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macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator
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well im sorry that you're feeling triggered by a stranger on the internet, but he posted his opinion on a public forum and even went through the trouble of making sure he labeled his post as "in his opinion." if you disagree with his post, there are better ways to deal with it than call him arrogant and complain about it
i actually happen to disagree with him - i use the time remaining feature all the time, and even went through the trouble of manually re-enabling it through some hackery. hell, i even posted a link on how to re-activate it a page or two back. however, he's fully entitled to his opinion
And the downloads of coconut battery surge http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/#idDownload
To be honest, I did not notice the IMO part. Most probably because it does not make much sense to have opinions about facts. The author most probably does not have access to those facts, so it would be wiser, IMHO ;-), to not make bold claims, especially using quantifiers like no one/everybody. To me it's like someone who has no knowledge of algebra boldly claiming 2+4=7 and adding "in my opinion" after that.
But what truly bothers me (unlike the above) is the fact that it's as if some people (here) completely lost empathy. Or does the presence of a feature they personally don't use harm them so much that it makes them more happy when that feature is removed, even if other people's use patterns will suffer? This is simply beyond my grasp -- unless it's some kind of non-critical at-all-costs fanboy-ism.
Don’t mischaracterize someone’s argument and then ridicule it as if that was what they meant.
Yep. Soon we will use more non-Apple then Apple tools even for stuff the OS used to provide. The only problem with this is that not everything runs seamlessly. For instance, after apple *****-up Spaces, I used Total Spaces. But ever since SIP was introduced, you cannot do that unless you disable SIP permanently (which is not the greatest idea). More importantly, due to this limitation I guess development of Total Spaces will cease, since most users won't be willing/able to do this kind of tweaking... Other system-oriented apps might run to similar problems in this era of sandboxing and locking everything :-(
The upshot is that specs and capabilities continue to increase. Yes we want under the hood but if the computers battery just lasts super long who cares about the exact amount of time remaining. Just saying.
Shameless plug to sell your $10 buggy App. Surprised you didn't offer a discount to MR for allowing you to advertise.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/
If I was going to spend money to fix this, I'd go for iStat Menu (or even the old Pro version).
But the FREE solution is to just copy the Battery.menu directory in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras from the previous version.
No one, but we're not there and won't be there for a long time. Until then it's a good tool for (some) people - I read Your argument along the lines of the one made for USB C, since everybody is going to have USB C stuff tomorrow let's just get rid of everything else - not taking into account that most people will be carrying dongles for the next couple of years.
If super long battery life is the argument why even have a battery indicator at all? Trouble is that reality is something completely different and change in the real world comes at a slower pace, one example is battery life - it is increasing at a very slow pace, the advances we have seen in the last couple of years is due to optimizations in software rather than actual physics.
So how about removing counters and timers when we have super long battery life.
Yeah those are the poles to hold between engineering and marketing. Also the LED lights went away as well as the MagSafe. Gruber posited there isn't MagSafe aynore bc you don't need to have these new ones plugged in as often. They're able to go longer on a charge like an iPhones. I see where they're going and agree it's still quite thin. I don't terribly mind.
[doublepost=1481868517][/doublepost]I want so badly to upgrade to 10.12.2, but for the first time, I will sit this one out because I don't want to lose the "Time Remaining" feature. Looks like my Late 2013 15" MBP will be stuck at 10.12.1 for the foreseeable future. I can't believe Apple is doing this for the REASONS they are doing it. SMH...
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.
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
Has anyone noticed that iStat Menus and MacOS don't agree on what programs are using the most energy? The "Apps Using Significant Energy" never seems to match up. Maybe they need to update iStat Menus or are they using different thresholds? Anyone know?
Because you may need to estimate whether or not you have enough battery life left to complete two or three complex tasks that are pending. I use the estimate all the time when travelling to keep a track of, and prioritise, my tasks so that I don't end up with a dead battery late in the day when I may need to pick up some emails etc.
Here's how my 2011 MBPro looks 5 mins after pulling the power cord. OSX 10.6.8 obviously. Time remaining displayed directly in the menu bar. As it should be.
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This is a terrible move. Taking away a functional part of the system? Pointless.
Not only does this eliminate easy access to battery time remaining, it also eliminates easy access to the battery's time to full charge. These are useful indicators, especially as the battery ages. Refusing to update for now just b/c this should have been listed in the information in the App store.
Not only does this eliminate easy access to battery time remaining, it also eliminates easy access to the battery's time to full charge. These are useful indicators, especially as the battery ages. Refusing to update for now just b/c this should have been listed in the information in the App store.
Ehh, that's how it worked before 10.12.2 and also one of the reasons why the number has been so inaccurate. Prolonging the time to measure means that you'll make it even worse. The only solution is to measure more often (somewhere in milliseconds) but this causes performance degradation.
