Regarding the Safari Web browser, which is launched as part of the tests, we used the version of Safari that was common to each edition of OS X at its launch. Open Mail, pause 10 seconds to allow any messages to download Navigate to a second content-heavy website (cnn.com), pause 20 seconds Open Safari and navigate to a content-heavy website (), pause 20 seconds Our automatic workflow consists of the following steps: To simulate a moderate workflow, we use a custom Automator application, which is the same as in our previous tests. We then disable all applications and services except for WiFi, set the screen to 50 percent brightness, turn keyboard illumination off, disable the screen saver, and set the power and display to remain on indefinitely. We then updated each installation to 10.6.8, the last version of Snow Leopard released by Apple.įor each test, starting with OS X 10.6.8, we allow the battery on the Mac to reach a full charge. Using the MacBook’s original system installation discs (remember the good old days when Apple used to include those?), we erased the internal drives and installed the version of OS X that the system shipped with, 10.6.6, to both drives so that we could individually test battery life on the SSD and HDD. The excellent coconutBattery utility showed that the battery’s capacity was still at 95 percent of its theoretical maximum. Its battery at the start of the tests had 159 cycles and was considered healthy by OS X. Our test MacBook Pro, which readers should note is a different computer than the one used in our first tests, has been lightly used during its life. Our test computer is a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro at 2.0 GHz with 8 GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 6490M GPU, and two internal drives: an OCZ Vertex 4 64 GB SSD and a Seagate Momentus 750 GB HDD (we used an Other World Computing Data Doubler bracket to replace the MacBook Pro’s optical drive with the Seagate hard drive). We hope that our tests will answer some questions about a Mac’s battery life “journey” though the many iterations of OS X over the past few years. In an effort to provide a comprehensive look at battery life, we decided to take one of our test Macs back to Snow Leopard and test each build of OS X from 10.6.8 all the way to the current build of Mountain Lion on both an SSD and an HDD. Other readers wanted to know if there would be a significant difference in battery life if the tests were run on a solid state system drive (SSD) versus a traditional hard disk system drive (HDD). In response to our reports, we received many questions and suggestions for further testing, with some readers telling us that they experienced a similar loss in battery life after the upgrade from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 Lion. We were able to demonstrate that the upgrade to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion caused a significant reduction in battery life and that Mountain Lion’s first update, 10.8.1, only partially restored the lost running time. Last month we performed a series of battery life tests on three Mac laptops: a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro, 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and a 2011 13-inch MacBook Air. We have put those builds through the same test and the results can be found here. Update: The final builds of 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 were released by Apple on September 19.
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