Consumer Reports fallout: How many MacBook Pro engineers' holidays are spoiled?

[saintforlife]

How many MacBook Pro engineers had their holiday plans cancelled do you think because of the Consumer Reports battery fiasco? Can't help but feel sorry for them.

I can only imagine Apple is working on putting out a iPhone 4 antenna gate like PR campaign to address the battery issue on the new MacBook Pros, which means the poor engineers will be working through the holidays to come up with an answer for the execs.

 

[LiemTa]

That's funny because I don't know a single person who gives a rat's ass about what Consumer Reports has to say.

 

[Naimfan]

None.

And therein lies the problem . . .

 

[ag29]

They won't have to work, Apple already covered up the issue by getting rid of the battery indicator.

But in all honesty, I have the Mac 13 inch with TB and the battery could be better, but it's not all that bad. I wouldn't say the battery is bad to the point where its an actual issue.

What can the engineers possibly do? They can't change the hardware inside the Macs unless they Recall all the Macs and issue another battery. They can try to issue a software update that will help improve battery life but the issue is most likely hardware related.

 

[leman]

What I find very curious is that their battery test were so inconsistent between the runs. This suggest that there is no issue with the battery itself, but that there might be some problems with the software. The next logical st p is to sample the app power consumption over time while testing the battery life in order to find the offending process.

 

[kipwheeler]

Yes, as Leman points out, Consumer Reports' testers seem to think it was software, not hardware. They ran the test with Safari as the browser, constantly reloading the same webpages for multiple hours., and they got the crazy wide-variety over three runs ranging from 19 to 3 hours! They tried it again with Chrome, and the battery life all evened out fairly evenly over three runs. That surely means software, not hardware?

 

[coolbreeze]

That's funny because I don't know a single person who gives a rat's ass about what Consumer Reports has to say.

Mostly 60-yr old mail order/infomercial [customer] grandmas.

(mostly kidding) but their opinion isn't the gospel. Perhaps in the pre-internet days where their magazine was eagerly anticipated each month, but these days? Bah, just another opinion.

The sky isn't falling, folks. But those fishing for a reason not to drop the money on the new MBPs, use this I guess.

 

[skids929]

Mostly 60-yr old mail order/infomercial [customer] grandmas.

(mostly kidding) but their opinion isn't the gospel. Perhaps in the pre-internet days where their magazine was eagerly anticipated each month, but these days? Bah, just another opinion.

The sky isn't falling, folks. But those fishing for a reason not to drop the money on the new MBPs, use this I guess.

Precisely!

 

[Lucifer666]

What type of twisted logic is this?

"Oh the poor engineers (he he). No soup for them"

(Then again, it actually could be sincere. A Macrumors first? )

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Battery fiasco? Lol. More like bad methodology by this 'report'. If they got 3 hours on one test and 10 hours the next time then it should be obvious they don't know how to run a consistent testing procedure.

I know that some reviewers do stupid things like install all their social media notifications (which kills)and then surf YouTube (which varies in bit rate). I know some reviewers don't take into account things like ambient temperate (cold discharges battery more than warm). I know reviewers often aren't aware or remember what they were doing to cause dGPU to kick in.

No doubt Sierra needs updates. But most reviewers are basically crap at what they do. Even someone decent like Lisa...she installs Bootcamp and then she starts running games. On a pro laptop. Doesn't bother with Autocad, Resolve, Maya, Smoke, etc

 

[DarwinOSX]

How many MacBook Pro engineers had their holiday plans cancelled do you think because of the Consumer Reports battery fiasco? Can't help but feel sorry for them.
I can only imagine Apple is working on putting out a iPhone 4 antenna gate like PR campaign to address the battery issue on the new MacBook Pros, which means the poor en this;
http://www.imore.com/consumer-reports-fails-earn-macbook-pro-credibilitygineers will be working through the holidays to come up with an answer for the execs.

