2016 MacBook Pro Denied Recommendation From Consumer Reports Due to Battery Life Inconsistencies

[MH01]

Ohhhhh there we go. Telling someone that has problems that their problems basically don't exist. This go to response of "you're wrong! Indexing and stuff" needs to stop being copy and pasted everywhere when there are clear battery issues.

What do you then say to people who have had theirs since launch and still get crap battery life? Maybe you just don't comment because you don't have anything handy to paste into a conversation. I don't know
[doublepost=1482455438][/doublepost]The comments here remind me of the presidential election. When people hear facts they don't like, they say the source is biased and start smearing them to disregard the results. This is a disgusting trend

I love the indexing excuse, the indexing that only runs with the power cable attached. The current issue with the new MacBook kind of nicely illustrates how many users talk themselves up as power users/pros etc and yet use their machines in such efficient manners that they get great battery

I am confident that if u got my hands on the machines these people claim to have great battery life, the machine would get about 4 hours battery life with my workload and settings.

I completely disagree there are bad / good versions of the MacBook pro , no faulty batteries , just different user workloads .

If the machine is great for you, awesome! Enjoy, if it's failing get a 2015 model if u want to stay with mac, nice refurb deals while they last.
[doublepost=1482500494][/doublepost]

The 2015 MacBook Pro is way to thick and heavy. The only reason to use it is when you already owned one prior to October 2016.

Get a gym membership for Xmas

Difference between 2016 and 2015 15" is not very noticeable , I have both .

 

[ocnitsa]

vitriol is out of hand though. I mean we have this spilling over into posts about AirPods what did the lowly AirPods ever do to the MacBook Pro 2016.

The fact they exist must prove apple took away even more focus from the Mac.

The fact is you have over 60% of your cash form mobile and portable your going to spend more than 60% of your time working on that.

The other thing is the Mac are PC with a shinny box and fancy OS. The PC industry of innovation is flat and has been for almost a decade. So what is apple supposed to do.

The took a healthy risk by apple standards. They came up marginally short. I for one am still using the 15 2016 but with every passing day I think about just hunkering down into a non touch bar model and waiting out the storm.

Apple made a mistake finally. Intel screwed them. So you got the best of what apple had left to design with.

The thing is that time and again people make excuses for Apple (the fault of the market for computers vs mobile, intel's fault, software's fault, your own fault). I've seen numerous examples in the forums of features Apple could have optionized, but didn't. People aren't clammoring for groundshaking innovation...most of the complaints stem from Apples disinterest with real performance (GPU, RAM, CPU), emphasis on thinness and the resulting implications, and price point which is getting outrageous even for groups that have long been accustomed to and cool with the Apple tax. I think it's a real problem when decades long Apple fans are looking at PC options...Razer, and even (gag) Microsoft. I don't buy it that Apple doesn't have the resources to put together a talented discrete team that can give the laptops the dedication they need. Telling people don't let the door hit your butt on the way out doesn't confront a real trend that seems to be going on among a small but previously dedicated group of consumers. Apple is capable of more AND better in the domain of desktops and laptops and doing so would in no way break the bank. Their computers are good for light to moderate computing, sometimes use older hardware (while championing the future of USB-C), and are overly expensive, even for Apple. In terms of the apologists, even if you love the new MBP, why wouldn't you want Apple to do better? Even if you think Apple is doing great, why wouldn't you want them to do better?

 

[BenTrovato]

I love the indexing excuse, the indexing that only runs with the power cable attached. The current issue with the new MacBook kind of nicely illustrates how many users talk themselves up as power users/pros etc and yet use their machines in such efficient manners that they get great battery

I am confident that if u got my hands on the machines these people claim to have great battery life, the machine would get about 4 hours battery life with my workload and settings.

I completely disagree there are bad / good versions of the MacBook pro , no faulty batteries , just different user workloads .

If the machine is great for you, awesome! Enjoy, if it's failing get a 2015 model if u want to stay with mac, nice refurb deals while they last.
[doublepost=1482500494][/doublepost]

Get a gym membership for Xmas

Difference between 2016 and 2015 15" is not very noticeable , I have both .

