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macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator

Courage + Innovation ==> when you can't/won't add any improvement, take features away!
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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Reactions: dzj, Aldaris and Romy90210
How about a static indicator that doesn't change and reads:

Your new 15" MBP has a 76-watt-hour battery vs. 99.5—prepare accordingly.
 
chabig said:
Mine runs 15 hours under the same conditions. You should return yours.
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make sure you do reset your SMC and PRAM, you should get way over 11hours if just idling. Using it normally at 40% brightness, I get about 10 or so hours. (don't use chrome though)
 
Avenged110 said:
I understand, but the battery percentage isn't much different, yet that remains. My percentage is always off by 3-10% or so from the actual capacity remaining as reported by System Information at any given time. They're both estimates that may be somewhat or greatly off the mark, that doesn't mean they can't leave them as a toggle for those that use them, especially after letting it become an established feature over the years.
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yea percentage is similar, but its more like a reading of how much current the battery is currently holding. That current could be dispensed in 3 hours or 8 hours, depending on what you do. Just because I ate 25% of a pie in 3 minutes, you can't just assume that I will eat the other 75% at the same rate.

also, everyone should know that your battery indicator is NEVER actually reflecting the true amount of current in the battery. it is controlled by software and firmware algorithms and leaves headroom for the battery to charge properly and safely to capacity. Battery indicator at 100% is not the TRUE overall capacity of that battery. So yea there may be some calibration issues that can cause a constant offset of a few percentage points. Sometimes on my MBP the charge won't go past 99% even though the LED on the charger is green.

good info here:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries

http://www.apple.com/batteries/why-lithium-ion/
 
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Indefensible, as much as I like some of their products, they really are collectively scum.

There's been a time remaining indicator on countless generations of OSX and all of sudden it's 'suddenly' inaccurate and removed following a decision to shrink the battery in the MBP to a ludicrous level.

What next, perhaps they should disable the displays to hide issues with the graphics?

I'm amazed there are Apple fanboys on here defending this.
 
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Watabou said:
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.
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So the metric has been wrong all these years ? I think then they should have adjusted the metric. Could be a problem however when you market a laptop as (up to 10h) but your updated (more correct) metric never ever shows 10h.

Anyway. Bad move at the wrong time. And no these 2 minuses don't eradicate each other.
 
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Reactions: mkeeley
This was a really useful feature so that I could see the impact of the running applications. If I saw I only had 3 hours left, I knew to close some stuff and watch it jump to 4 hours left etc

Apple why are you doing this? I'm so tired of you guys making bad decisions.
 
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samcraig said:
It's only useless if you don't understand how and why things fluctuate with usage.

Anyway - the point is - if it's that useless - why have it. Why remove it as a response to battery complaints. That's like Apple trolling its customers.
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Only the very dedicated Apple trolls have decided this to be the case. The real world knows otherwise.
 
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Reactions: zaaach48
Lots of new 3rd party apps that give you estimated battery time remaining in... *removed by Apple* ... oh, some indeterminate amount of time.
 
I am getting tired of a multi-billion dollar company complaining it is too hard to do things right so they either remove the feature or don't do it at all, and then criticize all their competitors for doing it better.

Also, how many more features have to be marginalized to suit naive hipster posers instead of the professionals the brand was originally targeted for? Someone that uses a $3500 "pro" laptop to watch movies and tweet on probably won't understand how battery life is affected by what they do, but a professional does, and yet Apple insists on crippling product functionality for morons? Bad precedent.
 
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zaaach48 said:
yea percentage is similar, but its more like a reading of how much current the battery is currently holding. That current could be dispensed in 3 hours or 8 hours, depending on what you do. Just because I ate 25% of a pie in 3 minutes, you can't just assume that I will eat the other 75% at the same rate.

also, everyone should know that your battery indicator is NEVER actually reflecting the true amount of current in the battery. it is controlled by software and firmware algorithms and leaves headroom for the battery to charge properly and safely to capacity. Battery indicator at 100% is not the TRUE overall capacity of that battery. So yea there may be some calibration issues that can cause a constant offset of a few percentage points. Sometimes on my MBP the charge won't go past 99% even though the LED on the charger is green.
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Yes, I'm not complaining about the (lack of) accuracy. I just think it's funny to completely remove this one feature (that plenty of people use) because it can be inaccurate but leave the other possibly inaccurate measure. Why not just make time remaining opt-in optional?
 
adamjackson said:
If you want it back, just install iStat Menus Pro:

VKGrIZf.png


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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It's cool but that's not something average or new consumer need to deal with.
 
Quu said:
This was a really useful feature so that I could see the impact of the running applications. If I saw I only had 3 hours left, I knew to close some stuff and watch it jump to 4 hours left etc

Apple why are you doing this? I'm so tired of you guys making bad decisions.
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Thank you!
 
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Reactions: pat500000
M2M said:
So the metric has been wrong all these years ? I think then they should have adjusted the metric. Could be a problem however when you market a laptop as (up to 10h) but your updated (more correct) metric never ever shows 10h.

Anyway. Bad move at the wrong time. And no these 2 minuses don't eradicate each other.
Click to expand...

It has been wrong all this time, yes. This is the reason why this metric does not exist on the iPhone in the first place. All you get is a percentage which is a better indicator of how much time is left (barring the iPhone 6s battery issue :))
 
ok, this is hilariously bad.
I support Apple in general but this is just a LOL moment. Wtf were they thinking? LOL
 
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