Mavericks MacBook Air 2013 Battery Draining

Hi everyone, the SMC and PRAM reset didn't work. Still draining battery...

Are you guys using Chrome ? Safari est far less battery consuming.

I did an SRC reset which helped somewhat, but my biggest improvement was after I upgraded the 3rd party app Hidden (a laptop location security app). As soon as I upgraded to their latest version, I saw a tremendous improvement. I do think that Apps that constantly check location must really be battery power "hogs". This leads me to believe that quite a few of us, may be running 3rd party apps that are draining battery life until they are upgraded. Someone mentioned BOOM earlier, I am just mentioning HIDDEN for those using this app (an update was for Mavericks was just released).

In my case the problem is Mail App, and the imap accounts, and account settings. As you can see in the image, these two tasks, consume battery, fun full speed and CPU. In uninstall all my account imap, Google and other providers. Install ThunderBird an put those accounts there. In the first minutes works OK. lets see in the next days.

Before doing system resets and those sorts of things, one should check the Activity Monitor first. I also faced this battery drain problem on my early 2013 MacBook Pro retina (13"). At first this baffled me, but when I looked at my Activity Monitor I noticed that Adobe Creative Cloud app was using up 30% of my CPU continuously. I shut that app down and my battery consumption returned to what it was like before the OS upgrade.

I'm not saying that this Adobe app will be the cause. The problem is that with each new iteration of OS X, there's going to be a lag between the OS and developers of other apps. There is a strong likelihood that there will be general incompatibility between these apps and OS X. So the simplest solution is to see if there are these kinds of apps running background processes that are using up an inordinate amount CPU, and then quitting these apps. In my case I was able to reinstall the Adobe Creative Cloud app and the problem went away. In other apps, you may have to wait for their developers to address the issue with new updates.

People have to understand, its how you use your laptop. Thats how you achieve great battery life. If you install things that run in the background like backup utilites, system monitoring, temp guagues, etc. ITs going to drain your battery life considerably. If you really want to know how much you are using instantaneously, go to system information -> then to power -> then you should see "Amperage (mah)". To calculate battery time left, get your Battery's capacity that is left divided by the Amperage number and you will get your time left in hours. To achieve hours like 15 hours like on the tests you should be using no more than 475 mah for the Macbook Air 2013. Doing things like calibrating your battery does nothing to your life or health of your battery. It just syncs the battery chip with the battery itself so it can be read properly by your system. Thats all.

This is what I achieved with a Macbook Air 2012.

Wifi on, mostly reading pdfs listening to music and surfing the web. 5-10min of flash videos.

On idle with wifi On

stop saying that is usage or this app or the other apps...

i have a macbook air 13" mid 2013 i7 8GB and 256HD and last week using ML i usually got between 11-13h like they said...

now after a almost a week using Mavericks i always get 7-9h with a full charge... same macbook air, same apps running..

i check the activity monitor and nothing is doing nothing crazy (kernel_task 1.6% average CPU usage but almost 500 Mb RAM) not big deal i think...

i also did the SMC and PRAM reset and i drain all my battery and did a full charge but NOTHING

Something is wrong with Mavericks, that's a FACT

i dont know what else to do !

Whizkid56222

If you install things that run in the background........going to drain your battery life considerably

No, ...That has changed and far less the case now with Mavericks

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/how-os-x-mavericks-works-its-power-saving-m agic/

😊

Juancho21 wrote:

stop saying that is usage or this app or the other apps...

i have a macbook air 13" mid 2013 i7 8GB and 256HD and last week using ML i usually got between 11-13h like they said...

now after a almost a week using Mavericks i always get 7-9h with a full charge... same macbook air, same apps running..

i check the activity monitor and nothing is doing nothing crazy (kernel_task 1.6% average CPU usage but almost 500 Mb RAM) not big deal i think...

i also did the SMC and PRAM reset and i drain all my battery and did a full charge but NOTHING

Something is wrong with Mavericks, that's a FACT

i dont know what else to do !

Can't agree more. I have tried everything, and saw people just did a clean re-installation of Mavericks and still have the problem. It's defenitely the Mavericks problem. 100000000% sure about that. Just waiting for Apple to step up and say something. Or 10.9.1 maybe.

Juancho21 wrote:

i dont know what else to do !

Hi Juancho21

Please start a new Discussion so that your individual circumstances can be addressed. Thanks!

App nap only works for apps not services like kexts or guages, they work all the time. Skype takes 2 percent doing nothing and up to 15 percent talking. I am saying cpu usage adds up.

First off running an I7 takes off 1-2 hours the of 12 hours they said you could get right off the boat. If you really want to debug battery life I suggest you go to activity monitor and check your cpu usage and go to spotlight -> system information -> power -> check "amperage" (should be a negative number on discharge). Refresh using cmd+r every 1 minute to see discharge rate. based on stock 7150 mah you should be only using -600mah on average to aquire at least 12 hours of battery life.

Im not saying that you're wrong. Im saying in order to achieve the battery life you wish to achieve, you will to adjust to how Mavericks works. Mavericks works in batches. It groups all the users cpu load in one burst ever so often to save battery life and stay in idle time longer. Taking advantage of the low power state of the haswell processor chip.

Battery life is always an issue becuase people work differently, it is difficult to have the battery to work to everyone's benefit. Some people will just have better luck than others.

recommend you download the FREE little APP coconut battery.... same for everyone else here

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

tiny little informative APP

Whizkid56222

I am saying cpu usage adds up.

Yes and no, depends on the CPU speed also,.....

even though there are discharge regulators for the battery, an i7 processor pulses a LiPo battery whereas a slower processor trickles on constant (more so) power use, ...of the battery. Lithium battery profile 'prefers' to be slowly drained rather than pulsed.

Heat increases battery performance but shortens life by a factor of two for every 10°C increase above 25–30°C (18°F above 77–86°F).

*Mavericks not only increases a single charge cycle for longer battery use off a full charge,… but also prolongs the overall long term life of the LiPo battery in a Macbook by reducing the load conditions the battery experiences from heavy peak-use.

Counting cycles is not conclusive because a discharge may vary in depth and there are no clearly defined standards of what constitutes a charge cycle on a Lithium Ion battery. Similar to a mechanical device that wears out faster with heavy use, so also does the depth of discharge (DoD) determine the cycle count.

The shorter the discharge (low DoD), the longer the battery will last. If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses. Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine.

Frequent HIGH depth of discharge rates (draining the battery very low) on a Lithium battery will hasten the lowering of maximum battery capacity.

Although better performing when warm, batteries live longer when kept cool.

For those still having problems with battery life, I recommend reverting back to mountain lion if you have had better battery life then and just wait till 10.9.1 comes out and hopefully your issues will be resolved.

I feel indifferent about this issue because I fixed my problem doing a long rigorous method that I posted on this discussion. That is why I am unsure whether or not there is an issue or not. But in the meantime dont lose hope. 10.8 had battery issues initially too and they were fixed iterations later.

I am not saying there isnt problems, I have found a couple bugs already and reported it to the discussion boards. One being the Instantaneous Amperage reporting is displaying some arbitrary number.

I am just saying that wait for 10.9.1 and then report back. Until then, its best not to be playing around with your battery or use it unnecessarily just checking for how long the computer will last. Thats one way to kill your battery life sooner.

This truly worked for me...by the way Adobe released an update for Creative Cloud.. Before the update, CC was using 42% of the CPU...now back down to 1-2% with great battery life...Thanks for the information. Adobe Creative Cloud was really the Culprit..followed by the Hidden.app (Which was updated as well). Now I'm getting close to 8h again.