Battery drains fast on Mountain Lion compared to Lion?

etresoft - You are completely mad 🙂

I don't doubt, most, if not all software has bugs in it. The problem you are ignoring is the fact, and quite simply, something that gave 7 hours and now gives 31/2 hours (half life is the common pattern) with zero indication of what the difference is so we can delete/fix it. I've spent man weeks on this, and helping Apple. Do you think Apple would bother calling/emailing me to do more and more logs if it was friggen obvious.

And No, Apple could NOT tell me what software was the cause, they just said, switching is more inefficient with pooly written programs. I got my tech to agree (back in December), it would be quite useful to have something to tell us over and above Activity mon. I also could not get my tech to find me any tech docs for developers on best / poor designbest practices for it. And in any case, in my case, it's something that's running, in background, somewhere, without me knowing. I am sure of this because Apple found "one of these" last time. And I have the problem with 98% CPU idle and nothing running. Last time, one big problem was an old driver (heck I didn't know Mac's had drivers) and we had to go through a complicated deletion process to get rid of it!

OK, I'll dig out you email address.

Since upgrading to ML, my six month old, 15" MBP drains really quickly and it is really, really hot without too many processes running. Something has gone wonky with charging, too, but I can't put my finger on it. Leaving it on a charger overnight either results in less charge or just no change, I haven't really tested enough to tell.

Anyone seeing any correlation to this issue? Because in my case, I am. Battery drain returns apparently to normal once I kill CalendarAgent. Of course, since I have no way of noticing when that process goes out of control until sometimes well after the fact, I haven't been able to prove I can still get my previous 6-8 hours of battery life by killing it.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4154209?start=0&tstart=0

My 2011 macbook Pro 13 had much better battery life before upgrading to MT-Lion. I'm thinking about switching back because of this problem, as well as a lot of things I used have disappeared like RSS, iChat, iWeb, and others. I like some of the new features in MT-Lion, but why do we have to give up some of our older stuff????

I agree, I thought I had something set wrong. But I am finding that my battery is not lasting as long as it did prior to ML. Also the wi-fi for over a week was jumping from 300MBs to 450MBs, it would never stabilize. Now for the last 2-3 days it has been stable at 450MBs

After installing Mountain Lion on my MacBook Air purchased June 2012, my battery life decreased from 4.5 hours to less than 3.5 hours. I'll try to return to the previous version 10.7. I need the battery life as the new features in Mountain Lion are of no use to me as a casual user.

This is like dealing with Microsoft as their "upgrades" were always "de-grades".

BeeMann

Nashville, TN

I also like a couple of the new features in MT-Lion, but not worth losing my battery life and some of the other applications I have learned to love like iChat, iWeb, normal tabs in Safari, and my RSS. If they do not release a fix in the next 10 days I will reload Lion and go back to what makes sense. I will have to say at this time I am very disappointed in the $19.99 I spent even though I was suppose to get it for free since I purchase after June 12, 2012. Hey, but that's a whole new story to tell.

Those of you experiencing severe battery drainage are you seeing a lot of mds/mdworker spikes in activity monitor? To find out open Activity Monitor.app, chose 'All processes' in the drop-down menu on the right and type 'md' in the filter bar.

Watch the process mds for a minute or so. Does it keep repeatedly spiking up from 0% to 20% or more every few seconds, or does it stay fairly constant at 0 - 0.3%?

Secondly, open Console.app, scroll down the sidepanel to Files > System.log. Are you seeing multiple (like hundreds) of messages that look something like

sandboxd [nnnn]: mdworker [nnnn] deny file-write-create Users/[username]/Library....?

Amazingly fast drain for me as well. Nearly a percent per minute! I upgraded from Snow Leopard on my 15" 2011 MBP and now have to keep it plugged in all the time. I did not have that issue with Snow Leopard.

But the question is - why? Before you jumpt to a conclusion it is a problem with Mountain Lion, you have to check your CPU usage. You might want to check your GPU usage too. I have seem reports of high CPU temperatures (which equals high fan speeds which equals reduced battery life) related to Chrome. Chrome is known to be a poor manager of the GPU and that could be worse in Mountain Lion.

