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Portables (Apple) Apple Hardware

Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue (cnet.com) 254

Posted by msmash from the sorting-things-out dept.
Last week, Consumer Reports concluded that it won't be recommending Apple's new MacBook Pro models. The American magazine published since 1936 by Consumers Union, a nonprofit organization, cited inconsistent battery issues for not recommending the MacBook Pro for the first time in its history. Apple's VP of Marketing has since addressed the report, saying they are working with the magazine to understand the results. From a report: Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller followed up with a tweet late Friday saying Apple is "working with CR to understand their battery tests. Results do not match our extensive lab tests or field data." Consumer Reports' review says that in-house testing revealed wild fluctuations in battery life for unplugged MacBook Pro computers. In the case of the 13-inch model without a Touch Bar, for example, battery life ranged from 19.5 hours to just 4.5 hours. Apple says the devices should operate for up to 10 hours between charges.
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Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue More

Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue

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  • I'be been a Mac user for 13+ years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:10PM (#53557073)

    And, even to me, it's obvious if Phil Shiller is the point person on this, Apple is looking for a PR "solution" to this battery life issue.

    This is antenna-gate all over again.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hognoxious ( 631665 )

      It's spelled Schiller. Freudian slip?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That is nonsense. From Apple's perspective this IS primarily a PR problem at the moment because it is highly unlikely that CR's testing is so advanced and extensive that they would be able to detect issues that Apple internally could not.
      Especially things like extremely varying battery life ranging from 4.5 hour to 19.5 hours.

      And obviously if they do find reason to think that CR is on to something, a VP will have direct access to all of the companies resources to drive further investigation forward.

      • Re:I'be been a Mac user for 13+ years (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @06:13PM (#53557539)

        That is nonsense. From Apple's perspective this IS primarily a PR problem at the moment because it is highly unlikely that CR's testing is so advanced and extensive that they would be able to detect issues that Apple internally could not.
        Especially things like extremely varying battery life ranging from 4.5 hour to 19.5 hours.

        I think you are missing the point, if you think this is about "advanced and extensive" testing.

        I don't expect the Consumer Reports' crew to be experts on this sort of thing. I expect they will run things more along the lines of how a typical non-technical Mac user will run things, because CR's team probably isn't that much more knowledgeable about Macs than the typical end user. And many end users - even before CR said anything - had already been reporting these same problems... so it seems darn obvious there is an issue, whatever Apple's "advanced and extensive" internal testing may (or may not) indicate.

        That's kind of the point of Consumer Reports... to test things the way typical real-world people do.

        And, frankly, we don't know if there was some subset of Apple's internal tests which did indicate this sort of issue, but the company decided weren't critical enough to cause them to hold production. The iPhone 4 antenna issues showed it can - and does - happen. Heck, how did Samsung release an exploding phone, if all these companies' "advanced and extensive" internal testing is infallible?

        • Because the amount of testing that a company can do internally pales in comparison to what customers will do when you put millions of units in their hands. Internal testing can't cover the same scale as the mass market.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
            But the company, especially one that charges premium prices like Apple, can and should control the number of 'failures' that occur. They have a lot of control over the quality of the parts that are put in, and they are supposed to be the one you go to if you don't want problems.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Guspaz ( 556486 )

              Yes, but this sounds more like a software issue than a hardware issue, I think it's unlikely that battery lifetimes being so inconsistent on a single unit would be from a hardware issue: if it was, you'd expect to see consistently poor battery life.

              My guess is there's some glitch in the power management that's causing the notebook to get stuck in a high-power state.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by rtb61 ( 674572 )

                Downloaded apps are usually the problem. People forget that something as simple as running two calender programs can cause real problem, especially if the access the same repository. One set a setting, the other detects the change and resets it and the first sets it again and etc. etc. and this happening as fast as the system allows and going on and on. The common trend to accessing the same shared data storage, actual files, can cause real problems with programs never ever designed to run together, fightin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          And, frankly, we don't know if there was some subset of Apple's internal tests which did indicate this sort of issue, but the company decided weren't critical enough to cause them to hold production. The iPhone 4 antenna issues showed it can - and does - happen. Heck, how did Samsung release an exploding phone, if all these companies' "advanced and extensive" internal testing is infallible?

          Well, Samsung had a design flaw that the law of large numbers meant turning a rare event into a probable one.

          CR works b

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by plover ( 150551 )

            Given the description of the test includes repeatedly downloading the same pages on an "internal" hosted server, they're at least attempting to control for variables like automatic updates, random network scans as a result of malware attacks, or variations in advertisements delivered. An "external" test risks exposing the machine to too many random power draining events.

            Or do you mean "external" as in an external simulated mouse and keyboard instead of an "internal" script? CR has always been scrupulously

        • Heck, how did Samsung release an exploding phone, if all these companies' "advanced and extensive" internal testing is infallible?

