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

[polee]

This is something which Apple has to live with for a while at least until it blows over. Well, the Galaxy Note 7 issue is still vivid in the minds of many. Bad publicity is never good for any company for whatever issue at hand...

 

[bizack]

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.

Wow, you really want to defend this machine while making hyperbolic statements about testing methodologies. I don't believe consumer reports said anything about installing 'social media plugins' or other pieces of software. Also, what planet are you living on where there's such extreme variances in temperature? CR looped some web pages, in the same environment on multiple machines. The fact that they could produce such varying results is the part that's troublesome. Also, you're apparently making things up, like the amount of 'connected data' vs. battery life over the next five years. Please stop being an armchair engineer - you're clearly speaking misinformation.

 

[Pootmatoot]

Battery life will just become another "unimportant" feature now that Apple isn't industry leading, just like "specs" suddenly became irrelevant when Apple released an under specced compared to market product a few years ago...

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Wow, you really want to defend this machine while making hyperbolic statements about testing methodologies. I don't believe consumer reports said anything about installing 'social media plugins' or other pieces of software. Also, what planet are you living on where there's such extreme variances in temperature? CR looped some web pages, in the same environment on multiple machines. The fact that they could produce such varying results is the part that's troublesome. Also, you're apparently making things up, like the amount of 'connected data' vs. battery life over the next five years. Please stop being an armchair engineer - you're clearly speaking misinformation.

You haven't actually refuted anything above even if you believe you have. All you did was turn a discussion into yet another trolling personal attack and that does nothing to solve the issue here. And you just take CR's word for it that they tested consistently even though you aren't a witness to it. You are fine with insulting someone online and equally fine not questioning the methodology. I think you should take a deep look at who you are as a person before you open that web browser again to communicate with humans.

Bear in mind over 100 reviews of these machines have been out, a simple Google search will show you the average ratings are very good, and people like me (who was a pessimist before buying) have been using the new MBP for over a month. How CR's staff outweighs us all I have no idea.

 

[richpjr]

Battery life will just become another "unimportant" feature now that Apple isn't industry leading, just like "specs" suddenly became irrelevant when Apple released an under specced compared to market product a few years ago...

Isn't it amazing how that works?

 

[dudeslife]

I don't blame the engineers.. they are being unfairly constrained by a teapot designer. Blame also falls on tim cook who is a bigger computer failure than Sculley ever was...

 

[therealseebs]

CR has been testing computers for years, they've been very clear about their methodology, and you want me to believe that it's gone completely wrong and been totally useless exactly once, while all their other reviews have correlated strongly with what everyone reports. Also that the people posting here about wildly inconsistent battery life results are all fakers or idiots.

I think Occam's Razor wins out here: The simplest explanation is that the 2016 MBP has battery life issues that are not fully understood but probably relate to apparent engineering difficulties they ran into with their original planned batteries.

 

[bizack]

Edit - Deleted

 

[Uplift]

I've never been too concerned about battery life.

I've always felt my Macbook Pro's battery has drained fairly quickly [going back to 2012].

A test loading 10 websites over and over at 50% battery?

Thats no good to me who uses 3-4 battery draining apps at any given time including lots of browser tabs in several browsers, virtual machine, music and tons of general every day apps. I'm constantly thrashing my Mac so I don't expect anywhere near 10 hours. If I want to browse a few websites I'll likely pick up my iPad.

Now if the battery is defective thats a different story, but low powered.. who cares, I'll charge it when it dies.

It is mainly plugged in anyway.

 

[imm22]

...

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

I'm a industrial / product designer and by that I have to use some powerfull CAD/CAE/CAM software on windows (boot camp). But found out that my new MBP 15" late 2016 doesn't have the amd PRO enterprise drivers it needs. Apple provided a simple Radeon crimson driver for games. No Cad support like with the AMD FirePro or Radeon Pro WX
This renders this mobile workstation useless for me. That's a petty since I've started to like it ...