Consumer Reports "tests" were idiotic and nothing but link bait. Using Chrome is especially stupid.
Rene Ritchie has the best take on this.
http://www.imore.com/consumer-reports-fails-earn-macbook-pro-credibility

 

[therealseebs]

I know it's the "in" thing to automatically bash anything that isn't nice enough to Apple, but have y'all forgotten how much stock everyone used to place in ConsumerReports back when they were saying nice things about Apple?

They're actually pretty good. They give clear test methodology, and you can like or dislike the test, but it sure is hella suspicious to me that all these people who have never previously had complaints about the test's methodology as applied to all the other Apple products it's been used on suddenly jump on it when it reaches the same conclusions that a lot of other users had about this machine's battery life.

 

[leman]

I think Ritchie is spot on here. The consumer reports does not help, it simply increases confusion. They didn't complete the tests and don't know what is going on. There is crearky an additional deciding factor and CR dorsbt even try to find out what it is. If it were an academic contribution, it won't be publishable because of a lack of proper investigation.

 

[Immiddx]

None.

And therein lies the problem . . .

Yeah, because as everybody knows the correct response to one organization getting odd battery results is to panic and rescind your employee's holiday off-time. How is it that you don't run Apple, given that you have all these amazing ideas?

 

[SteveJUAE]

I think Ritchie is spot on here. The consumer reports does not help, it simply increases confusion. They didn't complete the tests and don't know what is going on. There is crearky an additional deciding factor and CR dorsbt even try to find out what it is. If it were an academic contribution, it won't be publishable because of a lack of proper investigation.

It only makes sense for those that are more computer literate

If the average user buys Apple for a premium experience and "it just works" philosophy be it an IPhone/Ipad/MAC then CR reporting is in context for this user.

Dodging the bullet by blaming the test and any other reason is simply denying the basic's and I presume this is why Apple are interested in CR results, who had already stated they had shared their findings with Apple and are happy to retest.

Many of us have an above average interest or professional interest in laptops etc but equally many buy because of the logo, is CR letting this latter group down for cheap advertising as some seem to suggest, I don't think so IMO.

 

[Cameron604]

That's funny because I don't know a single person who gives a rat's ass about what Consumer Reports has to say.

I don't know a single person who cares about the quality of diapers, gay bars, or prune juice. But that's because I'm not a parent, gay, or old.

Consumer Reports is big.

 

[dallas112678]

How many MacBook Pro engineers had their holiday plans cancelled do you think because of the Consumer Reports battery fiasco? Can't help but feel sorry for them.

I can only imagine Apple is working on putting out a iPhone 4 antenna gate like PR campaign to address the battery issue on the new MacBook Pros, which means the poor engineers will be working through the holidays to come up with an answer for the execs.

Apple still has engineers working on Macs? That's kind of shocking actually.

 

[richpjr]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the attack the messenger if you don't like the message as that is what always happens here whenever anyone has anything faintly critical to say about Apple. If you read these forums much, you'll notice a lot more people than CR reported crappy battery life on their new MBs. I haven't noticed it on my new MBP, but then again I use Chrome.

 

[Scott G.]

Battery fiasco? Lol. More like bad methodology by this 'report'. If they got 3 hours on one test and 10 hours the next time then it should be obvious they don't know how to run a consistent testing procedure.

I know that some reviewers do stupid things like install all their social media notifications (which kills)and then surf YouTube (which varies in bit rate). I know some reviewers don't take into account things like ambient temperate (cold discharges battery more than warm). I know reviewers often aren't aware or remember what they were doing to cause dGPU to kick in.

No doubt Sierra needs updates. But most reviewers are basically crap at what they do. Even someone decent like Lisa...she installs Bootcamp and then she starts running games. On a pro laptop. Doesn't bother with Autocad, Resolve, Maya, Smoke, etc

Wouldn't you want reviewers to test in that way? It seems more likely that that would, being how the majority are using their machines daily. Most (any?) consumers aren't setting up a temperature controlled zone, not installing their social media notifications, and remaining aware of whether the dGPU is running a certain task over the iGPU. I, personally, like to see reviewers use the machine how I normally would and get their results from that. A controlled battery test, in favorable situations, doesn't tell me as much..

