fully charged battery -> 4h max ... (running mostly chrome and keynote) not really the "all day battery life" they promised (http://www.apple.com/macbook/design/)
I'm not kidding. Try Safari for two days and be amazed.
There are probably things you can do to make it better, but for whatever reason Google doesn't seem to care and ships (what I would say is effectively) broken software.
yeah, chrome is in there.
but switch to safari? my thoughts a) i'm a developer, i rather like new APIs, latest HTML 5 features b) my whole company infrastructure relies on google services (and they work best in chrome, no surprise there) c) my old macbook air (2013, maverick, killed one month ago by my son with self made kombucha) had about 7h battery-life
Hint: It's the ad for the top 7 ways you didn't know you could get bunions, and there's a 50% chance it will convince you to buy new shoes.
I run Firefox with NoScript, and my battery usage is always very very good. An additional benefit is that I see few ads, since they invariably rely on third-party javascript.
Your problem is probably Chrome + screen brightness. Recommended monitor brightness in an office setting is 100-150 cd/m^2. The MB gets up to 375 cd/m^2 for outside use, but inside it should be at like a 35% setting. Also, Chrome guzzles juice like there is no tomorrow--use Safari.
Chrome on the Mac is very tough on the battery.
A switch to Safari increased my battery life by about 80%.
I hear that Chrome sucks up battery like nothing else though; might be worth investigating whether Safari's improved power usage is worth the tradeoff in other aspects?
Chrome is terrible for batteries.