Apple Removes the 'Time Remaining' Battery Indicator In New macOS Update (loopinsight.com) 164
Apple has removed the "time remaining" battery life indicator with the new macOS Sierra update following complaints from several users of new MacBook Pro models. Apple says it stands by its 10-hour battery life claim in the new MacBook Pro models, and adds that the battery life indicator didn't show accurate information. From a report on The Loop: You can still see the image on the top of the screen, and you can see the percentage, but you will no longer be able to see how much time is remaining before your battery dies. [...] Apple said the percentage is accurate, but because of the dynamic ways we use the computer, the time remaining indicator couldn't accurately keep up with what users were doing. Everything we do on the MacBook affects battery life in different ways and not having an accurate indicator is confusing. Besides the apps we are working on all the time, there are a lot of things that are happening in the background that users may not be aware of that affects battery life.
They can't dynamically figure this out? (Score:2, Informative)
My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.
Observation is bad, m'kay? (Score:3)
(incoming comet threat, panic):
Re:Observation is bad, m'kay? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to work at a place where if you put an "Out Of Order" notice on something they'd fix it by removing the notice.
We (well I, they volunteered me because I used to work in a bar) once changed a water container (after waiting four hours for maintenance to do it). Fuck me, the song and dance they made how it could have caused a disaster and so on.
I will add that, unlike them, I did it properly; I peeled off the hygiene seal rather than leaving it in place so it got rammed inside the container by the spigot. Cunts.
Re:Observation is bad, m'kay? (Score:5, Interesting)
I will add that, unlike them, I did it properly; I peeled off the hygiene seal rather than leaving it in place so it got rammed inside the container by the spigot. Cunts.
I used to be an operator on a Burroughs B4700 mainframe (which shows you how old I am). It used to blow these 100 amp fuses in the power supply cabinet periodically. We'd call Burroughs, they'd send someone out when they could fit it in their schedule and we'd be down for hours. Finally we found the spare fuses in the engineer cabinet so we'd pop the breakers and replace the fuses ourself. One day a Burroughs FE happened to be in when a fuse blew and we started to replace it when he blew a gasket, telling us how dangerous that was. He proceeded to start changing the fuse but neglected to throw the breakers - and knocked his ass across the room.
To stay on the subject: the B4700 did not have a battery indicator.
Re:Observation is bad, m'kay? (Score:4, Insightful)
It just shows that "authorized" personnel are not necessarily qualified, and "qualified" personnel are not necessarily competent.
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This reminds me of my days programming on a DEC VAX 11/780. A call to DEC field circus was always entertaining.
http://foldoc.org/field%20circ... [foldoc.org]
Re:They can't dynamically figure this out? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't recall seeing a Windows computer without this since... geez... probably Windows XP.
I am not sure that it has ever been all that accurate though.
I am surprised that Mac even had this indicator in the first place. The main difference I have always seen between Mac and Windows is that Mac tends to hide more stuff from you.
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This is just another example of Apple oversimplifying things. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of how a computer works will understand that battery life will vary depending on how you're using the computer. Or, they could have added the word "estimated" in, so any English speaker over the age of 10 could understand. But I guess they deemed i
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Everyone should be able to figure this one out. The pressure was put on Apple to produce a totally accurate battery meter, including life left. Now problems arise is that it will remind people they have a dying battery ie a battery at 80% of it's life will become 20% inaccurate in measurement, the older the worse, with fixed batteries designed to drive unit replacement, this becomes ever more problematic. So they simply allow download and install of free, supplied by others battery meters and deny any accur
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You know eventually the public will force the supply of generic user replaceable batteries
Literally the only product in the world that has generic replaceable rechargeable batteries, is cars. Maybe this is why car analogies are preferred above all others.
I mean, sure, some things run on AAs, but AAs are shit, and pretty wasteful of space, and mostly only used in toys and tv remotes. For a while you could get products that ran off NiMH AAs, and included charge circuitry, but not really any more.
Re: They can't dynamically figure this out? (Score:1)
This is just a momentary lapse of courage on Apple's part. Eventually they'll have to come to the conclusion that the real problem is the battery itself. The outdated idea that portable computers "have to" include a battery has been alowed to continue for too long, and Apple is going to once again lead the industry in removing this decades old legacy technology.