Actually, I WOULD Jump to the conlusion on Mountain (and/or) Lion as there's a good chance it's the root cause. I agree, the question is why but look here and see there are many of us (including Apple) still trying to figure it out;

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135250?answerId=19193388022#19193388022&ac_cid=tw123456#19193388

Etresoft

Reading the last post on that discussion is actual evidence of an actual software issue with Mountain Lion and NOT some spurious hardware issue as you continue to claim.

I wonder why you would defend Mountain Lion so much? As a first release it will enevitably have some bugs and there's no reason to assume by now that the battery draining issue is entirely software based and nothing else.

Eresoft, come on, are you prepared to admit this now?

Sushant

My battery seems to be working as it was with Lion now for some reason. To sum it up, I did these things:

1. Do a clean Install instead of upgrading on existing Lion setup(Erase SSD completely, Verify Disk, Install ML)

2. After install do a PRAM/SMC reset. Did SMC twice to be sure it works(The light on the adapter blinks orange/green)

3. Did not install any other App other than the ones ML installs ( Kept this for 3 days)

4. Repair permissions on disk (There were a lot of wrong permissions after a clean ML install)

5. Charged battery to 100% and then removed the adapter. I let the battery drain completely till 0% and MBP shutdown overnight.

6. The next day I charged the battery again to 100% with MBP shutdown and let it keep charging for another 2 hours after the adapter light turned green.

7. Did another PRAM/SMC reset.

8. Installed my regular apps. (Mint, Twitter, Pinterest Tab, Dreamweaver CS6 (Trial), Photoshop CS6 (Trial), Lightroom 4)

-My battery has been on a constant 7.5+ hours at 100% with following apps open (Safaril, Mail, Mint, Twitter)

-After opening Dreamweaver and keeping the above apps open, battery drops to 5.5 - 6 hours. (Previously it was dropping to 3 hours)

-Battery percent is dropping slower now, I was down to 85% from 100% on Dreamweaver and other apps open for about 1.5 hours. (Previously 1.5 hours was dropping me to atleast 60% or more)

Before, when I kept MBP on sleep overnight, I saw a huge drop in battery (15-20%), which was ridiculous. Now my battery percent drops 4-5% overnight (6 hours on sleep)

I am happy with the battery life for now, and this has been constant for the last 5 days. Hoping it does not drop again (Touchwood 😀). I will update if it does, hope this is helpful.

Hardware: Macbook pro 13 Late 2011 i5 2.4, 16GB Corsair 1333, 256GB Corsair SSD.

Thanks,

Sushant

But first simply callibrate the battery - full charge, 2 hours work, complete drain, 5 hours rest, then full charge again. 3 times in a row. From one charge to another the battery life improved and no unexpected overheating - only on youtubing.

You now, SL was the end of a road, well trimmed and fixed. I think is normal

Etresoft is home alone again.

Somehow I skipped a part of the message.

... I think what is happening now is with L & ML is kind of normal.

Norbert Dentressangle wrote:

Reading the last post on that discussion is actual evidence of an actual software issue with Mountain Lion and NOT some spurious hardware issue as you continue to claim.

What is "the last post"? Threas are always getting updated. Is that the one you included? My original response in this thread was to someone claiming their battery was draining while plugged in. That is a hardware issue. I only reply to individual people with individual problems. I pay no attention to the Apple zeitgeist du jour.

I wonder why you would defend Mountain Lion so much? As a first release it will enevitably have some bugs and there's no reason to assume by now that the battery draining issue is entirely software based and nothing else.

Eresoft, come on, are you prepared to admit this now?

Admit what? Admit that a clean install without 8 years of forgotten junk software will run better. No news there.

Once one of these Apple stories catches the bloggers and media, it takes on a life of its own. No one does any analysis or research. Everyone just says "me too" and waits, sometimes patiently, sometimes for years, for a magical Apple "bug fix" that never arrives.

If you want to upgrade to a new operating system, then do so. Just clean out the junk first.