I noticed the same thing on my 15" when I shut it down overnight on the weekend... very odd.
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Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro
- Thread starter fokmik
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I think its a bit too early I'll install it tonight and then work on battery tomorrow. With 10.12.2 today my battery went down from 90% to 35% in about 7 hour mixed usage, which I think is excellent (this is 15" MBP)
I'm on beta2 of 10.12.3 and saw no difference in battery life on my 13tb - getting around 5hrs of browsing/MS office usage.
Thus far 10.12.2 Public Beta 3 is actually doing me notably worse than the GM 10.12.2. Apple officially has no idea what they're doing...
Curious why everyone is waiting for a software 'fix' when Apple explicitly said no such thing is going to happen (since Apple doesn't believe there to be a problem).
Are you in the US? Whats your return policy? Here in Germany we have 14 Days when ordered online and you are only allowed to check the product as you would in a Store - so using it for two weeks and then returning isnt possible - at least officially, any slack cut there is goodwill from the dealer/company and not consumer law. Another thing is if the product doesnt work as advertised but you'd have to go to court over what battery perfomance is still ok under the "up to X hours"-claim.
This.
I do not think there will be a major software fix. Maybe some minor things. But it wont improve batterie life by hours.
This is a gen1 product. Feel free to buy and use it. I guess I can wait a little longer. Not sure if rMB 2017 or 2017 13" rMBP.
Anecdotally, I was getting around 3 hours before going to the beta software and after installing the beta MacOS release I have got anywhere between 6 and 8 hours, so not a bad improvement. This is with my standard daily usage of email, web browsing, Excel, WebEx etc...
Also been on a VPN all day...
Also been on a VPN all day...
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Having used my tbMBP for a couple of days now I have nothing bad to say about the battery (or anything else, for that matter). Granted, usage has been pretty mellow for now, mostly browsing the net (anywhere between 2-5 tabs open), listening to music (iTunes) and watching videos (Youtube), email etc., but f. ex. yesterday I got a solid 7 hours and still had somewhere between 30% and 40% battery left.
Much better than my previous machine, but then again the battery on that one was one step away from exploding, so.. Yeah.
Much better than my previous machine, but then again the battery on that one was one step away from exploding, so.. Yeah.
Apple's response to Consumer Reports results:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2017/01/10/apple-comments-on-consumer-reports-faulty-macbook-pro-tests/
http://www.loopinsight.com/2017/01/10/apple-comments-on-consumer-reports-faulty-macbook-pro-tests/
My battery life seems to have improved in the last week on my 13" MacBook Pro (without tb). I have been running 10.12.2, but it is only in the last few days I have noticed battery life. Yesterday I was in a meeting taking notes in Evernote and checking email and used less than 10% in 3 hours. More intensive work in Office and online is now burning less than 10% an hour.
This is not the case. Public beta 3 is actually better at managing when the Discrete GPU fires up.
This is actually really easy to check, up until public beta 2, if you opened googlemaps on safari, discrete GPU was firing up and it stayed on until you closed that specific tab GoogleMaps tab . Of course this was also happening for other websites also.
This does not seem to be the case any more, beta 3 seems to handle the situation better. I have yet to see switching to discrete because of Safari.
Nice try Apple. I have one of the new 15 MBPtb and the battery is a disaster after 10 tests the past 7 days(only broke 5 hours one time). I am returning it for another laptop at BB today. Either last year's model or a windows ultra book. I gave it 16 days, this stinks as a first time MacBook owner. The Apple sales guy has heard from 8 people out of 25 he sold with the same issue. Apple has a software or hardware QC issue.
It was a software issue, the discrete GPU is firing up for no reason. See my post above and make the test with google maps tab.
I am aware of the dGPU fix. You are telling me the dGPU is firing up surfing mac rumors and mac rumors only? Battery died at 4hr 35min doing just that.
Yes, basically it used to. If there was a video embedded, offen it was doing just that. On Chrome, Google maps still fires the discrete GPU in beta 3.
None of that makes any sense to me.
1. If CR used the same settings for all the rounds of testing(which are averaged for the final rating), why does that produce wildly different results? Shouldnt the results be the same anyway if the settings are unchanged?
2. If CR's standardized configuration/settings for tests across different laptops, requires cache to be turned off, isn't CR's initial reservations still valid?
3. If CR turned caching off on other laptops (past MacBooks, Windows boxes, etc) why dont they produce wildly varying results?
Something smells fishy.
