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Yosemite battery drain solution found?

As so many of us here, I experienced fast battery drain (and, oddly, charge) under Yosemite. The battery used to last 6+ hours for light work under Mavericks, but only 2-3 hours after I installed Yosemite. There were no cpu-hungry processes, PRAM and SMC reset wouldn't do anything. The battery would still last 2-3 hours only.


Not any more. I'm back on 5-6 hours. What happened?


Two days ago, I opened my Macbook Pro to clean out the fans. Careful as I am, I disconnected the battery cable from the logic board. I unexpectedly had to go away, so the cable was left unplugged for an hour or so. Later, I finished the job and put all back together. To my surprise, my battery appears to be fine after that! I've drained it to zero twice since that – it lasted much longer than it ever has under Yosemite.


Maybe someone else suffering from a bad battery might want to try this...

MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Jan 22, 2015 7:37 AM

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Feb 5, 2015 2:04 AM in response to Thiago Martins

Thiago, of course I'm not lying. I worded my observation carefully because I also don't know exactly how it worked (or whether it was just accidental). Fact is, I didn't just unplug any odd cable, but the power cable from the logic board. This clearly resets parameters, as the internal clock is reset and when you first start up, the device actually does two startups including two chimes. I can only assume that something relating to battery must be reset as well.

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Feb 5, 2015 12:04 PM in response to labch

Analyzing what you said with a friend, he said exactly the same thing about the internal clock... I'd like to try this too, but I think I will take the laptop to a Apple Store or a authorized technical assistance so they do this for me hahaha. I could just wipe and move to mavericks, but now, I'm really want to find out if it will solve the problem!


Thanks labch.

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Feb 5, 2015 1:01 PM in response to Thiago Martins

Thiago, the steps required are very simple, you are advised to follow them when you change RAM, which even Apple considers a user replaceable part. Without accepting liability, let me suggest you check out this guide at iFixit:


https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Early+2011+RAM+Replacem ent/5905


Whether you do it yourself or have someone do it – I'd love to hear back from you if it worked or not...

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Feb 18, 2015 11:40 AM in response to labch

Has anyone found any real solution to this problem? Since installing Yosemite, my battery life has gone from 8 hours to 2-3 hours depending upon what I'm doing. I use the Battery Health app and it says my battery is "good". I have 540 cycles on this battery which was a replacement from Apple after my first battery failed miserably (i.e was lasting 30 minutes)...they did replace it under warrantee - this was 2 1/2 years ago.


the other issue I've noticed is that my fans are running overtime and my computer gets hotter than it used to under Mavericks. Could the 2 issues be related??


If anyone has found a solution that really does work, I'd love to hear it -- I saw the suggestion to clean the fans -- if that really solved the problem, I will go to the Apple dealership (no Apple Store where we live) and ask them to do that as I'm not confident opening up my computer!! thanks to anyone who has a constructive solution to either issue.

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Feb 18, 2015 11:58 AM in response to pariseau

I'm in the same situation as you, for the battery and the fans. I found some workarounds but every time they would be temporary and for a reason I have yet to understand I ultimately go back to 3-4 hours after the battery is drain during the cycle for which I thought there was an improvement.


The solution has yet to be found and unfortunately, cleaning the fan is really unlikely to do the trick. I've done extensive research on the topic and I'm 99% sure that it is software related and that it only affects some laptops, especially rMBP from 2013 to 2014. No luck either from genius bar nor over the phone.


I'm just glad to have bought a 2,000$ laptop mainly for its battery life since I'm often working outside and get less than my former PC laptop...


I guess wait and see, like they say...


PS: I have 250 cycles on my battery and my laptop (rMBP 13") was bought in November 2013.

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Feb 18, 2015 12:06 PM in response to Alex_lveb

I also do not think it's a battery issue (early 2011 MBP). I checked mine and they were just fine. I talked to an Apple seller, not an Apple store, and of course they were clueless. Tried to say that my 3 year old battery might need replacement. Tests show that it's just fine too. I've done every test imaginable and can find nothing so I too now think it's a software issue. Or perhaps a power issue based on European standards. I can play a dvd movie and it runs on battery for maybe 4 hours. Runs doing nothing but screen saver for 5 hours. I expected it to drain faster actually doing something. Also seems to affect the older MBP's more than the newer ones. My iPad Air seems unaffected but i wish I'd paid more attention to it before the Yosemite upgrade. Now every little drop in battery % freaks me out.

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Feb 18, 2015 1:05 PM in response to Alex_lveb

mine is a 2011 model Macbook Pro - 16 G RAM. If it's a software issue, then the software has to be Yosemite!! When this initially happened, the only "software" (I guess the OS is software) that I had changed was moving from Mavericks to Yosemite. I did a clean install. I did all the zapping the PRAM, ran disk utilities before and after the install. The battery (and fan) issue started IMMEDIATELY after Yosemite's installation -- so I'm going to have to blame Yosemite. That being said - what's Apple doing about it? nothing as far as I can tell. Very frustrating. Apple is usually much more responsive - now they seem to be modelling themselves after Microsoft!!

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Feb 18, 2015 1:09 PM in response to pariseau

My problem really started with Yosemite, minutes after a clean install. I was so satisfied with my laptop on Mavericks when I finally decided to jump from PC to Mac (got an entire day of work covered, - where I have no plug around - and still 25% of battery at the end!). But now, because of the issue that really reduces the usability of the laptop, it is another story (I'm so lucky if I make it through lunch time now).

It really is warmer than before (almost burning sometimes, not to mention the noise of the fan running 90% of the time) and less powerful than before. To me it is now useless for work (I now keep it at home using the PC I wanted to replace with the mac in the first place) and since the battery last half of what it used to be, I don't think this is a good thing to make my computer or its battery lasts a long time (twice as many cycles, etc.).

It's okay to have issues but what is not acceptable is how little feedback we have and the fact that we have been stuck with it with no solution whatsoever for 4 months, hoping that the next update will fix it only it doesn't...

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Feb 18, 2015 1:17 PM in response to Alex_lveb

I agree, Alex. I'm wondering if any Apple employees moderate these forums and if so, do they take notes and pass on the info? I was having an issue with a Photoshop Elements program - I "complained loudly" on their forum - within the day, I was contacted directly by an Adobe employee who bumped it up the chain and within 2 days, Adobe came out with a patch even though the problem was an incompatibility with Yosemite. The next Yosemite update fixed the problem but there was never any input from an Apple moderator ever!! I've been an Apple user both at work (I ran an Apple computer lab for 20 years at an elementary school) and at home (back in the days of the Apple IIe) and have never had problems like this -- or if there were issues, they were addressed directly by an Apple employee. I'm going to look around on the Apple support site and see if there's a way to contact someone directly. ....interesting too that you also had a similar experience with your fan.....

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Yosemite battery drain solution found?

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