But others have reported that battery life is just fine, which leads me to believe that there is either a software conflict or a bad batch of batteries. Did you migrate or do a fresh install? Are you using "stock" Sierra or are you using the beta? It might be helpful trying to figure out what is going on rather than just have 500+ thread complain-fests about how bad Tim Cook is (which just about every thread about every new Apple product seems to turn into).
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MacBook Pro Users Express Concerns About Limited Battery Life
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I tend to stick to a firm rule with buying in general, especially Apple products: Never buy the first generation of a new product, never buy the first generation of a complete redesign. I broke this rule with the 13" MBP-NT, and regretted it within 24 hours.
Used laptop with touch screen. Terrible. Touch bar is new and limited but huge opportunity for growth. 25 year editor and finding touch quite useful in workflow. Hoping keyboards are next for use with desktops.
Time to face up to the facts, Jony robbed battery power to pay for his obsession for thinness. Would this have even been an issue if the chassis was the same thickness and the battery filled the space?
I wonder if this is Skylake issues? I recall Windows machines (i.e. SP4) having hella issues with Skylake drivers. Only recently were they mostly fixed. Apple's foray into this? I know the MacBook is Skylake based, but the i5/i7 processors are new to Apple. Hopefully a firmware update will remedy?
It isn't an obsession with thinness. The new market expectation is that 13" notebooks weigh 3lbs and 15" notebooks weigh 4lbs. Had Apple released a brand new 13" MacBook Pro with the same size chassis as the outgoing design, people would have complained how big it was for a 2016 design.
Apple really hit the ball out of the park with this release! Alienating longtime customers by releasing a "Pro" lineup that is actually the next generation of MacBook Air's and telling long time users where they can stick it if they want an actual "Pro" laptop instead of an overpriced, underpowered, thin, light appliance that can't be upgraded or repaired.
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Damn, my used 2015 MBP 15" purchase in July with AppleCare until end of 2018 seems everyday the best thing I ever done. Apple is really dropping the ball for me to say such a thing.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
It could well be, but they didn't have these issues with the 12" MacBook. Also, I had figured part of the reason Apple waited so long to release the MacBook Pros was to sort out the Skylake issues. If Skylake is "unfixable" then perhaps Apple should have just waited for Kaby Lake (though they would have lost out on the holiday sales, which commercially was likely not acceptable to Apple).
Battery has been very spotty and I certainly hope Apple responds to these valid concerns.
During both these times I had only Safari, Mail, iMessage, gfxCardStatus and a few others open. Made sure I was only using the iGPU and no TimeMachine backup was running:
This especially after shelling out about 3.5K for it. I suppose with time these might be sorted out (maybe after a class action or two). But right now, this decision is extremely frustrating after having waited for so long for a MBP. At-least if Apple responds officially, that would make me lean towards keeping this Mac.
I still love Mac OS despite Windows being much closer in features and experience. I've owned about 3 MacBook PRO's including an older Powerbook G4. The Powerbook G4 albeit being slower than Windows at that time was certainly a lot stabler and offered a superior OS experience.
During both these times I had only Safari, Mail, iMessage, gfxCardStatus and a few others open. Made sure I was only using the iGPU and no TimeMachine backup was running:
- On one occasion I got close to 9 hours of battery and the MBP was cool throughout.
- But off late it's only been 4-5 hours and the MBP was warm.
This especially after shelling out about 3.5K for it. I suppose with time these might be sorted out (maybe after a class action or two). But right now, this decision is extremely frustrating after having waited for so long for a MBP. At-least if Apple responds officially, that would make me lean towards keeping this Mac.
I still love Mac OS despite Windows being much closer in features and experience. I've owned about 3 MacBook PRO's including an older Powerbook G4. The Powerbook G4 albeit being slower than Windows at that time was certainly a lot stabler and offered a superior OS experience.
