Mountain lion kills my battery

look over to the left "more like this". Several people have posted the same question with no answer. Seems to be a widespread problem, although I am not experiencing any battery loss.

See the "More Like This" to the right. A lot of people have had this problem (I'm not among them) and Apple is aware of the problem. No answers from users or Apple thus far - and it doesn't seem as if it's any one particular model, etc. The only thing in common is Mountain Lion.

Sorry,

Clinton

I have same problem. Mid-2009 13 inches MBP, it says "service battery" on the battery icon and the battery rechage cycle shorten by half.

See the "More like this" to the right or read the woes at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135250.

A number of people are having problems with ML and battery life. Apparently 10.8.1 offers no solutions. Without having to read through all the posts, the gist is that it's a ML problem and that it exists on all models - i.e., not related to any specific model. You can join the discussion and add your name to the list, detailing your problems. Apple has contacted a number of people that have posted on the thread, gathering information for what all hope will be a fix: but there is no 'fix' at present.

Sorry,

Clinton

I just made the transition from a mid-2009 13" MBP to the latest 15" MBP (2.3 GHz version). I too experienced the "service battery" message with the 2009, and also the diminished battery capacity. Yet, the new 15" seem to be performing normally, and even out performing. Right now the new MBP is running on battery power, currently at 87%, and the indicator show that I have 8 hours and 16 minutes left. Both systems are running OS X 10.8.1.

I'm wondering, could the battery issue be related to the age of the machine? I'm not very knowledgable of hardware systems beyond the basic stuff. Maybe someone with some expertise could provide an opinion.

I just updated to OS X 10.8.1 and now it says Service Battery. I have a mid-2010 MBP 13". Sounds like bad software to me rather than an old battery. Apple needs to fix Mountain Lion in several areas, but this one sounds like a top priority!

Yea, I need to modify my earlier contention that my new MBP was "outperforming" battery-wise. While the indicator did show 8:16 @ 87%, this did not match my experience in terms of real-world performance. It quickly diminished and I'd estimate I'm getting about 6 hours life on a full charge - i.e., about 85% of the advertised performance of 7 hours.

An Apple "genius" I spoke to told me that this was to be expected since Mountain Lion does so much more than Snow Leopard. Yikes.

Let's hope 10.8.2 fixes the issue.

My almost new rMBP (bought on 21st June 2012) is seriously running at diminished battery capacity ever since I've started using it, and has recently become worse with the 10.8.1 Mountain Lion update.

With only Mail and Safari running, and on Intel HD Integrated graphics, I'm getting like 4hrs on average (maybe sometimes going at 5hrs, "Wow") after I plug out at 100% charge. This is really disappointing and I've tried various methods at fixing this issue including some Terminal command codes that some forums have suggested to input that basically kills of some "phantom" code loop that is running on Mountain Lion.

The battery life is really a letdown, as to the 7-8hours promised initially by Apple. I hope Apple finds a fix for this ASAP and not let its loyal consumers down.

Same problem for me,

MB Pro 13'' 2010, I installed Mountain Lion like two months ago, but now after the 2nd update of the system I got the message of ''Battery Service''. Although I think I got almost the same lifespan in my battery performance, there is something going on with the Mountain Lion.

Kind weird, no news in the media about this. Big downside in loyalty!!!

Experiencing same issue with recently purchased (June '12) 15" Retina display machine - though I can't say the battery performance was great prior to upgrading to Mountain Lion - it sure is a lot less than the 7+ claimed!

I also am not seeing any battery problems. In fact, I have been running a battery life test over the past 2 days and see very good battery performance. I am currently at over 4 hours of runtime with:

1) display at full intensity

2) ESET CyberSecurity running in the background

3) Active use of MS Word (Office 2011) for most of the time

4) Mail application running

5) WIFI connected

6) Intermittent Web access (like right now)

7) I let it sleep over the last 18 hours (did not power-down)

And, I am still at 22% of the battery charge. I can't complain. It hasn't changed significantly from what I saw with Lion.

Just a follow-up: After 90 minutes of use today, only a 12% drop in battery charge. And, I'm not trying any extreme battery saving strategies (again have been using Word with the display at full intensity). Not bad at all.

BTW, I let the computer decide on graphics switching.

The key is I'm not using iTunes and not viewing any videos.

Here is my configuration:

I have the 750GB hard drive (no SSD) and the high resoution display (anti-glare).

I am also having battery problems since installing ML. This is a MBP 13" early 2011 purchased August 2011, and before ML battery gave 7 7.5 hours. I recently monitored consumption running Safari, iTunes, Thunderbird.

time %age Battery Hours left

18.30 92 6.53

18.45 88 6.39

19.00 84 5.04

19.30 76 5.11

19.45 72 5.02

20.00 71 3.52

21.45 44 3.06

So in 2 1/4 hours used over 50% of battery. No good when I want to work away from base.

Are Apple really aware if this and are they working on an upgrade. I don't want to revert to Lion as there are so many good new features in ML, also am getting the 'beach ball' several times when opening sites in Safari.

I had the same issue on my MacBook Pro unibody early 2011.

After installing mountain lion I noticed that my battery was draining faster and suddenly the panel started to warn me to bring the Mac to service batteries.

I went to the apple store and they told me to buy a new battery: it was 14 month old, with only 79 recharge cycles!
It had only 29% health (current capacity [mAh] / design capacity [mAh]).

Now I have a new battery and in 2 recharcge cycles already lost 5% of its health!!!

The new battery was OK since I put the Mac in sleep mode for some hours.

I noticed that the Mac drains down a lot of battery during sleep, but this is not the last bad news: when it wakes up the health of the battery is decreased!

Anybody else is experiencing this? How many of you had to buy a new battery because it was under 3.000 mAh (macbook pro unibody early 2011) against a nominal capacity of 6.900 mAh?

My MBP could watch alomost 3 movies after fully charged, now it won't last even 1, thanks to the new Mountain Lion! Somebody tell me what to do please!