OS X Mountain Lion battery glitch makes Apple users roar
Summary: Hundreds of Mac OS X users who upgraded to the newest Mountain Lion release are complaining the update has cut battery life short, in some cases by as much as 50 percent
People upgrading their Mac hardware to the newest version of the OS X operating system, called Mountain Lion, have been complaining on Apple's forum that the update has significantly reduced the battery life of their devices.
The Mountain Lion update was released on 25 July but early upgraders almost immediately took to Apple's support forum to complain of massively increased battery drain, even when the computer was not really in use.
"I upgraded to mountain Lion and now my battery life is about half of what it was before upgrading. Shouldn't the update improve battery life? Also, what can I do about this?" a MacBook Pro owner with the user name 'jpengland96' asked.
Despite the problem seemingly affecting a sizable number of Mac hardware owners that have made the upgrade — the original support thread has currently been viewed more than 33,000 times, has more than 550 replies and is spread across 39 pages — no fix for the problem has been forthcoming and the problem persists to date.
"I've had the same problem for the last 10 days after upgrading to Mountain Lion. I have a MacBook Pro 15-inch mid 2010. I also had about 7 hours of battery life before upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion, now the most I can get is about 4.5 hours. Also, my MacBook sometimes runs noticeably hotter, particularly if using Google Chrome," a user with the screen name of 'david907' wrote on Tuesday.
"I have always been very happy with this great MacBook, but now I'm decidedly unhappy — I was about to purchase the new Retina MacBook Pro, but have changed my mind, at least until Apple fix this software," he added.
Apple had not replied to a request for comment or confirmation that it was looking into the issue at the time of writing.
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Talkback
Hasn't affected mine at all...
You're probably holding it wrong
read before posting ill informed comments please
The vast majority of people there are talking about this happening after a CLEAN install. It's got nothing to do with incompatible apps. There are no apps there to be incompatible in the first place. What we have discovered so far is as follows:
1) For those not on the 'CLEAN' install, Dropbox seems to be a problem. Apple tech have been recommending update or removal. This has given many users ~1 - 1.5hr battery life back. Even then, the performance is still less than that of Lion.
2) SMC and PRAM resets are not solving the problem.
3) Many people have had these type of problems this time last year with Lion.
4) Some users have reported removing a bash script has helped.
5) For nearly everyone who has found a workaround, it's only been temporary and reverts back to the drainage problem again after a while.
6) Some people have reported odd kernel behaviour such as repeated FATAL errors in the console.
7) Some have reported installing on 2 or 3 different portables and having the same issue.
8) Some people are even reporting buying rMBP's and having the issue on them too.
Please at least try to read the forums next time to become better acquainted with the issues faced. We're not all idiots and noobs you know. Some of us with the problem are mac 'tech' people and know what we're doing.
If you're saying you don't have the problem, please post your model, year and specs for comparison to help narrow things down a little. Assisting others in finding the problem would be better than being dismissive.
And yet if a few hunderd
Riiiiiiiight.....
How about this then. With the exception of ONE person, everyone else I know who updated (~25 people) are all reporting the same problem. Maybe I should ask my friends if they work for Microsoft huh? Or the friends of friends? Maybe they all work for Microsoft and I'm the only one who doesn't...
So far, there have been 3 million + downloads of Mountain Lion.
Taking into account that only portables are affected and not iMacs/Mac Mini's etc then you're probably down to just over a million - if even that.
Suddenly your figures ain't looking as good as before.
Of COURSE there are people who have noticed a gain. Just as there were last year when the battery problems happened with Lion. Some users were unafected (inc me) and some were affected badly (inc many of my friends).
As for proving your point, you didn't have one in the first place. The specs you posted don't *prove* anything whatsoever. The fanboi-esque comment however, does.
So again. Please READ the forums before making baseless comments and posting conjecture.
Considering 60% of all Macs sold are laptops, the number is more
33,000 what?
Anyway, 33,00 what? The numbers on the Engadget Poll? Are you saying you think that every user with a problem has a) visited the thread and/or b) participated in the Engadget poll? I doubt it. Very much.
Anyway, not to worry if they all work for Microsoft eh?
All my friends use Macs
Are you retarded?
Microsoft paid astroturfers
No but apparently you are
1) You're an idiot, just a quick search, shows Microsoft's most profitable products is F.U.D.
2) You're a blind Fanboy, that refuses to believe you religious Idols would ever do anything wrong.
Errr....
"Few" means nothing. Those are the one that know how to find Apple support [and excludes phone calls]. What about those novices out there - and there are plenty of Mac novices? You think they'll nitice a battery drain?
Oh and just for th sake of proving my point
Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0F
SMC Version (system): 1.58f16
It is most definitely a major problem...
13in, late 2011 Model
2.4 GHz i5
My battery life increased
So says
Stop your nonsense already!
You are one of the biggest representatives of the religion known as Apple, and, Apple is a god to you, for whom you'd likely sacrifice your first born and your mother. Do try to get out of Apple's behind, and come up for air, and then, you can probably get a life.
I don't get any problems..........
Some users have reported removing a bash script has helped
For example, removing a script that contains (provided it is run):
#!/bin/bash
while true;do echo -n ""; done
certainly takes one core from my CPU and drains the battery faster...
My MBA runs at around 20W with it and eventually gets hot, etc.
Without the "bash script" it's back to about 8W (with a dozen ZDNET tabs open with flash and discussion threads).
I could run it twice of course, to use any remaining cycles from the second core, as well...
Again, read.