Mountain lion 10.8.2 battery life is worse !

I'm also having a very short battery life after upgrading (all the way to 10.8.2) - I have a MacBook air Mid-2011

any solution from Apple?

same here, my mid-2011 macbook air goes to sleep after 2 and a half hours!

at least there are no freezes since 10.8.2, but the latest fix stole 2 hours from the battery life...

Hi there, I hope this helps. I followed this method and my macbook pro late 2011 improved a lot:

http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/25/how-to-clean-install-os-x-mountain-lion/

After this do a SMC reset:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Best of luck!

All you guys are hung up on how many hours the battery meter is showing you. There's a good reason why Apple removed the option to show remaining time in the status bar - it's gimmicky at best.

What counts is how much actual time you get between recharging your battery.

For all i know is that with SL 10.6.8, a 2 hour 30 minutes DVD dropped me down from 100% to 75%.

Now, since ML 10.8.2, I can barely watch a 2 hour movie before getting Low Battery Alert.

MacBookPro8,2 (early 2011). Battery Condition: Normal

meanwhile I was taking the time to do a clean install of ML (no upgrade) and I have the Batterie life back to pre-ML-Upgrade-Status. And while I was at it, I put a SSD into the MacBook to build myself a Hybrid. Best decision ever.

I know that so many people did the update to ML very fast, almost 4 Mil during a very short time or whatever Tim Cook told on the last Keynote. Well, 10.9 won't get my money 'til 10.9.2 is out, fo shizzle!

I did the 4th clean install to try and remedy the battery problem. With this latest attempt I have total battery life with wireless and a busy website running for about 6 hours. I guess that's the best I'm going to get and it is about an hour and a half less than the same test with Lion. Since Apple isn't paying any attention to this issue and the geniuses at the Stores are all denying there is any problem, I guess I'll just have to live with that or have Lion and loose the functionality I bought Mountain Lion for.

Gotta second this. Battery life in 10.8.2 is absolutely pathetic.

Last week I switched the keyboard in my MBA 2011 (coffee accident), and got a request to update to 10.7.5 once I got it up and running again. This completely broke the system. Every app crashing, couldn't boot normally without first booting into safe mode and fiddling with settings, then rebooting again and waiting for 5 minutes for the broken Lion to come up.

Decided to do a rescue reinstall, but couldn't. Recovery refused to install a new version.

Got hold of Mountain Lion and wiped everything, then installed.

I haven't opted in on any of the really bad things, like syncing with iCloud (don't need that crap). So my system is basically as vanilla as it gets. I don't even use Mail, Messages, or Calendar. Basically anything that comes with OS X is thrown away on my system and unused, so I can't even blame those apps for sucking away my juice.

All I can say is, after having ML for now two days, I'm right now just surfing in Chrome and listening to Spotify. I'm down 37% of my battery in less than an hour. It claims, "1:52" remaining (although, conveniently, they've now hidden that estimate away so you don't get alarmed too often). That's at 50% screen brightness (and aut-brightness enabled, and I'm in a virtually dark room).

That's just ********. I thought testing Ubuntu on this on a USB and seeing only 6 hours battery life was pushing it. Now I'm on Mountain Lion and seeing less than three hours. Thank God for The Pirate Bay so that I can get back to my purchased yet un-reinstallable Lion OS and my 7+ hours of battery life.

The ****** up thing is that the first thing I noticed about ML is that the CPU fan kicks in much less often, and that it doesn't get that hot... Maybe that's just my brain being ********, or something funky is really going on. Like the baseline juice sucking is just over the top for some reason.

I really don't care anyway. There isn't really anything exciting about ML. I thought I could replace AirFoil with the built-in Airplay functionality, but it only works for a limited subset of hardware. I also looked forward to getting the notification center that I've been happy about in Ubuntu for a handful of years now. But to be honest, a notification center for 50+% of my battery life? Naaaaahhh... I'll pass, thanks!

I am also experiencing incredibly low battery life.

About a month ago, I noticed that my battery life was decreasing by a percent every minute. It came to the point where I can actually watch it go down. I called in Apple and they were kind enough to do some troubleshooting with me on the phone. We reset the SMC and PRAM...but that didn't seem to fix the issue. So, I set up an appointment with the genius at Apple and went in for a check up. They ran a hardware test and saw that everything was running perfectly fine (Logic Board/RAM/HDD/etc). I told them that I wasn't running any heavy applications that hog up my CPU. In fact, I only browsed the web. Anyway...the genius denied that my computer had problems because the Hardware test he ran "claimed" that the hardware on my computer was looking fine.

