This is not true. Safari would last significantly longer than Chrome.
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Consumer Reports Retesting MacBook Pro Battery Life After Apple Says Safari Bug to Blame
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You're not required to use Safari to get the best battery life. Safari is the problem here, not the solution. When running safari, they were having a battery drain. Apple says it's due to a setting they had in Safari most people don't have set on.
They tested it with Safari running because Safari is listed as one of the apps in Apple's standard battery test. So they're trying to validate Apple's runtime claim using the same settings.
Do you really care about the battery life for whatever your pro work?
If you are working on anything intensive, you have to plug the power anyway.
If you are working on anything intensive, you have to plug the power anyway.
I'd say CR was testing it right - browsing the internet means loading new pages over the network all the time, not loading a cached page (or pages) over and over again.
Last month, the new MacBook Pro failed to receive a purchase recommendation from Consumer Reports due to battery life issues that it encountered during testing. Apple subsequently said it was working with Consumer Reports to understand the results, which it said do not match its "extensive lab tests or field data."
Apple has since concluded its work, and says it learned that Consumer Reports was using a "hidden Safari setting" which trigged an "obscure and intermittent bug" that led to inconsistent battery life results. With "normal user settings" enabled, Apple said Consumer Reports "consistently" achieved expected battery life.
Apple's full statement was shared with iMore and other publications:Apple said it has fixed the Safari bug in the latest macOS Sierra beta seeded to developers and public testers this week.
Consumer Reports has issued its own statement on the matter to explain why it turns off Safari caching during its testing and other details:Consumer Reports said it will complete its retesting of MacBook Pro battery life and report back with its update and findings when finished.
Article Link: Consumer Reports Retesting MacBook Pro Battery Life After Apple Says Safari Bug to Blame
I'm no Apple apologist, but the Consumer Reports test was laughably amateurish, as even the author admitted in the article that Safari could be to blame.
Consumer Reports sucks. The fact that they say they turn off caching to work the batteries harder, but are also trying to show consumers what they can expect is a classic red herring. I would bet significant money that the typical Consumer Reports reader would NEVER think to turn off page caching in Safari, let alone actually know how to do it, so CR doing so was setting up an unrealistic / uncommon scenario for what people could expect.
Apple should sue them, to recover the $18,000.00 in lost revenues caused by the 10 CR readers who bought a PC instead of a new rMBP.
Apple should sue them, to recover the $18,000.00 in lost revenues caused by the 10 CR readers who bought a PC instead of a new rMBP.
One browser would have to be the best no matter how you twist or turn it. A bug could also cause extreme CPU-usage in any browser, not only safari/chrome.
Consumer Reports' big failing wasn't so much the test conditions, which seemed reasonable, but in accepting such wildly varying results. It's clear they wanted to publish a click-bait article and didn't care about investigating the issue any further.
This is a curious contention given that Consumer Reports says in their own statement that they've not re-run the tests yet, so apparently Phil is quoting anecdotal evidence from an uncontrolled test or is simply talking through his hat.
I agree with CR's test methodology. While most people visit the same sites often, there are many situations when browsing where there will be a lot of cache misses. Researching error messages, debugging server crashes, writing a history paper, reading research reports in one's field, and any number of other activities often bring us to sites that would not be cached, and may be visited just once and never again. Loading 10 (or even a thousand) sites over and over again from cache would not produce a good real-world test, either.
I'm eager to see the results with the cache disabled and the bug fixed. As stated in the original article, Chrome worked great under the same conditions.
Really? Was it Consumer Reports's fault that there's a bug in Safari?
Why would they reach out to Apple? They don't reach out to any other company when the results are negative. Does Apple deserve some sort of special consideration?
There was a bug in Safari software. That's not CR's fault or problem. They pulled retail machines off the shelf. They tested the machines in the same manner they tested every other macbook previously. The same macbooks that, until the latest testing, never failed the test. They tested over several weeks, before and after a software update. From all of that you conclude they rushed to publish? Based on what exactly?
I asked if Apple deserved special consideration. Looking at it, that's exactly what they got. CR wasn't obligated to send their data to Apple (which helped Apple find a bug in the software). But I'm still curious about this rush to publish.
Really? Was it Consumer Reports's fault that there's a bug in Safari?
Since it was a hidden setting that consumers (and presumably you) wouldn't have enabled, I don't think it will make any difference to you.
Safari is made by Apple, it isnt third part software.
Hey, it's a PRO machine and I'm sure PROs never just while away the hours surfing the web so no need to do any testing that involves browsers.
I love Phil ... Consumer's Report went deeper than our PRO users would ever go ... it's our best ever.
I don't know about you, but I don't reload the same web page over and over and over and over until my battery dies. And when I do re-visit a web page, I'm not clearing the cache each time, so real life does take into account cached pages or elements of a page.
If you wanted to know how web browsing would effect battery life without using cached elements, you would need to create a script that loads one page, then after a minute or two loads a different page and so on never going back to the same page again.
Maybe they don't actually take issue with these things like many of us who purchased this laptop.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Furthermore, if you don't turn them on at all, battery life is far beyond Apple's claim.
Magical.
I don't use Safari, but I consistently get 2.5-3.5 hours of battery life using Chrome. I wouldn't expect Apple to design their battery usage for all 3rd party apps, but Chrome is obviously a common choice. The fact the battery drains three times faster is ridiculous, and one wonders if it's not related to browser competition. I doubt it will, but I'm hopeful the "bug fix" helps my situation out as well.
I got my 13-inch MBP Touch Bar in November. Using it to be online (wifi) reading, watching some videos, I was getting 4-5 hours. That's not acceptable. I returned it on Jan 3, no questions asked...I don't think they wanted customers seeing returns.
Regardless of their testing methods, it led to a bug being found and fixed. This is why CR does what they do.