macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator

[tentales]

And i suppose you can't tell your percentage is dropping in the way you can tell you time is dropping?

No. Not as easily as comparing the two metrics. Without the time estimate, you need to keep looking at the percentage over time to determine depletion rate, whereas having both metrics there at a glance you can make an instant determination about the state of your system.
Example: 90% 8hrs remaining = no worries. 90% and 2hrs remaining = wtf? let's check activity monitor.

 

[Suckfest 9001]

For anybody who wants to get it back, I suggest you disable SIP and look for pingdr0p's comment in the following article:
http://osxdaily.com/2016/12/13/see-battery-life-remaining-macos-sierra/

 

[photoj2754]

never mind

 

[BigDO]

Looooool... This is so lame.

 

[kimmen]

"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"

Then why is the dGPU there?

 

[OrangeInc]

Eventually Macs will reach a point where they have no ports, no listed specs, switch on when you open them, log you in by touch and instantly take you to a single screen that only displays Apple.com where everything you need to see, know and do is dictated by Apple.

And that's the Pro model.

Apple have been adding bricks to their walled-garden for years and users have been happily watching the sunlight vanish as it gets bigger and bigger under the guise of "simplicity".

Too late now guys.

Well, if you take a look at the packaging on beats products, nowhere will you find any technical specs....nor online either.....even the BestBuy girl was surprised. Nothing. No impedance, no driver size, nothing remotely technical just "over the ear" "great bass" etc. Just shows people will buy anything as long as the advertising is done right. Look, I don't see athletes wearing Beats headphones everywhere like they did a couple years ago. Heck, I don't even see people with Beats headphones at the gym anymore like I did not too long ago. Coincidence? Athletes stop advertising them everywhere they go and now people stop wearing them.

 

[Bacillus]

Greg: Tim, I have great news !
I worked around the clock and found a new algorithm to predict remaining battery time !!
Tim: Like what ?
Greg: Just take last batt cycle and subtract half a minute to adapt for battery degradation !
Waauuw !! I am the forefront of revolutionary IT development.
Samsung wil be so envious that their eyes will gook and pop out of their heads !
Tim: I doubt so. They have different battery cycles - mere seconds until destruction. So we are better anyway. I don't see your point.
Greg: Well, the point is we can't steal away something that is such integral part of our User Experience.
Tim: But Joni insisted on that. Remember, we grow older. All those menubar icons make him nervous. Plus: we are in a negative spiral with batteries. Our customers want to prove that their batteries fall out too suddenly. We shouldn't allow them. Think of all the forthcoming court-cases.
Greg: Well, I am here to develop the best software and user experience. To hell with all the environmental, juridical, diversity, social acceptable agenda's. You're killing our products.
Tim: I can see that. But I can see also that you're a individually oriented, self-developed, small and merely isolated workman that should concentrate on software and leave major decisions to real managers.
What's the last time you got feedback from a real customer ?
Greg: Well, my servers receive a 287 Terabyte of system error data from our customers each hour...we'd need around 5000 more analysts to process that.
Tim: What !!? Don't say that to me. This is something that you should never, NEVER, ever reveal to anybody. Understand that ? I haven't heard this.
This conversation is over - it never happened.
I'm out for Donald Trump now and remember: I didn't know this and never will.

 

[Mildredop]

Greg: Tim, I have great news !
I worked around the clock and found a new algorithm to predict remaining battery time !!
Tim: Like what ?
Greg: Just take last batt cycle and subtract half a minute to adapt for battery degradation !
Waauuw !! I am the forefront of great and revolutionary development in IT technology.
Samsung wil be so envious that their eyes will gook and pop out of their heads !
Tim: I doubt so. They have different battery cycles - mere seconds until destruction. They measure heat instead of time. So we are better anyway. I don't see your point.
Greg: Well, the point is we can't steal away something that is such integral part of our User Experience, but we should improve it.
Tim: But Joni insisted on that. Remember, we grow older. All those menubar icons make him nervous. Plus: we are in a negative spiral with batteries. Our customers want to prove that their batteries fall out too suddenly. We shouldn't allow them. Think of all the forthcoming court-cases.
Greg: Well, I am here to develop the best software and user experience. To hell with all the environmental, juridical, diversity, social acceptable agenda's. You're killing our products.
Tim: I can see that. But I can see also that you're a individually oriented, self-developed, small and merely isolated workman that should concentrate on software and leave major decisions to real managers.
What's the last time you got feedback from a real customer ?
Greg: Well, my servers receive a 287 Terabyte of system error data from our customers each hour...we need around 5000 more analysts to process that.
Tim: What !!? Don't say that to me. This is something that you should never, NEVER, ever reveal to anybody. Understand that ? I haven't heard this.
This conversation is over - it never happened.
I'm out for Donald Trump now and remember: I didn't know this and never will.

TL,DR

 

[thettareddast]

amazing the cop-out some people use to defend this indefensible practice.

