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Q: Late 2013 13" Macbook Pro Retina Battery Issues

Just got my new MacBook Pro 2 days ago and been using it for web surfing (Safari), few coding projects, skyping and listening to music mainly. Somehow the battery lasts for about 6 hours at it's best and not only that but the battery estimate is not correct at all. I charged it to 84% and it said 12 hours left then at 70% after exactly 54 minutes of battery usage it said 5 hours and 50 minutes left.

The time estimate drops fast and doesn't last that long ... I've seen similar discussions but there problems were because of Chrome or the kernel_task using the memory & CPU extensivley. But in my case, I'm not using Chrome and the kernel_task is taking around 500 - 600 of memory and fair usage of the CPU ..

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Nov 6, 2013 12:13 PM

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Q: Late 2013 13" Macbook Pro Retina Battery Issues

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  • by benjaminjday,

    benjaminjday benjaminjday Dec 17, 2013 7:41 AM in response to mrmatthew
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    Dec 17, 2013 7:41 AM in response to mrmatthew

    I sent my machine to Apple's UK service centre, run by Group 8, and was informed by their engineer that despite me getting only 5 hours battery life using just Mail and Safari, that this sounded "about right". They had apparently carried out tests where they would expect to get 9 hours and only got 5, but they couldnt detect any problem and as such returned it to me.

     

    During my conversation with the engineer he said that the only way I'd EVER get 9 hours is if I didn't use it at all. To me, it seems like a car manufacturer saying that a car will do up to 500mpg - but only if it's not driven.

     

    What is interesting is that since it's been returned to me (with nothing on the job sheet at all), the battery life has gone back up to 8 hours on a full charge. I'm doing nothing different - so I'm at a loss to explain why it's changed. I'm willing to bet that there was more to my machine's visit to the service centre than they're letting on.

  • by thewusman,

    thewusman thewusman Dec 18, 2013 10:50 AM in response to Hutch51
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 18, 2013 10:50 AM in response to Hutch51

    Exactly the same observations as you Hutch.

     

    Spotify running, if my late 2013 rMBP 13" goes to sleep, there is a 50/50 chance that, upon wake, kernel_task will go AWOL and use 100% of a core.

     

    Closing spotify before sleep state seems to eliminate the issue.

     

    Hope there is a fix soon. Crazy bug this.

  • by Johan Soh,

    Johan Soh Johan Soh Dec 19, 2013 4:35 AM in response to Johan Soh
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 19, 2013 4:35 AM in response to Johan Soh

    I migrated my old system through time machine and it seems some of the old processes tagged along to the new hardware. Especially my home plug software. On a rebbot you couldn't tell but when it had been running for a few days with 2-3 hours of battery each time but no reboots you could tell in the activity monitor that something fishy was going on with the "devolonetsvc" process. If I terminated the process I would get a not so slight increase in battery life of up to 5-6 hours. I managed to rid the system of the whole process and I'm now on 12-13 hours of actual battery life on WiFi! I was convinced the battery was faulty but this process that showed up as a possible culprit only after about a week of no reboots was the root to my problems.

     

    Needless to say I'm a happy camper. Go through your process list, especially if you installed your system from a backup.

  • by SMfmDXB,

    SMfmDXB SMfmDXB Dec 26, 2013 12:06 PM in response to xnull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 26, 2013 12:06 PM in response to xnull

    I had the same issues as detailed by the OP.

     

    I bought my machine thru a reseller in Dubai - Apon opening the box up , the laptop refused to start up. Deduced the battery was completely dead on arrival.

     

    Subsequently plugged in the mains and booted up.. Even with basic surfing I was not able to get more than 5-6 hours of usage on battery. Apple support got me to reset SMC, boot into safe mode, do a complete battery calibration exercise - all to no avail.

     

    I discovered the issue pretty much by using common sense. I took screenshots of the battery capacity and SHUT the system down (not sleep - fully powered down). After 8 hours, I turned the system on and again checked the battery stats. Very revealing... I was losing about 50-70 mAh every 8 hours - translates to 150-210 mAh..  2-3% PER DAY! In other words this clearly is a SELF DISCHARGE ISSUE. At the rate of 2-3% a day , my battery will run completely dry in less than 40 days (which is why it came dead to begin with) without ever powering up. Apple's own claim is that you'd get over 30 DAYS on 'STANDBY'. Battery in machines switched off should last a year at least! Consumption in Switched OFF mode is ZERO. LIthium Polymer batteries have a self discharge rate that is lesser than 1-2% a month! THe local Apple support in Dubai does not have the dignostics to check self discharge rates (or the common sense). They are totally dependant on the auto diagnostics protocol to pick it up. But thise tests are run on a machine that is booted up -  so no way of getting to the self discharge calculations other than the process detailed! Have turned in my MB Pro and put in a request for a replacement.

     

    Request eveyone with battery issues to PLEASE CHECK their self discharge rates in a shut down state .. It has to be in low single digits at best!

     

    I have a feeling there is a potential Battery or hardware issue that needs investigating!

  • by cnanderson,

    cnanderson cnanderson Jan 7, 2014 1:08 PM in response to thewusman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 7, 2014 1:08 PM in response to thewusman

    Exactly the same observations as thewusman.  Spotify was 100% on energy impact.  Killing Spotify brought energy impact way down.  I also run MATLAB 2013, and once Spotify was killed, Matlab had a 40% energy impact.   Closing both had a remarkable impact.  I have to say that I love the energy tab in ActivityMonitor.  I didn't even know it existed.

