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Battery - Show Time no longer available
- Thread starter SuprUsrStan
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That's true, but it's not a big loss, as the time remaining is a constantly changing estimate, based on the current workload on the system. It is not accurate at all, since the workload changes from moment to moment.
This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
I get that it fluctuates, but if it drops from say 7 hrs to 4 hours then at least know I'm pulling a lot of power and it might give me a reason to check whats running in the background. It's very nice to have.
Is there any way to get it back?
Is there any way to get it back?
What a pointless alteration to something that did not need it. I find the battery status indicator very useful. Of course it fluxes, but not by much when you're doing one continuous task.
Agreed, the change annoyed me at first, but I've got used to it. Now I need to regularly click on the battery icon to get the time estimate.
so wait, as a first time owner, i look at the question as it doesn't show the time left anymore, however, it does say the time, u just have to click on the icon to see it, apposed to it being displayed before??
lol
i can see where it would've been convenient
lol
i can see where it would've been convenient
I mean, yeah you know the time fluctuates and its inaccurate. The only problem with only showing the percentage is you don't know the rate of consumption. If you see 4 hours on the clock and you know should be around 80%, then you instantly know that your dedicated video card is on and that you're pulling more power than you need. Or if you you're at 2 hrs @ 50% you can catch the flash video that bugged out and is maxing one of your cores at 100% in the background.
This.
I like to open an application sometimes just to see if it's worth it. It gives clearer choices.
Which is better?...
20 minutes of Portal 2
OR
2.5 hours of watching Youtube?...
Without the indicator I would have gone for Portal 2 without knowing I would only get 20 minutes out of it. It's also useful for knowing when your dGPU kicks in and when your CPU hits high usage. The battery indicator changes about 1 minute before the fans come in and if you're quick you can close whatever you're doing and the fans won't start up (once started, they stay spinning for quite a while).
Hope there's some third-party hack for this (as much as I hate third party hacks) or that ML brings it back (can anyone confirm this?).
iStat Menu will show allow you to show the time, but I see it's not as accurate as the OS one. Don't know if its less accurate or more accurate, but for now I've just stuck with the built in one. Maybe ML will re-enable this option?
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I'm with you. Doesn't matter if it's accurate or not or fluctuates or not. I liked it better than the percentage. Thing is that it WILL tell you time when you click the battery icon. Just not allow a constant display. I liked the option. Send a complaint to Apple. Maybe they'll re-enable it if enough people complain.
I'm not even sure the battery percentage is accurate in iStat. Right now I'm looking at 50% remaining as reported by OS X, but iStat says 47%.
Apple Store systems have it
What's really strange about this is that all of the MacBook Air systems on the local Apple Store have battery time remaining as a selection in their menus. My new MacBook Air (13", 2Ghz, 8Mb) doesn't have it. When I asked an Apple Store person about it, he had never heard of it being an issue.
I'm tempted to take my new MBAir into the store and talk to a "genius" just to see what they say about it.
What's really strange about this is that all of the MacBook Air systems on the local Apple Store have battery time remaining as a selection in their menus. My new MacBook Air (13", 2Ghz, 8Mb) doesn't have it. When I asked an Apple Store person about it, he had never heard of it being an issue.
I'm tempted to take my new MBAir into the store and talk to a "genius" just to see what they say about it.
Small App to fix the issue
If you don't want to use iStat Pro here is an alternative: Battery Time Remaining. A small free App that shows the time in the menu bar. Just download and unzip the build to test it.
There is not yet an auto update function, so note that you should check for updates yourself.
If you don't want to use iStat Pro here is an alternative: Battery Time Remaining. A small free App that shows the time in the menu bar. Just download and unzip the build to test it.
There is not yet an auto update function, so note that you should check for updates yourself.
Stupid response. Hey...% remaining "s a constantly changing estimate, based on the current workload on the system. It is not accurate at all, since the workload changes from moment to moment." So why not get rid of that too?
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Exactly Cinemagic. The point isn't whether someone here thinks it's useful or not, the point is some people preferred it and it sure takes more work to remove an option than leave it alone. Why Apple would bother to go to the trouble to remove an option that by all accounts doesn't affect operability of the system if baffling. My guess the engineer who had that section of code figured since he didn't use it much, nobody did so he would bump up his metrics in reduction of the lines of code.
Thanks for digging up this old thread, but the % remaining doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as the time remaining, and is a much more reliable indicator. I wasn't suggesting getting rid of either of them, but only indicating it's not a major loss, especially since you can still access the time remaining on the dropdown menu.