And, look, before you start going on about how you need your computer to have a way to receive electricity, obviously there will need to be some kin
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I don't recall seeing a Windows computer without this since... geez... probably Windows XP.
I am not sure that it has ever been all that accurate though.
I am surprised that Mac even had this indicator in the first place. The main difference I have always seen between Mac and Windows is that Mac tends to hide more stuff from you.
Windows XP had a battery remaining time as standard, I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 did too. Cant remember Win 98.
I cant think of a Linux distro that cant do this either (AHCI command if you're not running a GUI, if memory serves).
This move is more likely to be that they don't want their users to notice that the battery lasts significantly less than the advertised time. Out of sight, out of mind, that kind of thing.
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Re:They can't dynamically figure this out? (Score:5, Insightful)
They can, and have been for years. I believe they're being petty - butthurt from all the backlash they've received over the clusterf- that is the 2016 MBP lineup.
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How big are the charts?
But is it accurate? (Score:2)
My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way.
That's what Apple was doing also. But that calculation is not as accurate as it used to be, partly because even if you "use the computer the same way" the computer may or may not decide to put some of the cores out of low power mode, or possible something the app is doing may suddenly activate the discrete GPU. I don't think the Surface is using the same CPU t
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With apple its easier to hide proof of a problem than admit the problem.
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Even with all that, calculating an approximate battery-time remaining shouldn't be an NP problem. I don't do this kind of system work, so I don't know how difficult it really is, but it seems like even with the variables you describ
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You have more than just the information of that instant. You also (could) know the full usage history of the device
Or you could just display 10h*current_charge%
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But removing something instead explaining it does show its a cover up - literally.
https://support.apple.com/en-u... [apple.com]
The battery status menu updates frequently and changes depending on your screen brightness and system workload. You may see the time remaining drop significantly, for instance, if it updates while opening a very large file or starting up an application. It's important to remember it's an estimate based on what your computer is doing at the specific time it updates.
Published Date: Dec 6, 2016
Looks like Apple explained and some people still didn't understand. Funny how the same tolls that keep claiming all Mac users are utter morons now say nobody could be that stupid, and it must of course be Apple's fault.
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Well no, if you are using it in the same way it won't take them out of low power mode. If what you're doing is just reading news articles there is no reason to take them out of low power mode for example.
What if you have Dropbox installed? I often see CPU surges if someone puts something in that it has to sync.
Or a background web page, it's not infrequent I open up Activity Monitor and find a GitHub page I just left open for review later is constantly consuming 15% of my CPU.
It could well be you are just d
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My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.
They're just copying Gnome 3
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I have that feature on my Lenovo X240 but I haven't found it useful.
If anything, it would be misleading.
Here's an example: I was watching a movie and my laptop's battery was 15%, saying it can still hold for 35 minutes given the current load. So I went back to full screen mode, and less than 10 minutes later the laptop was at 5% so it went into hibernation. I guess some background process decided to fuck with the laptop resources because of "5 minutes idle" or something.
Re:They can't dynamically figure this out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.
Well that's just it, isn't it? The time-remaining figure, even if calculated accurately based on what you're currently doing still likely bears little resemblance to the actual time you have left before your battery runs out.
Say I'm editing my source code in a text editor -- zero CPU / disk / network usage, very light load, and so my time-remaining figure is 9 hours.
Then I decide it's time to do a fresh compile, and my "make clean; make -j4" drives all cores to 100% and exercises the internal drive for several minutes. Now my time-remaining figure is 2 hours.
Then the compile ends, and the time-remaining figure is back to 8 hours.
Which of those figures was correct? Answer: none of them was. The only way to get a correct figure would be to predict how many times I'm going to recompile in the future. So why bother making up a number that clearly is not going to be correct anyway? It only confuses the issue.
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The only way to get a correct figure would be to predict how many times I'm going to recompile in the future.
Or it could quote you a range: time remaining with light load, and time remaining with heavy load.
It could also figure out what is "light" and what is "heavy" by your usage patterns.
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Or it could quote you a range: time remaining with light load, and time remaining with heavy load.
Or better yet, a line graph, with battery-percentage-left on the y-axis and time on the x-axis, with accurate logged information up to the present moment, and speculative prediction into the future (the line getting progressively wider as it proceeds to the right side of the graph, to indicate the greater likely margin of error). You could even use statistics or a neural network to dynamically adjust the speculative algorithm based on past behavior to make it become more accurate over time.
