2016 MacBook Pro Fails To Receive a Recommendation From Consumer Reports (9to5mac.com) 212
Consumer Reports has released its evaluation of the new MacBook Pro laptops, and it's not good. The 2016 MacBook Pro is the first MacBook to fail to receive a recommendation from the nonprofit organization dedicated to unbiased product testing. 9to5Mac reports: In a post breaking down the decision not to recommend the new MacBook Pros, Consumer Reports explains that while the new models held up well in terms of display quality and performance, the battery life issues were too big of an issue to overlook. The organization tested three MacBook Pro variants: a 13-inch Touch Bar model, a 15-inch Touch Bar model, and a 13-inch model without the Touch Bar. The general consensus was that "MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next." Consumer Reports explains that the 13-inch Touch Bar model saw battery life of 16 hours in one test and 3.75 hours in another, while the non-Touch Bar model maxed out at 19.5 hours, but also lasted just 4.5 hours in another test. The 15-inch model ranged from 18.5 hours to 8 hours. Generally, according to the report, it's expected for battery life to vary from one trial to another by less than 5 percent, meaning that the battery life variances with the new MacBook Pro are very abnormal. Once that was completed, Consumer Reports experimented by conducting the same test using Chrome and "found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs." While the organization can't let that affect its final decision due to its protocol to only use the first-party browser, it's something users may want to try.
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:2)
Something is rotten in the state of Apple.
Re:The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:5, Funny)
I blame the Russians. Clearly they influenced the reviewers, so the results should be ignored.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:2, Insightful)
It has been, every since they went the user-hostile route of gluing/soldering in all parts, to maximize profits on forced initial upgrades.
For a company the touts itself as being "green" it makes super expensive, disposable computers.
Finally, the Apple tax used to be $200-300 on an equally equipped PC, but now it's $500-$2000 more - freakin insane.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:2)
You have a non-disposable computer? I mean besides that Kaypro in the closet.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:2, Insightful)
And I think they did it for both reasons. And suspect someone at a board meeting described it as a "win-win situation."
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Im not a fan of the non-replaceable parts, but i dont think they did it to force upgrades or anything. They just focus so much on compact designs that at some point they had to do it.
How was the kool-aid? I was gunna try it but you drank it all up.
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Fine thank you, just a hint of cyanide.
The reality is that the goal of making ever thinner machines is easier to do if the machine isn't made to be opened for service, glue is an excellent way to reliably fit things together.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:4, Insightful)
Working as an Apple employee in the part of the company that performed non-user updates, how many times did you THINK you would encounter customers who wanted to do the upgrade themselves?
Why would Mac owners who wanted to upgrade their own hardware have even come into contact with you??
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Oh yes they did. I'm quoting this about upgrades in 1986, from wikipedia's article on the Macintosh 512K.
The stock [Macintosh] 512K could also use an 800 kB floppy disk drive as well as the Hard Disk 20, the first hard disk manufactured by Apple exclusively for use with the 512K, but required a special system file (not required by the 512Ke) that loaded the improved ROM code into RAM, thus reducing the available RAM for other uses. Apple offered an upgrade kit which replaced the floppy disk drive and ROMs essentially turning it into a 512Ke. One further OEM upgrade replaced the logicboard and the rear case entirely with that of the Macintosh Plus.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say people doing their own upgrades didn't care about 'apple approved' parts. I bought dozens of macbooks for my employer with base specs and immediately popped a SSD and 3rd party ram in them upon receipt. It was way cheaper and if anything went wrong, I'd put the original parts back and send it in for repair.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone that works in IT I've seen the number of replaceable parts get reduced over time. Today if there is a problem with a computer, and it's something other than a hard drive or it's a really high end computer, then the computer is replaced. If under warranty it gets sent back, if not then it's old enough to write off and send out for recycling. We keep some other parts for the high end stuff, but even that is shrinking.
We keep a pile of spare hard drives for all the newer computers. The CAD people have some big HP towers that we keep spare power supplies and video cards for. We have some old computers that get beat up because they are in workshops, and we keep some RAM for them that we pilfered from the ones that died before. Adding RAM and a new hard drive to an aging computer can mean getting a couple more years out of it. We had a large a pile of spare DVD drives for them but any more the stuff they need comes on USB flash drives. When we run out of spare internal DVD drives then I doubt we'll get more. Since the pile is small now we've become a bit reluctant to replace DVD drives that die.
