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OSX questions for my new MBA

ViviTheMage

ViviTheMage

Lifer
Got my 13.3 MBA, and was wondering two things.

How can I verify my laptop is going into standby/sleep mode? I had the closed closed shut from midnight to noon (12 hours), and it used up 6% of the battery, I was told that is high.

My second is, anyone else have issues with ical syncing with google calendar? It never seems to update properly. Sometimes I will delete them in ical, and they'll never show up online, or on my phone, even doing % R to refresh it.
 
On the front right of your MBA there's a white led that blinks slowly. If its blinking slowly then its in sleep mode.

Google Calendar has an issue that it doesn't update properly. I haven't revisited this issue though. From your experience it looks like its still a problem. You may have to do some searching to fix this.

EDIT: Wait..crap, I don't think the MBA has a white led. Maybe someone else can chime in on this.
 
Yeah, I didn't recall a white LED.

I am sad about the bug, I read it started in OSX 10.5, just never fixed...something on googles end I think? No concrete fixes from what I read either.
 
It may be on Google's end. Google Calendar has a lot of syncing problems. I created a website that's supposed to sync with Google Calendar and come to find out it doesn't work.
 
ViviTheMage said:
Got my 13.3 MBA, and was wondering two things.

How can I verify my laptop is going into standby/sleep mode? I had the closed closed shut from midnight to noon (12 hours), and it used up 6% of the battery, I was told that is high
Click to expand...

If it was not going to sleep, and staying awake, the battery would be depleted by a lot more than 6% after 12 hours. It would be depleted by 95+% and then the MBA would shut itself off.
 
Is 6% pretty decent then? I read that it should be able to last 30~ days in sleep, which would not happen at this rate, not even half.
 
ViviTheMage said:
Is 6% pretty decent then? I read that it should be able to last 30~ days in sleep, which would not happen at this rate, not even half.
Click to expand...

30 days in standby. I don't know how long before the system takes itself from sleep and puts itself into standby, but 6% over 12 hours is low based on my prior MacBook experiences. So I think it put itself into standby at some point.
 
By default OS X Lion is supposed to sleep when you close the lid and does a fast resume function that is now possible due to the SSD drives.

This is why the mouse is unresponsive after awaking from sleep for a few seconds after the screen is visible and IMO a step backwards from Snow Leopard in speed to recover from a closed lid.

It is possible to enable "deep sleep" hibernation and see if you have a different result. Might tell you if nothing else if it's actually been sleeping vs hibernation.

To enable, from Terminal type "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25" without the quotes.

To reverse/undo "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3" without quotes.

You also enable the root account and run any command from that by going to /System/Library/CoreServices and running Directory Utility.

In the drop down menu in there one of the options gives you the ability to enable the root account and set it's password.

Not something I recommend using over a user account but still can come in handy in a pinch.
 
Yeah, I went in and disabled hibernation, could that be it? I read that there's no point in having it enabled, just wastes space. When standby should be just as effective.

I already enabled the root account 🙂.
 
ViviTheMage said:
Yeah, I went in and disabled hibernation, could that be it? I read that there's no point in having it enabled, just wastes space. When standby should be just as effective.

I already enabled the root account 🙂.
Click to expand...


Sleep keeps the RAM powered, so it uses some battery.

Hibernate turns eveything off, should use no battery. You'll still lose charge over time (normal for batteries), hence the 30-day life they quote. There's nothing special about Apple's "30-day standby", all laptops will last a month on Hibernate... 😀 The difference is it wakes up quickly from Hibernate because of the SSD.

Usually laptops will go into sleep for a few hours, then switch to hibernate to save battery life. If you turn Hibernate off, the battery would be dead after a few days.
 
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BTW, your 6% seems high because you only tested for 12 hours. Most likely it went into Sleep for 8 hours (using up most of that 6% drop you saw), then switched to Hibernate.

If you had checked after 2-3 days, the %drop/hour would be less.
 
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Hibernation is disabled entirely though, so it will not go into it.

What are the levels of sleep/standby/hibernation for OSX?
 
ViviTheMage said:
Hibernation is disabled entirely though, so it will not go into it.

What are the levels of sleep/standby/hibernation for OSX?
Click to expand...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392

There's Sleep (Suspend to RAM) and Standby (Suspend to Disk, or Hibernate). I'll edit my other post, I wasn't using the correct terms.

So basically, it sleeps for an hour, then hibernates. If you turn hibernate off, it'll use more battery and won't last a month.
 
Well now, just for fun...I want to see how well Hibernation does.

Is it pretty easy to enable it, and recreate the disk space required for it again?
 
My second is, anyone else have issues with ical syncing with google calendar? It never seems to update properly. Sometimes I will delete them in ical, and they'll never show up online, or on my phone, even doing % R to refresh it.
Click to expand...

YES, I stopped using iCal.
 
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