"but your power usage is dynamic we cant predict the draw-down!"
"but sometimes i use premier pro and sometimes im just reading a .doc"

yeah. thanks for that insight. brilliant. so why does apple still advertise "Up to 10 hours of battery life" if every user is a unique snowflake whose keystroke can flap a butterflys wing across the pacific. following that logic, they should restrict themselves to advertising "xxx wh capacity"

 

[Cindori]

If somebody knows any trick, or Terminal command, app, whatever to check remaining battery life, I will be thankful. Otherwise, probably I'll stay on 10.12.1 forever... Glad I kept my 10.12.1 downloaded on my hard drive.

You can use Command Center to view Battery remaining status, as well as health and current power draw. Still works like a charm in maOS 10.12.2.

https://www.cindori.org/software/commandcenter/

 

[Parsec]

Include youtube, engadget, reviewers, forbes, investor letters, etc in your list of "troll-echo-chamber"s. I'm sure they are all trolls in macrumors and just echo each other. Clearly for you the "Real world" doesn't include the actual real world, but just some place where apple is magical for you and that they are as strong as ever and everyone is just stupid and not using the product correctly. I recommend stay in that world, I miss the days when my ignorance towards apple was bliss and all was well.

Clearly this has nothing to do with mac rumors or trolls.. Why are you hanging on and defending apple like it was god for you? Did you invest a lot into them? Stock? Or just trying to get everyone to be an exactly like you, want the same things as you, see things the way you do, and only want things that you do?
[doublepost=1481752575][/doublepost]

Is that typical for you, or just after this update?

Well, I cannot say that it is typical for me as it's the first time that I've worked for so long without charging. But it seems to have gotten better now after two weeks of use. When I got it new, my estimate would've been that I wouldn't get more than 8 hours out of it.

And I actually installed the latest update on while the battery was at about 90% and then went through the rest of the day
[doublepost=1481792795][/doublepost]

Which looks like stellar battery performance. Would you also agree that the time remaining estimate is pretty accurate - and useful?

Well, it is accurate and helpful if what you do throughout the use of the battery doesn't change much.

It's like with a car. If you drive long-distance at a constant speed and same direction (with same wind, etc) a modern car will be able to give you an accurate estimate on how far you can drive with your car, but if halfway you need to pick up a trailer with a horse in it, that will change dramatically.

So if you decide to start do video encoding/transcoding or 3D gaming halfway throughout the charge, the initial estimate goes out the window.

[edit: added the car analogy]

 

[Spectrum]

All they need to do is average out the power draw over a wider time window... This simple change will remove the impact of brief spikes in high processor activity. It really is that simple.

Because decades ago we had hardware that ran at a fixed speed, then we had hardware that ran between certain speeds that was very easy to predict but now we have hardware that is increasingly more aggressive in doing very short burst and that makes it almost impossible to make any useful estimation. Add to that people in general have great difficulty in correctly interpreting data and you end up with the current situation.


Keeping the increasingly inaccurate estimation which almost no user interprets correctly (just take a look in just about any thread here about battery life and you'll see 99% of the people thinking that the estimation is the actual battery life) would do exactly that: incite criticism, foster disappointment and infuriate users. Apple should have removed it some years ago.

The alternative would be something like the background service in iOS. That technology is based on usage of the apps. Unfortunately this will also mean that there will be invasion of privacy as the system is monitoring very closely what you are doing on the machine. The question remains how much of an invasion it really is and whether you'd want something like that. Judging by the Windows 10 privacy concerns I'd say that this would be unwanted behaviour. In that case the only option left is to remove the estimation.

I'd advise to have the menu item show the percentage and monitor this yourself. That way you build up a very good sense of how much your battery is going to last. Something that is probably going to be far better than whatever system Apple can come up and without the privacy invasion. Some people might recognise it from their watches (lots of automatic watches out there that will drift over time so you have to adjust the time eventually; after some use the watch wearer knows when he has to do that).


That's not a very good way of telling that. Monitoring CPU/mem activity in Activity Monitor or apps like iStat Menus are a much better way of doing that. I'm using iStat Menus and have the CPU graph set up to show the load number.

[doublepost=1481798804][/doublepost]

So if you decide to start do video encoding/transcoding or 3D gaming halfway throughout the charge, the initial estimate goes out the window.

But that's exactly what it should do...it's a dynamic estimate based on recent/current usage. Why is this a problem?

 

[thettareddast]

So if you decide to start do video encoding/transcoding or 3D gaming halfway throughout the charge, the initial estimate goes out the window.

[edit: added the car analogy]

So??? What's the problem??? Same thing goes for a navigation device adjusting the ETA or your car projecting the range.....or your smart phone with 'minutes left.

Why remove it?

 

[Parsec]

So??? What's the problem??? Same thing goes for a navigation device adjusting the ETA or your car projecting the range.....or your smart phone with 'minutes left.

