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OS X 10.8.1 May Address Mountain Lion Battery Life Issues

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Apr 12, 2001
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Earlier this month, we pointed to testing by Ars Technica showing that upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion on a test Retina MacBook Pro substantially degraded its battery life. The testing showed a 38% decrease in battery life, moving from eight hours of battery life on a single charge under OS X Lion to just five hours under OS X Mountain Lion.

apple_7hr_battery_magsafe.jpg



Softpedia now reports that it has heard from one developer claiming that OS X 10.8.1, which entered developer testing just days after Ars Technica's report, does indeed address this battery life issue.
"Until I installed 10.8.1, my MacBook was showing 4h:05m after a full charge," he said, referring to the amount of time before the battery would deplete completely.

"After installing 10.8.1 it's showing over 8h," he said. "I'm now able to use my Mac throughout the day again without having to carry my charger," said the happy developer.
Click to expand...
Another report from Apple's discussion forums describes a similar major boost to battery life under OS X 10.8.1, but results from our own forums are less clear. Several users have reported no changes to their battery life while others suggest that there has been some improvement, but it appears that specific testing by those who were affected by the Mountain Lion battery life drop has not been well-documented.

OS X 10.8.1 will be the first maintenance release for OS X Mountain Lion, and such updates are generally pushed quickly through the development and testing processes in order to address the most severe bugs cropping up with the initial public releases of new operating systems. Significant battery life issues would seem to qualify as something Apple would want to address in this update, but the company has not specifically addressed the topic in release notes or other documentation associated with the test builds being distributed.

Article Link: OS X 10.8.1 May Address Mountain Lion Battery Life Issues
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/08/21/os-x-10-8-1-may-address-mountain-lion-battery-life-issues/
I wonder if the reported battery life increase is measured from real word use or if these developers are just going off the estimated battery life.

From the Ars Technica quote, it looks like they are going off of the estimate, which we all know is wildly inaccurate half of the time.
 
I'm glad I am still waiting a bit to buy the Retina Macbook Pro.... I knew there would be bugs like these...

But I'm happy Apple is addressing it!!!
I think I'm ready to buy my new Mac!!!
 
No battery issues here, but it did fix a keyboard hesitation when waking from deep sleep and introduced an issue where the wireless shows as not configured but works fine when waking up from sleep.
 
My battery life issues have been atrocious on Mtn Lion, have even swapped Hard drives for my old SL partition and the battery life instantly improved. I would have guessed they would fix the battery drain culprit, and I can't wait til friday when this is pushed to us.
 
I still find this story odd. I've always gotten about 60% of Apple's estimates for battery life. Going all the way back to Panther.

I assumed they did their tests by just reading an e-book with the screen on the lowest setting and since that's not what I do, I shouldn't expect anything better.

I didn't realize anyone expected to get times like that, but apparently people do?
 
I have other issues as well I'm hoping the next update will fix such as running much hotter, and a mail rendering bug.
 
I hope it addresses the Dock issue where it doesn't go away when you take an app full screen.

Or do makers like Hulu need to use the new Apple full screen standard?
 
fins831 said:
My battery life issues have been atrocious on Mtn Lion, have even swapped Hard drives for my old SL partition and the battery life instantly improved. I would have guessed they would fix the battery drain culprit, and I can't wait til friday when this is pushed to us.
Click to expand...

I have a SSD from Crucial. No problems yet.
 
Anyone else having issues with flash video freezing a lot? My Magic Trackpad and wireless keyboard routinely disconnect now as well. Hopefully this patch addresses those as well, although maybe flash needs to be fixed on adobes end.
 
Thank goodness, my MBP was getting some nubs battery life with Mountain Lion doing a little streaming, word processing, and surfing the web. Which is a shame, because the update (while somewhat marginal) actually made my machine seem a tad bit quicker.
 
I am constantly streaming videos for my online graduate courses. So I usually have my charger plugged in. but I am glad they jumped on it right away.
 
Macbook Pro Retina + OSX 10.8 freezing

Looking forward to it. Having major issues with MBP Retina + OSX 10.8 freezing completely when doing cpu intensive stuff.. Seems to have something to do with the dynamic switching of the video chips. Continues working when I fix the OS to use the nvidia chip with gfxCardStatus.
 
Samuriajackon said:
I have a SSD from Crucial. No problems yet.
Click to expand...

I had SL on my 64 gig partition, and ML on my 128 gig partition. Both intel SSD, no trim activated through trim enabler yet, been going without until first patch.

Both drives running perfectly no issues, and the battery life on my spinning hard drive with ML partition is also terrible. I am seeing an issue, have been, where my battery just drains from surfing the internet, 5 percent from reading twitter, nothing in background.

I hope this fixes the drain.
 
short battery, runs hotter and BT keyboard issue

early 2008 macbook pro

New battery a month before Mountain Lion, so drop in battery life was noticeable.

As was a corresponding increase in heat generated - always ran fairly warm - definitely running hotter now and I am hearing the fans regularly now whereas before they were silent in all but the most extreme heat - i used to work in Egypt

Also glad to see from this thread thats its not just my bluetooth apple keyboard thats having problems disconnecting - does it several times a day with a good battery in it . Thought my keyboard was dying - hopefully its an ML issue that will get fixed

Roll on 10.8.1

If they nail these issues i'll be happy with the hill cat
 
Was the developer actually "happy" or was he/she simply no longer pissed-off? Big difference! :)
 
I wonder if those who did not see a return to better batteryt life under 10.8.1 would benefit from reseting the SMC. I know that I've had to do this when I replaced my battery and the indicator was still reading like it had the old battery in it. Worth a try anyway.
 
My rMPB's battery sucked before ML and sucks now, fingers crossed, Michael Jackass would never have approved! :rolleyes:
 
In the name of all things Apple I hope this is true. I got 2:20 minutes on a full batter last night.
 
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