The pile of spare DVD drives is larger than our pile of spare computers. Not because we have more DVD drives but because the computers are so small. These aren't pokey little things either, Intel i5, 4GB RAM, 250GB SSD, dual DisplayPort, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, USB3.0, and all in a little box smaller than those old DVD drives.
Come to think of it these computers aren't all that different than a MacBook. The only ports on it are video, USB, Ethernet, power, and a little threaded nub for a WiFi antenna if the one built in isn't strong enough. Since the video ports are DisplayPort and VGA we keep a box of DP++ to DVI adapters since most of the displays we have are DVI. If anyone wants a DVD drive, which is rare, we have a pile of USB DVD drives for them. On the MacBook the USB-C ports play the part of video, USB, and power. One would need the right kind of cable to plug into a display or whatever but that's something we'd have to do anyway. Hard drives don't die as often as they used to, I expect our pile of spares to last a long time. In fact we may never have to buy spares again, if trends continue.
I'm starting to feel like a horse veterinarian, if the horse is sick shoot it and get another.
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I'm starting to feel like a horse veterinarian, if the horse is sick shoot it and get another.
I'm feeling a little bit sad. We're upgrading some machines but I know this is the last time we'll be upgrading anything.
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And in your estimation, of the millions of macs sold each year, how many purchasers do you think are like you? Or hell, expand it out further, lets look at the whole world wide PC market. I'd bet it's a lot smaller than you think, especially these days. We're reaching the new age of computers, where they're appliances, not hobbies. Most people are as interested in opening up and upgrading their computers as they are in changing the oil on their cars.
So by that logic car manufacturers would be totally justified in making the oil filter unaccessible and forcing you to buy a new engine everytime it runs dry.
Re: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Score:2)
I believe the logic would imply it was ok for auto companies to put oil changes behind some DRM key, so that you must take it to the dealership to get a change.
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Something is rotten in the state of Apple.
... and that something is the Safari browser. As long as you use a different browser, everything is okay, so this looks like a software issue, that will likely be fixed with a routine update, rather than a hardware issue. My spouse has a new Macbook, and uses Chrome so she has the same UI and can sync bookmarks with Windows and Linux. Her battery life is better than expected, and an improvement over her 2014 model.
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Hasn't the consensus been, recently, that chrome is the resource hog and safari was the faster, less energy using browser?
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What if it dies a week after it expires? And what about the other way round - you drop the machine or spill a ventiwoppamochachocca all over it & it won't boot. Now you can't take the drive out, plug it into another machine and get your data off.
It makes as much sense as welding the clutch to the car.
Chrome produces high battery life on Mac (Score:5, Funny)
Hell must've frozen over. Next thing you'll tell me a reality TV star became President....
Re:Chrome produces high battery life on Mac (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly, the web browser makes the difference between recommended and not. Ignore all of the hardware, its the browser.
I'm curious now, exactly what they are testing. I'm guessing Facebook and YouTube, or similar. Ajax and video. Not my use case, but certainly a popular one.
I guess I won't make fun of Microsoft pimping their browser efficiency any more...
Re:Chrome produces high battery life on Mac (Score:5, Insightful)
They test products based on how the average person will use them. So if the average person spends 80% of their computer time in a browser on Facebook or YouTube, by God they're going to test how the laptop performs running a browser on Facebook or YouTube.
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I'd agree with you except for the case of the iPhone 4. They initially recommended it, but then changed that after antenna gate was revealed.
The antenna was definitely an issue, but Consumer Reports missed it during their testing. What made them change their mind was when someone else discovered it. If the "hold it wrong" test was that important to make them change their minds on it, why didn't they do it initially? If the average consumer could potentially hold the phone in a manner that makes it malfun
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If the average consumer could potentially hold the phone in a manner that makes it malfunction, how did they not see that happen in their first round of testing?
Uh, because that was a bit of a black swan? If they didn't happen to hold the phone that way, why would they even think to try?
By that logic, parents who bought Aquadots [wikipedia.org] for their children should have first eaten some of the beads to check if they had psychoactive drugs in them (i.e. why would they have any reason to suspect such a thing?)
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If they didn't happen to hold the phone that way, why would they even think to try?