  • by Jon Bo,

    Jon Bo Jon Bo Jan 7, 2014 3:33 PM in response to xnull
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 7, 2014 3:33 PM in response to xnull

    I have performed several tests on my mbp retina late 2013 (Mavericks, 4/128Gb), here some results. All tests with brightness set to about 40%, with Degrees, Copy, and Dropbox running.

     

    • Reading/Writing: Safari, Email, Calendar, TextWrangler, Dashboard, Terminal = 7 to 10 hours
    • Gaming: Limbo = 2 hours (very hot and loud), OpenTTD = 8 hours, Steam = 2 hours (very hot and loud)
    • Maps: with 3D = 4 hours (hot)
    • Online videos, HD flash = 3 hours (hot, but quiet)

     

    so it looks like MBP retinas are not especially good for online videos and gaming. But I wonder: why if I watch same videos and play same games on my iPad it stays cool and its battery time is not affected?

  • by supcom123,

    supcom123 supcom123 Jan 15, 2014 8:49 PM in response to thewusman
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    Jan 15, 2014 8:49 PM in response to thewusman

    I had the exact same issue as you both; kernel_task using 100% cpu indefinetly...... Thanks for the workaround Hutch!

     

    My macbook either staying cool to the touch half the time or burning my lap the other half while simply using songza running in Safari is no longer a mystery.

     

    I'm a bit surprised though- this is my first mac, and I bought it, in part, based on the convention that macbooks are essentially 'problem free', but in the two weeks I've had it, this and the 'keyboard/trackpad non-responsive issue' have been dissapointing- especially since mine shipped with the supposed fix for that....

  • by supcom123,

    supcom123 supcom123 Jan 15, 2014 8:50 PM in response to supcom123
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2014 8:50 PM in response to supcom123

    almost forgot- my battery life went from 3 hours remaing at 75% to almost 10 hours after this workaround.

  • by NoelKo-G,

    NoelKo-G NoelKo-G Jan 28, 2014 7:01 PM in response to xnull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 28, 2014 7:01 PM in response to xnull

    I have the same issue....very disappointed with the battery life....4 hours at most for my Macbook pro 13 Retina (late 2013). My laptop's configuration though is 2.6ghz, 512ssd and i heard that the clock speed of the iris graphics card for the 2.6ghz variant is slightly higher than the 2.4ghz variants.

     

    9+ hours is for the 2.4ghz, 128ssd, and lower clockspeed iris graphics card...?

     

    I do photoshop, browsing, youtube videos. I also set my screen resolution to the highest by default and not the factory default lower resolution.

  • by Mir Behroz,

    Mir Behroz Mir Behroz Feb 8, 2014 9:13 AM in response to mrmatthew
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 8, 2014 9:13 AM in response to mrmatthew

    I have a Macbook Pro 13 Retina late 2013 and its Battery is horrible using bootmanager to use windows 7 but its same on MAC OSX last only 2 hours its really heart breaking i paid AUD 1700 for this with Apple Care Documents.... at a time it says 4:15 hr then 2 mins later 3 hr and then 2 i didnt closely watched the time but it i think lasts only 1:30 hr to be exact....pfff
    i am total nutt head to buy MBP Retina should have went for Dell Alienware at this price

  • by FabPla,

    FabPla FabPla Feb 14, 2014 3:54 PM in response to xnull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 14, 2014 3:54 PM in response to xnull

    I'm interested, how is your MacBook's overall standby time? Is it anywhere near the 30 days? Mine is 5-8 HOURS max, in STANDBY where Apple advertises up to 30 days. And it's only 1 month old (MacBook Pro 13" Retina).

  • by Prowen1,

    Prowen1 Prowen1 Feb 18, 2014 8:32 AM in response to SMfmDXB
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 18, 2014 8:32 AM in response to SMfmDXB

    i have same self discharge issue with my mid-2013 model MBA 11', only at a faster rate - overnight drops over 10%. Any solution yet?

    Check my full description -

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5914770

  • by Pigumon,

    Pigumon Pigumon Mar 17, 2014 7:47 PM in response to xnull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2014 7:47 PM in response to xnull

    I am having the same issue, but I just checked and Adobe's dynamiclinkmediaserver.app was taking 99%!!!!! of CPU usage, whereas the only other drain was Firefox at 15% with nearly 100 tabs open! (and only 15%! CPU)

     

    Anyway, I checked, and as I'm not doing much back and forth between Adobe Video apps, I moved the dynamiclink media server app so it wouldn't automatically load.  My estimated battery life has already doubled ni the last couple of minutes, and it keeps getting bigger. 

     

    I don't think was the same problem as yours, but it's surprising what a tiny nearly useless app can do to a system.

  • by nuclear wirehead,

    nuclear wirehead nuclear wirehead Mar 25, 2014 9:39 AM in response to SMfmDXB
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 25, 2014 9:39 AM in response to SMfmDXB

    i have the same issue with the macbook air i recently purchased. it also came dead when i bought it and had to charge it a bit at first to power up. i wonder if i can still return it

  • by sinpastik,

    sinpastik sinpastik Apr 10, 2014 2:04 AM in response to xnull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 10, 2014 2:04 AM in response to xnull

    same here too.. I bought rmbp 15" 15 days ago and i sent it to apple service. They made all tests also reinstall the system. They said there is nothing wrong with your battery or anything. But i still have the same problem (it shows 4 hours when its fully charged. I made a test with using chrome (4.5 hours), max/msp (1 hour), lights %90 and it took 4,5 hour to run out the battery.

     

    I hope its a bug but Apple should make an explanation for this issue, its so annoying..

     

    Call apple support and make them aware of this issue.

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