14 DAY TRIAL // Mac OS X Lion seemingly has better power management, with one tester reporting improved battery life on his 11-inch MacBook Air, after confirming Apple’s advertised battery life under Snow Leopard.
Admittedly, the tester says he can’t vouch for all Macs, but he could confirm a significant and visible improvement in battery life after testing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with the screen brightness set to half - 8 hours of battery life with 91% charge remaining on his 11-inch Air.
However, OS X Daily seems to erroneously point out that 8 hours of battery life on the 11-inch Air is “about an hour longer than Apples suggested max battery life,” whereas Apple advertises 5 hours of wireless productivity for this particular model.
The seven-hour battery is reserved for the 13-inch Air, while the tests were reportedly carried out using the low-end version of the ultra-thin notebook.
In other words, Lion seemingly boosts battery life far beyond the lifespan noted by Apple - by as much as three to four hours!
Still, no one will be able to say for sure whether or not this is the case. Not until some proper benchmark tests are carried out, anyway.
The tester finally notes that he has continued to observe the behavior of his MacBook Air with unchanged results, suggesting the analysis is most likely accurate.
Needless to point out, if Apple can pull this off with Lion, the MacBook Pro family may well reach the advertised battery life of the iPad - 10 hours.
If the tests in question are accurate, it most probably means Apple has invested some developer resources in the operating system’s power management for notebook computers.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is currently in internal beta testing among Apple developers, and is slated to ship this summer.
The desktop operating system is a flavor of iOS and Mac OS X combined to provide the most natural way to interact with your computer.