Honestly what did you expect from people who shelled out 3 thousand dollars for a high end machine?

I don't know how anyone can confidently say there are not good/bad versions of the same tech - of course there are. That's how manufacturing works, not every product will be the same but they fall within an "acceptable parameter" and sometimes that parameter is more noticeable which could be the case on a new product line.

Anyway, I was getting around 7 hours at first, but I'm consistently getting 9-10 hours. Definitely the best mac laptop I've owned but still way over priced.

 

[RoboCop001]

It states in the article that the test is run till the computer shuts down. I believe all reputable review sites do that, using a video camera or something to measure time elapsed.

Good to know (I didn't have time to read the full thing at the time). It's too bad Apple couldn't figure out that battery engineering issue in time. I wonder how much it would've delayed the launch if they just waited.

 

[cardfan]

vitriol is out of hand though. I mean we have this spilling over into posts about AirPods what did the lowly AirPods ever do to the MacBook Pro 2016.

The fact they exist must prove apple took away even more focus from the Mac.

The fact is you have over 60% of your cash form mobile and portable your going to spend more than 60% of your time working on that.

The other thing is the Mac are PC with a shinny box and fancy OS. The PC industry of innovation is flat and has been for almost a decade. So what is apple supposed to do.

The took a healthy risk by apple standards. They came up marginally short. I for one am still using the 15 2016 but with every passing day I think about just hunkering down into a non touch bar model and waiting out the storm.

Apple made a mistake finally. Intel screwed them. So you got the best of what apple had left to design with.

That's BS. Yes, iphone is the magic money machine for Apple. It transformed them from little apple into something huge. And sure, keep that focus on iOS. But Apple's a big company with the Mac being the heart of it. They can still have a dedicated team on MacOS and all things Mac. This is a focus and operations problem. Simple as that.

The PC market has been shrinking some and flat for some companies. But so what? This is Apple. They can leverage iOS and they have..building iOS features into it. Thin and lights? They can do those. But not all things are going to be revenue kings. Some things you just have to do. Call them ecosystem spillover benefit items. Routers, monitors, etc. Gut these at your own peril.

But the main thing is core customers. Your creatives. You have to stay focused on them. Another necessary expense even if the revenues don't justify it in accounting land. This is how Apple stays the cool kid. And in this area, Apple seems clueless right now. Touch screen macs don't make sense. Ok. Got it. iOS is great with touch..and have you seen that pencil? Ok, we got that too. So make them work together. Can't do that? Then you have problems.

Graphics amplifiers? Nope. Anything cool to go with (or justify) USB C besides third party 5k monitors? Nope. Consumer option for a Mac that allows any type of desktop graphics card? Nope. Any pro level mac worth spending on? Nope.

And you wonder why Macs are declining? It's a wonder they're not declining at a faster rate.

 

[apolloa]

There was a report a few days ago that they had a new design of battery which failed a key test, so Apple used an old battery design. I don't think the problem is thinness over battery life, but rather "we've got to ship this product before the holiday" rather than perfecting the new batteries.
[doublepost=1482490109][/doublepost]

I use Chrome over Safari because Safari often just wouldn't load websites. Chrome never fails.

Also Chrome pretends to be Safari and will handoff to Safari on my iPhone, or vice-versa.

Didn't know Chrome could do that! I use it all the time on my Macs because Safari is useless and won't load websites as you say. However I use my iPad a lot now which means Safari but it works very well with ad blocking software.

