For MacBook users who are experiencing battery issues with their laptops, it could be because you have left the iTunes Music Store open.
It seems that Apple's store consumes a good amount of CPU power while it remains open, as it does more than simply switch images on its pages.
Blogger Kirk McElhearn wrote in a post that launching iTunes and leaving it on an iTunes Store page consumes a significant amount of CPU power.
McElhearn discovered that in total, iTunes and coreaudiod, which is tasked with processing audio that is played by apps such as iTunes, takes up about seven percent of total CPU power.
The problem is not iTunes itself, as switching to any page aside from an iTunes Store page decreases CPU usage right away.
"It's easy to pick on iTunes, but this is pretty egregious," wrote Daring Fireball's John Gruber, and for users who are skeptical of the battery drain caused by iTunes, here is a way to test it out.
Apple has added the "Apps Using Significant Energy" feature to the OS X, which is accessible by clicking on the battery icon. Users can launch iTunes and access a page on the iTunes Music Store, and then click on the battery icon. iTunes will be listed under the energy-draining apps, as long as the Music Store remains open. Users can then move away from the Music Store and browse through their music collection, for example. After about a minute, iTunes will no longer be listed on the Apps Using Significant Energy list.
Users who would like more detail on how much the iTunes Music Store is draining a MacBook's battery can launch the Activity Monitor and move back and forth between accessing the iTunes Music Store and browsing through their music collection. The CPU usage will be shown to fluctuate as users shift between the two activities.
It would be a safe bet to say that Apple will eventually fix the issue for iTunes, which is serving as a music store, music player, diagnostic and syncing tool for iPhones and media hub. The app is simply doing so many things at once for the OS X, which could be the reason why Apple missed this problem.