After a couple days of stress about my computer, I called in Apple and decided to escalate the issue to the Senior Advisors. They asked me to calibrate the battery and gave me specific instructions on how to do so. I followed their directions hoping that this would hopefully improve my estimated battery time (which it didn't work unfortunately). They then told me that IF the calibrating process didn't help, I should start timing the battery life and report it to them immediately. Apple has advertised a 7+ hour battery life and I was only getting 1 hour in real life. I called them up and they set up an appointment for me to FINALLY get my battery replaced. A couple of days after I got my battery replaced, I noticed the same issues again. But this time...with an additional problem! I noticed that I am getting a buzzing/hissing/high pitched whiney noise coming from the upper left hand corner of my MBP (where the magsafe connects). It was not the fans or the hard drive spinning...I can assure you that! It only happens when I plug in my charger and start loading/working with my MBP (i.e.. clicking on links/scrolling down web pages/working in general with the computer).

I've tried the following....

-Reset PRAM and SMC (4-5 times as instructed by an Apple genius)

-Did a clean install of Mountain Lion (10.8.2) (I did this 3 times....very frustrating)

-Downgraded to the latest version of Lion (still got only 1 hour of battery life)

-Replaced my battery (Apple was so kind to get my battery replaced, but unfortunately, it still didn't work).

-Checked to see whether or not Spotlight was indexing (wasn't indexing)

-Checked Activity Monitor to see if I was running applications that could be CPU intensive

Some things you should know:

-I have only 8 cycle counts for my battery because I just got it replaced (had 116 cycle counts before I replaced it)

-Every time I use my computer, my battery HEALTH/Capacity decreases by one percent

-I shut down my MBP when I'm not using it and plan on NOT using it until the next day

-I am only browsing the Internet and experiencing quick decreases in battery life....that is why I'm concerned

-My 2008 Unibody (Aluminum) Macbook is getting better battery life than my 7 month old 2011 17" Antiglare Macbook Pro.

Apple senior advisors have been telling me that this could be a hardware issue..and because of that I have to take it to the store for check up AGAIN. My advisor told me that I should definitely get my Magsafe adapter replaced ASAP because that could be the reason why I'm experiencing my battery issues. I highly doubt this, but I am going to replace it anyway. After all, my Magsafe charger is making weird noises.

Sooooo.......I'm going to go ahead and see what happens. Perhaps 10.8.3 update will fix this issue? HOPEFULLY!

I've been an Apple customer for about 4 years now and I've never even imagined facing these issues one day. :\

I would greatly appreciate anyones help!

I am amazed at the detailed description of your misery. Also I recognize the pain because I have gone through it as well. Luckily for me after 10.8.1 update my battery life has been around 5 hours. And I am not willing to risk further by updating to 10.8.2.

My slightly older MBP on 10.7.1 still gives solid 7 hours and I am afraid of any upgrade.

The worst of it all I think is that Apple refuses to accept that this is a major problem with many many users. I have been loyal to Apple for 10 years (still love my fully working Powerbook), but no more. I will look for BB10 to get Apple a few notch down of their arrogance.

i got a new MBP 13" basic on new years eve and i had also about 3-4h AFTER calibrating. i turned bluetooth off (wich is default ON) and get now around 5-6. Not as good as lion but better than 3-4h

Want to put out an update for everyone regarding my experience with this same issue. Here's the details in brief:

Mid-2011 Unibody MacBook Pro 2.3Ghz i5

Upgrade to Lion in late 2011 or early 2012, can't remember exactly, no battery change noticed. I typically got between 5 and 6 hours from when I first got my MacBook, and nothing really changed with a Lion upgrade. I use multiple programs when I run it so of course I could theoretically have gotten more out of it, I just didn't try, and that's what I got. Full brightness and all.

Mountain Lion came out, I upgraded to it almost right away, no big change, although I think battery life slipped half an hour or an hour and I just attributed this to battery age. Then last Fall, I upgraded to 10.8.2.

Immediately after my MacBook restarted from the update, my battery life was between 2 and a half and 3 REAL hours. I came to this forum and read everything, tried everything. I did a PRAM reset, reinstalled Mountain Lion 10.8, then tried a CLEAN install of Mountain Lion 10.8, didn't do a thing for me. I called Apple (don't have Apple Care, but I got one free call) and the guy was so helpful as to suggest it was a hardware issue... even though I explained clearly, "I had over 5 hours, then five minutes later after the udpate, had less than 3 hours." ****** me off, he told me to find the nearest Apple maintenance place to have my hardware checked, and gave me no explanation otherwise.