 

[Abazigal]

The thing is that time and again people make excuses for Apple (the fault of the market for computers vs mobile, intel's fault, software's fault, your own fault). I've seen numerous examples in the forums of features Apple could have optionized, but didn't. People aren't clammoring for groundshaking innovation...most of the complaints stem from Apples disinterest with real performance (GPU, RAM, CPU), emphasis on thinness and the resulting implications, and price point which is getting outrageous even for groups that have long been accustomed to and cool with the Apple tax. I think it's a real problem when decades long Apple fans are looking at PC options...Razer, and even (gag) Microsoft. I don't buy it that Apple doesn't have the resources to put together a talented discrete team that can give the laptops the dedication they need. Telling people don't let the door hit your butt on the way out doesn't confront a real trend that seems to be going on among a small but previously dedicated group of consumers. Apple is capable of more AND better in the domain of desktops and laptops and doing so would in no way break the bank. Their computers are good for light to moderate computing, sometimes use older hardware (while championing the future of USB-C), and are overly expensive, even for Apple. In terms of the apologists, even if you love the new MBP, why wouldn't you want Apple to do better? Even if you think Apple is doing great, why wouldn't you want them to do better?

Maybe doing "better" doesn't necessarily mean "better Macs" in the greater scheme of things.

If Apple decides that maybe Macs don't factor into their long-term roadmap, that maybe their energies and resources are better channeled towards iOS and maybe new markets such as self-driving cars because that's where the future is headed, I will respect that. I may not like it, but I will accept and respect that.

 

[sziehr]

That's BS. Yes, iphone is the magic money machine for Apple. It transformed them from little apple into something huge. And sure, keep that focus on iOS. But Apple's a big company with the Mac being the heart of it. They can still have a dedicated team on MacOS and all things Mac. This is a focus and operations problem. Simple as that.

The PC market has been shrinking some and flat for some companies. But so what? This is Apple. They can leverage iOS and they have..building iOS features into it. Thin and lights? They can do those. But not all things are going to be revenue kings. Some things you just have to do. Call them ecosystem spillover benefit items. Routers, monitors, etc. Gut these at your own peril.

But the main thing is core customers. Your creatives. You have to stay focused on them. Another necessary expense even if the revenues don't justify it in accounting land. This is how Apple stays the cool kid. And in this area, Apple seems clueless right now. Touch screen macs don't make sense. Ok. Got it. iOS is great with touch..and have you seen that pencil? Ok, we got that too. So make them work together. Can't do that? Then you have problems.

Graphics amplifiers? Nope. Anything cool to go with (or justify) USB C besides third party 5k monitors? Nope. Consumer option for a Mac that allows any type of desktop graphics card? Nope. Any pro level mac worth spending on? Nope.

And you wonder why Macs are declining? It's a wonder they're not declining at a faster rate.

Simple there are vastly more normal consumers now for the Mac than there are pros. Truly how many creative pros exist in the world in total. That number will come in sub 10 million. They are going to sell more MacBooks this year than that number. So we expand pro and you not hit me the network and system admin / developer pro. I use this machine with little issue.

So Pro is BS term good bye.

Creatives are real and they got left behind. The other professions who are pros did not get left behind so much.

 

[triton100]

Sadly, I agree with you completely. To me, the first sign that things had gone amiss at Apple was the release of OS X Lion, which was widely regarded as the Vista of OS X. Lion was what drove me away from the Mac. I was a student and needing to upgrade my rather slow 2006 iMac at the time for studies. I could have got a Mac Mini, but I decided to get a Windows 7 machine instead. Even more sadly, I still have this Windows machine, and it is by far the fastest computer in our household!! I never really liked Windows, and was disgusted with Windows 8, so later on I got both an iMac and Macbook Pro to work on, both of these from 2013. I originally wanted to sell off my Windows machine when I got my iMac, but quickly found I couldn't due to the iMac being gutless, unreliable and OS X to be far too iOS based to be used as a serious desktop environment. Both Apple machines have been a huge disappointment, and now I find little reason to buy another Mac.

As far as I am concerned, I didn't abandon Apple, they abandoned me. I'm expecting that in a few months they will completely gut the iMac, and at that stage, they will no longer make ANY computers worth buying.

OS X is superb. It's a sophisticated advanced and smooth operating system. I'm literally bemused as to how much better or what other improvements people expect from it.

 

[sziehr]

So many apologists and deniers omg. This is a very big deal as it's the first MacBook not recommended by consumer reports.

This is also the first MacBook to have such a wide delta for each run. I think I smell some sort of nasty bug.