 

[mac_in_tosh]

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

Unless a defect in the device itself is the source of the randomness, i.e., an intermittent problem, in which case the testing will uncover it.
[doublepost=1482630527][/doublepost]

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

Apparently, Phil Schiller is one such person.

 

[Garage Battle]

They should have never done touchbar. I guarantee most of their problems stem from that decision (and the crappy keyboard)

 

[rextilleon]

Wow, the fanboys are feeling the heat. It has a been a bad year for Tim's Apple----Iwatch update bricking Series 2 watches, the totally uninspired release of the Mac Books (after years of waiting). No update to the ancient Imac line nor the even more ancient Mac Pro line. Dont worry fanboys, your objects of desire are still hot sellers and Tim will learn from this. God Bless you Apple, and the LiL Fanboys all over America and the world!

 

[rwaggoner]

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.

None.

The Consumer Reports piece was trash and included really amateur analysis.

My MBP is getting 10-12 hours as promised. And that's using Chrome. I hate Safari.

The one thing I do wish is a slightly longer key travel, though I have grown to like the keyboard decently. I like how it cradles my fingers better than my old 2011 MBP. I don't like that old keyboard anymore after using the new one. But, a tad more travel would be nice. But, thank heavens it's more than the 12 RMB. That isn't enough. They did improve things with this new MBP.

 

[edenorchestra]

Wow, the fanboys are feeling the heat. It has a been a bad year for Tim's Apple----Iwatch update bricking Series 2 watches, the totally uninspired release of the Mac Books (after years of waiting). No update to the ancient Imac line nor the even more ancient Mac Pro line. Dont worry fanboys, your objects of desire are still hot sellers and Tim will learn from this. God Bless you Apple, and the LiL Fanboys all over America and the world!

He means it.

 

[leman]

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.

While I understand what you mean, I can't really agree. The CR report strongly implies that the new MBP has subpar battery life. While in reality, what they find out is more along the lines of "the battery life is sometimes good and bad when browsing the web with Safari but good when browsing same websites with Chome". That is not really helpful, neither to the casual user or a more advanced one. CR themselves state that they observe better battery life when using Chome. Which seems to imply that some if the websites they are using is hitting a bug in Safari (btw I also noticed that Safari under 10.12 tends to use higher-powered graphics more aggressively for some reason). What I am trying to say here is that CR investigates a complex issue - they themselves make it very clear that things are not as simple as "battery capacity is too small" - but their conclusion throws all that complexity out of the window and is based on an arbitrary simplification. They could just as easily have written: buy the MBP, its great, but avoid Safari as it seems to have battery problems

 

[SteveJUAE]

While I understand what you mean, I can't really agree. The CR report strongly implies that the new MBP has subpar battery life. While in reality, what they find out is more along the lines of "the battery life is sometimes good and bad when browsing the web with Safari but good when browsing same websites with Chome". That is not really helpful, neither to the casual user or a more advanced one. CR themselves state that they observe better battery life when using Chome. Which seems to imply that some if the websites they are using is hitting a bug in Safari (btw I also noticed that Safari under 10.12 tends to use higher-powered graphics more aggressively for some reason). What I am trying to say here is that CR investigates a complex issue - they themselves make it very clear that things are not as simple as "battery capacity is too small" - but their conclusion throws all that complexity out of the window and is based on an arbitrary simplification. They could just as easily have written: buy the MBP, its great, but avoid Safari as it seems to have battery problems

I equally agree the "problem" is not simple and perhaps their wording could of been different eg "Given Apples known optimisation and normally good battery performance with native apps we have scored our finding lower due to problems we encountered with Safari"

I also note that a lot of these posts are somewhat clickbait and are a result of probably some comeuppance simply due to the history of replies and postings that many used to demonstrate some superior point of trivia (eg magsafe) only now to find Apple did not really care as much as they thought/guessed

There's no smoke without fire but equally no OEM is immune to problems and most are fixed within the first 6 months but given the extended period between major releases which adds fuel to the fire and the smaller battery Apple may have a bigger challenge than normal.

