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Some Serious Power Issues With Lion (GM)

natd1993

natd1993

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 6, 2011
140
50
Great Britain
I installed the GM of Lion today, on my MBP (mid-2009, 2.26ghz, 2gb ram etc) and have noticed a serious hit on my battery life. With medium brightness, airport off, and just doing word processing in Pages, I used to be able to get 8 hours. Now however, the fan seems to be constantly running, and I only get a max of 3.5 hours. Is there anyway to fix this, furthermore, is anyone else experiencing issues on their Macs similar to this?

P.S. I am not a pirate ;)
 
G

Genocide

macrumors member
Jun 7, 2011
68
0
Have you checked Activity Monitor to make sure nothing is running in the background that may be using up unnecessary resources?
 
LukeHarrison

LukeHarrison

macrumors 6502
May 11, 2007
276
111
I'm sure I'm experiencing the same on my MBP 13" (Early 2011). Left it to sleep last night, had 80-odd% charge when I let it sleep, woke up this morning to find the battery completely drained. :confused:
 
NikFinn

NikFinn

macrumors 6502a
Jun 22, 2009
646
0
MA
natd1993 said:
I installed the GM of Lion today, on my MBP (mid-2009, 2.26ghz, 2gb ram etc) and have noticed a serious hit on my battery life. With medium brightness, airport off, and just doing word processing in Pages, I used to be able to get 8 hours. Now however, the fan seems to be constantly running, and I only get a max of 3.5 hours. Is there anyway to fix this, furthermore, is anyone else experiencing issues on their Macs similar to this?

P.S. I am not a pirate ;)
Click to expand...
Was spotlight indexing your drive? That process will eat up battery life pretty quickly, but it only happens when you install a new OS/hdd.
 
A

amarchendra

macrumors newbie
Jul 6, 2011
1
0
not able to play youtube videos

got my copy of osx Lion from pirate bay and not able to stream youtube videos .'Just you tube videos.
other things are super fine.
can some 1 tell me how to fix it.
 
S

superericla

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2010
301
0
amarchendra said:
got my copy of osx Lion from pirate bay and not able to stream youtube videos .'Just you tube videos.
other things are super fine.
can some 1 tell me how to fix it.
Click to expand...

First of all, I definitely don't condone pirating. Second, Lion doesn't include the flash player plugin so you may want to ensure you have flash installed.
 
Lord Appleseed

Lord Appleseed

macrumors 6502a
Nov 7, 2010
682
37
Apple Manor
amarchendra said:
got my copy of osx Lion from pirate bay and not able to stream youtube videos .'Just you tube videos.
other things are super fine.
can some 1 tell me how to fix it.
Click to expand...

Seriously, if you expect help it is very stupid to admit that you pirated, and further the pirated versions are logically the same as the legally downloaded Lion GMs, so your problem is with your installation or settings.
 
F

Fatdog

macrumors newbie
Jun 19, 2003
29
0
Texas
Lord Appleseed said:
Seriously, if you expect help it is very stupid to admit that you pirated, and further the pirated versions are logically the same as the legally downloaded Lion GMs, so your problem is with your installation or settings.
Click to expand...

First off, get off your high horse. Not everyone who is pirating the GM version is a pirate. I have the GM version running on my MacBook and I still plan on paying for it when it's released on the Mac Store...

Second, Lion doesn't include Flash Player. YouTube uses flash to play videos so what he needs to do is install Flash Player from the Adobe website. Your advice that his setting are incorrect is incorrect. :rolleyes:
 
R

Roman2K~

macrumors 6502a
Mar 11, 2011
552
16
(Getting back on topic.)

I noticed the same behaviour in OS X Lion GM as the OP. The OS seems to be using 5-10% of the CPU continuously (shown as 20% out of 200% in Activity Monitor):

screenshot20110709at801.png

(No applications running but Activity Monitor. "mdworker" happened to be active at the time but it's usually idle.)

It's always the same processes that use CPU time: SystemUIServer, WindowServer / to a lesser extent: mds, kernel_task / periodically: mdworker:

screenshot20110709at756.png


Generally, this GM feels sluggish. The most obvious aspect is scrolling: not spot-on in sync with the scroll gesture like in v10.6.8. Whether on web pages (Safari) or generic scrollable window items (as in Finder, vertically or horizontally).

As a consequence of the constant CPU usage, battery life is destroyed. My guess is it's almost halved. The most I get is 4 hours*, browsing websites (Safari, Flash deactivated) and watching 720p H.264 videos using VLC.



Note that the computer in question is no workhorse: MBA equipped with an old-ass C2D, 320M, 4 GB of RAM. Still, SL is snappy, feels light and responsive. Bearing this in mind, and seeing those background system processes taking this much CPU time, I'm hopeful Apple will optimize the heck out of Lion in the next iterations.

After all, "premature optimisation is the root of all evil" (most of the time). I'm sure the developers have kept CPU and GPU efficiency in the back of their mind all along though. Now that all features are in place and working well (in my experience), these upcoming final iterations are their opportunity to optimise.

* About battery life and CPU usage of background system processes: I have yet to compare those extensively with SL. Prior to Lion, SL was installed for a day only, didn't have a chance to test battery life or watch CPU usage but from what I remember, those processes were behaving (idle or close) and estimated remaining time on battery was a lot more optimistic than what I'm getting now.
 
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Z

Zachquiel

macrumors newbie
Jul 4, 2011
4
0
Roman2K~ said:
(Getting back on topic.)

