MacBook Pro Users Express Concerns About Limited Battery Life

[MH01]

It's like asking why the iPhone couldn't have both a touchscreen and a physical keyboard.

The whole point is for the touchbar to replace the function keys. It's essentially a souped up function key. Having both defeats the purpose of the touchbar in the first place.

Is that the point of the touchbar? Having used it for 2 weeks its not a replacement of the function keys but an extension of programs.

ESC , brightness and volume are the only keys that remain constant... Might as well keep those keys Physical. Its kinda annoying how they move .....

 

[masteroflondon]

HUH, my 2014 MB pro 13 retina, already 30 minutes in use, and showing almost 11 hours to go!.

Has USB, HDMI, Displayport, SDcard and magsafe. works like a charm in heavy illustrator, photoshop, coding, 30+ tabs in safari all at the same time.

Will be sticking to that for long 😀😀😀

According to Wikipedia, your laptop was criticised at launch for:
1. exclusion of an optical drive
2. exclusion of an Ethernet port
3. very high starting price
4. lack of Superdrive
5. change to MagSafe2 with a lack of backward compatibility
6. glued in battery
7. glued in glass, limiting recyclability

Sounds familiar, don't you think? I am glad you're still delighted with it after all this time and for the foreseeable future.

 

[MH01]

Just looks like a narrower usage profile on the new MBP's to achieve the up to 10 hours claim. It's a consequence of a now smaller battery being offset by a more efficient CPU/GPU and system optimisation. That's fine until you load up your CPU/GPU/disk storage which results in the efficiency gains being negated over the previous generation CPU/GPU. Quoted efficiency gains for each generation are effectively skewed against the full range of CPU performance as an example. If you look at successive generations of Intel processors those quoted gains are much smaller when under full load.

It also looks like owners coming from the integrated 15" previous generation are taking a hit as even a more efficient dedicated GPU will still be less efficient than the previous gen integrated model. The latest MBP GPU will kick in much earlier.

It's a bit like saying I've bought a new car with the same size engine as my last car but it now does 50mpg and is 30% more efficient than my last car. Sure if you drive at 56 mph you may see the improvement however if you run both cars with your foot to the floor the efficiency gains will be negligible on the new model. Throw in a smaller fuel tank on the new car as well.

Ultimately if you load up your system with intensive tasks you'll be restricted by a laptop with a smaller battery. It's why even something as trivial as using Google Chrome takes you outside of the usage profile Apple are quoting for their 10 hour battery claim.

Apple still have a much better track record of quoted battery life over most PC laptop manufacturer's particularly for ultrabook models where they'll quote 15 hours battery life but won't specify that's only for an extremely narrow usage profile.

This is exactly my experience. Throw intensive tasks at the 2015 and 2016 machines , and the 2016 runs out of juice while the 2015 has about 30% left. If you operate the laptop within its efficiency sweet spot the 2015 and 2016 are equal, heck 2016 might win....but that is not realistic usage for me. I use intensive CPU/GPU programs, and wished the laptop was a bit thicker and could match the 2015 for battery life.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Battery life has been about 6 to 6.5 hours with me, but was able to isolate the battery life issue to MS Word. When using Pages, I get the advertised battery life. I haven't experienced the issue in Powerpoint or Excel and I don't use Outlook.

Running MS Word on 13" MBP w/ Touch Bar (512gb, 2.9GHz Core i5), I've been getting the following in Activity Monitor pretty often:
~50% CPU; with CPU time over ~3:00:00.00 after just running for an hour or two with just a few documents open (none of them running in track changes).

Reached out to MS Office Support and they've forwarded the issue to the engineering team.

EDIT: Found that, unsurprisingly, under the "Energy Impact" tab, MS Word energy usage is often spiking to ~50 pretty regularly.

You are seeing this only in Word ? You use PowerPoint and excel frequently but the spikes / heavy CPU use is only on Word ?

For me it's an important question because besides Keynote, I am a heavy Office user.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Ugh. I'm getting a 2016 to get a 5K monitor. I'm thinking of canceling my order.

It totally sucks that we're at a point of technological hardware developent where there is so much that is incompatible with everything else.

We've had it good for many years. Buy any computer and the only immutable difference between them is the OS that it runs. You could mostly go out buy something and plug it into any brand of hardware.