          Actually, given that many hundreds of consumer devices hit the market each year and there are a handful of really bad failures like antenna-gate and the exploding Note, I'd say they're running around 3-sigma. To me, that seems just about in-line with expectations that we'd see 99.7% or so reliability of the testing mechanisms.

          Building a testing regimen that moves it to 99.99 or 99.999% of products released without a defect would likely double the testing costs and add weeks (or months) to the release schedu

        • I don't expect the Consumer Reports' crew to be experts on this sort of thing. I expect they will run things more along the lines of how a typical non-technical Mac user will run things, because CR's team probably isn't that much more knowledgeable about Macs than the typical end user... That's kind of the point of Consumer Reports... to test things the way typical real-world people do.

          Allegedly, what CR did was to set up a script that would constantly reload a half dozen pages in Safari, and they got the wildly varying battery life. When they re-ran the test in Chrome, it was solid and in line with Apple's marketing info. Was Safari not using the cache properly? Was Safari properly refreshing the cache and Chrome was relying on it? Something else? Either way, it's clear it's not a hardware problem, which makes CR's refusal to rate the Macbook questionable. Their justification is that th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        4.5h sounds about right if the computer is doing something.

        19.5 hours sounds about right if it somehow got disconnected from the net and all the pieces pinging the internet stopped to run magically, keeping the load low and also the performance setting was set to low.

        and look at the wording "OPERATE". that doesn't mean doing anything... and if it's the day that it wants to download updates over wifi sure as f it's not going to have 10h+.

        problem with apple testing their own hw is of course that they can make

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        That is nonsense. From Apple's perspective this IS primarily a PR problem at the moment

        Apple wants to cast FUD on CR's testing process, until Apple is able to get a handle on the issue, which is obviously real,
        and obviously something Apple has missed, but CR's testing may not have yielded enough facts so far for Apple to figure it out.

        Or Apple may know very well but can be biding their time for PR purposes.

        Why else would Apple publicize them working with CR before they have some concrete information?

      • Re:I'be been a Mac user for 13+ years (Score:4)

        by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @03:20AM (#53558801)

        I'm kind of mystified by the abuse of CR testing here. There's kind of a meme that CR can't test anything besides blenders, AFAICT it originated back in the day when they started testing stereos and audiophiles got bent that their testing wasn't judging whether exotic equipment produced the exotic sounds or wasn't using the requisite 00 gauge welding cable to connect the speakers.

        They're not disassembling the batteries and running the cell material through a mass spectrometer or conducting elaborate electrical tests of the batteries themselves; they don't need to.

        What they do need to do is design reasonable structured tests of laptop usage and keep track of the battery's lifespan during these tests and compare it to the manufacturer's claims. That's well within CR's ability and it's perfectly valid. Either the computer battery does what the manufacturer claims it will do or it doesn't.

        What CR is likely complaining about is that Apple modeled their battery life on some average use pattern that's not very realistic or very easy to deviate from in ways that seriously affect battery life.

        What Apple should have done was modeled their battery life based on more intensive use cases. But of course then you can't make the laptop even thinner and the battery even smaller and then make long life battery claims. IMHO Apple is a victim of their own thinness obsession and is fudging the numbers to make it look positive.

    • And, even to me, it's obvious if Phil Shiller is the point person on this, Apple is looking for a PR "solution" to this battery life issue.

      This is antenna-gate all over again.

      I think that is jumping to conclusions.

      Phil is definitely "on" this, even reaching-out to individual Users who have Responded to his Tweet on CR, asking them to send him certain specific Logs to help Apple diagnose this problem.

      The difference is, Uncle Phil is doing this on a one-on-one, direct basis, rather than issuing some "Press Release" explaining why MBP Users are just "charging it wrong", or something.

      I honestly think that, while it is true that Schiller wears a Marketing hat, he is high-enough

  • Working on the report instead of the battery (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lucm ( 889690 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:17PM (#53557117)

    They are trying to prove them wrong, they are not working on fixing the battery issues. Within a few days we will all learn on Slashdot that Consumer Reports was doing it wrong.

    • Re:Working on the report instead of the battery (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:27PM (#53557163)

      In other news, Apple has secretly hired a team of "Test Conformance" executives and engineers from Volkswagen, to ensure that the battery lasts longer, when it detects that it is being tested.

      Back in my younger days, vendors would add obscure flags to the C compiler, to ensure that it produced code optimized for benchmark tests.

  • Up to (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bagofbeans ( 567926 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:23PM (#53557143)

    Apple says the devices should operate for up to 10 hours between charges

    up to 10 hours includes lasting only 10 minutes.