That tells me that their testing method is flawed, and they admitted it by changing their recommendation after it was discovered.
By that logic, parents who bought Aquadots [wikipedia.org] for their children should have first eaten some of the beads to check if they had psychoactive drugs in them (i.e. why would they have any reason to suspect such a thing?)
That's.....wow. Maybe it's because you're not supposed to eat aquadots. You are supposed to be able to hold a phone without it losing signal.
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Consumer Reports isn't a tech rag. They don't give a damn about technical specs except as guidelines for what to buy (e.g. "get at least 8 GB of RAM").
They test products based on how the average person will use them. So if the average person spends 80% of their computer time in a browser on Facebook or YouTube, by God they're going to test how the laptop performs running a browser on Facebook or YouTube.
iHOW DARE THEY...
Testing these products like they were to be used by pleb switcheurs!!!!!1!!ONE!!1ELEVEN!!!! Don't they know that you are only ever to test an Apple product by the method suggested by the Holy Jobs and any differences between your results and the specifications in the sacred literature are because you're holding it wrong.
Click bait (Score:3)
More importantly, the web browser makes the difference between recommended and not. Ignore all of the hardware, its the browser.
I'm curious now, exactly what they are testing. I'm guessing Facebook and YouTube, or similar. Ajax and video. Not my use case, but certainly a popular one.
I guess I won't make fun of Microsoft pimping their browser efficiency any more...
Apple and Microsoft both intended to use Kaby Lake processors in their latest iteration but ended up using SkyLake processors instead because of delays. This according to a very reliable news source [slashdot.org] that never succumbs to hyperbole, bad journalism or gives in to the temptation to post click-bait. The linked article even mentions the forced decision to use SkyLake processors as the reason for poorer battery life. The current Microsoft/Apple offerings in this device class are interim devices., so the thing to
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More importantly, the web browser makes the difference between recommended and not. Ignore all of the hardware, its the browser.
I'm curious now, exactly what they are testing. I'm guessing Facebook and YouTube, or similar. Ajax and video. Not my use case, but certainly a popular one.
I guess I won't make fun of Microsoft pimping their browser efficiency any more...
Apple and Microsoft both intended to use Kaby Lake processors in their latest iteration but ended up using SkyLake processors instead because of delays. This according to a very reliable news source [slashdot.org] that never succumbs to hyperbole, bad journalism or gives in to the temptation to post click-bait. The linked article even mentions the forced decision to use SkyLake processors as the reason for poorer battery life. The current Microsoft/Apple offerings in this device class are interim devices., so the thing to do is defer purchasing decisions until devices with the Kaby Lake processors arrive. On the plus side, this story will allow all the Apple critics out there to come here, vent their rage and thus lower their blood pressure.
Nonsense. KabyLake and Skylake are identical except for the GPU. And the reason Apple and MS did not use KB, is because models with an Iris branded GPU haven't yet been released by Intel, and they traditionally have been using the Iris-branded GPU models. The reason the battery life in the new MBP is inconsistent is because the battery is smaller, and have been replaced with more aggresive power savings in macOS, power savings that turns out to be a lot less consistent than just having a larget battery.
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It's a sign of deeper problems. I actually do this kind of thing for a living and I think I can see what their issue is.
Apple relied on software optimization, similar to what mobile operating systems like iOS and Android have done, to get good battery life from small, light weight batteries. For example, the OS stops tasks waking up whenever they want to, and instead bunches them together to limit the amount of time the CPU wastes going from sleep to awake states. Of course, mobile operating systems heavily
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Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor?
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Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 1985? Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan. Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor?
What do Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump all have in common?
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None of this should be read as an endorsement or criticism of Reagan on Trump, but...
I've seen this comparison several times with all the "Reagan, the actor?" jokes from the 1980s. Not so minor differences: Reagan was a multi-term governor of the largest state (California) before becoming President. Before that, he was already viewed as an important political commentator, making speeches for or against campaigns on the national scene. Before that, he was elected as president of the Screen Actors Guild
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Hell must've frozen over. Next thing you'll tell me a reality TV star became President....
Well, I wouldn't say star. But some guy who's been on TV yeah.
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If by "successful", you mean that his ROI was less than sticking the money in an index fund and forgetting about it, then sure, we can call him that. Hey! That means I'm a successful businessman, too! Cool!
