Consumer Reports Reverses Course, Recommends MacBook Pro Following New Testing After Apple Bug Fix

[Abazigal]

Excuse me, but the 15" MBP was not meant for the average consumer.

Then maybe it's time the 15" MBP was (targeted at the average consumer).

Could be the same reason why the drawbacks don't affect you.

I am not complaining.

The "best of both worlds" is Apple abandoning the "pro" niche one release at at time.

I would argue that what Apple is doing is expanding the definition of the "pro" branding and making these pro features more accessible to the average consumer.

Think about it. The Apple Pencil made writing and drawing more accessible to iPad Pro owners without them having to invest in expensive and clunky Wacom tablets or put up with crappy 3rd party styluses. The iPhone democratised tech by making otherwise confusing and complex features easier to understand and use. The touchbar is the perfect anti-expert feature. Useless to power users who have memorised every single keyboard shortcut on macOS, invaluable to those who haven't. Now these people too can open a new safari tab with the press of a single key even if they never got round to memorising the "cmd+T" shortcut.

What Apple is doing here is breaking down the barriers that might prevent a consumer from owning a 15" MBP, one by one. It's still a "Pro" laptop in all the ways that matter, just one which no longer just serves a specific niche market.

 

[Spectrum]

Apple makes things thicker again when they need to. iPad 3 was thicker than the iPad 2. iPhone 6s was thicker than the 6.

Good points. I hope you are right!
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I don't need a 65" 4K tv, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate one, nor does it mean I won't have a use for it if I ever came into possession of one.

It's the larger screen size mainly. I work on a lot of documents as a teacher and the screen estate looks like it would be nice for typing. I basically want a 15" retina Air.

I agree 16 gb ram is probably overkill for me though.

Hence why I think a 14" MB Air (even lighter than the 15" model they just released) may suit you better and yet still protect the top-end quad core/discrete graphics/16 GB RAM/MBPro market.

For example, when will the average consumer ever need 4 thunderbolt 3 ports!?!? Yet they may like, low weight, a 14-15" screen, HDMI output, USB-A and an SD card slot.

There are so few people that actually need 4x TB3 ports. And those that do, probably also would prefer a bigger battery. To me, this is the odd thing about the mixed priorities in this new MBPro machine.

 

[CaTOAGU]

This still doesn't really explain how Consumer Reports were getting impossible 16 hour battery life in some of there tests.

 

[techfun]

Honestly, I was in the camp of those who viewed the new MacBook Pro negatively.... until I tried one and bought one.

Here are some of my thoughts:

Screen - bright and absolutely gorgeous. Coming from a 13inch MVP late 2013 Retina its way nicer. There reduction in screen bezel is also nice. I can't go back to to previous screen anymore.

Portability - feels much lighter and sleeker. If you use its as a laptop, you will feel the difference.

SSD speeds- unreal. Blackmagic Speed test has not seen anything so fast !

Thunderbolt 3 -USB C - I was initially apprehensive about losing USB A ports but its presence gives us untold benefits.
1) With the implementation of the industry standard USB Power Delivery on the ports it gives us the ability to use certain Powerbanks to charge your Mac. I was at work today with no adapter. I put in a 10000mah USB C battery pack and after 10 hrs I left work with 100% charge. This works for the 13 TB and nTB. Not sure if the Power hungry 15's support this capability.
2) You can use non-Apple chargers to charge your Mac now. Some even have MagSafe like mechanisms so if you want your MagSafe functionality its possible.
3) Plenty of USB C cables around to connect your devices , e.g. A USB C to USB 3.0 Micro B cables are relatively cheap and they can connect to your external HD with no dongles.
4) One major irritation was the need to buy a USB C to lightning cable to sync phones and iPads. But there was an upside here as well. Charging the iPad Pro with this cable is MUCH faster than a standard USB cable.
5) Potential for use with an external GPU enclosure e.g.(Razer Core). There has been reports of some bootcamp users able to get the latest PASCAL 1000 series graphics card working with the Mac. Not for the 15 inch though as those already have discrete GPUs

Battery life. The battery life of the 13inch late 2016 MBP is good. Comparable to my 13 inch Retina 2013. Coconut battery reveals power draw of 8 W for web surfing and word processing. I did not do a TimeMachine reinstall of my Mac this time round for fear of some old script, incompatible software causing a power drain. I suspect those people with 3 hour battery life probably installed from time machine and some software bug resulted in a battery hog. My Time Machine image still has software from my 1st Generation 2006 MacBook Pro. I am glad I did a fresh install.

