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macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator

atlatnesiti said:
What the..? You guys must be joking - 32 pages with over 700 posts about battery indicator..?!
Get life people.
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Why go through the trouble of posting that silly comment? Does it make you feel better? Trying to make people aware you have a life? There has to be a reason.

I am sure this thread stopped being about indicator early on and is now about apple and their **** decisions lately.

That ultimately screw the end user.
 
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benlukes said:
Yes, unfortunately, but I'm not sure why...
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Why keep something that not only didn't work anyway, but was deceptive and misleading, solely because it was there in the past, which is the only reason. People reacted the same way about the floppy drive.
You would actually prefer the inaccurate, misleading, meaningless number, so you can complain about how inaccurate it is?
 
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MacDarcy said:
At first I thought the article was saying Apple got rid of the battery indicator altogether. But then realized they were only talking about the "time remaining" not the percentage. That's no big deal. Don't know why everyone is freaking out. I can live with that.
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So let's see what you are saying: "Was going to freak out, because they removed battery percent!", but "Was not the case, i'm fine!", then "Why the **** are people freaking out about something I don't use? Morons!"
 
batchtaster said:
Why keep something that not only didn't work anyway, but was deceptive and misleading, solely because it was there in the past, which is the only reason. People reacted the same way about the floppy drive.
You would actually prefer the inaccurate, misleading, meaningless number?
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Funny you use the words deceptive and misleading.

That sums up apple pretty accurately lately.

Let me ask you this

Before today, is this something you said to yourself..."You know, i think they should remove this time remaining battery indicator?

No you did not but now you feel obligated to defend it for whatever reason.
 
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batchtaster said:
Why keep something that not only didn't work anyway, but was deceptive and misleading, solely because it was there in the past, which is the only reason. People reacted the same way about the floppy drive.
You would actually prefer the inaccurate, misleading, meaningless number?
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It wasn't meaningless-it was purely an estimation and quite accurate on my 2012 MacBook Pro. It was great to gauge what I could expect getting with my current apps going. If I was somewhere without reasonable access to an outlet, I could readjust what I was running- it has always been an estimate and a gauge. Everyone is constantly changing apps and different processes on their machine-all it does is give you an estimate based on current usage, not a sell all. Seriously it's never been 10 hours of encoding and 10 hours at 40% brightness checking a webpage/refresh every 5 minutes... your mileage will vary, all the estimation did was give you a little perspective and insight.

If you looked at it and had 6:00 hours left and started some heavy encoding (or similar activity/process) and after 5 minutes it drops to 3:35, well hell, your burning up energy more than you were 6 minutes ago...

Some people have no idea how the thing works... just don't hold back their emojis.
 
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Oh boy! that was one feature i was quite happy with, lot of times helped me pull off very critical work while travelling and all. Least they could have done is retain it for older machines where it was working fine.

Time to find an alternate app for the time being, and hope apple find some sense :)
 
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Man on the moon said:
Funny you use the words deceptive and misleading.

That sums up apple pretty accurately lately.

Let me ask you this

Before today, is this something you said to yourself..."You know, i think they should remove this time remaining battery indicator?

No you did not but now you feel obligated to defend it for whatever reason.
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No, it doesn't. It describes the battery life indicator, which is entirely an affectation to make you feel warm and fuzzy and lord it over your fellow laptop users. Apple haven't been deceptive or misleading. They've just fixed the problem in a way you didn't want, which is not anywhere near the same thing.
No, I didn't think that. But I also didn't think about crying about it on a public forum, like the sky is falling, because it's not a critical feature. It was always necessary to take it with a bucket of salt. And now, considering how increasingly and frivolously litigious people are, Apple has seen fit to get rid of something that required too much user understanding and flexibility, because history has shown none is forthcoming. And considering the posts on this forum, they have clearly been proven right.
You'll get over it, just like you got over the removal of the Dock and Software Update items from the Apple menu (remember those?). Because you will have no choice. (Any chance you can speed up the process and just slide right through to "Acceptance"?)
 