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
The batteries aren't big enough, and Apple's power saving features are too aggressive, leading to a situation where the slightest load that pokes the machine in the wrong way (ie, anything that causes the GPUs to switch, or more CPU cores to wake up) will cause your battery % to drop through the floor.
It's a shame, really. If they weren't so obsessed with thinness to the point of discarding RAM slots, SSD sockets, and battery capacity- it might actually be a decent machine.
I wonder how many people pointed out these issues prior to launch. The answer is either "lots" (who were summarily ignored), or "none at all" (because everyone was fearing for their jobs- thou shall not go against thy word of thy great Ive). Either way, this only serves to highlight the growing dysfunction within Apple. And I can guarantee you their response to falling Mac sales won't be to release the machine people want, but rather to cancel the whole lineup entirely.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to one report, they originally planned to use a bigger battery and ran into manufacturing problems and had to fall back to the smaller battery. That said, the story seems suspect, given that they used a bigger battery in every prior model, meaning that the larger-capacity batteries should already exist and be thoroughly tested. It seems more likely that it's a cover story (as in "cover your *** story"), and that some designer's mandate for decreased thickness overrode all the engineers saying that reducing battery capacity was a bad idea.
If the answer is "none at all", it probably isn't because they feared for their jobs, but rather because so many of the older generation have left for other companies, and the new college hires running the show strongly exhibit the Dunning–Kruger effect. But I suspect the answer is "lots", and that the engineers were ignored in favor of thin. The evidence of design trumping function is just too overwhelming in product after product to believe that engineering has much (if any) real input until after things go catastrophically wrong and a product starts slipping.
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Actually, Consumer Reports is really just testing browser battery performance. All they've show is that if you're using Safari, you don't know what to expect for battery life. Chrome was fine.
Pretty good for dishwashers, but computers? Meh? (Score:3)
Consumer Reports is what it is, and for lots of stuff it is great, but because they do pretty well with appliances does not make them experts anywhere else. A very old joke in Motor Trend (or the equivalent; I forget.) has white lab coated guys in beards and spectacles carefully taking notes on clipboards as they push cars off a cliff. To one man's query another guy says, "Oh, that's just Consumer Reports testing cars again."
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Consumer Reports is what it is, and for lots of stuff it is great...
Especially great at trashing Apple when it deserves to be trashed.
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Re:Pretty good for dishwashers, but computers? Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
The point at which I determined CR to be crap for automotive testing is when they gave the Honda pickup truck the recommendation because it had the most comfortable interior and smoothest ride. Of course, it had the smallest bed, the lowest hauling capacity, and the worst trailer rating, but why would you need any of that in a pickup truck?
Re:Pretty good for dishwashers, but computers? Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Says a majority of the people who buy pickups and who, by the way, never fill the bed, haul anything that can't be lifted by two people, or pull a trailer.
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Says a majority of the people who buy pickups and who, by the way, never fill the bed, haul anything that can't be lifted by two people, or pull a trailer.
1. If that were the case, the Honda would be selling pretty well. Honda pulled the vehicle from N.A. sales a couple years ago due to almost non-existent sales. The F-150 is the best selling vehicle in the US.
2. The F-150 is the most popular vehicle amongst people making more than $1 million a year. It's, pretty much all, contractors and ranchers. You know, people who actually use pickup trucks.
3. I know this because half of my family work directly for automotive manufacturers and suppliers, and they know th
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Based on the pickups I see being driven around here, the ability to carry cargo isn't an important consideration for the majority of pickup drivers.
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I didn't read that article, but I can see a reasonable justifcation for the rating. Maybe sometimes people bump the turn signal stalk the wrong way and indicate the incorrect turn direction, and the indicator would help them to know that they're indicating incorrectly, thus avoiding an unexpected (from the point of other drivers) turn.
Not saying that I think it's worth dinging a car's rating over, but there might be some sense to it, especially if you consider the very limits of safety features to be an im
They forgot... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I would like different is more RAM (I use several VMs).
So when the new model arrived I was sure I would be a bit anoyed about the increased ram size and other new features that I would miss, but no.
I'm actually happy I got the previous model. It's so much better for my use.
I wouldn't even consider the new model. Who the f..k buys a pro laptop without any USB A ports? How isolated are you? Dongles? I hate dongles. I'm not spending that much money to carry around a bunch of dongles.