 

[Ghost31]

I don't blame the engineers.. they are being unfairly constrained by a teapot designer. Blame also falls on tim cook who is a bigger computer failure than Sculley ever was...

Well thats a hyperbolic statement if I've ever seen one. Taking over a company and making it one of the most profitable in the world is hardly being a failure as a CEO
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None.

The Consumer Reports piece was trash and included really amateur analysis.

My MBP is getting 10-12 hours as promised. And that's using Chrome. I hate Safari.

The one thing I do wish is a slightly longer key travel, though I have grown to like the keyboard decently. I like how it cradles my fingers better than my old 2011 MBP. I don't like that old keyboard anymore after using the new one. But, a tad more travel would be nice. But, thank heavens it's more than the 12 RMB. That isn't enough. They did improve things with this new MBP.

Oh your sample of 1 says the battery is fine? Well then we can just disregard this issue altogether. Pack it up boys! We're done here

 

[maflynn]

Bad publicity is never good for any company for whatever issue at hand.

What I noticed in 2016 is that Apple had to be very reactive, not just in the laptop realm, but in many of their product lines. Instead of being the one controlling the narrative, something they tended to do very well in the past, they had to react to negative news.

While the battery issue, is a type of problem that may be unforeseen, they've had to deal with other negative issues, and so it turns into a cumulative image problem for Apple.

For the battery, I think its a two fold problem.
1. They shrunk the size of the battery, and based on what I read they really tried to use a shaped battery like the one in the MacBook but couldn't over come some obstacles so they were forced to use a smaller battery to make the time line.

2. Software problems contributed to battery issue, and this is something that can be resolved in the short term.

 

[Apple 26.2]

Using Chrome is especially stupid./QUOTE]

Care to explain why?

 

[itguy06]

Probably not many. The PR department on the other hand....

Seriously, I've been a die-hard Mac user since 2002 with the G4 iMac. Had many Macs over the years - the iLamp, G4 Powerbook, first unibody MBP, 27" iMac, 11" MBA. The wife has had a G3 iBook, Original Intel Core2 MacBook, 12" MBP. I love OS X and think it's the finest OS there is. I love my iPhone and Apple watch. I'm a shareholder in AAPL for close to 10 years now. IOW a Fanboi. Apple has lost the plot and, IMHO headed for another Scully-era malaise.

I want a better machine for mobile photography than my 11" MBA - when I bought it it was for travel to replace an iPad. It's great for that but now I need a decent machine for Lightroom and Photoshop. Was hoping for great things from the new MBP. They may be great machines but they are not for me. I just bought a 4k Lenovo Yoga 710.

PRICE IS INSANE. $2300 for the 15" model is nuts. The laptop I got has the latest Kaby Lake, 256GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM. It's light and seems to be well built. I could buy 2 of these things and have money left over. And have the newest and best CPU's...

Functionality. I played with the touchscreen part of this for a while. While it's not perfect it shows promise. Flipping to tablet mode was cool for editing pictures. Interacting with them with touch was pretty much like an iPad or iOS device. Sure Win 10 is not optimized for touch but it seems good enough. Time for Apple to at least try it out. A hybrid OS X/iOS would be killer. Don't even get me started on the port situation.

Poor QC and Apple's attitude. Seems like every day there is more and more issues with these new machines. I listen to Mac Power Users and even Katie got a bum unit. And had to go though hoops to get a replacement - much too many. This is not the Apple of 2008 where I had a bum HDD in my Unibody and took it to the store and they gave me a new one. On a unit bought at Best Buy!!! Seems that Apple, while still the best needs to step up the game in this regard. A brand new machine should not have anyone going through hoops to get a replacement!!!

We'll see how this Windows/Lenovo experiment goes. I may be back in short order but Apple needs to get it's **** together and get it's head out of it's you know where - the prices they charge are insane and the ays of a $0-250 "Mac Tax" are gone - it's more like a $1000-2000 Mac Tax!