Why remove it?

Because it is causing major concern for many people who do not understand this principle. I would like to have seen it kept in the menu as it is very easy to reach

 

[sracer]

All they need to do is average out the power draw over a wider time window... This simple change will remove the impact of brief spikes in high processor activity. It really is that simple.

[doublepost=1481798804][/doublepost]
But that's exactly what it should do...it's a dynamic estimate based on recent/current usage. Why is this a problem?

Thank you!

Even though I dislike the fact that Apple removed the "time remaining" indicator it is probably a good thing that they did it considering their customer base. Concepts like "time remaining" appear to be too advanced for the current crop of customers to understand correctly. I honestly don't mean this as a pejorative, but simply an observation.

What was "easy to use" in the past (that was Apple's claim to fame) is now "too difficult and confusing". Whether it's types of storage media, ports, or OS indicators, Apple is marching toward an even more simplistic experience.

** warning, old-man rant **
Back-in-the-day, the command prompt interface was all that we had. Then came the GUI. And now we're seeing steps towards the appliance-ization of the UI. We see it in software... most people don't understand the concepts underneath the functions that are being performed... Photoshop is a prime example. Few would know how to add a drop shadow to text if there wasn't a button to do it. (I call those, "do-it" buttons) That certainly makes the task easier, but then people become dependent upon the functions provided by the software (rather than having the knowledge to use simpler functions to create more advanced results)

 

[A.Goldberg]

Here's the next step:

If the battery life lasts 4-10 hours, they'll just program it to shut off after 4. That way you expect a solid 4 hours of use every single time. And why not have the computer also normalize the recharge time.

That way everything is fair and expected and they can provide a countdown timer down to the millisecond.

For once being lazy pays off. I'm glad I haven't upgraded my MBP to Sierra.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

"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"

Then why is the dGPU there?

Its for house power use.

I know its circular logic. Why can't we put maybe a ballsier video card in the laptop? Power. What does most any mid to high end laptop, including apple, do with a dGPU and not on house power? Not run it and run the basic the integrated thats on there.

So a better GPU would not be a power issue since not used off house power logically flows. Except with apple. This was our bit in the other MBP threads. Dismissed because we are pro elitist apple haters or some such rabble.

Punchline being is people don't even notice the difference. They are running apps that don't show a difference off the bat. Which is fine, see seamless flow on and off power cool for them and a tad bit jealous maybe. Me...I have gone aww crap too many times when I forgot the power adapter. Fire up FCP?...nah. I have danced with that devil too many times of seeing if tasks done before battery drained in an hour or so (from 100%). Got lucky so far....I choose to not push that luck though these days.

 

[NufSaid]

Not really.

AC on/off. Heat on/off. Lights on/off, speed. Hills. Stop and go. Playing heavy metal and driving spirited. Bad weather traction control. Kids playing with the electric windows.

Seems more similar to me than different.

Except that stop and go can easily be planned for. Lights and windows are minor drop i the bucket as far as energy use goes and in the case of lights again...easy to plan for in the calculation.

Computer CPU usage varies by factors of 100's not 10/20/30 percent variation.

 

[Mcmeowmers]

Surely Apple could create an 'time left' estimator algorithm based on the user's typical usage. Any prediction would have an error, but over time this should go down.

Actually, depending on the algorithm it might get worst over time. An accumulation of previous "errors" may lead to an inaccurate estimate.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

So professionals shouldn't switch to USB-C even though it is vastly superior to it's USB type A predecessors?

It's not about should or should not, it's about can or can not, and the short answer is that I cannot drop a dependency on type A until all of my customers/clients do, too. Dongles, dongles everywhere.

I'm not going to rehash every argument against going USB type-C only. It's a pointless argument and I've already made my point quite clear to Apple by voting with my wallet.

 

[ignatius345]

Lame move on Apple's part.
CoconutBattery is an excellent replacement, though. The "watt draw" readout is genius, and I love how tweakable the display is. Here's my current display setup. It puts the time estimate and watts drawn up there, separated by the arrow which indicates charge/discharge:

%r %s %ww

I'm definitely not missing the useless stock Apple battery display.

 

[dv8r]

Computer CPU usage varies by factors of 100's not 10/20/30 percent variation.

Neither does cars... going uphill with headwind, going uphill with headwind while pretending to be Ayrton Senna.

 

[dadouney]

Hint: go on, remove the illuminated apple that is behind the screen...

 

[halfyardr]

It really doesn't make that much of a difference to me. People will forget about it eventually. Don't think Apple is trying to "disguise" bad battery life, just removing something that hardly anyone pays attention to anyways. IMO

 

[peter2]

It really doesn't make that much of a difference to me. People will forget about it eventually. Don't think Apple is trying to "disguise" bad battery life, just removing something that hardly anyone pays attention to anyways. IMO

Another expert on what other people do or don't do. Amen.