If Apple wants their Pro line to be used by bloggers then ok. They lost their way.
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Re:They forgot... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They forgot... (Score:5, Insightful)
This failure mechanism is so common that there are small companies that specialize in selling different power jacks for laptop motherboards, just so people can replace the broken ones.
The removal of MagSafe from the new MacBook Pro, even more so than the removal of all ports except USB-C, tells me that the people who are designing Apple laptops aren't actually using them anymore. Appearance has completely trumped functionality. I've replaced a lot of broken power jacks on other laptop brands, and I'm not going to buy a MacBook Pro with the same potential failure mechanism.
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Most of the broken power connectors
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I've never seen a laptop fail because the power cord has been tugged on. Not even your cheapest eMachine or MSI laptop and I've been looking after some of the most abused laptops for years (try doing tech support for Geologists, they abuse everything).
Apple fanboys need to stop creaming themselves over a power connector. It's not that great, most of us aren't klutz's that are continually tripping over cor
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They make a device called a "Snuglet" that strengthens the Magsafe 2 connector to the point where you need to give a meaningful tug to get it to disconnect. It's around $20, but totally worth it.
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Re:They forgot... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't argue with that statement. I'm starting to wonder if Apple's slogan should be changed from "Think Different" to "We have an adapter for that!"
Re:They forgot... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you misspelled "MagSafe 2". The original MagSafe was much more robust against those sorts of things (ignoring its tendency to fail to show a proper charge light at times). It was only when Apple redesigned the connector to make the machine even thinner that its reliability started to suck. (Hmm. I'm sensing a pattern.)
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Re:They forgot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Magsafe tends to be really bad if you do things like use your laptop in bed while plugged in. It comes out all the time, every time you move the laptop.
Yeah, that bothered me for like the first 30 seconds. Then I realized that every time I knocked it out I was doing something that would have been gradually breaking any other connector. If you hit it hard enough to knock it out, you want it to fall out instead of transmitting that stress to the jack.
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There, I fixed it for you. Moving around in bed should break a connector? Really? Or you could get a thinkpad and not worry about the connector breaking.
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I will say that the Dell XPS laptops are impressive. I don't own one but I've seen them recommended as an alternative to the MacBook Pro and I took a look at the pricing and specs. This is from someone that has owned three Apple laptops over the last 15 years. Which is an indication of how long they last and how rarely I buy new equipment. I had a bit of a mishap with my newest MacBook Pro so I'm looking to replace it sooner than I had planned.
The Dell XPS is cheaper, has much of the same capability, an
Apple is a fashion brand now (Score:5, Insightful)
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You don't need dongles for most things, you simply get a new cable that has USB-C. I greatly prefer being able to use any of the four ports for anything - charging on either side is really nice, as is choosing which side I want to connect cables to.
All USB-C was absolutely the right choice to make now, going forward it will be way better for people to have four high speed ports rather than waste a single space on a USB-A port.
Finally! Somebody listening to my preaching!
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I expect your right, and in six months it will be obvious; however in the meantime I wandered around Best Buy last week to see what USB-C peripherals they had on sale, and the only ones I could find were MacBook Pros and Apple-branded USB-C-to-X dongles for same... :)
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USB-C is a good choice for many things: charging (not as good as MagSafe, but more compatible), connecting a screen (VGA is getting old) etc. And having more than one is great for flexibility.
But: USB-A is a well established universal connector, and it will not go away for at least a decade. Pretty much every PC accessory has a USB connector, and not having a USB-A host slot is a serious inconvenience.
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Oh excellent that really helps with usb wireless dongles, usb sticks, usb mouse/keyboard, you know the kinds of things you plug into your computer.
Those all attach to the more convenient cheap USB-C hub I got, that includes HDMI, VGA, a charging passthrough USB-C port, and a few USB-A ports. It's actually easier than it was because I used to plug things like keyboards into my computer seperatley, now I just connect one cable and leave everything attached to the hub. With everything going to USB-C it means
Irony (Score:2)
The reason? Too many ports!
Too early even for speculation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course I'm mostly hoping for funny comments (as of days of yore), but in the case of this specific article I was hoping to find something about the possible causes of the variability in battery life. The mention of Safari was quite speculative, but I guess it isn't the job of Consumer Reports to diagnose the problems, just find them?
