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Mac Battery Issues

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xkairyux

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 6, 2012
4
0
About 2 days ago, at 100% my Mac battery would last for about 5 hours. Yesterday, at 100%, my battery said its estimated last time was 2 hours.
I tried calibrating my battery and this morning it said the battery would last for 5 hours again at 100% but then when it dropped to 98%, it went down to 2 hours again. I've been using my computer a little more frequently than I usually do, but not to the point where I believe my battery would drain out that quickly.

Should I bring my Mac into the Apple store or is there something that I can do to help my battery?
 
Last edited:
Battery time depends on CPU usage, watching Flash videos or playing Flash games for example are very CPU intensive.

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Have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.
Also check the "System Memory" tab to see what your "Page ins:", "Page outs:" and "Swap used:" are.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
Acitivty_Monitor.png

Further reading:
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To learn more about Mac OS X:
 
xkairyux said:
About 2 days ago, at 100% my Mac battery would last for about 5 hours. Yesterday, at 100%, my battery said its estimated last time was 2 hours.
I tried calibrating my battery and this morning it said the battery would last for 5 hours again at 100% but then when it dropped to 98%, it went down to 2 hours again. I've been using my computer a little more frequently than I usually do, but not to the point where I believe my battery would drain out that quickly.

Should I bring my Mac into the Apple store or is there something that I can do to help my battery?
Click to expand...
It would help if you provide a little information, such as what Mac model and year you have, but generally speaking, there are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
 
I have a 13" MacBook Pro. I got it in October so it's still new-ish, I guess.
A lot of my running processes Google Chrome Renderers, there are like maybe 6 or 7 of them running all at different sizes. I dunno if that's cause of how many tabs I have open but Chrome is usually the one program that I have running.
 
xkairyux said:
I have a 13" MacBook Pro. I got it in October so it's still new-ish, I guess.
A lot of my running processes Google Chrome Renderers, there are like maybe 6 or 7 of them running all at different sizes. I dunno if that's cause of how many tabs I have open but Chrome is usually the one program that I have running.
Click to expand...
The built-in batteries in the newer Mac unibody notebooks come pre-calibrated and do not require regular calibration like the removable batteries.

Read the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the FAQ for tips on how to maximize your battery life. Here are some other tips to maximize performance and battery life:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X
 
xkairyux said:
About 2 days ago, at 100% my Mac battery would last for about 5 hours. Yesterday, at 100%, my battery said its estimated last time was 2 hours.
I tried calibrating my battery and this morning it said the battery would last for 5 hours again at 100% but then when it dropped to 98%, it went down to 2 hours again. I've been using my computer a little more frequently than I usually do, but not to the point where I believe my battery would drain out that quickly.

Should I bring my Mac into the Apple store or is there something that I can do to help my battery?
Click to expand...

The estimated battery life is based on the amount of power used over the last 30 seconds. Nothing is wrong with your machine.
 
xkairyux said:
I have a 13" MacBook Pro. I got it in October so it's still new-ish, I guess.
A lot of my running processes Google Chrome Renderers, there are like maybe 6 or 7 of them running all at different sizes. I dunno if that's cause of how many tabs I have open but Chrome is usually the one program that I have running.
Click to expand...

But what is the CPU usage of them? I have Safari open with sometimes twenty tabs, GGJstudios is a tab whore and has up to 100 of them open, and if they aren't all Flash or something similar CPU intensive, one can have as many tabs open, as one wants or the browser can handle.
 
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