OS X Mountain Lion users reporting laptop battery life issues

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
A number of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air owners who updated to the recently-released OS X Mountain Lion are complaining of battery performance issues, with some reporting their batteries only last half as long as when OS X 10.7 Lion was installed.

Since the first complaints surfaced in an Apple Support Communities thread started on July 25, the day Mountain Lion launched, the number of reportedly affected MacBook Pro and MacBook Air owners has grown to the point where Apple has supposedly initiated an investigation. As of this writing the thread, titled "Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion" now stands at 15 pages.

While most users are seeing battery life drops of about one to two hours, some cases claim performance has fallen to less than 50 percent as their machines are only capable of staying on for a little over two hours.

Community members have been trying a variety of methods to remedy the issue, from re-installing the software to turning off some of Mountain Lion's new features like Power Nap, but the attempts have yet to produce a fool-proof solution. Some members have seen limited success in resetting the machine's system management controller (SMC), though the battery issue crops up again after continued use.

Many users are reporting heightened CPU temperatures even when the machine is at idle, possibly pointing to a backend program management problem, while others are seeing battery drain when the system is sleeping.

Mountain Lion


The troubles with Mountain Lion mirror those seen when OS X 10.7 Lion was released last year. In that case, a huge 176-page thread was created regarding MacBook Pro battery issues and the problem is still unresolved for many Lion users.

Apple has taken notice of the most recent complaints and, according to one community member, sent out a questionnaire on Friday in an attempt to pinpoint the problem.

OS X Mountain Lion launched last week, bringing with it over 200 new features including tighter iCloud integration, the Messages app, Notification Center, Facebook integration, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring and Game Center.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 71
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member


    I did a clean-install of 10.8 on my 2011 MBA.  Once nice thing is that WiFi is much better in connecting to my AirportExtreme access point.  Before, when resuming from sleep-mode, I always had to turn off/on WiFi in order to reconnect.  That's a big plus.



    The battery life I'm still watching... I think it did take a hit and was not as good as 10.7.  But not by much for what I use it for.



    Still a great OS.  I'm quite happy with it.  Issues will be ironed out.



    Hopefully this weekend I'll clean-install my 2009 i7 iMac.  Still debating that.

  • Reply 2 of 71
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member


    Time for an update. 


     


    Good news, though: all you beautiful people still running the GM, fully expecting it to update, are about to find out.   ;)

  • Reply 3 of 71
    raptoroo7raptoroo7 Posts: 140member


    I did an in place upgrade as well but I may end up doing a full wipe and install later on to see if it does anything.

  • Reply 4 of 71
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post

    Good news, though: all you beautiful people still running the GM, fully expecting it to update, are about to find out.   ;)


     


    That'll truly be interesting to see, as the GM is the same build number as retail. If Apple has changed OS software updates to require an Apple ID, that takes us to a whole different ballgame.

  • Reply 5 of 71
    daylove22daylove22 Posts: 215member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


     



    Apple has taken notice of the complaints and, according to one community member, sent out a questionnaire on Friday in an attempt to pinpoint the problem.


    Same as the iPhone 4s and 10 months later the battery still drain in 3 hrs and Apple has not done anything to fix it

  • Reply 6 of 71
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member


    I am sure it is just a piece of code that needs to be fixed.  It usually is just a little temporary issue.  Always wait about a month when Apple or anyone for that matter when they release a new OS.  Once the field has it, then we find out what the potential problems and Apple's pretty good at fixing it if it turns out to be a coding issue.


     


    It's impossible for OS developers to test every possible scenario.  But at least Apple does the quickest updates to fix the bigger issues first.

  • Reply 7 of 71


    2008 MBP furiously heating up and fans goings nuts. Clean install of ML.


     


    Generally MBP is faster, but heat and fan noise intolerable.


     


    Battery life has never been any good on 2008 MBP. Had lots of new batteries. None have given more than a couple of hours.

  • Reply 8 of 71
    tleviertlevier Posts: 104member


    Late 2011 Macbook Air -


     


    I had my first problem along these lines today.  I opened it from sleep while it was connected to power source and the Fan spun up real high.  After 3-4 minutes of it still running high, and I was just letting it sit there looking at the desktop with no programs running, I tried to see if the utilities activity monitor could tell me anything.  Nothing was using the CPU and no data was going in and out of the network.  Yet the machine was acting like it was working on something fierce.


     


    Restart didn't cure it, but once I did a shut down and then a boot up, everything was back to normal.