Anyway, for what it's worth, I have a long history with Apple, but as of this writing I do not anticipate any future purchase from Apple. The company is now dedicated to monolithic Apple-style thinking, which I find rather humorous considering the slogan of their most famous advertising campaign. Anything resembling criticism of Apple is now regarded as double-plus-ungood. Shut uppa your mouth!
I'm not sure how much to blame Apple. I think it is the American laws that basically require big companies to become increasingly evil in order to survive. Being an evil company is not a guarantee of success and huge profits, but being a nice company has become an absolute guarantee of failure, usually via acquisition. (My current list of examples includes NetScape, Palm, Sun, and Nokia.)
I'll check back later, though my hope of finding truly funny comments is fading these years.
Re:Too early even for speculation? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The company is now dedicated to monolithic Apple-style thinking"
They have ALWAYS been dedicated as such. Did you just start paying attention? In any event, this way of thinking has made them the most successful company in the world. And all companies are profit driven. It's how they stay in business, so I'd just get over it and move on with your life.
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You must be new here? Ever heard of the Woz?
Apple actually started at the other extreme of openness and open architecture. It was a hacker culture in those days and the idea was that not only could you understand the inside, but more power to you. Diversity was encouraged, and the employees even coined their own job titles.
It was really the Mac that led the transition to the closed-box closed-mind approach. That led to the... Not sure what to call it. The worst possible kind of endorsement? An anti-endorsem
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Hey Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Completing your work before the battery dies (Score:3)
requires courage.
Because... (Score:2)
... courage!
You wont need battery life longer than your AirPods!
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... courage!
You wont need battery life longer than your AirPods!
Which are also non serviceable and require replacement when the battery inevitably dies. Courageous.
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Integrity... right.
CR has always had a reputation for "testing" things it doesn't know enough about and writing unintentionally hilarious reviews. (All I can think of, not having read CR in years, is bicycles and lawnmowers - sorry.)
They also do things like awarding Tesla the highest score ever, then dropping it to Not Recommended the next year because of "maintenance issues" that don't seem to reflect anyone else's experience.
Take CR with a grain of salt, particularly unless you know enough about the item
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Or the time that they rated computers higher for having more free software "features" (aka crapware).
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I'm sure anyone looking to by a MacBook Pro isn't looking at Consumer Reports for advise...
Well, not anymore.
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I'm sure anyone looking to by a MacBook Pro isn't looking at Consumer Reports for advise...
Advice. Advise is a verb. Advice is a noun.
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I'm sure anyone looking to by a MacBook Pro isn't looking at Consumer Reports for advise...
Advice. Advise is a verb. Advice is a noun.
Why was this post modded down ? Are the cock-gobbling retards who make up the bulk of Slashdot readers now in love with their own stupidity ? You dipshits all ought to be sterilized so you are unable to breed.
You make a good point but whats with the space before the question mark?
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I'm sure anyone looking to by a MacBook Pro isn't looking for advise...
FTFY
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That would be a better response than their actual response: removing the battery life indicator from macOS. No, really, after reports of poor battery life Apple "solved" the problem by making macOS just not report how long the battery had left before it drains.
Plus that would involve Apple actually reading and caring about product reviews. They don't. iOS 10 is trash, the Apple Watch is useless, and this new MacBook Pro is a disaster - and they don't care!
Eventually they'll discover the lesson that Hillary
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I'm actually going to defend Apple removing that useless battery life time estimate meter, as it was never reliable to begin with.
On my older MacBook Pro, it would wildly overestimate my remaining runtime by several hours if I was doing something CPU intensive like playing a game.
I hope that they put it back when they finally fix it, though.
Re:Looks to be software, but that's fair. (Score:4, Interesting)
The bit about Safari and battery life is telling of QC issues.It sounds like safari processes are getting stuck in a race condition and are probably eating 100% cpu on a core. (I've seen this happen with lots of browsers and not just Safari. Modern webpages with megabytes of shitty JS can do this easily)
But, if it's the browser, why is this only happening with the new Macs? I don't see anyone complaining about this problem with older Mac hardware. It certainly isn't something I'm seeing with my 2015 13" MacBook Pro - the battery life is consistently good.
