Time remaining on Mountain Lion battery

Re: mountain lion. This post is to let Apple know I want the time remaining immediately visible on the menu bar (versus an extra click). I am also having issues with my battery life.

This post is to let Apple know I want the time remaining immediately visible on the menu bar (versus an extra click). I am also having issues with my battery life.

Best then to let them know here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Matt

My solution:

Step #1: Install SlimBatteryMonitor

Step #2: Disable Apple's built-in batttery monitor: System Preferences > Energy Saver: uncheck "Show battery status in menu bar"

I had no need to do this under Lion. Mountain Lion definitely removed a feature that was crucial to my applications. Very strange decision on Apple's part. Happily, there is a third party solution to fix that.

I find SlimBatteryMonitor to be superior to the built-in one in Mountain Lion. It shows estimated time remaining, and supports colors if you want, too.

I installed Battery Guard from the App Store. It displays time remaining next to its battery icon in the status bar.

My guess is that Apple intentionally removed this feature because ML has some issues with battery life (in some MacBooks). Hope that when they release 10.8.1 with the battery solution they also make this "essential" feature back!!

Remember that everyone who wants the time remaining on the menu bar should put that in here

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

This thread is only for users. It doesn't count as a claim.

=)

Martin

Btw, when battery life is dropping, I see a process called "Mingler" which eats up >100% CPU and about 1% battery life per minute. My MacBook gets very hot then. When this process is inactive, the battery lasts much longer. Anyone else seeing this?

For me I right clicked the battery icon and clicked off the check beside show percentage. When on battery it tells me how many hours, which is way lower another prob.

I've tried everything. I'm downgrading back to Lion until I see reports the battery life has improved.

Get your act together Apple!

The most ridiculous thing in my mind is that the function is still being performed; the fact that you can click the battery icon and see the time remaining in the menu shows that 10.8 is still calculating the time remaining. So why isn't the option there?

For a company like Apple to remove a (admittedly small) feature such as this there usually has to be one or more issues such as a security flaw (nope), detrimental performance (unlikely), or something being blatantly aesthetically unpleasing (nada). But none of these seem to be the case.

If the algorithm is still being used to determine the time remaining, if the work is still being done, if I'm still allocating (obviously minimal) resources to calculate it, what's the issue? It honestly seems like somebody high enough in the development team decided it was a good idea and did it. That's it. The fact that there is no official statement regarding this (unless I've missed it, please let me know if I have) is, to me, further evidence that there simply may be no legitimate reason for this feature to have been cut. I would understand it being unintentional. I do not understand taking development time to remove something that is, aside from being convenient and useful to us, so insignificant in the grand scope of the operating system.

And purely from a PR perspective, wouldn't the INTELLIGENT action be to just immediately release a small fix for this? With all of the issues with Mountain Lion at this point, wouldn't it make sense to release an EXTREMELY easy patch to re-enable this feature? Wouldn't it be desirable to make a majority of your upset customers at least somewhat more satisfied while waiting for you to fix the tremendous issues that most of us know we'll be waiting a decent amount of time for? I'm not going to sit here and say "I'm going back to Windows" or "I'm not going to use Mac anymore". I'm not going to take the time to roll back or re-install a previous version. But I am going to express how extremely disappointed I am in the company; not so much for allowing it to happen in the first place, but for ignoring something that is blatantly upsetting a massive portion of your consumer audience during a time like this.

Seriously, Apple. This is ridiculous. The calculation is already being done. If there is some ridiculously small issue that led to this decision, add it as an option in System Preferences > Energy Saver rather than directly in the battery dropdown with a popup disclaimer on-click explaining whatever potential issues it may cause (if any).

It's an unfortunate truth that the smallest inconveniences, such as this, can outweigh tremendous success in other areas of a software release... but it's still the truth. You have a large amount of users submitting anonymous usage data, I'm sure you have the ability to see approximately what percent of users (still using a version prior to 10.8) are using this feature. In fact, EVERYBODY I know with a Mac uses it. And the people that don't? Well, every single time (out of the people I know) it was simply because they weren't aware they could change the display mode. There has not been a single time I have shown somebody the ability to display time remaining and they decided to view the percentage instead.