That would be a
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I guess Activity Monitor doesn't show a prediction, but it does have a line graph of the percentage of remaining charge as a function of time over the past 12 hours. Not sure if that got removed in the new update.
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Since when is no estimates a subsitute for poor estimates? It's done when it's done, we'll get there when we get there, it'll run out of power when it runs out. Let's not try to find any answers because they'll be based on assumptions and have uncertainty and won't be perfect.
I agree that sometimes the estimates are as good as they get and the only way to know more is to actually try, but if you do say a 30 minute average and tell people it's an average of the last 30 minutes that's a reasonably good indica
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It's the same reason web browsers warn for self-signed certificates but pass legacy cleartext (the http: scheme) without a warning. The general principle is that a false sense of security is worse than a true sense of insecurity.
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Yes, there's lots of uncertainty when it comes to computers since the environment is always changing. Microsoft's file copy time estimate is notoriously bad (3 minutes, 5 hours, 357 days, 2 minutes 30 seconds...). Maybe people just need to be a little bit smarter and realize that if
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Microsoft has improved their estimation [xkcd.com] algorithm quite a bit then.
Re:They can't dynamically figure this out? (Score:4, Informative)
Therein lies the rub. What is "the same way"? Browsing the web can be tricky - some websites are nice and static and use little CPU and give plenty of battery life. Other websites have videos and sound and take more CPU and reduce the time. So "browsing the web" isn't the same way - I may go to YouTube all of a sudden and the battery life will have to drop.
And that's the issue - there's no point telling the user they have 5 hours of battery life because they'll think they have ... 5 hours of battery life. Then they launch Netflix and watch a 2 hour movie, and expect 3 hours of battery life left, but get awfully surprised when they're down to 1 hour or less.
Time remaining works well for relatively constant loads - a camcorder recording video can display time remaining when recording because it's all it's going to do. If it says you can record for 2 hours, then it will last two hours regardless of what you're filming. It won't suddenly drop to 1 hour because a kid comes into frame and recording cuteness takes more power.
News at 11 (Score:2)
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My cheap as hell, several years out of date referb Acer does this too. There really is no excuse not to have it in a new high end laptop.
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My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.
That's exactly how it works on the Mac. It's frustrating that people can't understand that browsing the web and then switching to a videogame will change the amount of time remaining. I love the feature and will hate to see it go.
huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big gripe here is that Apple's 15" 2015 MBP had a 99.5 watt-hour battery (rated for 9 hours wireless web) while the 2016 15" MBP has a 76 watt-hour battery that's rated for 10 hours. The 2015 model came very close to the rated time, which makes sense with its 31% larger battery.
Apple removing the estimated time, which it's provided for a long time, feels like a really childish response to the backlash they're receiving. It's been largely understood by most that these times are simply estimates based on the recent rate of consumption.
These 2016 MacBook Pros are great machines, but they should've been in the 'MacBook' or 'MacBook Air' product lines.. not Pro.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
You'd be 100% right.. except for one nasty detail which makes you 0% right.
There are multiple ways to find out precisely which applications/processes are draining your battery.
Here's one:
https://support.apple.com/en-c... [apple.com]
Here's another:
http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-con... [osxdaily.com]
That second one is right there in the battery menu.
Nasty.. nasty details.
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10 hour battery life doing what? I have a brand new macbook pro and it is more around 6-7 hours. It is undoubtedly the best battery life of any laptop I've had so far but not 10 hours.
Actually, Apple is pretty specific (e.g. "Brightness set to 12 clicks from the bottom, or 75%" (see below)) ( unlike, say, Microsoft [microsoft.com] for the Surface Book, who only stated "Auto Brightness Disabled" for the biggest current-hog in the system...Right...) on their Product Page. [apple.com]
Here are the "Tech Specs" for the 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pro. Scroll down to the "Battery and Power" section (and don't forget to read Footnote 8).
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Why give vague statements like "12 clicks from the bottom, or 75" when they could easily measure the screen brightness for easy comparison to other laptops? Oh, wait, never mind, answered my own question.
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Why give vague statements like "12 clicks from the bottom, or 75" when they could easily measure the screen brightness for easy comparison to other laptops? Oh, wait, never mind, answered my own question.
Because brightness specs could not be easily duplicated by most people, and wouldn't be that good for cross-comparison purposes anyway, because there isn't a correlation from one brand to another as far as energy-usage and the absolute brightness of the screen.
