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OS X 10.8.2 Restores Notebook Battery Life to OS X Lion Levels

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Just over a month ago, Ars Technica reported that many users had noticed a significant decrease in battery life on their notebooks after upgrading from OS X Lion to OS X Mountain Lion. In its own testing, Ars Technica saw a 38% decrease in battery life following the upgrade.

The Mac Observer followed up with more extensive testing showing a similar 33% drop in battery life on a test machine following the upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion, and also finding that OS X 10.8.1 improved battery life over the original Mountain Lion release. The improvements did not, however, bring battery life back up to the levels seen under OS X Lion.

With OS X 10.8.2 now well into testing, The Mac Observer has performed its most complete set of tests yet, not only testing the effect of moving from OS X 10.8.1 to Build 12C35 of OS X 10.8.2 on battery life, but also looking at upgrades from OS X Snow Leopard to OS X Lion.

Of most immediate impact, The Mac Observer's study shows that the testing build of OS X 10.8.2 completely restores battery life to OS X Lion levels, yielding approximately 380 minutes of power under the testing protocol, compared to 260-275 minutes under OS 10.8.0 and 280-300 minutes under OS X 10.8.1.
Just as we saw in our previous tests, the upgrade to 10.8 Mountain Lion decreased battery life significantly, by about 1 hour and 45 minutes, or 30 percent. The upgrade to 10.8.1 restored about 30 minutes of battery life for our MacBook Pro, an improvement for sure, but not nearly enough to regain lost ground.

The big change came with 10.8.2, which is still undergoing developer testing. Using the latest build, 12C35, we saw a tremendous increase in battery life, to the point where running time was a few minutes longer than even that of 10.6.8.
Click to expand...
10_8_2_battery_life.jpg



In addition, the study shows that users experienced a similar but smaller effect on battery life with the introduction of OS X Lion, an issue that was not fully resolved until the release of OS X 10.7.3 over six months after the public debut of OS X Lion.

Not all notebook users have experienced significant battery life reductions under OS X Mountain Lion, and thus it is unclear exactly what the root cause of the issue is. But for those who have been suffering from the problem, it seems that OS X 10.8.2 may deliver a resolution that will restore full battery life to their machines.

Article Link: OS X 10.8.2 Restores Notebook Battery Life to OS X Lion Levels
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/10/os-x-10-8-2-restores-notebook-battery-life-to-os-x-lion-levels/
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kauthor

macrumors member
Aug 4, 2006
32
1
About time! Now I can go buy Mountain Lion without fear of battery levels being reduced
 
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edk99

macrumors 6502a
May 27, 2009
859
1,409
FL
Am I reading this right that a SSD has a shorter battery life then a HDD? I would of thought something with moving parts used more power then something that has no moving parts. :confused:
 
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kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
I go on a 12 hour flight on Wednesday afternoon UK time. If only this would get released a little early!
 
Yvan256

Yvan256

macrumors 603
Jul 5, 2004
5,081
998
Canada
SSD vs HDD

Maybe I'm missing something here, but aren't SSDs supposed to increase battery life compared to HDDs?

And I'm not talking about the ~5 minutes differences here, from what I've read SSDs were supposed to significantly increase battery life.
 
chilady1

chilady1

macrumors regular
Dec 29, 2011
108
60
Northeast
This is GREAT NEWS! I am one of those individuals who has experienced some issues with my battery as a result of upgrading to 10.8. The Apple forum has a huge thread (over 100 pages I think) regarding the issue and a lot of folks changing HOW they use their laptops to accommodate this issue.

I am sure most folks will be very happy to hear this news! Thanks for this update!
 
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tiwizard

macrumors regular
Jul 12, 2010
233
0
Adestro said:
How come HDD seems to drain the battery less than SSD?
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was wondering... 5 minutes isn't too big of a deal though. If they tested with different machines with different battery wear levels then that would cause the discrepancy.
 
