I swear, all Apple cares about is this "thinner and lighter" nonsense. I'd rather have a MacBook Pro that's as thick as the 2015 model, but actually has a long-lasting battery!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacBook Pro Users Express Concerns About Limited Battery Life
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well, I can see the problem from the screenshot. You're using Chrome. 
Seriously, there's probably a hardware issue if users are noticing that it lasts less than the older models, but I also would recommend against Chrome if you care about energy consumption.
Seriously, there's probably a hardware issue if users are noticing that it lasts less than the older models, but I also would recommend against Chrome if you care about energy consumption.
Last edited:
It wont be long before Timmy has us connecting the Mac to the outlet permanently and make it razor thin
All the apps were closed. Activity monitor also shows a history of the previously opened apps. You need to look at the 'energy impact' column.
Oh sorry, did you look at the cpu tab and show root processes?
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.
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.
Last edited:
I've found that the Messages app will trigger dGPU usage on my older mbp 15 whenever there are any animated effects. At this point I just keep the activity monitor open to kill any apps that use high performance graphics. They really need a better of prioritizing its usage.
Every day, more bad news.
This things a stinker. Too bad it's all apple has to show for the last three years of mac development.
This things a stinker. Too bad it's all apple has to show for the last three years of mac development.
I know people complain about the "thinner" obsession a lot, but it really seems like a lot of these "bad news" issues may ultimately be due to Apple's obsession with thinness. Thinness means smaller battery, it means cramped components and inferior cooling, and it may be costing performance and functionality. I hope that's not the case--I wish these were all just fixable software/firmware bugs, but I doubt it.
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.
If I was only getting three hours of battery life, as some in this thread are claiming (while doing relatively light work), I'd be returning that puppy to the nearest Apple Store for a "Genius" check-up and presumably a replacement.
I don't have a screen shot of it (sorry), but from memory I can tell you that there was nothing significant going on. Activity Monitor was the only process showing any real usage.
The thinness leads to other issues too, like the low repairability of the machines because everything has to be held together by glue and the lack of a Kensington slot might well be due to the machine being too thin.
Everyone likes to scream that Tim Cook must go. I beg differ. Johnny Ive or whoever is forcing Apple to be a design company first and a technology company second is my biggest gripe.
Who said they are the same people?
Either way, if Apple didn't have a thinness obsession, they could have 32GBs of RAM and decent battery life.
Yeah, quite frankly for most of their recently history their battery life estimates were really solid (some software related issues to some recent iPhones notwithstanding). You have to go back to the G4/G5 PPC days to see Apple repeatedly make a mockery of battery life estimates.
this pretty much settles it for me. no more macs. ever. PC only from now on with my 2011 iMac when i need to use mac software
Wait for V2, bound to be updated fairly swiftly around this time next year. By then the kinks will have been worked out and hopefully some nvidia GPU will be in there too. It's just like the iPhone 5 being super bad compared to the 5s and the 6 to a lesser extent the 6s. Funnily enough the original retina MBP seemed to be a pretty decent V1 so my theory doesn't always work!
there is a misunderstanding.
today REAL pro users only need to work 3 hours a day. ;-)
today REAL pro users only need to work 3 hours a day. ;-)
It might be just a few bad machines. It might be bad browsing habits.
Too many background windows open with HTML5 and Flash....
Too many background windows open with HTML5 and Flash....
The battery in the current 15" is 76 Wh. It's the previous gen that had 99.5.
Had they not been obsessed with thinness, they could have kept the battery at 99.5 and added 32GB memory. The non-LP DDR won't use an extra 24Wh
if you just don't work on it but just stare at the screen, it will last even longer!