And call it "vague" all you want; but Apple's spec. Is FAR better than MS' "auto brightness disabled" with NO other conditions regarding the actual brightness setting (which tells me they simply set the brightness to MINIMUM).
And please show me a
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Brightness is the best metric. No need to measure it, just set it to your preferred level. That will be the same level regardless of manufacturer, it's just what you need to comfortably read the display.
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Brightness is the best metric. No need to measure it, just set it to your preferred level. That will be the same level regardless of manufacturer, it's just what you need to comfortably read the display.
In what environment? Your perception of "display brightness" will vary along with the ambient, because your own personal "aperture" (iris) opens/closes in an attempt at normalization of the overall level reaching the retina.
So, unless you have the laptops all sitting next to each other, PERCEIVED brightness level is less-than-useless when it comes to measuring battery life.
Apple at least gives you enough information to re-create their test conditions. No one else does this; a fact you conveniently ignor
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Your perception of "display brightness" will vary along with the ambient
Yes, but obviously you will set your laptop to a comfortable brightness level. That level will be the same regardless of if there is an Apple logo or an NEC logo or a Dell logo on the back.
The point of giving a number is so that it is possible to make a direct comparison, like how cars have an MPG number. There is a reason why car manufacturers don't get to state "we drove to McDonalds and it used about 1/8th of a tank".
Are you the real Tim Cook? This argument is stupid enough for me to believe it.
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The point of giving a number is so that it is possible to make a direct comparison, like how cars have an MPG number.
But then you say your idea of "a number" is "a comfortable brightness". Which is it? Do you want an Objective number (x nits/lumens/mcd) or a Subjective "number" ("a comfortable brightness").
And yes, I am the Real Tim Cook. And as proof of my awsome powers, I was able to answer your previous post while simultaneously attending a meeting with the President-Elect. [/sarcasm]
Courage! (Score:5, Insightful)
In before 'courage'!
In all seriousness, just another stupid and anti-customer decision by Apple.
1) People complain about battery life on new Macbook Pro, so remove battery time indicator.
2) ???
3) Profit!
Re:Courage! (Score:5, Insightful)
So who wants to write the replacement widget that puts the time back? I mean it has to be what, a hundred lines of code, tops?
This is an absolutely idiotic response by Apple. It seriously diminishes the usability of the machine for people who currently use that indicator as a "My computer is using ten times as much battery power as it should be; what app has gone crazy?" notification.
I'm growing more and more concerned about Apple's leadership, and I say this as somebody who spent almost thirteen years working there. This is not normal Apple behavior. Something is very, very wrong in Cupertino.
Re:Courage! (Score:4, Informative)
iStat Menus still has the widget. So does the energy tab of Activity Monitor.
Agreed, this is stupid.
Re:Courage! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm growing more and more concerned about Apple's leadership, and I say this as somebody who spent almost thirteen years working there. This is not normal Apple behavior. Something is very, very wrong in Cupertino.
Been spending those thirteen years in the utility closet? This is EXACTLY what Apple does and has been doing since the first days of the Macintosh. You will use their computer in the way they intend, and no other way, and if it does something unexpected, it's YOUR FAULT, and they'll fix it so you can't do what you did.
Re:Courage! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the functionality they just removed predates Mac OS X. So this isn't something that suddenly stopped working, nor was it some sort of emergency that required immediate action to "fix". But some manager had a knee-jerk reaction in response to some article, and they decided to remove functionality that is decades old.
Ten years ago, this would have gotten shot down in UI review. It is unclear whether they could have even made such a change in a major OS release, much less a minor bug-fix release, which are supposed to have zero user-facing functional changes except in situations where a feature's schedule slips, and even then, only to the minimum extent required to enable that feature.
No, this is not "exactly what Apple does and has been doing since the first days of the Macintosh". It might occasionally appear that way to folks who have no idea how Apple works internally, but that's a different matter.
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No, this is not "exactly what Apple does and has been doing since the first days of the Macintosh".
Actually, yes, it is. Always has been. It's exactly what makes Apple attractive. They make a fairly idiot proof computer for people who want to do -things- on a computer but don't want to ever know how to actually use it. This has been Apple's marketing since day 1 of the Macintosh. Apple is the computer for non-computer people. Sadly, in making their crap idiot proof, it's also rather draconian and offputting to computer enthusiasts.
