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

The new Energy monitoring tab in Activity Monitor is great. Writers of piggish software beware! Your customers will soon be calling you out for frequenting the top of the Energy Impact column.
 
I was getting 8 hours previously (ML) and now am getting 4.5 hrs with Mavericks with doing less (letting it sit idle 90% of the time). Any other users with Macbook Airs (Mid 2012) noticing this?
 
15 hours?!! :eek: That's just insane. Man, it's actually making me re-think whether I should get the 13" rMBP or this.

Can you imagine what the MacBooks will be like a couple of years from now?
 
Popeye206 said:
I don't think the anti-Apple crowd appreciates how much work must go into the hardware and software design... getting this kind of battery life is crazy good.

All these new toys are making very hard not to want a new MB Air... my 6 year old Mac Pro is looking sicker and sicker by the minute. I just might have to open the wallet and get an Apple fix. :D
Click to expand...

i've always been a macbook pro person myself, but damn, the airs are getting sweet enough I'm temped to downgrade and lighten the load. iMac or Mac pro at the house, air for the go might be my new combo.
 
Chuck-Norris said:
How much of an imrpovement did the 2012 15" retina macboks get?

----------



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

Actually you can't even say it improves by an hour because the new retina comes with Mavericks and the old one didn't so it could be that the 15" model is not seeing almost any increase in battery life
 
Wow, these are stunning numbers. I know it's just one set of tests, but still.
Probably the worst thing about my ol' 2011 MBA is the battery life... I'm really looking forward to the increase!
 
It is time to replace my 2007 Black MacBook. If I had spent more money back then on the MBP I would be able to get this update.

So should I get the Air or a rMBP? I have had nothing go wrong with this laptop and I would keep it a couple more years if it had been more 'future proof' and able to work with todays software.

Is a i7 Haswell Air as 'future proof' as a rMBP? Or will the Intel HD5000 be obsolete a couple years before the Iris graphics on the rMBP?

Helping me spend my money today could keep me from whining 7years from now.
 
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robanybody said:
You'll be lucky! in my Real World test (that is actually using the damn thing not just setting up some script) I've never had more than 8 hours from my June 2013 13" Macbook Air. In consequence I expect I'll be extremely lucky if I get more than 9 hours with Mavericks (and yes I've already upgraded and in two hours of use (web surfing mainly but one or two other very minor tasks like setting up iBooks) the battery life is down to 72%.

So it looks like far from battery life improving, it's got worse. At least this time yesterday i was only down to 75%
Click to expand...

Before : 8 hours
Now : 9 Hours
= it's got worse :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
applemotor said:
It is time to replace my 2007 Black MacBook. If I had spent more money back then on the Pro I would be able to get this update.

So should I get the Air or a Pro? I have had nothing go wrong with this laptop and I would keep it a couple more years if it had been more 'future proof' and able to work with todays software.

Is a i7 Haswell Air as 'future proof' as a Pro? Or will the Intel HD5000 be obsolete a couple years before the Iris graphics on the Pro?

Helping me spend my money today could keep me from whining 7years from now.
Click to expand...

what is futureproof is the RETINA display! Get the 13 inch 8G + 256GB model
 
Those numbers seem legit to me. When I was using a 13" Haswell Air earlier this year, I would regularly get well over 12 hours of battery life with light usage on ML. Only laptop I've ever had where I never thought about taking the charger with me when I left in the morning. That to me is the true definition of all-day battery life.
 
tjleonard said:
I was getting 8 hours previously (ML) and now am getting 4.5 hrs with Mavericks with doing less (letting it sit idle 90% of the time). Any other users with Macbook Airs (Mid 2012) noticing this?
Click to expand...

The first boot battery life is reduced while it rebuilds spotlight, etc.

Repair your disk permissions and restart
 
applemotor said:
It is time to replace my 2007 Black MacBook. If I had spent more money back then on the MBP I would be able to get this update.

So should I get the Air or a rMBP? I have had nothing go wrong with this laptop and I would keep it a couple more years if it had been more 'future proof' and able to work with todays software.

Is a i7 Haswell Air as 'future proof' as a rMBP? Or will the Intel HD5000 be obsolete a couple years before the Iris graphics on the rMBP?

Helping me spend my money today could keep me from whining 7years from now.
Click to expand...

I say get the air and use that money you saved from upgrading to rMBP to buy another air after 3/4 years. I bet it will be more powerful than the rMBP of today!
 
With this gross underestimate, here's hoping that the Haswell Retina Macbook Pro 15 inch could have 11 hours!
 
robanybody said:
You'll be lucky! in my Real World test (that is actually using the damn thing not just setting up some script) I've never had more than 8 hours from my June 2013 13" Macbook Air. In consequence I expect I'll be extremely lucky if I get more than 9 hours with Mavericks (and yes I've already upgraded and in two hours of use (web surfing mainly but one or two other very minor tasks like setting up iBooks) the battery life is down to 72%.

So it looks like far from battery life improving, it's got worse. At least this time yesterday i was only down to 75%
Click to expand...

The range you're going to get is pretty wide, obviously the quoted "maximum" life is just that, a realistic maximum for light tasks such as reading web pages or typing. If you play World of Warcraft or render After Effects animations on battery, you're not likely to get more than 2-3 hours. So, 8-9 hours battery life on "real world" tasks, on a 3 lb. machine, does not sound bad, at all. In fact, it's quite impressive.

And, setting up iBooks (or similar things) is not necessarily a "very minor task", you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes and software setup can in many cases require a lot of resources (lots of memory reads, disk reads and writes, CPU for sorting lists, using the WiFi antennas for downloading content, etc.).
 
No Problems here so far...

MBA 13 inch Mid 2011. 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5. 4 GB RAM.
Fastest and smoothest OS X Update ever :). Feels snappier, so far no problems...
 
iamevilbear said:
The first boot battery life is reduced while it rebuilds spotlight, etc.

Repair your disk permissions and restart
Click to expand...

I just repaired it and restarted. I've had my laptop up for about 6 hours so far. It should be done rebuilding spotlight, ect.

I also plugged it up about 4 hours ago and charged to 100%.

After the reboot a second ago, I went from 78% battery to 74% battery...it just seems like it's dropping in a hurry. I don't have anything that says it's consuming a lot of battery and the ETA right now (from ONLY web browsing and mid way screen brightness) is about 3:12 remaining.
 
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