Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Hi I have the same issue on my MackBook Air. ML EATS my battery. On Lion I had 5 to 6 hours time to work now only 2 to 3,5 hours. Sleeping from yesterday it has gone from 67 % to 10 % !!!!!!!

Please fix it!!!! Look at how much CPU is used constantly on Safari while not using it live.

C

There's a ton of chatter in this thread, but not much actual information.

So if you are having an issue, PLEASE open Activity Monitor (it's in Applications/Utilities) and see which processes are using the most CPU. Sort it by CPU time and watch it for a minute or so, without doing anything else.

Most likely you have a stray process using CPU. In my case, it was the Dock using about 3% CPU at all times. That's already enough to significantly drain battery. If you are not actively using your computer, all processes should be well below 1%.

I think ML causes some processes to spin - I am not convinced it's just the Dock, there might be other stuff too.

Other things that cause decreased battery life: Network access, and disk access. Both also show in Activity Monitor.

But if your computer gets hot, then chances are it's the CPU.

My activity monitor is showing nothing. I have a bunch of things open but evrything is under 1%. The only thing that's up is for Activity monitor at 9.1%. But that doesn't explain the heat problem. My dock is 0.0%.

Hello, I've observed that always exist a process with 5-10% of CPU (kernel_task) in Activity monitor with 1.5 GB of RAM. :O

kernel_task top on mine also 3-5% most of the time

Since applications from Lion are not fully compatabile with MTL some of them are using CPU like mad, when I did an update of them CPU problem was gone but still my battery life was low. So out of the blue I decided that I don't need Notification Centre and I disabled it, after restart my battery was back to normal. Maybe because NC is using processes from other applications so it can display information, i don't know, but after that my battery was back to normal.

Here is how to disable it, maybe it will help link.

My MBP late 2011 after Update to  MTL battery life get down 1% per 2-3Min. only read text on the Internet forum & news! No yutube & Co.

With 10.7.x battery life was up to 6h. Naw after update max. 3h.

Sorry apple but this is my last apple product

Curses, as we mentioned above, no fiddling will work once you have the problem. I deliberately did not name my two affected macbooks as it is irrelevant whther 2 years old or just a week.

Hope Apple's fix adresses your concern.

Rochester, call APPLE. ANd if they refuse to help, (after patch and all) and you are out of warranty but your problem persists, but the machine is not too old, file in small claims court for the full value. Then bring these posts and machine and the judge will rule in your favor. Although youmay be out of warranty, all machines must hhave what is called a "reasonable" functional window, and certainyl cannot be wrecked by a software. If they are, legal precedents in all states and Canadian provinces have already awarded in the consumer's favor. So you will get a new machine.

noiseordinance wrote:

 

....

 

Today is my last day to either return it to a store (after waiting three weeks for its arrival), or try to revert to Lion.

So what did you finally do? I downgraded after 2 3 days of working with ML. The battery is creating too much of a problem and should have been rectified by now by Apple. The premium we pay while buying an Apple Machine should cover all this.. Apple should not have allowed something like this to happen and should have rectified the problem by now.

I am actually begining to feel that I rushed into purchasing ML. I could have and should have waited for people's reaction and for Apple's solution.

Update (see my previous posts for details): I charged my rMBP to 100% last night and removed it from the charger around 11pm.  When I got into work this morning, around 7:30am, it was still at 100% (though iStat reported 97%) -- progress on that front!

Been using it for about an hour now: Chrome, Mail, iMessage, Twitter, Terminal, Calendar.  Brightness on auto, gfxCardStatus forcing graphics on Integrated (Chrome likes to make it use Discrete), and I'm down to about 85% (iStat reporting 81%), and iStat is reporting about 7h of battery left.

So, again, this resolved my pain:

  1) I disabled Notification Center completely, using the instructions found here:

 

http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/06/disable-notification-center-remove-menu-bar-icon- os-x/

 

  2) I also followed the instructions on here, and did NOT set my background back to my custom background, I've kept it on the default galaxy pic:

 

http://jonathansblog.co.uk/how-i-fixed-my-mountain-lion-battery-issues-on-a-macb ook-air-2012

I would LOVE for somebody else to try this, to confirm my findings.  Anybody game?

Your mileage my vary but so far so good.  I'll let it get all the way down to 0 and we'll see if I can get through a full work day, which was my goal, on battery.

-r

I will  try number 1 as I already got number 2 set in my MBA

Yep if they dont resolve this quickly then they can kiss goodbye to selling any future OS upgrades until it has been proven which will slow the early adopters who dont want to go through this again without a quick fix. Come on Apple - give us an update as you have collected data from loads of us.

21:21 I GOT 78% battery.