Have you ever tried to disassemble an iMac? Those things are next t
Re: Courage! (Score:1)
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I guess they need someone acerbic in charge or they'll turn into Microsoft and take the easy way out on everything...
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Yes, yes, yes.
I've worked with Apple machines for 30 years, the last 15 in Mac support and solutions. This is another indication of something very wrong at Apple - it's becoming totalitarian and suppressing things it doesn't like instead of dealing with them as problems, finding solutions and moving on. I've become convinced that all they care about is fashion - and like any fashionista all the want is to be thinner with the option for different colours. The leadership is clearly hopeless, at this stage I t
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#!/bin/bash /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_full` /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_now` /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_now`
while [ true ]
do
capacity=`cat
batterylevel1=`cat
sleep 120
batterylevel2=`cat
estimatedtime=$(( 2 * capacity / ( batterylevel1 - batterylevel2 ) ))
kill "$yadpid"
yad --notification --text="$estimatedtime minutes remaining" &
yadpid=$!
done
Probably gets close o
Re:Courage! (Score:4, Insightful)
They did the same thing many years ago when people complained that the latest iPhone got fewer bars of signal. They sent out an update that artificially added bars.
Fool me once.
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I switched my iPhone to show the numeric strength indicator instead. Much better than their crappy recalibrated bars.
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1) People complain about battery life on new Macbook Pro,
2) So remove battery time indicator.
3) Profit!
Fixed that for you.
The ??? part was pretty easy to figure out.
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Next they'll accuse people of timing it wrong!
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Hey, I was in before courage, cut me some slack.
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You mean I didn't invite that? Damn...
Will they remove the mini and mac pro next? (Score:3)
Will they remove the mini and mac pro next?
and then being able to run non store apps?
Re:Will they remove the mini and mac pro next? (Score:4, Insightful)
One has to wonder whether the thinking in Apple corporate hq is something like "Mac Pro and Mac Mini sales are cratering--let's kill the product line to save costs."
Well no crap, you don't update the MacPro for 4 years and your most recent (last?) update for the MacMini was a downgrade when compared to the 2012 model and you wonder why people aren't buying.
I've been an Apple user and occasional booster / apologist for a long time, but this is just ludicrous.
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How about the iPhone?
My turn-of-millenium Ericcson T28 give remaining standby and talk time.
True issue is (Score:1)
Makes sense to me (Score:2)
I dunno, on both my Windows 7 laptop and my older Macbook (non pro) the time estimates are both way off. It seems they both take into account what I'm doing right now and project it across the remaining wattage. If I'm surfing the web it might show 4 hours left but if I fire up Starcraft she sure ain't gonna go another 4 hours. So what's the point of showing a time? I can play about an hour of SC2 on my Win7 laptop before I get warning about needing to plug it in. Even though it could go all day with just a
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If you understand how the time estimate works, it is quite useful.
I frequently used the estimated time indicator to gauge how to use my Mac: "Oh, I have to push the battery life 30 minutes beyond what's left. Maybe I should decrese the screen brightness." Or: "Oh, there is only 15 minutes left on the battery. I should find an outlet pretty soon." It was never used as an absolute indicator, at least for me. It was used to alter my behaviour so that it was less likely to result in a dead battery at an i
Apple Missed a basic concept in battery life (Score:1)
This is just basic common sense. The fact that Apple built an app around a basic concept like battery life without grasping the basics (they apparently couldn't figure out that computers have dynamic loads that can change battery life dramatically) is just silly and an indication of the lack of leadership at Apple. A good leader would call a meeting with his lead engineers and say: I want this. Then listen to his engineers as they explained why it wasn't a good idea. If the experts tell you it is not a
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You forget that Jobs was maniacal about motherboard (oh excuse me: "logic board") layout - not for efficiency or reliability but specifically so the board looked cool. That it often compromised performance and reliability was no matter. It had to LOOK good. Jobs valued form over function - which is stupid when you consider that a a computer is a tool. Sure, make the case look cool, but don't compromise performance, efficiency, or reliability for the sake of the inner components of a machine "looking cool."
Can't accurately predict time left... (Score:2)
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So they can even predict the time to charge the battery to full, when that varies by how you use the laptop? Try flogging the CPU and graphics as hard as you can, and you'll see how much longer it takes to charge from empty to full!