Lack of an SD card. Yup this was a slip up on Apples part. At least give us a small microSD port. Many of the complaints will go away.There are quite a few USB C microSD readers coming to the market though so in time this issue will be mitigated.

Overall , a great machine. Try one for a bit before you make your judgement. I bought one after vacillating for 3 months. No regrets.

 

[gnasher729]

So.... WTF did Apple use to get their original results?

I get 4-5 hrs ONLY running iBooks at 25% screen brightness in a 2.9 Ghz 15" 2016 MBP.

BTW I LOVE my machine (esp the new keyboard) despite my battery issue.

Open Activity Monitor to see what is using up your battery. There are two possibilities (since running iBooks should realistically not empty your battery that quickly): Either there is something else running in the background using lots of battery life, or iBooks is for some reason using much more energy than it should (and I have seen it doing that).
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Clearly CR's "fixed" testing involves running the MacBook Pro in a parallel universe, because there is no way you'd ever get 18 hours (!!!) of battery life in this one.

If they ran it for 18 hours, then you are wrong, it can demonstrably run 18 hours with a single battery charge. It will be in a situation where extremely little energy is used for some reason.

 

[Beenblacklisted]

Consumer Reports is out with an updated report on the 2016 MacBook Pro, and following retesting, the magazine is now recommending Apple's latest notebooks.

In the new test, conducted running a beta version of macOS that fixes the Safari-related bug that caused erratic battery life in the original test, all three MacBook Pro models "performed well."

The 13-inch model without a Touch Bar had an average battery life of 18.75 hours, the 13-inch model with a Touch Bar lasted for 15.25 hours on average, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar had an average battery life of 17.25 hours.Consumer Reports originally denied the 2016 MacBook Pro a purchase recommendation in late December due to extreme battery life variance that didn't match up with Apple's 10 hour battery life claim.

Apple worked with Consumer Reports to figure out why the magazine encountered battery life issues, which led to the discovery of an obscure Safari caching bug. Consumer Reports used a developer setting to turn off Safari caching, triggering an "obscure and intermittent bug reloading icons" that drained excessive battery.

The bug, fixed by Apple in macOS Sierra 10.12.3 beta 3, is not one the average user will encounter as most people don't turn off the Safari caching option, but it's something done in all Consumer Reports tests to ensure uniform testing conditions. A fix for the issue will be available to the general public when macOS Sierra 10.12.3 is released, but users can get it now by signing up for Apple's beta testing program.

Each of the three 2016 MacBook Pro models, including the 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar, and the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro models with Touch Bars, are advertised as achieving 10 hours of battery life on a single charge when watching iTunes movies or browsing the web.

Real life Battery usage can vary significantly, however, based on factors like screen brightness and the applications being used.

Article Link: Consumer Reports Reverses Course, Recommends MacBook Pro Following New Testing After Apple Bug Fix

Everyone has a price.

 

[Spectrum]

If they ran it for 18 hours, then you are wrong, it can demonstrably run 18 hours with a single battery charge. It will be in a situation where extremely little energy is used for some reason.

Bu that means only 3-4 Watts on a 50-75Whr battery. Let's forget about CPU draw for a second, but can the computer+screen really use so little power?
If it can, then I really think it is quite amazing.

 

[gnasher729]

Um yea that's possible. Consumer Reports own lab is like a set out of a ride from Disneyland's Tomorrowland. Suddenly there's a chorus here of pro Consumer Reports and a plethora of "Apple haters". Something's not right.

To be honest: They used a secret Safari setting to run the software in a way that was intended to simulate heavy users. That's not unreasonable. Unfortunately there was a bug that caused really bad battery life when _simulating_ heavy use, which didn't happen with _real_ heavy use. This is most likely an unlucky coincidence.

Although I must say, you shouldn't run tests where the machine is deliberately set up to behave worse than it could. Like when Fusion drives were introduced, that was a nightmare for benchmarks: Up to some point the drive is as fast as SSD, go beyond that and it is as slow as a spinning drive. People going beyond that point shouldn't buy a fusion drive but SSD; people not going to that point should buy Fusion. So what is a benchmark going to do? Whatever it does, it reports totally unrealistic results for half the potential customers.