 

[David58117]

I know it's the "in" thing to automatically bash anything that isn't nice enough to Apple, but have y'all forgotten how much stock everyone used to place in ConsumerReports back when they were saying nice things about Apple?

They're actually pretty good. They give clear test methodology, and you can like or dislike the test, but it sure is hella suspicious to me that all these people who have never previously had complaints about the test's methodology as applied to all the other Apple products it's been used on suddenly jump on it when it reaches the same conclusions that a lot of other users had about this machine's battery life.

This sums it up nicely.

I'm glad Apple is getting flak for this release, but what surprises me are the excuses people are making here..even after complaining nonstop about the same issue consumer reports had a problem with....

 

[maflynn]

I don't know a single person who gives a rat's ass about what Consumer Reports has to say.

CR is a very popular organization and it has a lot of sway and power. You see that by Schiller's comments about working with CR instead of just ignoring or denying the issue (which they tend to do).

Just because you may not know people who thinking highly of Consumer Reports, doesn't mean no one does. In my circle of friends and acquaintances its something that people rely on to make purchase decisions

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Wouldn't you want reviewers to test in that way?

No because a rigid testing methodology for obtaining accurate data must eliminate factors that produce random results. In science and tech testing that's called 'controls'. That's how companies gets the maximum battery life numbers it displays in spec sheets.

If you want real world battery life with varied usage, social media notifications, video and music streaming that have varied and unpredictable bit rates - then the results of those tests should be published on a separate line or paragraph from the first result. There are reviewers in magazines who have done that for years and I'm surprised CR didn't.

Regarding real world usage, our computers are receiving more and more connected data and background processes every year. Even if we double battery capacity in the next five years you still won't get more duration because the amount of data inbound and outbound is increasing at a similar rate. You'll keep seeing people ignore this and then go online to cry and complain. You can't win. The internet is noisy like a nursery school.

 

[GDF]

I am glad Consumer Reports is calling Apple out. If anything, it will only make things better. This definitely was not Apple's usual laptop rollout, where there battery times were very conservative and then moste end users got better battery life than advertised.

Walt Mossberg, who has been one of Apple's best supporters, has been calling Apple out a lot during the last year and did on the new Macbook Pro too. Apple needs to step up there game and get back to what end users like me expect from them, as I am one of there fanboys, but think they have underperformed and taken there end users for granted lately. The Macbook Pro is expensive and Apple should strive for perfection with it. Steve Jobs would not have let this stuff fly.

 

[Karnicopia]

To me it sounds a lot like when my photo agent and email were synching. I had wild fluctuations the first couple days and then it settled down into stable battery. This could explain why some reviewers didn't see this type if thing as they may have waited for all of the indexing to finish. Can't see how else the same exact loop on the same exact laptop under identical conditions would produce different results. There's some external variable going on here and to me seems like this is a good possibility for the culprit.

I'd a agree though for someone to go public with wildly inconsistent results like this and no attempt to understand why the differences is really surprising. I agree with the Rene piece there are some huge glowing red flags that I'm kind of shocked they didn't attempt to follow up on in any meaningful way. Another one that is surprising is they did get reliable results under a certain test but then ignored that to take the minimum of a wildly inconclusive test. Yeah they gave their default browser excuse but that's a pretty horrible representation of what the tests actually show which is that something was wrong with their safari test, the chrome tests seemed to give consist results. The conclusion you should draw from that is that there was an some kind of issue with the safari test that somehow has to be resolved but the chrome test seems to be giving consistently good results. Not we're going to take the worst result from a test that was clearly not working and run with that. The could have still withheld their recommendation until the test issue is resolved but to run with the worst result in a clearly malfunctioning test like that is honestly just strange. Seems like they hyped it up as much as they could to force a response from Apple.

 

[therealseebs]

No because a rigid testing methodology for obtaining accurate data must eliminate factors that produce random results.

Proposed methodology: Don't test the 2016 MBP.

Since that eliminates the "random" results, clearly that's the correct methodology.