Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1 Update: Apple Addresses Battery Life, Safari, Mail Clients

By Dave Smith | August 22 2012 10:37 AM

Mac OS X Mountain Lion has out in the wild for a month now, and by and large, users are very happy with Apple's biggest new cat. However, there are still a large number of users still experiencing issues with the new platform; luckily for them, it looks like Apple is just about ready to release the first major maintenance update for Mountain Lion.

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A Colorado dog owner watched his pet dachshund get snatched away and eaten by a mountain lion last week.

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After the company seeded the first beta build of OS X 10.8.1 to developers on Aug. 10, Apple seeded a second build of Mountain Lion to developers, this time with more instructions on which applications to focus on.

According to the email sent to Mac developers, Apple is asking developers to focus on "Active Directory, iCal, Microsoft Exchange in Mail, PAC proxies in Safari, SMB, USB, and WiFi and audio when connected to an Apple Thunderbolt Display."

It's not too surprising to hear Apple is addressing some of the most common issues reported among early adopters of Mountain Lion, but on Tuesday, Softpedia discovered that Apple's 10.8.1 update for Mountain Lion also "substantially" improves battery life on MacBook laptops.

Filip Truta of Softpedia spoke to a developer enrolled in Apple's annual program, who confirmed that the new update has no battery drainage issues:

""Until I installed 10.8.1, my MacBook was showing 4h:05m after a full charge," the developer told Softpedia. "After installing 10.8.1 it's showing over 8h. I'm now able to use my Mac throughout the day again without having to carry my charger," said the happy developer."

The report of vastly improved battery life was corroborated by another Mac developer using Apple's discussion boards, who noted a major change after the 10.8.1 update.

"Seems that 10.8.1 update solves the problem," said the developer. "My mbp-15 late 2011 using 10.8 lasted 1 h 45 mins, after 10.8.1 upgrade is showing 3 h 30 mins."

It's not atypical for the first maintenance build of a new Mac platform to try and fix the most severe bugs and issues such as battery life, but hopefully the 10.8.1 update also solves a number of bugs, errors and other assorted issues that early adopters have complained about, such as issues running Safari, problems and errors that arise with different Mail clients, faulty AirPlay Mirroring, and of course, reduce occurrences of the "spinning beach ball of death."

Have you adopted OS X Mountain Lion yet? What do you hope Apple fixes in the Mac 10.8.1 upgrade? Let us know in the comments section below.