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In his lengthy and ultra-detailed review of Mavericks, John Siracusa of Ars Technica conducts battery benchmark tests to measure Mavericks' power saving features on both a 2007 MacBook Pro and a 2013 13.3-inch MacBook Air.

While both systems saw notable battery gains going from Mountain Lion to Mavericks, the 2013 MacBook Air in particular saw impressive improvements of up to 30 percent, lasting for more than 15 hours in some instances.

batterylifetestsmavericks.jpg
For his battery tests, which were conducted using OS X 10.8.5 and the GM build of Mavericks, Siracusa created a light Web browsing and text-editing automation script, including websites that used Flash. In his tests, battery life varied significantly, but provided, on average, an increase of two hours of work time.
I suspect the aggressiveness of the auto-playing Flash ads that happen to be on specific websites on a particular day may partly explain the huge variability in Mountain Lion's numbers. Some of the lower-scoring Mountain Lion trials may have also had the bad luck to coincide with energy-intensive periodic jobs--jobs that are prevented from running on Mavericks due to AC power or battery-level restrictions as part of centralized task scheduling.

These tests may or may not be representative of how you use your Mac, but regardless, it's clear that Apple's efforts have not been in vain. Mavericks really does consume less energy than Mountain Lion when performing the same tasks.
Since its debut at WWDC, Apple has touted the power saving features bundled into Mavericks, poising improved battery life as the keystone of the operating system. Mavericks is designed to cut down on CPU activity using Timer Coalescing, Compressed Memory, and App Nap.

While Timer Coalescing bundles low-level operations into a single batch action that reduces CPU utilization by up to 72 percent, App Nap cuts down on the power usage of apps that are not running in the foreground, reducing their overall power draw by up to 23 percent. Compressed Memory also works in conjunction with these two features, compacting the least used processes so less time is spent reading and writing virtual memory swap files on disk, which improves power consumption.

There's also a new power saving feature built directly into Safari, called Power Saver. With Power Saver, Safari intelligently detects plug-in content playing in the margins of a website and pauses it, preserving battery life.

During Apple's October 22 event, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi also highlighted Mavericks' battery saving capabilities on the new 13-inch MacBook Air, noting that the operating system provides an extra hour of web browsing and an hour and a half of extra video time.

Mavericks is available for free from the Mac App Store and is a one-step update for all Mac users running OS X Snow Leopard and above. It can be installed on most computers produced after 2007. As of this morning, total Mavericks adoption hovered at approximately seven percent.

Article Link: 13-Inch 2013 MacBook Air Gets Up to 15 Hours of Battery Life With Mavericks
 

Wilsoncw1997

macrumors newbie
Jul 19, 2013
29
0
I am getting this over the 15 inch retina just because the new retina didn't meet my expectation battery life.
 

WillFisher

macrumors 6502
Feb 19, 2011
387
16
Thats so crazy!

I was amazed when my MBA could do 11-12 hours, now it "can do 15"
Thats boggled my mind.
 

ctross

macrumors newbie
Jun 10, 2010
27
12
My 2007 Macbook Pro battery lasted about 10 minutes on Mountain Lion. Just upgraded to Mavericks, hoping to get a whole half an hour!
 

peteullo

macrumors regular
Dec 13, 2009
245
57
Scranton, PA
Getting nearly 45 additional minutes of battery time out of a 2007 Macbook Pro is pretty impressive.... And people say Apple doesn't support old hardware!
 

Chuck-Norris

macrumors 6502a
Sep 17, 2012
850
1
How much of an imrpovement did the 2012 15" retina macboks get?

----------

I am getting this over the 15 inch retina just because the new retina didn't meet my expectation battery life.

yes an hour improvement is such a big improveent and loss of a dedicated graphics card LOL
 

onthecouchagain

macrumors 604
Mar 29, 2011
7,382
2
I love MacBooks. If only Apple would diversify their iPhone lineup as they do their Mac line up.

Are there any numbers for the 2012 rMBP's?
 

Tankmaze

macrumors 68000
Mar 7, 2012
1,707
351
I'm more interested with the 15 inch macbook,
but still that is crazy good!!!

wonder if there is any other PC Laptop can match this.
 

CarpalMac

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2012
1,617
3,984
UK
Mine arrives tomorrow. If it comes anywhere near close to this I will be very pleased.

Means i don't have to carry a charger with me everywhere which is a great thing.
 

jmgregory1

macrumors 68030
Wow - I keep trying to convince myself that I don't NEED a new 13" mba, but dang, that is some crazy long battery life. My current 2011 13" base model, with a battery at 81% health, is getting almost 5.5 hours on Mavericks (I was getting just over 3 on ML), which isn't bad, but to almost triple that amount would be fantastic. I could travel without a charger, the same way I do with my iPad now.

Sort of makes having an iPad with 10 hours of battery life seem a lot less desirable - at least to me it is.
 

D.T.

macrumors G4
Sep 15, 2011
11,050
12,460
Vilano Beach, FL
Yeah, that's pretty astounding (I realize there's a notable amount of deviation depending on the exact apps/services running). Even with -20-30%, this is to the point where I could meet a couple of my partners outside the office for an all day-er, and not have to worry about bringing a power supply or being near an outlet.

:cool:
 
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