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OS X 10.8.1 May Address Mountain Lion Battery Life Issues
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
“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.
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.
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80 months ago
Discussions of "Battery Life" belong in the religion or politics forums.
Nobody will ever agree.
Nobody will ever agree.
80 months ago
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.
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.
80 months ago
Not everyone lives where there is a Starbucks, or where there is highspeed internet...or a coffee shop every damn corner. Stop being a snob.
McDonalds.
Snob that.
80 months ago
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 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?
80 months ago
Why are OS X updates so huge? Assuming this ends up being 8GB like the rest of their 10.x.x updates. My Verizon LTE bandwidth quota is nearing and i wont be able to download this.
If you can't afford downloading a <1GB file in 2012, your bandwidth quota is not appropriate. Your smartphone is not supposed to download updates for your computer. If you decided not to have home internet, you should have expected to make compromises. Apple won't make some for you since a negligible proportion of people use their phone's tethering as their main computer internet connection.
IMO, to have at least a basic internet service on my computer is more important than to have LTE (and data in general) on my phone.
80 months ago
Not everyone lives in the city where this is so common, what world do you live in? Not everyone is in your utopia.
If you live in an area without a bloody Mcdonalds with a hotspot, chances are you also live in an area without 4G LTE ;)
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