Well, I lived with this crap for a few months, two and a half to three hours maximum battery life. My "Service Battery" icon actually came on a month ago, which I felt was strange. I finally gave up and last week bought a brand new Apple battery (on eBay for half the cost) and installed it.

VOILA! I'm getting 6-7 hours of battery life!

So, either Apple's update somehow physically screwed up my original battery, or made it perform poorly, or... well I really don't know. Because there's no way my battery just decided to work at half-capacity in a ten-minute time span and stay that way, and not be correlated to the update.

By the way! I learned some more battery-saving tips during this awful process of trying to recover battery life, which helps my brand new battery have even more battery life.

1. Turn off Bluetooth in System Preferences. That eats some battery searching, I've been told.

2. Download gfxCardStatus v2.3 http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33905/gfxcardstatus and every time you restart, click on the i icon in the top bar and set your graphics card to Integrated Only. Some programs decide you should use your Discrete Graphics card to display higher-quality graphics and switch to it without asking you, even on battery, and that kills your battery faster. This will prevent them from doing that.

3. The old "turn brightness down" trick actually does save some battery. To be honest I don't use it much, but I've tried it and it does help.

So, if you're constantly plagued with problems, you might just want to buckle down and dish out 55 bucks for a new battery. I went for about four months with that awful battery life, and forgot how amazing it is to be able to go an almost ENTIRE work day without plugging in. My computing experience is really refreshed.

The money was worth it. I'm ****** at Apple, but honestly, I lived with PCs for 19 years, worked on them professionally, and will never go back; the problems that plague me with Apple pale in comparison to the problems Windows gave me.

Okay, I have had 2 hours of battery life for a LOOOONG time now, ever since I upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion, my battery life have gone from bad to worse to even worse. But 2 weeks ago I decided to get a new battery, it cost me a pretty penny, but if I only use it for Safari (when I read fanfiction) and I put the brightness down to one bar - I have 11 hours of battery life on my 15" Macbook Pro mid 2010 :-)

So maybe the upgrade did **** up my old battery, but **** it... I have my battery life back, even though it costs me some... but I don't care. Still cheaper than buying a new mac

All right, all of a sudden my brand new battery dropped from getting over 6 hours real battery life, with lots of apps running, to now what appears to be just over 4 hours... this is insane. I closed almost all my apps, have way less going on than when I was getting 6 hours, and I can watch my battery percentage dropping.

I just upgraded yesterday via software update, I don't think it was even a big update just some camera RAW etc... but my battery life has totally changed. I can see it go down as I type. I'm going through 1% per minute and the only thing to have changed is the recent update.

The whole computer seems to be going far slower too.

I am in the same boat as the majority of you. I guess in my case I may have more of a reason to gripe and complain about this completely overlooked issue.

I have recently purchased a 13' MBP a little after New Years this year and had better than expected battery life, typically around 7 1/2 to 8 hours with 7 or more apps running (iTunes, Twitter, Safari, Messages, eMail, etc.). Coming from a PC I was astounded. About a week to a week and half later Apple released the 10.8.2 update and my battery life went down considerably.

Checked a few different kinds of battery life and monitoring softwares and each of which provided me with near identical data. My battery health went from 5770 mAh to 5562 mAh (about 96.4%), keeping in mind this is a brand new MBP. My estimated battery life from 100% starts me off with a 4 hour expectancy...with real world usage it tends to hover around 3 1/2 to 3 hours and 45 minutes.

I've tried everything from the SMC reset to battery re-calibrations to completely changing the way I use my MBP....nothing has worked to correct the issue. I don't want to return my MBP for another because I don't think that it should be necessary for me to do so. ML 10.8.2 has to be the cause of the terrible battery life.

It becomes increasingly more aggrivating when Apple continues to release updates for 15' & 17' 2010/2011 MBPs to correct their battery issues but completely ignore the 13' and more current MBP releases. I'm tempted to download a copy of Lion and downgrade my OS. Anything for better battery life. I mean, whats the point of having a laptop when it has to be plugged in constantly. Even my HP Netbook (which specs pale in comparison to my MBP) gets 5+ hours of battery life between charges.

Apple has been asleep at the wheel on this one.