 

[inplainview]

Consumer Reports is out with an updated report on the 2016 MacBook Pro, and following retesting, the magazine is now recommending Apple's latest notebooks.

In the new test, conducted running a beta version of macOS that fixes the Safari-related bug that caused erratic battery life in the original test, all three MacBook Pro models "performed well."

The 13-inch model without a Touch Bar had an average battery life of 18.75 hours, the 13-inch model with a Touch Bar lasted for 15.25 hours on average, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar had an average battery life of 17.25 hours.Consumer Reports originally denied the 2016 MacBook Pro a purchase recommendation in late December due to extreme battery life variance that didn't match up with Apple's 10 hour battery life claim.

Apple worked with Consumer Reports to figure out why the magazine encountered battery life issues, which led to the discovery of an obscure Safari caching bug. Consumer Reports used a developer setting to turn off Safari caching, triggering an "obscure and intermittent bug reloading icons" that drained excessive battery.

The bug, fixed by Apple in macOS Sierra 10.12.3 beta 3, is not one the average user will encounter as most people don't turn off the Safari caching option, but it's something done in all Consumer Reports tests to ensure uniform testing conditions. A fix for the issue will be available to the general public when macOS Sierra 10.12.3 is released, but users can get it now by signing up for Apple's beta testing program.

Each of the three 2016 MacBook Pro models, including the 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar, and the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro models with Touch Bars, are advertised as achieving 10 hours of battery life on a single charge when watching iTunes movies or browsing the web.

Real life Battery usage can vary significantly, however, based on factors like screen brightness and the applications being used.

Article Link: Consumer Reports Reverses Course, Recommends MacBook Pro Following New Testing After Apple Bug Fix

Fine but it is still not a "Pro" machine. It is a high-priced consumer laptop.

 

[Martyimac]

I agree its not CR's job to make Apple look good - but when your battery results defy the laws of physics (a battery cant last 18 hrs in today's world) then you need to do some follow up. They did a huge disservice to their readers publishing that article.

So, CR needs new stopwatches since the laws of physics say what? I would like you to reference that law of physics please.
And as far as I am concerned, CR would have done their readers an even BIGGER disservice if they had NOT published that article.

 

[ChrisCW11]

The question is, when is the next update that will ruin battery life again?

I agree the consumer report's review wasn't valid overall, but when Apple has a history of poor software roll outs followed by months of bug fixing, ultimately this reflects in the quality of the overall product regardless if the actual hardware is decent.

 

[lowkey]

Fine but it is still not a "Pro" machine. It is a high-priced consumer laptop.

Obvious troll is obvious.

 

[muasachi]

I have 13" w/touch bar with latest public beta (That Apple claimed it's fixed)
Still having like 3-4 hours of battery.

T.T

 

[russ99]

Good deal, going to wait until the full release, since betas have to be tweaked.

One thing that could help battery life on the touchbar MBPs, is a brightness control for the touchbar.
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Obvious troll is obvious.

If people had one, they wouldn't think that. This computer flies.

Tricked out the processor and graphic card, so it was a really pricy pro computer, but still a pro computer.

 

[manu chao]

This still doesn't really explain how Consumer Reports were getting impossible 16 hour battery life in some of there tests.

Consumer reports weren't the only ones. Arstechnica found battery life values between 13 and 16 hours for the 2016 MBPs in their WiFi browsing test (200 nits). Only when the discrete GPU in the 15" model was used did this drop to 7.5 hours. It's simply that under the right conditions, the power consumption of (probably mainly) the CPU can drop to quite low values (the second biggest consumer after the CPU, the display backlight, is rather independent of how a computer is used). And these WiFi browsing tests fulfil those conditions.
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I agree its not CR's job to make Apple look good - but when your battery results defy the laws of physics (a battery cant last 18 hrs in today's world).

I think you confuse 'laws of physics' with 'common knowledge'. And look at other testing publications, Arstechnica found battery life of up to 16 hours (with a brighter screen setting). If you want to invoke the laws of physics start with the screen brightness (and let's say 90% efficient LEDs) and backcalculate from there.

 

[Spectrum]

I have 13" w/touch bar with latest public beta (That Apple claimed it's fixed)
Still having like 3-4 hours of battery.

