Horrible battery life after 10.8.4 update?

Sorry to hear about that. 😟

Every time you reboot, the file rebuilds itself. Did you check the battery life after deleting the file, without rebooting? In my case, I see the estimated time increase in 10 minute blocks till it gets close to what Apple say I should be getting. Give it a few minutes.

Not trying to insult your intelligence, but maybe you haven't calibrated your battery? 😕

Yes I used it without the file for a couple of days before restarting. I have calabrated the battery before but not in conjunction with deleting the file. Maybe I'll try that next time?

Hmm it might help. 😀

Again, not trying to sound condescending, but if you're on a Mac with switchable graphics, it's not uncommon to find a process causing your discrete, more powerful GPU to be used. With this on, I get 3 hours tops, and it heats up to the point where I can't even keep it on my lap. 😟

I use gfxCardStatus to monitor whether there's any process causing my discrete card to be in use. It's a lightweight utlility which sits on your menu bar, and quite useful I must say. It lets you choose which card to use and even highlights the process causing the problem (universalacessd is usually the culprit on mine).

Hope this helps,

Skip

I've attached a screenshot of how the utility works if it helps.

I am in complete agreement with Brandon. I think upgrading to 10.8.1 has damaged battery life. I bought my MBP in early January. That first week I was getting upwards of 8+ battery life with more than 10 programs running. After the first week, the 10.8.1 update was available and I of coursed updated my software. Ever since then my battery capacity has dropped considerably and continues to decrease with every update. I'm not at 87.4 battery capacity on a 7 month old MBP. Apple needs to address this issue and provide free battery replacement for all those facing this asinine issue.

Thanks! I'll definitely give that a try. I have also noticed that my macbook is getting very hot even when I'm only reading emails. Maybe this is the culprit????

Assuming you're using Apple Mail, open up Windows---> Activity in the menu bar and check if something is happening in the background that shouldn't be. gfxCardStatus should tell you whether Apple Mail is what's causing your problem. I refrained from using Apple Mail as it was slow and buggy IMO. However, after I got around to tweaking my settings for Gmail (finally), it's working very smoothly now. I didn't notice any heating up though. 😕

I would also suggest using Temperature Monitor to check whether it's your CPU or GPU getting targeted. Again, it sits in your menu bar and provides you with quite extensive temperature readings on individual cores, graphics card, to palm rests too! 😀 If it's your CPU, check out Activity Monitor for any runaway processes. If it's your GPU, use gfxCardStatus to wean out the problem. I would recommend using gfxCardStatus to set the GPU used by the computer to the integrated one, so that there's no chance any programs you start up make the Mac switch to the discrete graphics.

Also, if it's the top left of your Mac (to the bottom left of your display) which is heating up, it's usually a clear indicator it's your GPU.

Best of luck and hope this helps,

Keep us updated! 🙂

Skip

Just had the battery drain from 100% to 37% in 45 mins! Visibly terrible performance since the 10.8.4 update. I've tried all the solutions mentioned here over the past month (since the update)... the best one that altered the performance (for the better) was deleting the desktop.plist file. That solution was very temporary - BTW...down to 33% since starting this post 3 minutes ago).

Apple - what is the problem?

down to 19%....

9%

7%!

Checkout the time frame from 37% to 7%

Message was edited by: WonderWizard

So I performed another SMC reset... I don't think I did it correctly the first time as it booted up when I pressed all the buttons at the same time. I also found you can do a "practice" SMC reset when the MBP is still running - oops 😁

Anyways - this time the SMC reset worked well - so I did a few back to back, then rebooted.

Boot up time significantly quicker and Shut Down time also significantly quicker...

I'll keep an eye on battery life and post any improvements!

15" MBP 2012 - June Build FWIW

How do you reset SMC?????? I formated by macbook air twice already, but at least getting a 2 hours of battery from 5-6 hours before LOL.

Please tell me how to REST this **** SMC thing so i can get my battery life back!

Thank you!!!!!!!

Shut down your MBP and then press SHIFT, OPTION, CONTROL AND THE POWER BUTTON at the same time. Then release simultaneously. If it boots up whilst doing this, you've done it wrong... So you'll need to do it again...

After you've done that, hit the power button and reboot.

There are proper instructions on the apple support site. Google "how to reset SMC osx"... That'll point you in the right direction

Cheers

I had the same issues and tried everythign with no luck.

I went back to the basics and updated Java to the latest as well as every program and app I have. Aftering manually updating everything... my battery life magically came back.

Hope this helps.

WISH this would will work for the rest of us as well.....

Hi all

Same issue here! Any news from Apple/Jerry?