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How do you all feel about Apple removing the battery estimator in Mac OS?

Seems odd removing functionality; but considering that function wasn't exactly working and was doing more harm than good, I'm not too concerned.
 
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It's fine. The primary cause of all the tears were people clicking on it, seeing 3:49 (after a bit of use) and flipping out.

It's a completely moving target. Nothing more than an estimate snapshot at the exact moment you reference it, therefore it was always inaccurate.

People used the numbers to create FUD SKY FALLING threads, etc. I'm sure this hysteria and people returning machines contributed to why Apple nixed it.

I mean, I'd presume these people that are all bothered by it are "professional serious business power users." If that's so, they certainly know of other more technical ways to reference this moving target inaccurate information, no?

Instead, look around here. The end is apparently near with the complaining: "THXANS APPFLE FIRE TIM CONSPIRACIES THEROIES TIMES!" Give me a break, nerds.

Comical.
 
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There's never be an accurate time indicator on any iOS device, and that doesn't seem to faze people.
 
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Not important for me. What I find strange is that MacOS and Coconut didn't give me the same battery %. MacOS a little higher, 92% vs 87.5%. Is this a way for Apple to trick us about the battery life or is there a way that they show the same...
 
Never looked at it in two decades because in all systems and gadgets it has never been accurate or good at predicting. With all the notifications we get these days it is even more unreliable to make predictions about energy use.
 
Not a big deal if it wasn't accurate.

But, you can still find it in the Energy tab in Activity Monitor (for now... Apple may have overlooked that in this version)
 
For me not that much of an issue. The amount of times I have used it have been very few. I look more at the % not estimated time to go.
 
soulreaver99 said:
kind of a dick move but that thing was hardly correct in the first place. not sure why they didn't fix it instead of remove it though
Click to expand...

Because there's no way to fix it. The problem with the estimator wasn't that it was bad at making estimates. The problem is that different apps/functions have been optimized in different ways so it's become impossible to give a reasonable long term estimate of the battery life without knowing, in advance, all the other things the user is going to later on. If you sit and watch youtube videos with 1 tab open for 10 hours, the estimate is accurate. If you're constantly switching between tabs, apps, etc then the estimate will struggle to give reasonable estimates at one point about the battery life of your device over the nest 5-8 hours.
 
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I much prefer the iOS style of giving you a percentage and then on a tab you can see how long you've been using it for. The estimate has never been good in my experience.

While I really don't mind them removing the estimate, I think the better thing to do would have been to fix it and revamp the way it calculates remaining time. I can't remember the last time I actually looked at the estimate though.
 
I think:
  • It's hilarious and I'm glad that Apple still has the gall to do things like this... you're measuring it wrong!
  • Apple needs to open up about the so-called 10 hours.
    • They said to The Loop that they had been doing lots of testing and stand by the estimate. How?
      • I know they detail the process of the test in the small print, but they don't tell you things like which "25 popular websites" they visit (because I bet it excludes Facebook and YouTube, the most popular websites), nor do they tell you if they literally try it with people in real circumstances, or whether it's actually just a simulation that is run
  • Apple needs to clarify what "up-to" means. Does this mean they ran their test a hundred times on a hundred machines, and one of them creeped over 10 hours once? Because that is hardly representative of what users should expect.
At the end of the day, 10 hours is a long time, but so is 8 hours. And I can get 8 hours quite reasonably. I'd rather Apple just straight up say "8 hour battery life".
 
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They probably got fed up of people returning devices after using them for a few hours, complaining of battery, or checking the ones in store and seeing low battery estimates.

Otherwise I feel... nothing
 
Seems like the right thing to do. Right now it seems like having your car say you could go 300 miles when you could really only go 150 miles. You are going to be very upset when you run out of gas on the interstate.
 
It baffles me they can't just use "You are using 0.2% of your battery per minute. At your current power usage you have 4 hours remaining".

Boom, easy to understand, and no-one minds if it yo-yos as you fire up different programs.
 
Only an Apple fanboy would be OK with this move by Apple.

It is infuriating to me is that they are getting rid of the battery life time estimate (one of the most useful features on a portable device) in order to cover up the fact that there is indeed a problem with poor battery life on these machines. This sounds like a good way to cover up the evidence and "make the problem go away."

Now in order to prove your laptop is not working according to the claimed spec, you have to physically sit at the Genius Bar for 3-4 hours instead of showing the battery estimate, which per my testing is still perfectly accurate.

What is so unique about the late 2016 MacBook Pro that a feature that worked so well on every other laptop they have released now "is not accurate because modern components switch power states so frequently."

We all know that is total non-sense and a flawed logical argument. This feature has been reasonably accurate on every other MacBook I have ever owned, especially if you are consistent in usage. If the estimator algorithm was really so bad, why would it have been a prominent feature for the last 10 years?
 
oktane said:
Only an Apple fanboy would be OK with this move by Apple.

It is infuriating to me is that they are getting rid of the battery life time estimate (one of the most useful features on a portable device) in order to cover up the fact that there is indeed a problem with poor battery life on these machines. This sounds like a good way to cover up the evidence and "make the problem go away."

Now in order to prove your laptop is not working according to the claimed spec, you have to physically sit at the Genius Bar for 3-4 hours instead of showing the battery estimate, which per my testing is still perfectly accurate.

What is so unique about the late 2016 MacBook Pro that a feature that worked so well on every other laptop they have released now "is not accurate because modern components switch power states so frequently."

We all know that is total non-sense and a flawed logical argument. This feature has been reasonably accurate on every other MacBook I have ever owned, especially if you are consistent in usage. If the estimator algorithm was really so bad, why would it have been a prominent feature for the last 10 years?
Click to expand...
https://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/time-remaining-battery.jpg?quality=82&strip=all&w=1000

Take a deep breath...
 
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