OS X Mountain Lion has been a fantastic update for Mac users, but some of us on portable Macs discovered an annoying side effect of reduced battery life, often accompanied by a Mac that felt warmer to the touch. Those issues have been largely fixed with the OS X 10.8.2 update, making it a must-have update for MacBook owners.
The following observations are anecdotal and not scientific by any means, but findings thus far with OS X 10.8.2 include:
- Dramatic improvements to battery life on three different MacBook Airs (2010, 2011, and 2012 models), each jumping by at least 2 hours to an average of 6 hours under normal use
- Portable Macs running OS X 10.8.2 appear to run at lower temperatures and are noticeably cooler to the touch, perhaps suggesting the original battery life issue was related to power management or an errant background process
The largest boost was found on a 2011 MacBook Air 11″ model, which jumped from 3.4 hours to 6 hours on a full charge. This was shown by the Battery Time Remaining app and proved accurate while running a clock to observe battery drain under standard usage conditions at 70% display brightness.
Interestingly, the release notes of 10.8.2 make no mention of battery improvements, but if you have experienced any reduction in battery life with Mountain Lion then updating to the latest version will demonstrate very obvious increases. The difference in battery performance between OS X 10.8.1 and 10.8.2 is night and day and should give users who suffered under prior versions at least an hour or two longer while on the go.
If you have a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air running Mountain Lion 10.8 or 10.8.1, install the OS X 10.8.2 update right away through the Apple Menu > Software Update, and enjoy the immediate battery boost.
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