 

[Marzzz]

Mildredop said: ↑
Or, more accurately, you reap what you sew.

Um, can't resist.
You reap what you sow.
It's an agricultural reference. Reaping is gathering the harvest while sowing is the planting of seeds.

So, Sew, Sow. Hmm - only one relates to reaping.

Um, I think "Mildredop" was making a joke...

 

[Red Fummoxed]

Well crap - now I'm torn. I generally do the opposite of what Consumer Reports recommends as I've had horrible experience with their recommendations in the past, but I had already passed on the new rMBP. Looks like I might have to reconsider it. As for the testing, the results from Consumer Reports seems very odd and I suspect that something is flawed in their testing methodology (unsurprising) as it just doesn't seem like someone would see such a drastic variation in battery life like that.

My 15" arrived Monday. I am finding battery life seems reasonable after the update, screen is awesome, keyboard is quite nice. I don't agree with all the criticism with this computer, but I will say that they should have redesigned Magsafe and I did have to purchase one dongle so I could use a USB serial cable (big deal).
Those are all first world aggravations, and for me are not big detractors to the product.

I can see, however, why you would want to wait as laptops in general are in a transitional state and Apple does seen to be lagging behind in all their products. But if you have an older machine that just isn't cutting it any longer (my 2009 MBP had issues I no longer could fix like the Airport card connector was broken), then upgrade. I put off upgrading as long as I could, and I am happy with the new machine.

 

[citysnaps]

This is also the first MacBook to have such a wide delta for each run. I think I smell some sort of nasty bug.

I smell incompetent testing.

A nasty bug that would yield too-good-to-be-true battery life test results of 19.5 hours, 18.5 hours, and 12.75 hours? Seriously?

I mentioned this yesterday and so far have received zero push-back.

Seems there are a lot of people here, apparently with no curiosity, thinking there's nothing odd with that and therefore CR's overall conclusion is just fine.

 

[deany]

Anyone in the UK subscribe to http://www.which.co.uk/
Consumer Reports looks like they are similar to our 'Which?' in the UK
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which?

 

[Red Fummoxed]

The other thing is the Mac are PC with a shinny box and fancy OS. The PC industry of innovation is flat and has been for almost a decade. So what is apple supposed to do.

The took a healthy risk by apple standards. They came up marginally short. I for one am still using the 15 2016 but with every passing day I think about just hunkering down into a non touch bar model and waiting out the storm.

Apple made a mistake finally. Intel screwed them. So you got the best of what apple had left to design with.

The utility of Touchbar has yet to be played out in my world. Yeah, the ability to lock the screen with one touch is nice, and slide bars for volume is cute, but aside from that I am not sure it is worth the effort on Apple's part. Editing with Vim and Touchbar is just as odd as I thought it would be, but I am sure I will get used to it.

I really think the next innovation will be pushing away from Intel. I no longer need Bootcamp, I no longer need to run Windows in a VM, I am sure I am not alone in this. It may very well be that my next MacBook will run a processor whose name starts with A.

 

[TheDreaded26]

Just bring iOS's feature "Low Power Mode" to these Mac's, that solves everything, then Apple will have the freedom to do and say what they want.

I would appreciate that

 

[Phil in ocala]

I know his was due to the issues with the new battery design, but I hope it does something to wake Apple up. They need to stop putting the design team first, they seem extremely arrogant.

And I love the way they quoted Apples response

Apple has decided that the answer is more EMOJEs .....that is what is needed.

 

[thekeyring]

OS X is superb. It's a sophisticated advanced and smooth operating system. I'm literally bemused as to how much better or what other improvements people expect from it.

The only complaint I have is how slow it is on non-SSD systems. Supposedly, it's difficult to get an OS to run great on HDD and SSDs so Apple's focus on SSDs is understandable, but if that's the case they should have stopped selling Macs with hard drives in them about 4 years ago.

 

[t0mat0]

How likely is this just a software issue? WOuldn't the battery hardware likely be ok, it's just something is draining it at different/faster rates? Presumably a cause or causes that aren't easy to find.