This MacBook coupled with the new 5K LG is a dream come true. Expensive? Certainly. If you can wait 18 months, a better MBP is coming. If you can wait 6 months, you can get discounts (for the MBP but the LG will jump in price).

 

[palmerc]

previous rMBP's did not have soldered flash, only ram.

You're correct, I meant not upgradable. At least not upgradeable and maintain a warranty and there still aren't any compelling upgrades. What am I going to do swap in a newer 750GB SSD module?

To digress a bit...

In the days of hard drives, going SSD or hybrid SSD was compelling because it gave your old computer a new life, possibly better than new, but sitting at 750GB and 16GB of RAM a mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro and I have trouble justifying a 'need' to upgrade. The performance is still quite good. My official work 2015 rMBP just sits in its bag, solely because I prefer the US keyboard over the International English one, although the 2015 is faster.

On some level, I'd like 32GB of RAM and 2TB, but as a developer I also see that we've sort of hit peak requirements on this type of spec. The big change in the macOS/iOS system has been the movement of the disk pigs to the cloud. The move of Music and video to 'the cloud' stopped rapid disk usage growth, then iPhotos library further slowed growth, and now Documents and desktop clutter moving to iCloud has actually cause usage to shrink. GitHub also helped to some extent in allowing me to blow away all those projects I was keeping around out of nostalgia. So, from my viewpoint anything over 1TB local storage is just an inability to accept that the disk is for local caching and current work. RAM is also not a problem, 16GB is fine, although 32GB would be future proof it wouldn't be worth going with non LP RAM given the context of this article.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Want to know what I most want in a MacBook Pro? Removable batteries. I used to get about five or six hours of battery life on my black MacBook, because I always carried a spare 60 Wh battery and swapped batteries. If I could get a MacBook Pro with a removable 100 Wh battery pack, I could carry a spare and get six or seven hours, which would mean that I wouldn't be permanently tethered to a power outlet all day.

By going with USB-C Apple solved the problem for you. Now you can use ANY external battery pack to charge your MacBook. Problem solved.

PS today there are a few battery packs with 30w charging capability. In the near future we should have plenty more and with 45-60w charging power.

 

[masteroflondon]

You're correct, I meant not upgradable. At least not upgradeable and maintain a warranty and there still aren't any compelling upgrades. What am I going to do swap in a newer 750GB SSD module?

To digress a bit...

In the days of hard drives, going SSD or hybrid SSD was compelling because it gave your old computer a new life, possibly better than new, but sitting at 750GB and 16GB of RAM a mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro and I have trouble justifying a 'need' to upgrade. The performance is still quite good. My official work 2015 rMBP just sits in its bag, solely because I prefer the US keyboard over the International English one, although the 2015 is faster.

On some level, I'd like 32GB of RAM and 2TB, but as a developer I also see that we've sort of hit peak requirements on this type of spec. The big change in the macOS/iOS system has been the movement of the disk pigs to the cloud. The move of Music and video to 'the cloud' stopped rapid disk usage growth, then iPhotos library further slowed growth, and now Documents and desktop clutter moving to iCloud has actually cause usage to shrink. GitHub also helped to some extent in allowing me to blow away all those projects I was keeping around out of nostalgia. So, from my viewpoint anything over 1TB local storage is just an inability to accept that the disk is for local caching and current work. RAM is also not a problem, 16GB is fine, although 32GB would be future proof it wouldn't be worth going with non LP RAM given the context of this article.

The disk pigs moved to the cloud ? 😱

 

[JohnnyGo]

My 15" went from 3.5h estimate (and probably around 4h usage) to 12h estimate when i followed the guide and remove 1 file and restart computer. Search for Mac Migration Battery problem.

+1

Just do it !

 

[HumpYourWayUp]

The first thing I saw in the screenshots was the Chrome Icon.
How dumb is it to test battery life with the WORST browser in terms of performance and power efficiency?!?
Say what you want about Safari but it is way faster and less power hungry than the horrendously overrated Chrome...

 

[576316]

Funny. I get just over 6 hours on my 15" rMBP (mid 2012) on a full charge, and this thing is 4 years old.

 

[geta]

There are still 2015 models out there to be bought. I think thats the way to go as of now

With all the problems the new MBP having, i wont be surprised if the price for a used 2015 models will jump, like it happened with the 2012 Quad-Core MacMini.