I'm sitting at a coffee shop writing code. I have about 45 minutes of work ahead of me before I can publish the script. I *need* to know how much time is remaining at a glance. Looking up and seeing "24%" remaining means nothing to me, ESPECIALLY with the new battery life issues. Does that 24% mean I have an hour left or only 22 minutes? Is it at ALL going to demonstrate the change in power consumption based on my current activities? I've seen some people say it's because "it's not reliable" or because "it changes based on load", but isn't that the point? Isn't it a GOOD feature to see I have three hours of battery left and then notice it drop to an hour and a half once I launch Photoshop, start up MAMP, and have a movie playing? There are no cons. If there are, they're speculation. Why's that? Because you wont communicate with the thousands of customers complaining about this. How hard is it for a multi-billion dollar company, one of the most successful and influential of our generation, to have a minimum-wage employee make a post saying something as simple as "We're considering alternatives" or something of the sort? Hint: it's not. You've dropped the ball on this, period. You might be able to fool people that are computer illiterate or that simply don't give a ****, but you can't fool the people who use their machines for more than checking Facebook, email, and watching **** 6 times a day. The people that purchased their Apple machine to do *work* very often RELY on the convenience of this feature. I do not want to click my battery icon every 10 minutes to see how much time I have remaining. I want the company I've bought 6 laptops from, 3 phones, and god knows what else to solve what is potentially the smallest big issue I've seen here in ages.

Wake up, Apple. Your customers are unhappy due to multiple issues. Start by fixing an EASY one and restoring some faith.

I would type more but I'm not sure if my computer is going to die or not because it only says 4% and I don't know how much time I have le-

- Edited to fix typos and grammatical errors. There are probably more. English is hard.

Hopefully you had a Time Machine backup while still on Lion. I just reverted back to Lion and have peace once again. I had serious color output problems with some Adobe products in Mountain Lion, so it was a no-brainer for me to go back. Really happy I did, because I'm back to normal now. AND I have 2:47 left on battery power, at a glance 🙂

I honestly think it has something to do with the battery issues in Mountain Lion. Before my meter would start with 4 hours of battery life. Now I'm lucky to see 2.

I'm waiting for the first 10.8.1 fix which is already out to beta users and due for release shortly. If I don't see any improvement, I'm reverting back to Lion.

There is no excuse for this at all. Not on a premium product.

Bean, it's coincidence. You can't say "they removed the 'time remaining' feature because of the battery issues" because they released the operating system while unaware that there was a battery issue. Battery life is a huge deal, but that's a bug, unintentional. They intentionally removed the "time remaining" listing, and as far as we know it is not being brought back as of yet even if they fix the battery drain issues. The point is that whether battery life is messed up, perfectly fine, or even better than before... removing the ability to see how much time you have left to use your machine is, for lack of a more appropriately derrogatory term, dumb. And with such HUGE flaws in Mountain Lion, such as battery life as you and most other users are reporting, returning an extremely simple feature we've had since we started using OSX would be an intelligent move on Apple's part; not only because it's a useful tool that shouldn't have been removed in the first place, but also because it simply can't hurt to give us something to be happy about when we're already upset about more pressing issues.

Just installed 10.8.1 and the percentage is still the only option. Well, that or nothing.

Must say I am getting seriously annoyed at Apple for this "we know what you want better than you do" attitude. Let's hope they fix this and don't go down the path of a 1000 cuts death, where they pile little annoyances onto you until you give up. I really don't like Windows and I haven't got a clue about Linux.

Apple, just fix this. You can do it. Really, you can. You just have to want it bad enough.

Unless there is an underlying issue, simply re-adding the feature is simple enough on Apple's part. It's either what you said, them "knowing best", or there is an issue they have not publicized. As far as I know it uses the same algorithm as previously to show when you click the battery, so unless there has been a bug in the calculation ALL ALONG I don't think that's it.

Remember, there are several third-party apps that restore this functionality if you're willing to use them. Some are free, and some are capitalizing on the fact that this is a hugely requested feature (which is pretty smart, tbh).

I can't speak for Apple and I don't work there so for all I know there is some massive issue that caused the removal of it, but considering the data is still there and still being calculated, a part of me thinks it's nothing but them trying to have it more similar with iPhone/iPad displays, as they have definitely been trying to make OSX more similar to iOS.

Hey there, I just found this:

https://github.com/codler/Battery-Time-Remaining

Pretty cool and better than the MAS-version 😉

HF