Horrible Battery Life and Jittery iTunes playback after ML upgrade on rMBP

[wmouazzen]

Title says it all. After upgrading, I was extremely pleased with the snapiness of web browsing. I thought all was well until I noticed my battery life was dwindling at a faster rate than previously. Then when trying to play my music through iTunes, I get this jittery/staticky playback. This is not the apple that I know and have come to love in recent years.

 

[djmoody]

I noticed a drop in battery life as well. Downloaded Gfxcardstatus, switched in preferences where it didn't use discrete graphics when in battery, battery is now 8 hours on just above 50% screen brightness with wifi on(2.6/16/512 model)


Don't know if ML has an issue with Discrete graphics power management(seems to switch to discrete a lot more in ML than before), but this fixes the problem for my needs.

 

[adrian1480]

Title says it all. After upgrading, I was extremely pleased with the snapiness of web browsing. I thought all was well until I noticed my battery life was dwindling at a faster rate than previously. Then when trying to play my music through iTunes, I get this jittery/staticky playback. This is not the apple that I know and have come to love in recent years.

Safari uses the gpu to help render pages, so it's going to drain the battery faster with every page load. I've also noticed my system runs 10C-20C hotter when using Safari.

My recommendation: Chrome.

Doesn't need the GPU. Less CPU usage. As such, it runs 10C-15C cooler with the same tabs open...while remaining just as fast. It also has better extensions and a decidedly better unibar. Lastly, it's also more stable with a high number of tabs open. With Safari, I've even noticed that long pages now actually go blank like on the iPad for a moment while the gpu or whatever catches up. It's kinda sad, really.

How you go forward is your choice, but if you want better battery life than you're seeing out of Safari, Chrome is your next destination.

 

[wmouazzen]

resetting my PRAM seems to have fixed the playback issue i was having with iTunes.

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Safari uses the gpu to help render pages, so it's going to drain the battery faster with every page load. I've also noticed my system runs 10C-20C hotter when using Safari.

My recommendation: Chrome.

Doesn't need the GPU. Less CPU usage. As such, it runs 10C-15C cooler with the same tabs open...while remaining just as fast. It also has better extensions and a decidedly better unibar. Lastly, it's also more stable with a high number of tabs open. With Safari, I've even noticed that long pages now actually go blank like on the iPad for a moment while the gpu or whatever catches up. It's kinda sad, really.

How you go forward is your choice, but if you want better battery life than you're seeing out of Safari, Chrome is your next destination.

I don't use Safari. I actually use chrome, but I have GPU compositing on all web pages on in the chrome://flags setting. Someone suggested it to help with the scroll lag in Lion and it helped quite a bit. I'll turn it off and see how it helps the battery life.

 

[adrian1480]

resetting my PRAM seems to have fixed the playback issue i was having with iTunes.

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I don't use Safari. I actually use chrome, but I have GPU compositing on all web pages on in the chrome://flags setting. Someone suggested it to help with the scroll lag in Lion and it helped quite a bit. I'll turn it off and see how it helps the battery life.

word. gl!