Today I killed Dropbox and Copy, then I killed Skype, turned the WiFi off, and my 13″ MacBook Air was getting about 6.5 hours worth of battery life. This is very close to the 7 hours that Apple claims will work (though they do say 7 hours of wireless usage). Chrome, Firefox had tabs running, I was working in Mail and Terminal a lot, as well as Keynote (with 15 apps running when i mac+tab)
So what’s missing is battery profiles.
When plugged in, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Copy, etc. run.
When on the battery, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Copy, Time Machine, etc. stop running.
When on the battery with no WiFi, maybe Evernote sync stops, Google Drive stops, etc.
This app should make sure its all configurable.
Why hasn’t this appeared yet?
Maybe OS X Mavericks will rock in this sense since the CPU usage is only for the current running app, not those background running apps.
I’m willing to bet this kind of app makes sense even on Linux and Windows. We’re using apps that increasingly sync to the network. Some are badly behaved.
Road warriors need better solutions. And I bet they’d pay for it.