 

[HumpYourWayUp]

Wait a second....

"Currently I'm powering a 1080p external monitor and casually browsing with Chrome. At full charge, I'm getting an estimate of 3 hours battery life. With gaming it's even less."

Chrome? Worst browser ever...
Gaming! ON BATTERY! LOL What did he expect.

Is this some kind of click bait article?

 

[palmerc]

The disk pigs moved to the cloud ? 😱

Yes, they did. My realisation that hard drives weren't a long-term solution began by filling my 80GB iPod the day I got it. That was without even considering the organisational burden associated with keeping up with that much data (haha, 80GB is so 2004).

 

[MagicBoy]

No.

Why would I use safari? They said 10 hours of wireless web browsing, not 10 hours of wireless web browsing only if you use safari.

Apple build Safari into the operating system. Why would Apple test wireless web browsing using third party software not supplied with the computer? Don't be naive, it doesn't suit you.

 

[deany]

Looks like I'm waiting for a new MBP until Apple gets their act together. Ive heard nothing but bad from these new models: crap battery life, massive price hike, need an adapter to literally plug in anything to it. What next?

you forgot the graphics card and soldered SSD etc

I think the list is including but not limited to:

• apples obsession with 'thinness' that compomises the product
• lack of required external ports
• soldered SSD issue
• Price increase issues
• battery life issues
• graphic card issues
• possible supply issues
• arrow up keyboard issues
• compatibility with current Thunderbolt 3 devices issues

to be continued?.....

What is the problem with the updated arrow???

Hi
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...rd-up-arrow-key-broken.2018878/#post-24006083
post #1 and esp. #3

 

[MH01]

With all the problems the new MBP having, i wont be surprised if the price for a used 2015 models will jump, like it happened with the 2012 Quad-Core MacMini.

The mini was a different proposition, the new MacBook Pro is no way as gimped as the new mini compared the quad core.

Though I suspect the top end 2015 model, 2.8 with 1TB ssd may hold its value better after the big price increase with almost the same performance. And the 2015 has better battery

 

[gnipgnop]

The title should be changed to 'MacRumors Users Desperately Trying To Troll The New Macbook Pro'....

 

[deany]

The title should be changed to 'MacRumors Users Desperately Trying To Troll The New Macbook Pro'....

As someone else said I would speak to MR reporters first. They certainly cant be accused of being bias towards apple.

 

[geta]

The mini was a different proposition, the new MacBook Pro is no way as gimped as the new mini compared the quad core.

Though I suspect the top end 2015 model, 2.8 with 1TB ssd may hold its value better after the big price increase with almost the same performance. And the 2015 has better battery

Its different situation but the outcome will be the same, the 2015 MBP's will keep their value if not increase their used price.

 

[Jaekae]

Funny. I get just over 6 hours on my 15" rMBP (mid 2012) on a full charge, and this thing is 4 years old.

I got 4-5hrs on my 2012 🙂 but now on my 2016 i have around 9 😀

 

[Abazigal]

Is that the point of the touchbar? Having used it for 2 weeks its not a replacement of the function keys but an extension of programs.

ESC , brightness and volume are the only keys that remain constant... Might as well keep those keys Physical. Its kinda annoying how they move .....

I am reminded of the first iPhone keynote, where Steve Jobs demonstrated how a virtual touchscreen would change its layout on the fly to present whatever custom keyboard layout was ideal for any given situation. This touchbar reminds me of something similar. It's essentially a more versatile row of function keys.

That Apple is rumoured to be doing the same with their keyboards eventually makes sense. We are looking at a keyboard layout which can customise itself to present an optimum layout of keys depending on which application you have open.

 

[masteroflondon]

Yes, they did. My realisation that hard drives weren't a long-term solution began by filling my 80GB iPod the day I got it. That was without even considering the organisational burden associated with keeping up with that much data (haha, 80GB is so 2004).

No wonder I couldn't work out the typo, there wasn't one, sorry!

 

[otternonsense]

Is there anything that actually went well about this release? 😱

 

[gim]

The first thing I saw in the screenshots was the Chrome Icon.
How dumb is it to test battery life with the WORST browser in terms of performance and power efficiency?!?
Say what you want about Safari but it is way faster and less power hungry than the horrendously overrated Chrome...

This.
Saw the title of the article, scrolled down, saw the Chrome Icon..