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Today, on Apple Store, a genius told me that the difference bewteen 1,1 / 1,3 is super slight... I sill hesitate to buy it.
 
Can't compare my 1.3 vs 1.1's out there, but I use my computer with Lightroom, photomechanic and photoshop etc when i'm away from my main computer (15inch Macbook Pro). So far I am very pleased with this computer except I am disappointed with my battery life. Can't seem to get anywhere near what apple advertises or what others are reporting. Might have to return for a replacement.
 
Are you doing all the things that they tend to do in those battery tests, usually written in tiny fine print? Things like setting the display to around 75% brightness or less, turning off wifi and Bluetooth, turning off keyboard backlighting etc... For example, if you're working solidly using Lightroom and photoshop like you would do in a normal day's work, with the display at max brightness, then this is a very different use case to the advertised "9 hours of iTunes movie playback" or whatever it is. Any apps that regularly ask the CPU to ramp up will draw significantly more power than usage where the computer is next to idle, more or less. I've seen most people saying that if they use the machine at full tilt (pushing it with CPU intensive tasks with everything switched on and full screen brightness), they mostly report around 4 hours at best.

That said, I have read around the place that some people have been getting noticeably poor battery duration, even when testing out a very basic use scenario following all the low-consumption guidelines. I've also heard that laptop batteries these days have to "settle" after a few rounds of charges before they really deliver their peak performance. But if none of this is working for you, then maybe you got shipped a dud and you should see about getting a replacement. Let us know how you go and how helpful they are with recognising the problem if indeed it is a fault.. I really hope this doesn't happen to me when mine gets delivered, would hate to have to go through a return. Also I've found that the apple geniuses here in France can tend to give you a bit of attitude (basically acting like you don't know what you're talking about and if there's a problem, it's your fault), so I really really hope I won't have to deal with that particular nightmare! Good luck..
 
Are you doing all the things that they tend to do in those battery tests, usually written in tiny fine print? Things like setting the display to around 75% brightness or less, turning off wifi and Bluetooth, turning off keyboard backlighting etc... For example, if you're working solidly using Lightroom and photoshop like you would do in a normal day's work, with the display at max brightness, then this is a very different use case to the advertised "9 hours of iTunes movie playback" or whatever it is. Any apps that regularly ask the CPU to ramp up will draw significantly more power than usage where the computer is next to idle, more or less. I've seen most people saying that if they use the machine at full tilt (pushing it with CPU intensive tasks with everything switched on and full screen brightness), they mostly report around 4 hours at best.

That said, I have read around the place that some people have been getting noticeably poor battery duration, even when testing out a very basic use scenario following all the low-consumption guidelines. I've also heard that laptop batteries these days have to "settle" after a few rounds of charges before they really deliver their peak performance. But if none of this is working for you, then maybe you got shipped a dud and you should see about getting a replacement. Let us know how you go and how helpful they are with recognising the problem if indeed it is a fault.. I really hope this doesn't happen to me when mine gets delivered, would hate to have to go through a return. Also I've found that the apple geniuses here in France can tend to give you a bit of attitude (basically acting like you don't know what you're talking about and if there's a problem, it's your fault), so I really really hope I won't have to deal with that particular nightmare! Good luck..



Thanks for the reply. Yeah i'm just talking about browsing and emails at 75% brightness. Not sure the exact tests apple does but id LOVE to try it on my computer. Last night I did an old school "calibration" hoping this would help. So many mixed reviews on proper battery maintenance (even from apple) that i wasn't sure. Last night was the first time i let the battery completely run down. I charged fully and now I am seeing a more promising battery "estimate" but still below the advertised 9-10 hours at 75% brightness and browsing. My estimate is 6.5hours. But it fluctuates. Not sure what people consider "light" usage? I am assuming it still involves actively using the computer for the entire time right?

As for "APPLE-TUDE" - the combination of French and Apple "genius" is truly a recipe for arrogant DOUCHiness. HAHAHA
 
Thanks for the reply. Yeah i'm just talking about browsing and emails at 75% brightness. Not sure the exact tests apple does but id LOVE to try it on my computer. Last night I did an old school "calibration" hoping this would help. So many mixed reviews on proper battery maintenance (even from apple) that i wasn't sure. Last night was the first time i let the battery completely run down. I charged fully and now I am seeing a more promising battery "estimate" but still below the advertised 9-10 hours at 75% brightness and browsing. My estimate is 6.5hours. But it fluctuates. Not sure what people consider "light" usage? I am assuming it still involves actively using the computer for the entire time right?