  • Reply 9 of 71
    pjapkpjapk Posts: 24member


    Bloody typical! My first OSX upgrade (MBPr) & I waited for the usual issues that you hear about & heard/read absolutely nothing at all (read AI & another site daily) so bit the bullet last night. Upgrade went fine, then just read this thread.


     


    Hopefully I won't have the problem but I think the battery is going down quicker tho no overheating I can detect so far...

  • Reply 10 of 71
    beltsbearbeltsbear Posts: 314member


    My 2011 macbook pro is about the same, about 5 hours battery life before and after ML install. 

     

  • Reply 11 of 71
    macosxpmacosxp Posts: 152member


    I wonder if they have any location-based reminders going. I remember when I upgraded to iOS 6 and had a lot of location services running, batter performance was horrible until I figured out the problem.

  • Reply 12 of 71
    dbeatsdbeats Posts: 26member



    #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
    I can solve the battery drain while sleeping issues. It's called Power Nap. It's actually how it's supposed to work, since it's grabbing photo stream, email, etc. Gotta use some battery for that.


     


    I did see high CPU usage upon resume with my MBA 2011, but it turned out to be an App that was being a hog, so I removed it and no problems anymore. You gotta be quick with Activity monitor when you hear the fan spool up and sort by CPU. I'll bet you a beer it's an app that hasn't been updated for ML. 


     


     


     
  • Reply 13 of 71


    I want them to fix the issue of the MacBook not staying connected to the internet when it sleeps.


     


    In Lion I could leave my torrents downloading, backups running, emails would continue to come. Now in ML, once it goes to sleep it all stops. 


     


    I know I can make it not sleep, but that is not the right fix.

  • Reply 14 of 71


    I am having the same issue.  I have a new 2012 Air (8 gig RAM) that was smoking fast (and cool) with Lion, but now noticably slower and running hotter; fans running almost all the time with Mountain Lion.


    I check memory and it appears there is 2 to 3 gig being chewed up by something ( checked memory) but no program is running or showing up in the systems monitor.


    Help us Apple.

  • Reply 15 of 71
    macosxpmacosxp Posts: 152member


    Just checked on my 13" MBP (with SSD): No problems to speak of. And after shutting WiFi, reducing backlight brightness, keyboard backlight, and closing resource-intensive programs, I got a reading of over 14 hours battery life remaining.

  • Reply 16 of 71
    macosxpmacosxp Posts: 152member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by rlewisphilly View Post


    I am having the same issue.  I have a new 2012 Air (8 gig RAM) that was smoking fast (and cool) with Lion, but now noticably slower and running hotter; fans running almost all the time with Mountain Lion.


    I check memory and it appears there is 2 to 3 gig being chewed up by something ( checked memory) but no program is running or showing up in the systems monitor.


    Help us Apple.



    Did you have "my processes" selected or "all processes" selected? It may have been a system process using up all that space? Also can you see if you have any location-based reminders enabled or if maybe spotlight is reindexing your drive?

  • Reply 17 of 71
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    I am having the same issue.  I have a new 2012 Air (8 gig RAM) that was smoking fast (and cool) with Lion, but now noticably slower and running hotter; fans running almost all the time with Mountain Lion.
    I check memory and it appears there is 2 to 3 gig being chewed up by something ( checked memory) but no program is running or showing up in the systems monitor.
    Help us Apple.

    Keep in mind that after installing the OS, Spotlight will be indexing the drive. That's going to be hard on the battery for the first day or so. Since the complaints started on the very first day, that needs to be considered..
  • Reply 18 of 71
    aaarrrggghaaarrrgggh Posts: 1,609member
    Wow, maybe this will get as much attention from Apple as the 100 pages of people in one thread of MacBook pro users unable to use wifi spanning two years and three "major revisions" of software.
  • Reply 19 of 71


    I've never had more than 4 hours of battery life anyway even with Lion on my MBPr.  No change with ML installed.  It's not a big deal to me.... I max the brightness (keyboard and display) and leave everything I need to access open.  If I need more battery then I do the opposite.  Not brain surgery.

  • Reply 20 of 71

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post





    Keep in mind that after installing the OS, Spotlight will be indexing the drive. That's going to be hard on the battery for the first day or so. Since the complaints started on the very first day, that needs to be considered..


    this.


     


    Mine Late 2008 MB unibody was quite overwhelmed by the Spotlight work... now it's pretty normal, other than marked improvements in waking from sleep, reboots, relogins and wifi performance.   I'm happy with .0.  enough so that I'm upgrading the desktop Mac Mini tonight.

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