I noticed the same behaviour in OS X Lion GM as the OP. The OS seems to be using 5-10% of the CPU continuously (shown as 20% out of 200% in Activity Monitor):

Image
(No applications running but Activity Monitor. "mdworker" happened to be active at the time but it's usually idle.)

It's always the same processes that use CPU time: SystemUIServer, WindowServer / to a lesser extent: mds, kernel_task / periodically: mdworker:

Image

Generally, this GM feels sluggish. The most obvious aspect is scrolling: not spot-on in sync with the scroll gesture like in v10.6.8. Whether on web pages (Safari) or generic scrollable window items (as in Finder, vertically or horizontally).

As a consequence of the constant CPU usage, battery life is destroyed. My guess is it's almost halved. The most I get is 4 hours*, browsing websites (Safari, Flash deactivated) and watching 720p H.264 videos using VLC.

[url=http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8986/screenshot20110709at802.th.png]Image[/URL]

Note that the computer in question is no workhorse: MBA equipped with an old-ass C2D, 320M, 4 GB of RAM. Still, SL is snappy, feels light and responsive. Bearing this in mind, and seeing those background system processes taking this much CPU time, I'm hopeful Apple will optimize the heck out of Lion in the next iterations.

After all, "premature optimisation is the root of all evil" (most of the time). I'm sure the developers have kept CPU and GPU efficiency in the back of their mind all along though. Now that all features are in place and working well (in my experience), these upcoming final iterations are their opportunity to optimise.

* About battery life and CPU usage of background system processes: I have yet to compare those extensively with SL. Prior to Lion, SL was installed for a day only, didn't have a chance to test battery life or watch CPU usage but from what I remember, those processes were behaving (idle or close) and estimated remaining time on battery was a lot more optimistic than what I'm getting now.
Click to expand...

My Core i5 17" MBP feels sluggish too, although I don't have the CPU utilization issue that you mention, weird.
 
D

dolphin842

macrumors 65816
Jul 14, 2004
1,172
29
Roman2K~ said:
(No applications running but Activity Monitor. "mdworker" happened to be active at the time but it's usually idle.)

It's always the same processes that use CPU time: SystemUIServer, WindowServer / to a lesser extent: mds, kernel_task / periodically: mdworker:
Click to expand...

"mdworker" is just the program that indexes your files for Spotlight. It should calm down once it catalogs everything.

"mds" is the actual Spotlight program itself. "kernel_task" is essentially the OS, "SystemUIServer" handles stuff like the menu bar, and "WindowServer" handles GUI-related stuff like magnifying the Dock and such. It's normal for these to be active on a regular basis (though if they're taking up 20% even when spotlight isn't indexing things, it might be an issue).

For reference, with 10.6.8 on my C2D/320m Mac Mini, kernel_task is hovering at about 3% consistently, while WindowServer varies between 1-20% depending on what I'm doing at any given moment.
 
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R

Roman2K~

macrumors 6502a
Mar 11, 2011
552
16
dolphin842 said:
"mdworker" is just the program that indexes your files for Spotlight. It should calm down once it catalogs everything.

"mds" is the actual Spotlight program itself. "kernel_task" is essentially the OS, "SystemUIServer" handles stuff like the menu bar, and "WindowServer" handles GUI-related stuff like magnifying the Dock and such. It's normal for these to be active on a regular basis (though if they're taking up 20% even when spotlight isn't indexing things, it might be an issue).

For reference, with 10.6.8 on my C2D/320m Mac Mini, kernel_task is hovering at about 3% consistently, while WindowServer varies between 1-20% depending on what I'm doing at any given moment.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the descriptions of these processes ;). After Spotlight was done indexing, the continuous usage decreased to around 5%, but I still think the other processes are taking up too much CPU time.
 
I

iThinkergoiMac

macrumors 68030
Jan 20, 2010
2,664
4
Terra
Fatdog said:
First off, get off your high horse. Not everyone who is pirating the GM version is a pirate. I have the GM version running on my MacBook and I still plan on paying for it when it's released on the Mac Store...
Click to expand...

So you're still a pirate. I'm not making a judgement, but just because you plan to pay for the retail version doesn't negate the fact that you illegally obtained the OS. Whether or not you agree with it morally, it's still illegal and you can still (technically) go to jail for it. The chances of Apple taking legal action against you? Essentially none, of course. That doesn't make it legal/right.

You can't pirate something and not be a pirate. Just like you can't drive a car and not be the driver. You can't go swimming and not be a swimmer. You may not be a licensed driver or someone who swims a lot, but at the time of the action, you are.

You're the one on a high horse, so high you can't see something for what it is.
 
J

jashsf

macrumors newbie
Jul 26, 2011
1
0
natd1993 said:
I installed the GM of Lion today, on my MBP (mid-2009, 2.26ghz, 2gb ram etc) and have noticed a serious hit on my battery life. With medium brightness, airport off, and just doing word processing in Pages, I used to be able to get 8 hours. Now however, the fan seems to be constantly running, and I only get a max of 3.5 hours. Is there anyway to fix this, furthermore, is anyone else experiencing issues on their Macs similar to this?

P.S. I am not a pirate ;)
Click to expand...

I think I found the problem with the huge power drain on my macbook, post lion install. Activity Monitor showed me my Flash Plugin for Safari was consuming 115% of my CPU, even with Safari closed! I removed it and will continue to fight the suck that is Adobe.
 
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