML also with zero issues.  But from what I can from their download page, it hasn't been updated for ML. I deleted it this AM just to see if that was the issue.  I'm not convinced SMC was really beneficial anyways. My MPB would will get hot as ****.

Has anyone who's gotten a copy of the yet to be released update (programmers, developers, etc), noticed any kind of diffence (battery wise that is)?

It was reported yesterday that the 10.8.1 release will be seeded to developers shortly.

Just wanted to add something that I noted.

I let my MacBook Pro retina (for testing purpose) sleep at night.

But I don't see a battery drop.

It loses 1% (iStat pro says 2%)

But unfortunately, I also only get about 2-3 (and at rare occasionally 4) hours of batterie life.

(idlying my fans are spinning @ 2000 and 2150 rpm

Ulf1103

Are you suggesting the problem is a non-ivy bridge problem?