I don't see a conspiracy here. This makes sense if you think about battery performance if you've been monitoring closely. I agree that I don't know how this is affecting other laptops if they are using the same test, so I can't speculate on that. However, with this MBP and skylake, we've seen that it can be very variable based on usage. Turning off cache essentially reloads every page from scratch every time. This is likely outside of normal usage for most people. I don't know anyone that sets their browser like that, because it's inefficient with time and bandwidth. It's a system shortcut that makes sense and mirrors normal usage.
I thought the first round of test results were crazy. How do you get that large of a variance between best and worst life? I withhold judgment because I don't know their exact tests, but I cannot replicate that kind of variance.
They also say that the 10.12.3 beta has "fixed" some of this. These anticipated fixes are not major changes in operation, they simply turn something off that was incorrectly on (like dGPU or some software process). This was easy to see just doing regular testing. Random websites would burn battery, but others wouldn't. There was some software that was causing unneeded resources to be used.
Anyway, this is logical to me, and I'd expect these kind of "fixes". Whether Apple officially acknowledges these things as bugs or fixes is a different story. They can spin it anyway they want, but the fact is the software needed some tweaking just to avoid unnecessary processes. Just my opinion on why this makes sense to me.
Companies that admit their faults can be trusted. Companies that never admit any wrong, ever, when exposed will always have an aura of distrust.
I have been buying Apple computers since the 90s. Personally, over 30 computers. The 2016 MacBook Pro was the first computer I have ever returned.
Apples really going for broke here. There is something going on with these batteries. There are too many similar complaints for there not to be. It was all over the map on my testing.
Also if it was a Safari bug, why where the 2015 MacBook pros where not affected?
Apples not building a lot of trust with it's users. Apple only loves it's stock holders.
You have to understand that on laptops as optimised (because of few configurations) as the MacBook Pro, the same software will have different working parameters based on the models. When there was an update to Sierra to prepare for the launch of Late 2016 model, there was code written in there to support them, which only worked for them and them alone. Nothing was changed for the older models because the new code was specific for the new model only. That code is the culprit for the problems with the battery ( at least that would account for the inconsistencies).
So with a sample size of 30 you got 1 lemon.. What does this say to you about Apple and it's products ??
I can't agree with this unless you somehow quantify 'too many'. But I am afraid you can't. You cannot possibly know, I cannot possibly know ... only Apple knows how much is 'too many' and if it actually qualifies as 'too many'. Your testing doesn't mean or prove anything for a number of reasons not the least of which is that it is immediately evened out by my testing !!
@thesaint024
1. Consistency of tests. If all other branded laptops are tested with caching explicitly turned off, so should the Mac, right?
2. Variance of results. If the caching setting is off for the tests, shouldn't the results be roughly the same. And if caching is on wouldn't the results be roughly the same? (ie scientifically reproducible within a margin of error)
3. Why should Apple get a pass with caching turned on because it boosts their results? That defeats the purpose of being able to compare if to competitors. (its no longer a standardized test)
I'm not too concerned if it's a bug/fix/update/whatever. I'm just pointing out that the reasoning makes no sense to me.
Agreed, if you turn caching on, it does not need to use wi-fi as much and just loads from local storage, conserving battery life. But why the variation? And why dont other laptops see the same sortof results when they are put through the test?
On a side note:
That's why i'm not fond of browser tests. It might mimic real world casual usage. What if the page loads an Ad which requires WebGL, which may/maynot use the dGPU, etc? The power overhead of the ads(which are different every time) is not predictable. OTOH, what other 'real-world' can they do these days?
I'd be very curious if them use ad blockers when testing, could help standardize the test even more.
[doublepost=1484073754][/doublepost]
An excellent point.
1. Consistency of tests. If all other branded laptops are tested with caching explicitly turned off, so should the Mac, right?
2. Variance of results. If the caching setting is off for the tests, shouldn't the results be roughly the same. And if caching is on wouldn't the results be roughly the same? (ie scientifically reproducible within a margin of error)
3. Why should Apple get a pass with caching turned on because it boosts their results? That defeats the purpose of being able to compare if to competitors. (its no longer a standardized test)
I'm not too concerned if it's a bug/fix/update/whatever. I'm just pointing out that the reasoning makes no sense to me.
Agreed, if you turn caching on, it does not need to use wi-fi as much and just loads from local storage, conserving battery life. But why the variation? And why dont other laptops see the same sortof results when they are put through the test?
On a side note:
That's why i'm not fond of browser tests. It might mimic real world casual usage. What if the page loads an Ad which requires WebGL, which may/maynot use the dGPU, etc? The power overhead of the ads(which are different every time) is not predictable. OTOH, what other 'real-world' can they do these days?
I'd be very curious if them use ad blockers when testing, could help standardize the test even more.
[doublepost=1484073754][/doublepost]
An excellent point.