Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.1 Improves Battery Life Somewhat

[saud0488]

Thank God for my iMac and iPad!

or you know.....wall chargers

 

[kalsta]

Interesting. I imagine Apple will be putting some serious effort into understanding this (if they don't already) and working to improve it, because battery life is an important selling point for their laptops.

IMO they miss something significant:

Battery-Life on Snow Leopard.

Agreed, that would be an interesting comparison.

 

[Puevlo]

What a disaster. It's like they are purposely making the Macs worse so they can sell more iPads and iPhones.

 

[austinguy23]

I don't understand how Apple let this happen. They own both the OS and hardware, and ML is targeted for only a small subset of its computers.

 

[furi0usbee]

I guess it's part of the price for so much going on under the hood and the visuals, etc. I know I use my computer to listen to audio books during the night. I just hit play and leave it on. Since Mountain Lion my new retina MBP is dead by morning, whereas it used to have plenty of time left. I leave my display off during the night and no backlight, so there definitely are some gremlins running about during the night.

I know that I'd never get anywhere near the advertised battery life with Mountain Lion, but the OS looks so good, I'll pay that price.

 

[technopimp]

My 2010 MBA 11 is still draining about 2-3% per minute with nothing running.

 

[Ajones330]

With all the new features I expect the battery to drain quicker. I really don't see much improvement. I use messages and I do a lot of multitasking so my battery is probably up to par.

 

[Krazy Bill]

I think the good news here is Apple has not acknowledged there is a Battery life issue. Which means there is. Admitting this would indeed impact MBP sales so I wouldn't expect them to admit any liability.

IMO they miss something significant:

Battery-Life on Snow Leopard.

The 17" MBP (mid-2009) i'm writing this from used to get ~2hrs more than 10.7.x ever got - and, being on 10.8.1 now, haven't yet got them back

Yep. 7+ hours for me on SL. Another 30-40 minutes on reserve.

They should've also conducted a test with notifications disabled. Seems like checking for push notifications could drain the battery.

Notifications are a juice-sucker on my iPhone.

How many times was each of these tests performed? The graph shown there is meaningless without the ability to inspect the methods employed to gather the data. Do each test 10 times then graph it and I'll believe the results.

You're in denial. Better yet, believe what your own battery yields… that's what counts.

 

[charleswhalley]

Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.1 Improves Battery Life Somewhat

I'm either getting too old for all this or Apple really are starting to lose the plot.

More of a pro user than Pad or Phone user I constantly marvel at how Apple has turned their back on us all.

Yep they still make great products but some of the crazy decisions made on software really are starting to brass me off.

Mountain Lion as all of the last lot of software incarnations was a bit of a joke at launch.

I'll save the upgrade cost and join some of you down the pub tonight for several beers.

 

[Ed91]

On my 2007 MBP, after upgrading to 10.8, I started getting warnings about my battery - condition: replace soon.

After upgrading to 10.8.1 my battery condition has returned back to normal. Phew.

 

[nepalisherpa]

The battery life on my mid-2010 MBP has been fine on 10.8.0. I will wait to install the update.

 

[bungiefan89]

Good thing the iMac I installed ML on won't need a battery any time soon.
In the mean time, I think I'll keep my Macbook away from this upgrade until Apple gets their act together...

 

[MacMan1620]

My 2010 MBA 11 is still draining about 2-3% per minute with nothing running.

Your computer is on so there are things "running".

 

[jowie]

I will go out on a limb. It's MacRumors that drains the battery! Before you go off half cocked, look at what Flash is doing when you load MacRumors. at one point it was using 136% of my cpu. All the ads between the articles are in Flash! If you force quit the plug-in it will extend your battery. Freakn why doesn't MacRumor require HTML 5?

What are you doing without AdBlock for your browser?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=adblock

I've never seen a Flash ad on MacRumors

 

[KdParker]

I may be in the minority here but 10.8.1 has decimated battery life on my MBPr. I can literally watch the percentage go down several points per minute. I didn't see any issues with 10.8.0.

running 10.8.2 and getting 8 hours with which is an improvement.

 

[lcmazza]

Apple's beta testing = FAIL

Apple should learn with Microsoft and open up it's beta testing program to improve reliability of newer OS like Mountain Lion.
Who said the few developers (compared to user base) are the best ones to test a beta version?

A nice bug-tracking tool and an open beta program would be much better for the initial launch of a new OS.

 

[URFloorMatt]

My MBPr seems to have improved battery life with 10.8.1.

 

[Akuratyde]

10.8.1 actually improved the battery life somewhat on my 2011 MBA, but still not close to what I used to get with Lion. Very frustrating indeed.

 

[Tech198]

...

I'll need to see for myself ...... How much increase in a percentage do you guys reckon its improved. ?

This would indicate Apple's OS was 'holding back' on the 'extra' power......

 

[ben.h]

My iMac's battery life is awesome and I just updated to Mountain Lion. No idea what's wrong with all your guys stuff...

 

[EwanMcTeagle]

I haven't really seen a decline in my MBPs battery life - nothing drastic if at all. Nevertheless I'm not passionate about ML overall. I mean it's a nice system, but looks more like Lion 10.7.5.
It has some nice new additions vs Lion. But it seems that with every pro comes a con.
Like the notfication center. I get it that some may like it and need it, but I've found completely useless and there's no "legal" and most of all easy way to turn it off. I get the Apple's whole "complete ecosystem" idea, but come on. I don't like pushing stuff on me...

PS. Luckily there are some smart people who figured it out. If anyone would like to get rid of NC here's a Terminal command to type in:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

killall NotificationCenter

 

[Dangerous Theory]

Well I know I'd much rather have Lion. The only difference I've noticed with the ML upgrade is some dumb notification section when I scroll to the left, and notifications for email appearing in the top right. It's a shame this thing was shipped with 10.8 already installed.

 

[iSee]

i'll just wait until 10.8.11 or so to upgrade, if ever

but good work for all you beta testers

The problem is, ML is a great upgrade, in general.
Personally, I wouldn't even consider going back to Lion.

Hope they fix this soon. I've been lucky in that I haven't needed to use my MBA much in situations that would require max battery life, but sometimes I do.

 

[parapup]

On my 2010 17" Battery life with 10.8.1 is equally bad as 10.8 - roughly the same as Windows 7 which runs on dGPU.

If that wasn't enough - I get these artifacts 4-5 times a day! Anyone else seeing something similar? I can run Windows without any issues and this only started after the 10.8.1 update so surely this is yet another screw up on Apple's part.

 

[416049]

The update absolutely killed my battery life. I have an early 2011 13inch pro and at 98% right now it says I have 3:45 min left.

Same here, i am really mad right now.... should have followed the rule dont try to fix what isn't broken in this case updating to mountain lion... well its a bit too late for that now.