As for "APPLE-TUDE" - the combination of French and Apple "genius" is truly a recipe for arrogant DOUCHiness. HAHAHA

Not sure which model you have, the standard 1.1 gHz or a different one? I read the fine print of how Apple ran their battery tests for the rMB to come up with "up to 9 hours web usage" and "up to 10 hours itunes movie playback". They used 1.2 and 1.3 machines only for these figures, maybe that's a hint that generally these machines have a slightly better general battery performance and efficiency. So if you have a 1.3 and you're getting way way below 9 hours when replicating the exact conditions apple use for their test then maybe something is up. I'd go take a look at the Apple site, there's a page where they go into detail about batteries and their testing procedures. If you're able to identically reproduce their tests with results many hours less than they suggest should be the case, maybe you have a case to ask for an exchange. But actually I have no idea if they have a policy on acknowledging under performing batteries, it could be that they'll just say that their tests are estimates with a wide possible range of variation and so be it. Anyway hope it gets better and good luck if you decide to try to get a swap out..
 
Joining in, though the hole pro. thing is kinda silly (Don't shoot). Have not found any real life tests that compare the 1.1 and 1.3 Ghz model. I'm a PHP developer, meaning I run Apache, some-kind-of local db. server and either a lightweight editor like Sublime Text 2/3 or a full IDE (PHP storm). Do I need the 1.3Ghz model or will the entry 1.1 Ghz do just as fine. I have been working a lot on a Macbook air (mid 2012) and it's entry model worked just fine.
 
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To be fair to the OP, I think people might be misunderstanding what was meant by the use of the word "professional" in this context. English isn't the first language of everyone here, so sometimes subtleties of expression can be a bit off the mark. I think what was meant was that of all the "official" published reviews by all of the major tech press (be it blogs, magazines, tech/computing sites etc), they've almost always worked hands on with a base model machine and have made all of their meaningful assessments based on that. I think the OP was hoping for someone like Anandtech or Ars Technica perhaps, to actually put a 1.3 Ghz machine through its paces and give us the lowdown on what they think. As opposed to the only real opinion floating around on this model coming just from ostensibly more unbalanced sources, i.e., people who bought one.

Anyway for what it's worth: I ordered a 1.3 machine but to be honest, from all my extended periods of trying out a base model and really using it as if I owned it, it really felt like it would be more than fine for what I would want to use it for. Browsing with at least 12 tabs never got clunky, jumping around on the squarespace editor to do site updates was about as responsive as it is on my iMac (the site itself can be a little slow so it really didn't make much difference being on an rMB), and skipping back and forth between pixelmator files to do some photo retouching at the same time was all fine. Like many people, I found that with the combo of a decent amount of RAM (for this level of machine) and very fast PCI storage (at least for this class of machine, it's notably faster than competing SSD storage), makes for a decent working experience when jumping between apps none of which require hefty rendering clout.

My reasoning for going to the 1.3 was mostly for other reasons: Firstly, I wanted the bigger storage option of 512, that felt like a non-negotiable for the kind of use I have in mind. And once you've already gone to that extra expense, the additional 150 bucks or so to bump up the processor a little felt anecdotal and probably worth the punt. Secondly, I tend to hang on to machines for a while and repurpose them once I move on to other ones, so I thought having a better starting point on this machine would make it feel less utterly superseded for at least a couple of years. Basically, none of my reasoning for going for the faster CPU was purely because I thought the base model was too slow and this could be make or break..
 
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To be fair to the OP, I think people might be misunderstanding what was meant by the use of the word "professional" in this context. English isn't the first language of everyone here, so sometimes subtleties of expression can be a bit off the mark. I think what was meant was that of all the "official" published reviews by all of the major tech press (be it blogs, magazines, tech/computing sites etc), they've almost always worked hands on with a base model machine and have made all of their meaningful assessments based on that. I think the OP was hoping for someone like Anandtech or Ars Technica perhaps, to actually put a 1.3 Ghz machine through its paces and give us the lowdown on what they think. As opposed to the only real opinion floating around on this model coming just from ostensibly more unbalanced sources, i.e., people who bought one..

Absolutely right about what do OP mean!
 
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