Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Noerdy

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 13, 2016
35
37
A nice solid 2.5 hours. I have no idea what to do and at this point I am extremely frustrated with apple. I have been talking to support for days, each time they are just like "Its probably because you have Spotify open" or "you have too many tabs open in safari" (I have 5 open for work). I am not impressed at all with this. Is it possible it is a hardware issue, and nothing I do can fix this?

Even if it was 6-7 hours I would be happy, but I mean come on, 2 hours? This is insane. I don't know how apple can get away with this. I am worried that will just keep coming up with excuses and never actually fix my computer.


Attached is a picture of the activity monitor.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2017-01-01 at 5.07.19 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2017-01-01 at 5.07.19 PM.png
    621.8 KB · Views: 353
A nice solid 2.5 hours. I have no idea what to do and at this point I am extremely frustrated with apple. I have been talking to support for days, each time they are just like "Its probably because you have Spotify open" or "you have too many tabs open in safari" (I have 5 open for work). I am not impressed at all with this. Is it possible it is a hardware issue, and nothing I do can fix this?

Even if it was 6-7 hours I would be happy, but I mean come on, 2 hours? This is insane. I don't know how apple can get away with this. I am worried that will just keep coming up with excuses and never actually fix my computer.


Attached is a picture of the activity monitor.

They all have bad battery life except the Escape Edition. The battery is smaller, it cant be fixed it software.
 
First of all, the battery indicator is not a good indicator. Have you tried using it until in runs out of battery and measuring it with a watch?

The problem I see is that the Mac is running on the dedicated GPU, probably caused by your Adobe software. Adobe CC has a lot of background services which for some reasons are using the dedicated GPU and kills battery.

Also Slack is a battery hog on the Mac.

As an experiment I would try to run without any of the many background Adobe CC services you have running and stop Slack, just to test.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig
First of all, the battery indicator is not a good indicator. Have you tried using it until in runs out of battery and measuring it with a watch?

The problem I see is that the Mac is running on the dedicated GPU, probably caused by your Adobe software. Adobe CC has a lot of background services which for some reasons are using the dedicated GPU and kills battery.

Also Slack is a battery hog on the Mac.

As an experiment I would try to run without any of the many background Adobe CC services you have running and stop Slack, just to test.
Looks like it's Spotify that's demanding high performance graphics (I'm not completely sure since the column titles aren't visible and can be customized). If that's the case, then that's probably what's causing battery drain.
 
A nice solid 2.5 hours. I have no idea what to do and at this point I am extremely frustrated with apple. I have been talking to support for days, each time they are just like "Its probably because you have Spotify open" or "you have too many tabs open in safari" (I have 5 open for work). I am not impressed at all with this. Is it possible it is a hardware issue, and nothing I do can fix this?

Even if it was 6-7 hours I would be happy, but I mean come on, 2 hours? This is insane. I don't know how apple can get away with this. I am worried that will just keep coming up with excuses and never actually fix my computer.


Attached is a picture of the activity monitor.
Your dGPU is active. That will suck up lots of power (to be expected when active). You need to quit the app that's keeping it active.
 
You have a faulty model unless you have some watt intensive load kicking in without your knowledge. I'd get the unit swapped out. I get 8-12 hours with my model.
 
I mean come on, 2 hours?
You make it sound like the battery only lasted 2 hours before the computer went to sleep. That's disingenuous. You're basing a conclusion on an accuracy assumption of an unreliable prediction. Don't do that.
 
Yes I have tried waiting until the battery died, and it has the same battery as it says. :(
 
Do you have to have flash running in safari? I don't install flash and just use flash websites in chrome, while keeping safari as my default browser. I use this plugin as a one click method for opening a page needing flash whilst in safari.

https://github.com/lhagan/Open-in-Chrome
 
The activity monitor screenshot shows Spotify triggering the dedicated GPau, which would kill the battery fairly quickly. Try quitting Spotify and check again. Also, really annoying that Spotify devs would let a bug like this slip.
 
The 2016 is more power efficient though. In any case, how does your theory translate into 'they all have bad battery life'?

It's not a theory, it's a fact. The poster factually stated that "the battery is smaller". It is - by 30%. Whether other parts are more efficent is neither here or there. The posters statement was correct and your response of "I'm sorry, but that isn't true" was wrong.
 
One thing to take into account is the initial setup - indexing, syncing with iCloud, Time machine backups does take extra power, my MBP 2016 battery wasn't good for the first few days, but it's levelled out at around 8-12 hours depending on use. Just something to take into account for the first few weeks. I leave mine pugged in and awake for the first few days and it soon catches everything up?
 
It's not a theory, it's a fact. The poster factually stated that "the battery is smaller". It is - by 30%. Whether other parts are more efficent is neither here or there. The posters statement was correct and your response of "I'm sorry, but that isn't true" was wrong.

How do 'they all have bad battery life'? Poster starts by saying the batteries are all bad and then states that the batteries are smaller and so cannot be 'fixed' giving the impression the former is because of the latter. My point is that the former is incorrect full stop.

By all means please enlighten me on his/her behalf.
 
Last edited:
One thing that I'd like to get to the bottom of is whether the accuracy of Apple's (and others) battery tests are still valid for touch bar machines.

Typically these tests involve an automated script that either streams video or refresh web pages, however the new MBP's dim the touch bar after 60 seconds of keyboard inactivity and turn it off completely after 15 minutes. In normal (working) use the touch bar will be on all the time.

If the automated battery tests do not simulate keyboard activity then could this be why some users are seeing real usage stats that do not match the official figures? I know the T1 sips energy but I'm not too sure about the OLED touch bar.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.