The problem is, some applications you wouldn’t think need a lot of graphics power actually rely on features such as OS X’s Core Animation that require the discrete graphics card. I’m really dissapointed about how this has been handled and I really hope they come to change their minds.Some quick background: All 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models from 2010 and later, as well as 20 models outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce 9400M/9600M GT, dynamically switch between a low-power (and lower-performance) integrated Intel graphics chip and a power-hungrier (and better-performance) discrete Nvidia or AMD graphics card, based on the needs of running applications. At the same time, neither Safari or Firefox has this issue so they can’t claim it to be unfixable. I can only summize that the Chromium guys doen’t care about their users. There’s actually an issue about this on the Chromium issue tracker, it’s marked as “Won’t fix”. If you’re interested in gfxCardStatus you can find it here. Big thanks to Cody Krieger for the excellent gfxCardStatus app. Problem solved, I’m back to using Google Chrome again, without any It’s still a myster why the macbook had a hard time going into sleep mode but it seems to have been solved by not using the expensive card while on battery. I guess it’s really more of a workaround than a solution, but it works and it’s now easy to know which card is used. It also allowed me to setup so that the Nvidia card was never used while the computer was running on battery power. Once installed I could see rightaway that the more expensive card was put into action as soon as Google Chrome was started. There’s a free tool called gfxCardStatus which helped me figure my issue. This in turn not only eat a lot of power, but also make it harder for the Macbook Pro to get some much needed sleep, hence the constant power-shortage. You see, Google Chrome uses a feature in OS X that turns on the more expensive Nvidia card, even if it really isn’t doing anything special. After some googling it turned out to be, not my battery, but instead Google Chrome. I was heading off to Gr8Conf in Denmark a couple of weeks ago and thought to myself: “it’s really time I figure out what’s wrong with the battery”. That was something I had never experienced with my old macbook, even when I had left it lying around for a week or so. After a while I noticed that my mac always seemed to be out of power, even when it had been full when I last closed the lid. The next monday I started working at a customer and haven’t really used the mac much since then such is the life of the consultant. A couple of days into the gig my spanking new Macbook Pro arrived I was giddy as a school-girl. This february I started working with a couple of great guys at the small Stockholm-based consultancy Agical. But, I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s take it from the start… That was until it started eating at the battery of my new Macbook Pro. There’s been problems with it now and then, but I’ve been a happy customer most of the time. I’ve been a Google Chrome user for a long time and even ran with Chromium for a while before Google Chrome was released on the Mac. Rescuing my Macbook Pro’s battery from Google Chrome The story
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