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Okay I'm all for blaming Tim Cook on Apple's recent decisions and many product decisions anger me. That my late-2014 rMBP doesn't get more than 3 hours when doing anything more than light web browsing and that Sierra has become quite buggy (including serious graphic glitches) is frustrating. But in this thread, I really see this doomsday feeling in the community people complain about recently.
I get from the thread that many people relied on that feature, I actually haven't discovered this in 10 years of using macs - probably because I often do power-intensive tasks requiring my charger or because I just estimate the time myself from the percentage shown. It may be an annoyance for many, but the degree of impact and proof of Apple's demise seems quite exaggerated to me.
 
adamjackson said:
If you want it back, just install iStat Menus Pro:


The Mac is not limited like iOS is. You can download applications outside of the Mac App Store that do cool things (for now).
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True, but as these apps are not Apple's own, there won't be any "official support" regarding time remaining.

If you walk into an Apple Store, talk to a Genius bar employer, you could point to the time remaining status on the menubar and discuss the battery issue.
Cannot do that with a 3rd party app.
 
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adrianlondon said:
I think it's been hinted at, but not said outright (although this is a fast-moving thread!) ...

The Activity Monitor still shows the estimated time remaining.
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Don't worry, due to his busy social schedule and watch band design commitments, Tim just hasn't gotten around to removing the Activity Monitor yet. But rest assured, iOS doesn't have it, so neither should macOS.
 
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Apple removes a useful feature, then says "it's inaccurate" ?

It's a Mac,, I thought the whole point of not relying on third parties monitoring software, was because the battery indication is more accurate...

Now this is a push in the opposite direction... well done. I see there was no mention of resetting SMC.
 
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I've never liked fanboys. Apple has a lot of them. Some won't admit to the label.

However, constant news like this keeps chipping away at that glob of fanboys. I love Apple products... but, much like everyone else, I am loving the Apple ecosystem less and less as time moves forward.

"Simple" does seem to apply to Apple Music, or the iOS updates. Neither are simple. They keep adding 'features' that complicate the experience. In the case of Apple Music, it's easier to browse the iTunes store for music than it is Apple Music. I just don't like it. Steve Jobs would've made Apple Music so nice that no one would need to use any other streaming service.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If Google keeps streamlining their cloud services, hardware, and software... and Windows keeps streamlining Windows 10... then in 3 years I might not own an Apple product. Right now both are still cluttered with unnecessary things, but they've been moving in a good direction, whereas Apple has been moving away from their signature of being the ultimate of functional simplicity.
 
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I cannot comment on the new MacBooks, but I have the 2015 rMBP, and I find the remaining time estimation to be fairly accurate. I do not understand why some people think it should be a constant, when usage varies, as does the strain on the battery.

Regardless, removing this feature will not improve the battery time of the new Macbooks. I am just happy mine lasts around 10 hours if all I do is word processing and browsing in safari. ;)
 
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Jaekae said:
Its true though that the time left indicator is wrong because it only count on the things the users are doing at the moment when looking at it. I have that it showed 9 hours first after full charge and some safari browsing, then if i did a task for like 10 minutes that used dGPU instead it was showing 3 hours, but after done with that and continued to only do safari i got those 8-9 hours anyway.
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Yes, but it adjusts once you stop doing that particular task. You can live without it showing time but it was a good way to tweak what you want to use exactly. These days now I pretty much know to get the best battery shut all apps not necessary, switch to Safari and close tabs when possible.

What the time showed was what a huge difference Chrome made on battery life. How much power/time do I gain by shutting Utorrent for example. This way you were more easily able to balance your needs. If I have a torrent going and having Utorrent and Chrome open makes it so I get 3 hours of life or so. So if the torrent is going to take 5 hours and I won't be near a plug for 3 hours it let's me know to shut something down or there is no point.

Yes, the time meter would jump around by hours but would usually adjust itself with in a few minutes once you closed apps. Whatever apps you are using it made it easier to get the battery life to match the amount of time needed. So you would know more accurately how long you could leave things open before you had to go into skeleton mode if you wanted to just keep browsing on Safari.