    • Apple says the devices should operate for up to 10 hours between charges

      up to 10 hours includes lasting only 10 minutes.

      That's true but historically, Apple has been quite honest about how long the battery will last. Up to the point where you'd have a decent chance of doing better.

      However with the current "Late 2016" generation, there's people with 15" MacBook Pros who report not getting even half of that. So it's really a break from the past.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      And zero minute! :P

  • Working with (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:27PM (#53557159) Homepage Journal

    What a vague phrase - "working with".

    Does this mean bribing them to write more favourable reviews, or threatening them with lawsuits if they don't?

  • CR could be setting a bad precedent.

    • Re:Do all companies 'work with' CR after a bad rev (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @06:00PM (#53557475)
      CR will work with companies regarding details of test conditions and procedures to help them isolate any problems the testing might have turned up (which is probably the case here).

      The actual products that are tested though are bought off of store shelves by undercover CR employees posing as regular customers. That way a company can't rig the actual sample of the CR product being tested, unless they're specifically invited by CR to see if the product is defective (which has happened a few times with cars which failed some of CR's minimum safety tests.)

      This is one of the reasons I maintain a CR subscription even though the vast majority of their testing is too "average user" to be relevant to me. I think it's incredible valuable to have at least some published reviews based on random samples, instead of manufacturer-provided samples.

  • Apple says the devices should operate for up to 10 hours between charges.

    So their complaint is that CR sometimes gets more runtime than they should?

  • Battery life is not the real issue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dcavanaugh ( 248349 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:46PM (#53557223) Homepage

    Battery replacement is. After a few years, battery life will be half of whatever it started with. At that point, the MBP and its irreplaceable batteries can never stray very far from the charger. Users might accept that, as many people don't depend on the battery all that much. The ultimate deal breaker is soldered SSD. When that fails (and it will), the computer is junk.

    If Apple offered a MacBook Pro with HALF of the current battery life, HALF of the memory, and HALF of the storage capacity, but made the components replaceable, they would sell a lot more of them, even if they were TWICE as thick.

    • this is what people did in the 80's. repaired expensive electronics.

      except apple is making money from the repairs too. cheaper to spend $500 to repair a laptop than buy a new $2000 laptop

    • Re:Battery life is not the real issue (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @05:53PM (#53557445)
      This problem (after a few years, battery life being half what it was when new) has pretty much been solved with larger battery capacities and lower power components. Lithium-ion batteries do degrade this way based on the number of charge/discharge cycles. But the depth of discharge matters more [batteryuniversity.com]. A battery which will only last 300+ cycles when charged to 100% and discharged until dead, can last 1200+ cycles when charged to 75% and discharged to just 25% before being recharged. The relationship is non-linear - reducing the cycle depth by half results in about triple the battery longevity. So it isn't just a matter of shallower discharges using the battery less. In other words, the worst thing you can do to the battery is to charge it all the way to 100% and discharge it all the way to 0%.

      Most newer batteries integrate this into their design. When they report 100%, the battery is actually at 80% or 90%. When they report 0%, the battery is actually at 10% or 20%. The Li-ion battery packs in EVs are a good example - they're limited between 20%-80% charge, or 15%-85% charge. Many laptops also add software which further limits the charge - stopping the recharge process when the battery reads 80% or 90% (which probably corresponds to 65% - 80% of the battery's real capacity). Couple this with the user making sure s/he never discharges the device completely, and you've eliminated the deep charge/discharge cycles which degrade the battery the most.

      In the old days, laptops used a lot of power and batteries were bulky. So manufacturers had to use 100% of the battery's capacity just to eek out 2-3 hour battery lives. This is what led to many of those batteries dying after a few years. Nowadays, battery energy density has improved, and mobile electronics use a lot less power. So manufacturers can put in a small or medium-sized battery in a laptop and still get 5-8 hours using only 60%-80% of the battery's capacity. So they've taken advantage of this to replace the swappable battery with an integrated battery and cut down on weight and size. The charging circuitry limits it so it can't actually charge to 100% or discharge to 0%, thus allowing these integrated batteries to be used for well over 1000 cycles - usually more than enough to last the lifetime of the device.

      • Re:Battery life is not the real issue (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dcavanaugh ( 248349 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @07:22PM (#53557835) Homepage

        You are correct about managing battery charge level, power drain, depth of discharge, etc. But it's not easy to get 4 solid years of service out of ANY battery in a portable electronic device. Does it happen? Sure. Reliable? Depends on who you ask. 1000 cycles is about 3 years of everyday use, maybe 4 years of Monday-Friday use. Managed batteries work reasonably well on phones. Then again, phones take a beating; the average user can be expected to lose or break their phone before the battery dies. Most laptops are not subject to that much physical abuse. I'm OK with a phone that lasts 3-4 years, but I expect more out of a well-maintained laptop.