I am sure I can run my new MacBook pro 2016 in a manner that gets me 10 hours....instead I am using it as though I would my daily machine and not trying to prove that it can do x hours.
Here is what i did.
Bought 2 Brand new machines. A 2.8 2015 model and a 2016 2.7 460 model. Both arrived within 2 days of each other.
Both were setup as brand new machines out of the box, same software, no chrome.
So the latest test was simple, 80% brightness to enjoy the awesome new screen and see how the 2015 and 2016 performed over 30 minutes just using MR , browsing, replying etc. That was the whole test.
The 2016 after 30 minutes at 80% brightness has 85% battery life left, the 2015 model has 92% brightness left (80% brightness). The 2015 model when it reached 85% battery left had actually surfed for 54 minutes. All Safari.
Out of curiosity , getting my 2012 to 100% so I can do the same.
Ive run many CPU and GPU intensive tests, the 2015 has won each one by about 25-30% battery advantage.
Now, I can change the setting on my 2016, in such a way that I can also get 10hours battery life.....that does not prove it has a good battery, that proves that I am prepared to drop the setting so to maximise battery use....
For all these people on this thread saying they are getting 10Hours on the new MacBook pro, please get your machine to 100%, disconnect the power and surf just MacRumors for 30 minutes on 80% brightness, really interested what % of battery will be left after that.
Mine gets 3-4 hours. That's on integrated graphics with mail open and safari with one tab playing YouTube videos. No spotlight or photos indexing. Screen 12 clicks from zero which is just over half brightness.
The good thing is the battery drain seems to happen no matter what I'm doing. That suggests something's wrong but that it also might be fixable with an update down the line.
I'll give it an update or too before I declare it broken. If it is I'll swap it out when supplies are more plentiful. Otherwise I'm mostly on power and the 2012 MacBook Pro I came from was 3-4hrs so it's business as usual.
As a side note. 600+ comments here and about 580 of them are random requests for Tim Cook to resign. This use to be a great place to come to for advise. Now the noise is so high it's hard to find actual info in threads.
The good thing is the battery drain seems to happen no matter what I'm doing. That suggests something's wrong but that it also might be fixable with an update down the line.
I'll give it an update or too before I declare it broken. If it is I'll swap it out when supplies are more plentiful. Otherwise I'm mostly on power and the 2012 MacBook Pro I came from was 3-4hrs so it's business as usual.
As a side note. 600+ comments here and about 580 of them are random requests for Tim Cook to resign. This use to be a great place to come to for advise. Now the noise is so high it's hard to find actual info in threads.
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Cutting the battery from 74.9-watt-hour in the 13" 2015 model to 49.2-watt-hour in the 2016 model, and still claiming the same battery life is wishful marketing at best. The CPUs in the the above models have the exact same TDP, and there's no magic to make up that big difference. Instead, Apple bridges the raw numbers exactly by for example claiming Safari software improvements as battery life improvements on the machine specs!
If you don't use the machine exactly as Apple wants you to, you're going to see a much worse battery life, that is just plain physics 101. Pros don't use Safari, it's the IE6 of our age. If you're doing serious webdev you're going to be using Chrome, running JS profilers and debuggers, VMs, compiling code etc. When doing any of these non-battery optimized tasks, you're going to run out juice quicker on the 2016 model, that's just a fact. The 2016 model is plain worse for Pros than the 2015 model when it comes to battery life.
If you don't use the machine exactly as Apple wants you to, you're going to see a much worse battery life, that is just plain physics 101. Pros don't use Safari, it's the IE6 of our age. If you're doing serious webdev you're going to be using Chrome, running JS profilers and debuggers, VMs, compiling code etc. When doing any of these non-battery optimized tasks, you're going to run out juice quicker on the 2016 model, that's just a fact. The 2016 model is plain worse for Pros than the 2015 model when it comes to battery life.
Yes, they need buddy. If you are going to use Wifi sync you need to connect the iPhone to the USB and open iTunes to enable this. At least for Windows.