How muc time did you gain if you turned down screen brightness by two bars for example? How about turning off the backlight keyboard? Percentage doesn't show you how much you can extend your life by and that's the problem.

Now if Apple wanted to treat their users nicely they would have a toggle that you can turn it off or on. Oh Wait I think that's exactly how it was. So the people saying it wasn't accurate or needed could turn it off. There was absolutely no justification to axe it.
 
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You can still go and check the estimated time when you to System Preferences > Energy Saver and check on the bottom of the screen.

MacRumors said:



macOS Sierra 10.12.2, released this morning, features several key bug fixes and addresses an issue that has plagued some customers who purchased a new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar -- battery life.

Apple believes that the battery life indicator in macOS Sierra is ultimately inaccurate and has led to some confusion about battery performance, and so it has been removed in macOS Sierra 10.12.2.

batterylifeindicator.jpg

Going forward, the battery icon in the Mac's menu bar will offer a look at remaining battery percentage, but it won't provide estimates on how long the MacBook Pro's battery will last. Here's what Apple said about it to The Loop:MacBook Pro buyers have complained about getting less than 10 hours of battery life, reporting as little as three hours of battery life in some cases, but battery performance can vary significantly based on the apps and processes that are running.

Customers with poor performance may be using apps that are not optimized for the new MacBook Pro, and on the 15-inch machine, if an app engages the discrete GPU, battery life takes a significant hit. For MacBook Pro owners who are seeing bad battery life, it's worth checking the Activity Monitor to make sure the dGPU is not in use.

Spotlight indexing, iCloud photo syncing, and other behind-the-scenes processes can also have an impact on battery life, especially when a machine is new.

According to The Loop, Apple has done extensive battery life testing on the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and continues to stand by its battery life estimates of up to 10 hours. It seems Apple believes reports of bad battery life are largely based on the faulty indicator, but there have been some real world tests that don't rely on the estimate and still show poor performance.

Apple says its new MacBook Pros can get up to 10 hours of battery life when browsing the web or when watching iTunes movies.

Article Link: macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator
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I think when people say that the variance of the estimate swings wildly because of the processor has a point. But that is a total cop-out. The main reason the estimate swings wildly and provide inaccurate readings is because.. dum dum dum.

The battery is small!

I am not exactly sure how the API calculated time remaining but definitely the battery capacity is a divisor

As an estimate - if we take the battery of the 13 inch 2015 MBP which is 74.9 watt hour and the current touchbar version at 49.2 watt hour

For every 1 watt hour of battery on the old model you get .66 on the new one

So what does that mean?

If the processor goes from x to 2x in consumption (ergo double)

Then where as before it is

2x / 1

now it is

2x / .66x

So going from 1x to 2x will produce a more varied number.

But it is not the processor. It is the smaller battery.
 
for the love of… no the feature (Still there just hidden) used for years was inaccurate as it’s how people are testing their new Macs and it has nothing do with the new 10 hours Pros not hitting the mark. My 201 MacBook Air right now has 89pct and says over 10 hours left (found in bloody activity monitor!!! - why? this is convenient how?) and from experience I believe it will last that long if I tried. Reasonable people know it is only an estimate (It says so “estimated time”) shouldn’t be removed because new hardware is potentially not living up to expectations. Improve or revise the literature for the new hardware, but don’t hide an OS feature for the many users of all machines. As for the testing for battery life by apple changed? Pre-2016 machines (excluding the 12” MacBook) advertised X hours and reviews tended to get that or more in light workloads. Now apparently this isn’t the case but has nothing to do with the amount of battery in the new machines. If it doesn’t make sense it’s because it buiishit which applies to the battery life or the new need to hide an estimate. Percentages don’t give one a general a metric or real figure in hours, mins (taken with a grain of salt but still something to go by). This is rubbish and disappointing.
 
Sure, there are no perfect progress bars, kind of a shame no one has improved these yet.

Still a little bit weird that they remove an indication/guesstimate, I'd take a rough estimate over no info any day.
 
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