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.
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.
71 Comments
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.
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. ;)
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.
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.
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