And that's another form of adapter, please, understand my point. Apple was known for hassle free setups and etcetera. We are tech fans and we know all this, the regular consumer doesn't.
I have 2016 13" TB 512 ssd 2.9 CPU I migrated and run Sierra beta (developer) and have never gotten more than 6 hours of battery life. The average seems to be near 4 hours of quality use.
I have been observing the Watts and amp hour and it seems to be rather high (12 and up) most of the time.
I also noticed in the latest beta Apple has removed the estimated time left from the toolbar display. It is still in the activity monitor app.
I'm starting to wonder if something is running in the background that uses more than normal amount of power.
I would love to see an estimate of 10 hours at least once.
I have been observing the Watts and amp hour and it seems to be rather high (12 and up) most of the time.
I also noticed in the latest beta Apple has removed the estimated time left from the toolbar display. It is still in the activity monitor app.
I'm starting to wonder if something is running in the background that uses more than normal amount of power.
I would love to see an estimate of 10 hours at least once.
I honestly don't know. The only times I've seen Chromium installed are on malware-ridden Windows systems, with very few exceptions.
Not to say Chromium is malware or that it's even bundled with PUPs. But it seems unusual that it's installed, especially for people who didn't look to install it. Plus it doesn't appear in Programs & Features either and the executable is exclusively floating around in AppData/ProgramData.
Just seems unusual. Though back to your original question: I don't know
FWIW I use Chromium (on my Mac) because some site's are designed to run on Chrome (and fail with other browsers). However, Firefox is my main browser.
Please let Apple admit defeat, a huge price cut, and to tell us to keep our eyes peeled for the next system.
You know what's cool? When Nintendo fudged up their CEO took a pay cut, and they also gave away 20 games one time. And there are plenty of other examples of company CEOs admitting defeat and doing the right thing. It's endearing and, for me, builds trust.
You know what's cool? When Nintendo fudged up their CEO took a pay cut, and they also gave away 20 games one time. And there are plenty of other examples of company CEOs admitting defeat and doing the right thing. It's endearing and, for me, builds trust.
I upgraded from a maxed 2011 15" to a maxed 2016 13" and love it. Have had no problems. No, the battery isn't 10 hours but I routinely get 7+ doing everything I need it to do. That said, I am not a developer nor a graphic artist. I work in the entertainment biz and the machine lets me do everything I need or want to do when and where I want to do it.
10 or so years ago we'd all have been banned for trolling.. 'the anti apple stuff' !!!
The ironic thing is now we're the vocal majority
The long time pi$$ed off loyal customers ...
One man CAN make a difference , sadly he's no longer with us ( not counting Scott Forstall ) , Timbo lacks vision , has zero creativity and is hopeless in EVERY way apart from bean counting which SJ found him for
Apple NEEDS an ENEMA
The ironic thing is now we're the vocal majority
The long time pi$$ed off loyal customers ...
One man CAN make a difference , sadly he's no longer with us ( not counting Scott Forstall ) , Timbo lacks vision , has zero creativity and is hopeless in EVERY way apart from bean counting which SJ found him for
Apple NEEDS an ENEMA
I use exclusively Safari, but am sending off mine for a replacement as I couldn't get more than 2:30 hours out of mine. Just Photos, safari open.. not good enough and not what I expect from a MBP.
Before the so-called "hello again" event, there was a bunch of options for the 2015 mbp on Apple's refurbished site.
After the event, they quickly disappeared and I haven't seen them since. I check about everyday, but I guess when/if ever Apple posts a refurbished 2015 mbp, they sell out so quickly.
Really, lots of the design features could have been kept w/o making it thinner. The .5 lb loss was due to shrinking the battery. Do you really think the 500+ posts decrying battery loss would have even come close if it weighed the same as last year? No way!
everyone having the issue should just return the damn thing to send a message to Apple. Stop being so complacent because this is not acceptable for a $3500 machine.