 

[sziehr]

The utility of Touchbar has yet to be played out in my world. Yeah, the ability to lock the screen with one touch is nice, and slide bars for volume is cute, but aside from that I am not sure it is worth the effort on Apple's part. Editing with Vim and Touchbar is just as odd as I thought it would be, but I am sure I will get used to it.

I really think the next innovation will be pushing away from Intel. I no longer need Bootcamp, I no longer need to run Windows in a VM, I am sure I am not alone in this. It may very well be that my next MacBook will run a processor whose name starts with A.

I need VM I use them all the time to spin up VMDK images to test and work.

I suspect your right we will see a laptop with an A in the title of the CPU in less than 5 years. I think the next MacBook refresh will be with A series chips. They will have to start the process at a WWDC as kind of a joke like well we are making to so if we ever do decide to go to arm your ready already type thing and drop the mic. That will enable developers to just do as before compile large binaries and I swear that the app thinning idea plays into this as well.

So yeah I think your right. I do not think they will go across the range quickly but eventually just maybe.

This will be a slow march. They will need some sort of cover story for developers that is thin but holds up just long enough that the verge does not out them hardcore

 

[dmarkman]

yeah, horrible, horrible machine!
I own one (15"), no problem whatsoever, never used Chrome

now go and try to buy one in the nearest AppleStore, those computers so bad that Apple heavily discounted MBP 13" and 15" you can buy them for half a price (I'm kidding of course)

 

[sziehr]

How likely is this just a software issue? WOuldn't the battery hardware likely be ok, it's just something is draining it at different/faster rates? Presumably a cause or causes that aren't easy to find.

This is my hope. Though it looks like old school battery memory. I know it is not for sure I know that. That is just the way it looks. I hope apple can sort out the discharge bug and kill it.
[doublepost=1482503862][/doublepost]

I smell incompetent testing.

A nasty bug that would yield too-good-to-be-true battery life test results of 19.5 hours, 18.5 hours, and 12.75 hours? Seriously?

I mentioned this yesterday and so far have received zero push-back.

Seems there are a lot of people here, apparently with no curiosity, thinking there's nothing odd with that and therefore CR's overall conclusion is just fine.

I find it odd hence I said lets assume they are sound in the testing method. That is assumption 1.

Then the wildly different results is a flaw in the testing or a flaw in the machine. I would love to ready the methods in great detail and you know what is great CR does provide that.

So I suspect we are looking at some sort of glitch if and only if the CR results can be verified by like 9to5 Mac or hell even editors here.

If we can not produce the same large delta in data which your right normally points to a flaw in a testing method then it is bunk.

If we can produce the same delta or similar delta. I then have to assume that it is a firmware bug with discharge rates.

So I have 2 assumptions 1) CR did there job and it was sound 2) it can be reproduced by some one other than CR.

I am not a fan of CR nor lover.

I am looking at this as a giant science experiment. I know we can improve the controlled for variables with say a automator script clicking every 5 seconds or so. The point is this data is mixed bag till we can get more than I got this you got that data points. I need to see 2 machines loop this test 5 to 10 times. The delta should be sub 10%.

I assume that when we do that if we get similar results there is a firmware flaw. If not then it was poor testing.

So lets all simmer down and science this and not play slap fight.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I feel like this warrants somebody getting fired at Apple...

It's not good when your new product is considered the worst in over a decade.

 

[aevan]

The irony is that not a single person on this planet complained the 2015 was too thick. I haven't met anybody online or offline who said they wished it was thinner. Yet they trimmed it down along with the battery.

Same as no one complained it was too slow, and yet, every year we expect faster computers. I am, for one, happy that they reduced the volume and weight of the new MBPs. My battery life is, more or less, the same as it was, but the computer is easier to carry around.

 

[vapourtrails]

Whatever the story is (Donglegate etc) the media piles on because it drives the story and people's attention. Just watch the endless YouTube videos hyping the stupid dongle gate story. It's as much for attention as anything else.