I use Safari as my default browser, but I'm not on Sierra (I was, but rolled back after running into too many annoying bugs.
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If a background daemon gets into a tightly rolled loop consuming 100% of a CPU, the battery will run down quickly. And if that background daemon is one that is specific to the new hardware, it would affect only that model. So chances are, the problem is caused by some of the software that manages the new touch strip.
That said, it is likely that the smaller battery in the new model makes the problem worse than it otherwise would be.
Re:Looks to be software, but that's fair. (Score:4, Funny)
Apple's bread and butter is fit/finish and consistent user experience.
It was when Jobs was in charge. Ives and Cook don't have anyone to keep them in line.
I feel like if Zombie Jobs was forced to use a Dongle to connect his brand new phone to his brand new computer he'd go in search of new brains.
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Apple's bread and butter is fit/finish and consistent user experience.
It was when Jobs was in charge. Ives and Cook don't have anyone to keep them in line.
I feel like if Zombie Jobs was forced to use a Dongle to connect his brand new phone to his brand new computer he'd go in search of new brains.
It's more that the RDF is in it's death throes. Apple products have always been worse than their stated specification (like all other brands) but now people aren't blindly swallowing it.
Also the Mac craze is over So Apple need to do things to keep existing customers constantly upgrading because they aren't getting any new ones.
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Yeah, this seems like a minor issue.
Apple will patch the Safari battery drain issue, Consumer Reports will retest it, and Apple will get their Recommended product statuses back.
The real problem is how this issue got out in the field to begin with. Someone in Apple's QA team is probably going to get fired over this.
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This has always been the case with the MacBook Pro. For example, on the 2014-ish 15" retina models, you could easily burn through an "8 hour" battery in two or three hours by running things like Lightroom, Xcode, Finale (with Garritan instruments enabled), etc. For folks running high-end pro apps, Mac laptops haven't gotten great battery life since they took away our ability to put the machine to sleep, swap in a second battery, and keep going.
Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that the newer batteries
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Well, now you can, kinda, right? Since you can charge standard USB-C, any USB outputting external battery should power the Mac. Carry as many as you want!
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I don't think so. Low-enough USB-C chargers don't register as actually charging the laptop (so for example, trying my 3A USB-C charger for my phone made the computer claimed it wasn't connected to a power source). But you can charge from the iPad USB charger and -- while still losing charge -- lose it pretty slowly.
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That's not much counting against it though, is it? You have a computer that comes with a 60+ watt power supply standard and you complain... perhaps too strong of a word... point out that a 15 watt power supply won't keep up with the power consumption. I'm thinking you should be happy the iPad charger worked at all.
I like my MagSafe power adapter, it possibly saved my laptop once or twice. It's not a standard port outside of the Apple universe so finding a replacement in a hurry might be a problem. It be
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I have occasionally seen this on the 2014/2015 retina MBPs as well, but not often. It certainly isn't the sort of thing that happens frequently or highly reproducibly, though, and I've never seen it drain the battery in an hour. That sort of power consumption shouldn't even be possible with all four cores running full tilt. Maybe the GPU is doing something crazy.
That said, I doubt that this has anything to do with Safari, but rather with something Safari is doing that's tickling a bug related to the tou
Re: (Score:3)
I mean, there's something bordering on bats**t crazy about adding a second CPU and simultaneously cutting the power capacity by 25%.
To be fair that SoC uses next to no power so it isn't a real drain on the system at all. The problem is cutting the power capacity by 25% when the only significant saving in power usage is due to the screen. That's great if you're just doing web browsing or email or whatever but if you're using the CPU and GPU for things like, well I don't know, professional work then just because the screen uses 30% less power isn't going to make up for the reduction in power capacity. You need that 25% average saving acro
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Hey Apple, I could have bought a 15'' Macbook Pro for myself last year, and this xmas I bought an Asus for my wife.
Because I surely am not paying an extra 500 Euro tag to local thieves. So up yours!
As they say in my country in a very liberal translation, "when you want to earn it all in one go..."
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Is there something after the ellipsis in that translation?
Because as written it doesn't mean much.
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So consumer reports does not take into account Tim Cook displays gays, blacks, women and fat people in their MacBook product announcements, and has shinny iWatches????
No clue what the fuck your point is supposed to be. Seems you're butthurt about something.