The SEC has had the same issue where they'd only check every minute but where the trading takes place in milliseconds. That means that lots of things go unnoticed and that can cause to some serious issues (such as a crash as we've seen a few years ago).
Again, the issue is the small and brief spikes. This makes things a lot more difficult to predict and calculate.
As threads here have shown right now and in the past: there are very little people able to interpret the data correctly. For most the estimate is not an estimate but something that is set in stone.
Read up on what PowerPC actually is. It is not a CPU but an architecture. IBM and Motorola are only manufacturers of PowerPC CPUs (meaning: CPUs using the PowerPC architecture). Apple sourced them from both but gave them their own name (the aforementioned G3 and G4). This is similar to x86, x86_64 (both Intel and AMD) as well as SPARC (Fujitsu & Sun in the old days, now only Oracle).
One of the reasons why Apple ditched PowerPC for x86 was the amount of computing power per Watt and heat generation. The PowerPC 970 from IBM tried to solve the heat issue and was released after Apple's switch to Intel. Apparently it was too little, too late.
Actually, it still shows time to full charge.
There is no need to monitor millisecond rate energy use because there is a far more accurate cumulative counter they can use instead: the charge remaining in the battery (in mAh).
So all that need to be done is to sample the rate of change in the mAh value every minute - generating a minute by minute usage. Then to avoid any issue of some minutes being outliers, and giving an odd reading, take a moving average over a 10 or 15 minute window of time.
The final, simple, result will be a relatively stable estimator of expected battery charge life (given the average usage over the past 10-15 minutes).
Does that make sense?
If your sustained peak usage goes up (or down) the estimate will adjust accordingly. But it will not be briefly skewed by microsecond long peaks of very high activity.
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I applaud your determination in helping others to see the usefulness of the time remaining indicator.
It's ultimately a losing battle but I appreciate the effort.
It stands to reason that many of the battery complaints are from people who use the statistically most popular web browser, yes. And keep in mind that this is the MacBook Pro -- do you consider 15 tabs to be a lot for a professional user? That's nothing for me.
Good lord, you really don't know how things work...
- What you are talking about is still in 10.12.2, they did not remove this! It is in the menu bar item (it's the percentage; you need to enable this from the context menu) as well as in the Activity Monitor on the energy tab.
- Apple cannot use the amount of juice left in the battery for any form of estimating how long a notebook will last on the battery. For that they need to know 2 things: what's left in the battery AND the users usage on the machine. The latter is what's the problem here (see my previous reply). With only knowing what's in the battery it is entirely up to the user to interpret (read: guess/estimate/guestimate) how long the computer may last. For that you can use what's mentioned under point 1. If you do that for some time you'll get estimates that are far more accurate than any software can give you. You know the machine and everything outside the machine and you know it better than software, hence your own estimation is more accurate.
Which is what Apple does and then some because they put it in a neat graph. Take a look at it in the Activity Monitor under the energy tab. It graphs it over the past 12 hours.
None whatsoever. Before you reply again, do take a proper look at both the menu bar item and Activity Monitor! You can still estimate usage but the difference is that instead of OSX doing the guessing it is now up to the user. This is what many have done for years with various devices so it really isn't new, just inconvenient for some. The average camera, bluetooth device, smartphone, tablet, etc. will only show a percentage of battery life left, they won't give you an estimate, that's on you.
That would be stupid because everyone understands the usefulness of having a time remaining indicator. That is also not the issue here. The entire point is the accuracy of the indicator; it is so inaccurate that it is very questionable to keep it in the OS, especially when most people don't understand what it says and does. This has lead to misinformation and misinformation itself is very very dangerous and destructive (I think Faithless was correct in marking misinformation as being a weapon of mass destruction). I don't think Apple sees it any different than we do but it is their responsibility to not misinform the user (in many countries that's even in their consumer law) so they had to do something. I only wish they had done this in the macOS build that was already on the machine when it was released. It would have saved a lot of fuzz.
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I'm glad this site is called Mac"RUMORS" and not MacFacts.
After reading the article and responses in this this forum, I braced myself for the upgrade to macOS Sierra 10.12.2. However, after I upgraded, I noticed that the battery indicator STILL has the percentage next to the battery icon.
Does the percentage indicator missing only apply to the NEW MacBook Pro or macOS in general? Because I still have it.
After reading the article and responses in this this forum, I braced myself for the upgrade to macOS Sierra 10.12.2. However, after I upgraded, I noticed that the battery indicator STILL has the percentage next to the battery icon.
Does the percentage indicator missing only apply to the NEW MacBook Pro or macOS in general? Because I still have it.
It is not the percentage that was removed but "time remaining". The percentage is still there and thus you can still guestimate how long your computer will last but this requires the user to know his computing style and how this relates to power consumption (meaning: you have to get a feel for how long the machine will last and what you can still do on it).