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lilsoccakid74

macrumors 6502
Apr 13, 2010
282
0
This seems like a very well-documented test.
Unrelated, but I would not have guessed that SSD's use more battery life than HDD's in any scenario, you learn something everyday i guess:)
 
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Papapk

macrumors newbie
Aug 8, 2012
3
0
I seriously don't hope this means that I go back to the horrible battery life I had in OS X Lion. It could hold about 2 hours, but after upgrading to Mountain Lion, it is back on 6-7 hours as before Lion. I would be devastated if the battery life decreases again:mad:
 
heisenberg123

heisenberg123

macrumors 603
Oct 31, 2010
6,496
9
Hamilton, Ontario
Papapk said:
I seriously don't hope this means that I go back to the horrible battery life I had in OS X Lion. It could hold about 2 hours, but after upgrading to Mountain Lion, it is back on 6-7 hours as before Lion. I would be devastated if the battery life decreases again:mad:
Click to expand...

why would it decrease?
 
roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
Papapk said:
I seriously don't hope this means that I go back to the horrible battery life I had in OS X Lion. It could hold about 2 hours, but after upgrading to Mountain Lion, it is back on 6-7 hours as before Lion. I would be devastated if the battery life decreases again:mad:
Click to expand...

Um... but the article is about an increase in battery life in the near future, brought to you by an update. No decrease is mentioned.
 
ct2k7

ct2k7

macrumors G3
Aug 29, 2008
8,362
3,434
London
I'm still reading this as SSDs giving the battery a shorter life than HDD.

Mislabelled?
 
charleswhalley

charleswhalley

macrumors member
Jan 26, 2004
47
65
Peterborough, England
OS X 10.8.2 Restores Notebook Battery Life to OS X Lion Levels

Apple are you listening. Far too many products - hardware and software are being released that clearly need months more development testing. You mojo will be lost sooner rather than later if this continues.

I wonder what the iPhone 5 has wrong with it......
 
ct2k7

ct2k7

macrumors G3
Aug 29, 2008
8,362
3,434
London
ct2k7 said:
I'm still reading this as SSDs giving the battery a shorter life than HDD.

Mislabelled?
Click to expand...

No,

the article states:

"This slight difference in power draw, combined with a workload that is primarily idle, accounts for the 10 to 20 minute battery life advantage we saw with the HDD. So if you need the absolute best battery life for light workloads, a low speed, energy efficient traditional hard drive may be the way to go. Considering the large performance and reliability advantage that a solid state drive has over a traditional hard drive, however, the majority of consumers would be better suited with the SSD, even at the expense of a few minutes of running time."
 
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Papapk

macrumors newbie
Aug 8, 2012
3
0
iisforiphone said:
why would it decrease?
Click to expand...
Because, if it is true 10.8.2 would make the battery go back on level with OS X Lion, then that would possibly mean, that my battery would decrease back to Lion level. I holded out a whole year with a battery life of about 2 hours, and always dependable on my adapter. After Mountain Lion it's 6-7 hours. Maybe my logic is s*** (I'm not that technical), but I'm just afraid of a battery-life decrease again.
 
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tanousjm

macrumors member
Jul 5, 2009
41
0
Yvan256 said:
Maybe I'm missing something here, but aren't SSDs supposed to increase battery life compared to HDDs?

And I'm not talking about the ~5 minutes differences here, from what I've read SSDs were supposed to significantly increase battery life.
Click to expand...

Hi guys; I performed the tests for The Mac Observer. As I explained in the article, we were also confused as to why the HDD was getting better battery life than the SSD. We looked into it and discovered that our hard drive, a Western Digital Scorpio Blue, is extremely power efficient, using .59 watts at idle and 1.4 watts while active.

This is very low for a mechanical hard drive and our high performance Vertex SSD used more power: 1.3 watts idle, 2.5 watts active.

Some low speed, energy efficient HDDs have closed the gap in power consumption with SSDs, but YMMV.
 
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