macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator

[dilbert99]

1. They always sell it as "up to" x hours of battery life. You're not guaranteed the number they say.

2. From the sounds of it it appears that whatever they had been using to calculate time remaining on the battery couldn't keep up with the processes in the computer, especially if the load is constantly changing.

Wow it took a whopping 52 posts and on to page 3 of comments for the first fan post to appear.
That must be a new record.

I didn't think I was going to find any fan posts in this thread, oh well, I'll admit i was wrong 😀

 

[Bacillus]

Tim: Greg, can we improve the menubar percentage ?
Greg: Sure, but I am constantly being interrupted by Joni. He wants the whole thing out. I'm afraid he wants to get rid of the menubar altogether.
Phil: Well, simplicity rules. It marks our next step in the TouchBar transition. Also, it would improve overall performance by at least 0,0003 %. Gradual improvement - that's what drives us now.
Tim: Fine, but I am here to look after your cooperation, guys. So if Joni hammers on certain things, we must take that serious. Performance improvement is on anybodies' radar - even when incremental... Greg, you understand that, don't you ?
Greg: Happily. The more time I have to look after the current MacBook GPU artefacts...
Phil: Ooh - save my day please... we'd better get rid of that too. Let's remove the whole screen ! Joni will love it, it makes the device 0.7" thinner. And it will give the TouchBar the profile it deserves.
Greg: Well, in that case... it would save us the whole 5K discussion, all the buzz about OLED and make us independent from the Samsungs and LG's of this world that keep the best screens for themselves.
Tim: But the press will kill us...
Phil: Nothing new. Tell them it allows for a larger trackpad. Tell them they can keep their MacBook lids closed, also to avoid keyboard problems. And for the stubborn, we can temporarily offer the screen as a $1500 option. New dongles to be worked out.
Tim: Well, Phil clearly has the courage. With our Airpods success story, he can handle anything now.
Better for the environment too. And think of the visually impaired - no screens anymore will offer a level playing field. Diversity !
PostPC era !! Our shareholders will LOVE the improved margins.
I want a proposal tomorrow !!

 

[Jaekae]

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.

Isnt that only if they used same processor? Thought skylake is more power efficient than the older one, which was why they could use smaller battery and still get the 10 hour safari estimate

 

[ryanwarsaw]

I got caught up thinking about different apps and then the grim horror of this set in. It dawned upon me that this could seriously impact the way I use (certain adult sites for streaming that get censored) when I am on battery power. I really need to know to the very last minute how long I have and how bright it can be.

 

[SirRahikkala]

All the people complaining about battery life are all probably using Chrome and have 15 tabs open.

How does it make any difference between Macbook generations?

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

Have apple done ANYTHING good this year? I cant tell.

 

[G4DPII]

If it's so inaccurate as a lot are claiming why has it stayed in the OS for so long? Come, on give a valid answer. I know it's been part of the Mac OS since OS9, not used anything before that so don't know.

If it was such a bad indicator if time, don't you think Jobs or Mr Thinness would have removed it years ago.

Always been a pretty good measure to go by on our mid 2009 MacBook Pro. Give or take 10 minutes. It's a lot more accurate than most of the time related features in the OS.

 

[hans1972]

The native Apple timer was never terribly accurate; I always took it as a guide. If I plug my laptop into my external monitor, surely it'll drain faster (perhaps I should've gotten a monitor that supports Thunderbolt charging). Anyway, I use the Monity app; shows all kinds of diagnostics like battery life, number of cycles, active/inactive RAM, and so on, right in the Notifications panel. I think it also shows time remaining. It's worth the $5.

But don't you find it odd that this has NEVER been a problem on the previous Macbooks? Sure it's been inaccurate but I don't remember crowds of people complaining about bad battery life using that meter as the definitive says all means all. It may have been inaccurate but it's an odd time for Apple to just now realize it's inaccurate and remove it all of the sudden.

Maybe it is related to Skylake CPUs?

 

[mdiallo]

Hi, I cannot believe how Apple solved this issue!

 

[zen]

For a company that launched the Macintosh with a 1984-themed advert, I'm amazed how they have circled around.

There is no battery problem. There was never any battery problem. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

 

[Egally08]

I think the simplest explanation is that Apple decided to remove the thing simply because its not working properly. Of course, its very likely that the battery criticisms were the trigger. But honestly, if a feature that does not work properly is used to criticise a product, it kind of makes sense to remove it. I wouldn't be surprised though if Apple reintroduces it later, after they improve their estimation algorithms. Could be a neat little AI project for a masters or something 🙂

I would definitely say it was working properly. It's been working for years, what would cause it to stop now? Aside from that, there's really nothing to function improperly, or any 'AI' involved in it. It's as simple as taking the power consumption and dividing by the mAh remaining. - Or find the average consumption over a small period of time.

I don't believe they're looking at larger usage patterns(Average power consumption per individual app, average consumption for time of day etc - Which could be deduced with algorithms) , since people don't need to know what they've been averaging, they want to know what they can expect right now. Since the time fluctuates min to min, and will increase or drop drastically once you've opened / closed a large program, that tells me they simply do the calculations on just an immediate consumption/mAh. Nothing to really screw up in those figures.

 

[Merode]

This was a useful feature if you knew how to use it. It wasn't precise, but was really decent. You could easily evaluate what kind of energy consumption impact reducing screen brightness had. If my battery expectation raised 20-30% when I reduced brightness alone, it was kind of useful.