        Apple seems to think that battery lifetime is good enough to limit the number of in-warranty replacements, while not so good as to extend the useful life of the product beyond 4 years. They may be right, but I'm not so sure a 4-year disposable laptop is worth what they ask for it.

        • Most of my laptops have batteries older than 4 years and the runtime is just fine.
          My 2011 17" still runs close to 2h, and I doubt it was once over 2.5h
          My ages old PowerBook Pro or how it was called (the 2" thick / 11" screen model) once got its battery replaced. The only drawback of it is: it only runs 10.4 and has no support for WPA 2 WiFi keys. But it is on ethernet most of the time anyway :D

        • But it's not easy to get 4 solid years of service out of ANY battery in a portable electronic device. Does it happen? Sure. Reliable? Depends on who you ask. 1000 cycles is about 3 years of everyday use, maybe 4 years of Monday-Friday use.

          So it's not easy, except if you have a laptop that you don't charge and discharge every day like ..... every laptop? So based on your logic any business machine should last more than 4 years. Hell most personal ones will last more than 4 years since many of them are used on power. Portable devices are rarely charged every day.

          And a 5 year disposable laptop will please >90% of customers so really the odd opinion doesn't matter. This is a battle that was lost long ago, and people bought the devices happil

          • So it's not easy, except if you have a laptop that you don't charge and discharge every day like ..... every laptop?

            Many laptops are actually used as desktop computers most of the time, plugged into their charger, occasionally taken into a meeting or used on the train. In that scenario the battery will last forever. If it's used as a pure desktop computer, it doesn't even matter whether the battery is absolutely shot.

      • Although the general point is probably correct that min/max charge levels affect Li-ion lifespan, I would be careful with using batteryuniversity as a source of information. It's really a weblog of a small manufacturer of battery chargers that presents a couple of small-scale test results as if they represent the absolute truth for all brands and types of Li-ion batteties.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      I wish apple made midrange towers again, really that's what my macbooks are, a ultra thin sleek laptop tethered to a wall of dongles and devices and chargers, cause otherwise its a ipad with enough battery to piss me off

    • Battery replacement is. After a few years, battery life will be half of whatever it started with. At that point, the MBP and its irreplaceable batteries can never stray very far from the charger. Users might accept that, as many people don't depend on the battery all that much. The ultimate deal breaker is soldered SSD. When that fails (and it will), the computer is junk.

      If Apple offered a MacBook Pro with HALF of the current battery life, HALF of the memory, and HALF of the storage capacity, but made the components replaceable, they would sell a lot more of them, even if they were TWICE as thick.

      Sorry to burst your fantasy-bubble; but my 2012 MacBook Pro gets indistiguishably-differernt battery life from when it was new. If it is "down" at all, it is only by a few minutes, and nothing I could ever put a finger-on, given varying workload.

      As far as soldered SSD, I'm more with you on that one. But I will bet you will find that less than 1% of MBP owners suffer a catastrophic SSD-failure before they are ready to replace their machines anyway. I believe that this is essentially what Apple is using [samsung.com].

      A

  • Last mac has me sad (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Looking at alternatives for the first time in 16 years.

    Apple doesn't want to be a computer company anymore.

  • The battery life hasn't been... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    that bad for me, but lack of RAM just makes my new MacBook useless. It has the same amount of RAM as the summer of 2011 MacBook it replaced. It's sad Apple gave-up over five years ago on improving their laptops.

  • Make it bigger with more room for a bigger battery (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday December 26, 2016 @06:15PM (#53557549)

    Make it bigger with more room for a bigger battery.

    This thinness is killing the mac! the mini, mac pro, imac, laptops have all been hit by must look good and be thin. If they want to be thin why not have a 1u mac pro?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nnull ( 1148259 )
      I always figured people that wanted thin would just get the Macbook Air. People buying Macbook Pro's expected to have a powerful laptop and don't care how thin it is.

  • Since the problem goes away if you use Chrome. I wonder if the Safari team has brought in people from the iTunes team. God knows iTunes is a crawling horror.

  • Wonder how much money Apple will throw at Consumer Reports, to change their opinion ;)

  • Let me applexplain !

    It's all for the consumer, reduced battery life is a boon to users! And no one at apple ever used that sd card slot anyway.

  • I can not longer simply close my laptop and wake it up buy opening it without having a crash after 4 to 6 weeks. And it gets noticeable slow and causes a a so called kernel task to consume 75% or more CPU.

    It is related to the amount (about 100) and age of tabs. Ofc eating CPU will kill the battery. As I'm usually using my laptop connected to the grid, that is not an issue, but the slowing down is an issue and the constant spinning of the fans.

    I had a 15" laptop from my company a few month ago, running 10.10

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