Nothing to see here, users, move along, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, listen only to the Great Wizard of Jobs.
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The power sent to the battery is often limited for safety reasons. If the power supply is enough to run the computer at near-peak performance plus charge the battery at maximum rate, then it won't take any longer than if I were to put the thing in suspend while charging.
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No, it won't.
How Orwellian... (Score:3)
Battery life is up! :)
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This is right. Its the hallmark of a totalitarian regime. Shows that Apple are rotten and will continue to decline.
Remember we mentioned 'courage'? (Score:2)
We said courage is removing the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Now, we ask for so little: We want you, beloved user, to join us: We want you to live. On. The. Edge.
We want you to stare down at that sliver that's even less than 3.5mm wide: the last remaining hair of your precious: the juice that is about to beat you to the :wq finish!
Together we will rule the dark side!!
T. Cook
Accuracy is not required (Score:2)
I use it to tell me when the damned Government-required anti-virus scanner starts up in the background.
That's when the time remaining value drops by about half.
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Effing virus scanners. That's why I never use one. The amount of inconvenience you experience daily from them is worse than whatever any virus can throw at you.
Translation (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't fix it? (Score:2)
Can't fix it? Hide it!
Love to hear what the Apple apologists have to say about this move. Hey FakeTimCook! Do we "not get" this either? Do we not have enough courage?
a bit much? (Score:2)
I feel like every time Apple scratches their collective butt that there is a post about it on Slashdot.
They're sure it's at least 10 hours? (Score:2)
Since they are so sure that their 10 hour battery life estimate is correct, then there's no need to estimate battery lifetime in real-time, they can just start a simple 10 hour countdown timer when the laptop goes on battery, then the user knows exactly when their 10 hours of battery life time expire. If it's a little inaccurate and the user gets more than 10 hours, they can just call it bonus time.
In summary... (Score:2)
"We are allowed to guesstimate battery time for our advertisement campaigns, but you are left to guess what those means".
I mean, I get it... they need to put some number in the ads. But I have to thank reviewers with consistent methods to know how long devices will last on a single charge...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
NT
This is about OSX, not Windows NT.
Why not a battery gauge in electrical units? (Score:2)
I'm sure the general population is much too ignorant, but why don't they allow a battery gauge that shows actual electrical consumption in actual electrical units?
It makes sense that time remaining would always be misleading (and likely gamed by vendors anyway).
But if you had a 75 watt-hour battery and your gauge was in watt-hours, you'd have a reasonably accurate measure of how much battery capacity you had left.
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The problem with time is that it's a dependent function based on usage patterns and past usage may not be representative of future usage. On my recent Windows portables, the time remaining for battery varies a lot including during use. I may have 6 hours left, do something intensive, and it goes down to 2.5 hours, do something very light, and it's back up to 4.
Think of this way, cars have always had a gas gauge which was a generic graph representative of the fuel level in the tank. Nobody really worried
Apple (Score:2)
Apple: Cuz math is HHHHAAAAAAAAARRRRRD!!! (Score:3)
Apple is trying to tell you that it can't do a simple algorithm that checks battery levels, draw, etc and produce a decent, semi-accurate time remainder on battery life?
Get the fuck out!
This is what they get for sweatshopping their code to China and India.
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This was exactly how this worked up until now. You got a semi-accurate time of battery life. But the remaining time depends on what you do and the dynamic range between "hardly any load at all" and "full throttle" gets bigger and bigger. Which makes the time more and more pointless: If you just sit there and type you get a very long remaining time which will shrink down to a fraction of that as soon as you start to do more demanding things.
This is true for all modern computers with some decent power managem
Apple won't be happy (Score:1)
Apple won't be happy until the UI is dumbed down so all you have is a window with one "buy" button to click. There will be no description or specs or anything but just a photo of some sort of thing they pretend is a gadget but is really just a useless block that looks cool. It too will feature just a touch screen with a single "buy" button so you can buy additional proprietary charging cables.
And Macinmaniacs will still buy them.
So? Hop over to the Mac App Store (Score:2)
Why Is My Battery Estimate Never Accurate? (Score:2)
Laptops, tablets, and phones never seem to know exactly how many hours of power they have left. The estimate may jump from two hours to five hours before dropping back down to one hour. Even worse, the battery may suddenly die without warning.
Remember kids, this is only a problem for Apple.