NOBODY (really, nobody) expected it to forecast how long will battery live because you use different apps throughout the day. However it gave you VERY PRECISE indication how long will battery live assuming you kept using notebook the way you do right now.

Why was it removed? Because it showed pretty low battery life expectations on 2016 rMBPs even when idling in Safari.

 

[Tech198]

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. 😉

Its not the fact its constant,i don't think we expect it to be, but its more accurate then third party tool often are.. just because its Apple... and numbers are better ways of measuring than a bar 🙂

You don't remove something just because its easier to do,, You try and fix it first.

 

[flyinmac]

Have apple done ANYTHING good this year? I cant tell.

The "pile of crap" emoji seems to be working flawlessly. So I guess something is working.

 

[Tunster]

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.

I think that's a little doom and gloom plus very unrealistic. Microsoft can't even get a good run on an OS since Windows XP/7. Windows 10 is riddled with issues and even their hardware offers are far off being mature/mainstream for prosumers. Apple have enough cash to keep churning the marketing wheel for some time to come. For pure techies, we see underneath the smoke and mirrors. For the average user? They won't even care.

I personally think my current rMBP will be my last MacOS laptop unless Apple turns another corner on their design again. Very tempted to purchase a refurb'd 4K/5K iMac next. Much better value for money for what you get and VPN/Remote tech is getting so good that I'd rather leave the power of my computing at home. I'm nowhere near retreating to Windows yet though.

 

[aloshka]

No other browser besides Chrome has brought these battery draining comments.
Kinda obvious that Google Chrome is poorly designed.

Fine, let's say chrome sucks. What about the hundreds of other people having issues that don't use it?
[doublepost=1481705379][/doublepost]

Again, you don't get to make comments like this without being called out. They haven't lost anything, and no amount of passive aggressive trolling like this makes it so.

Nothing was lost? So how come I'm clicking my battery icon and I no longer see the time remaining? Did you miss that?

 

[MH01]

After feedback they will put it back after Xmas , removal will boost sales and Lower returns .

 

[xmonkey]

I got caught up thinking about different apps and then the grim horror of this set in. It dawned upon me that this could seriously impact the way I use (certain adult sites for streaming that get censored) when I am on battery power. I really need to know to the very last minute how long I have and how bright it can be.

Wow dude. Just use the Activity Monitor if you need to know how much longer you have before you gotta get off at max brightness possible.

 

[deany]

will there be a 3rd party addon in the mac store?
I see a market for this - if apple allowed it.

 

[dilbert99]

The users complaining in this thread don't get it.

That metric was so useless and inaccurate, just simply opening a new app would drastically change the "time remaining" for some time. So people would open up their favorite apps and then immediately check the "time remaining" and see that they're only expected to get 3 hours of battery life.

Since it was so adaptive, it was highly inaccurate. People can complain Apple is hiding the issue or whatever, but to me, percentage will tell you more about the actual battery life that the machine is expected to get.

EDIT: To users saying they should have tweaked the metric, I would say that the metric would remain be still inaccurate. It's very difficult to actually estimate time remaining (I say this as a software developer). There are certain things you can estimate, but generally, since it's all dependent on the user's actions, it's very difficult to predict what the battery life would be. There's a reason the iPhone doesn't have this metric too.

I think getting rid of the time remaining would actually remove that check having to be done in the background as well.

You as a software developer will be very familiar with estimates. These are necessary things and are not always accurate in life but we still have them everywhere from Software, car MPG, battery life, tradesmen.

I think your answer is a bit rose coloured...

 

[Egally08]

I think that's a little doom and gloom plus very unrealistic. Microsoft can't even get a good run on an OS since Windows XP/7. Windows 10 is riddled with issues and even their hardware offers are far off being mature/mainstream for prosumers. Apple have enough cash to keep churning the marketing wheel for some time to come. For pure techies, we see underneath the smoke and mirrors. For the average user? They won't even care.

Little bit off topic but wanted to respond - Windows 10 is a very solid OS. More stable than MacOS in a lot of ways, and less so in other ways. They each have their downsides compared to the other. Most people that use both of them extensively, agree that W10 is more fluid with less UI lag than MacOS now.

As far as microsoft's hardware - The Surface book is the only laptop they have out - And the max spec Surface book / performance base is very comparable to the 13" mpb. With the addition of the touch screen / digitizer / detachable. I use both platforms, I have a max Surface book, and my 15" 2016 max mpb just showed up today, and I'm loving it.

 

[dingclancy23]

Isnt that only if they used same processor? Thought skylake is more power efficient than the older one, which was why they could use smaller battery and still get the 10 hour safari estimate

The main issue Apple is pushing is that the battery time remaining indicator is "inaccurate", which means the estimate varies wildly from one minute to the next depending on what app you use. Point is it does not matter what processor you use, a smaller battery will cause the estimate to be more inaccurate compared to previous Macbooks.

 

[dilbert99]

All the people complaining about battery life are all probably using Chrome and have 15 tabs open.

So to get good battery life you have to use Apples own super optimised software and nothing from others?

I used Aperture on mine and that was a battery hog too. We cannot go defending Apple saying, "oh, sorry, you only get 10 hours when you use our apps, one at a time..."

 

[bagrov]

To be fair, I use my 2013 MBPr for 3 years now and I don’t remember when I looked at that bar for the last time until TODAY. But I agree, some users will definitely miss this feature. Not all though.

 

[Spectrum]

I bet at least half the people here didn't know you could click on the icon and get the remaining battery time guess. And what's really a hoot is those that knew about the "feature" actually think it's accurate.

It is accurate. And very useful.