T.T
View attachment 683450

Hi - I dont' have the new MBPro or OS. What does "Energy Impact" mean?
Does the new macOS still contain an Application called "System Profiler"? In there you can actually see the Wattage power draw of the computer.

Does the Safari webpage you have open contain a lot of FLASH adverts/forms?

 

[DudeDad]

While some may prefer speculation, I actually have the 15" and battery life has been very good.

Define "very good". The 15 has larger batteries than the 13, but also has to drive a larger screen. My 13 w/touch bar got around 5 hours. I returned it. Too much $$ for terrible battery life, that will degrade over time.

 

[nwcs]

I agree its not CR's job to make Apple look good - but when your battery results defy the laws of physics (a battery cant last 18 hrs in today's world) then you need to do some follow up. They did a huge disservice to their readers publishing that article.

I don't think a lot of us would say that their battery results are all that helpful. I certainly wouldn't. However I don't see them as being relevant. To me the relevant data is the comparison between laptops. That is very useful. No battery test will ever be good because everyone's expectations and workloads are dramatically different. But there is value in a simple scalar test.

 

[zen]

If they ran it for 18 hours, then you are wrong, it can demonstrably run 18 hours with a single battery charge. It will be in a situation where extremely little energy is used for some reason.

Well, yes. But there is no way that this represents any kind of normal use. Not that it necessarily should, but if they're reporting 18 hours with absolute minimal computer activity and as many energy-saving actions as possible, then they should perhaps also report a theoretical "real-world" use report as well. Then people can make up their minds.

 

[purush]

I tested 2015 and 2016 side by side doing heavy CPU tasks, the 2015 won by about 30% .

With the 2016 screen dimmed, you can get good battery life. With the screen at 80% or more brightness , battery drops fast. That was my experience, the 2016 can get good battery life if your take advantage of the efficiency and use the right settings.

With intensive CPU work, it cannot make the 2015 machine. And that is backed up by the simple facts of how much power both CPUs use at full load.

According to Appleinsider.com the 2016 model last longer at heavy work loads.
'Testing the batteries during 4K rendering, the 2016 MacBook Pro lasted 40% longer before dying. So from our testing, during simpler tasks like web browsing, the efficiency of the latest processor doesn't completely make up for the smaller battery. In medium to heavy tasks, the 2016 MacBook Pro stacks up or is better than the older model.'
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16...acbook-pro-with-touch-bar-vs-2015-macbook-pro

 

[PhoneI]

Fine but it is still not a "Pro" machine. It is a high-priced consumer laptop.

and here I am, using it for work.

 

[muasachi]

Hi - I dont' have the new MBPro or OS. What does "Energy Impact" mean?
Does the new macOS still contain an Application called "System Profiler"? In there you can actually see the Wattage power draw of the computer.

Does the Safari webpage you have open contain a lot of FLASH adverts/forms?

I have no idea what "Energy Impact" mean in term of technical meaning.
And yes, "System Profiler" is still in MacOS.

For the safari, no, I didn't activate flash player. I only browse typical websites and Youtube might be only 15 mins. since I unplugged the charger.

 

[nwcs]

For me the question of whether it's "pro" enough is kinda irrelevant. What I'd like to understand is CPU throttling: when does it happen and under what workloads? I often do tasks that peg the CPU for hours at a time. If the CPU throttles down, even on mains power, to maintain a certain cooling threshold then it's kinda annoying as it'll increase the time for those tasks to accomplish. It's one reason why my 2013 MBP is probably my last. That and I really really don't like that new keyboard. Again, a personal reason.

 

[shk718]

So, CR needs new stopwatches since the laws of physics say what? I would like you to reference that law of physics please.
And as far as I am concerned, CR would have done their readers an even BIGGER disservice if they had NOT published that article.

A battery is going to discharge at a consistent rate, so running the exact same test 3 times in a row, as CR indicated they did, and getting significantly divergent results would indicate to me, as a computer programmer, that something not normal was going on. Batteries don't change their discharge rate, to that extent, and computer programs don't produce different results unless there is a bug (software or otherwise). I would have investigated it further especially since CR changed a non user facing setting to conduct their test. I would have investigated further before writing the article.

here is a quote from CR "in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third."

 

[pruthvee]

Apple: We are a trillion dollar company (soon to be) you know... we also can afford better lawyers...

CR: I think we get it.