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Phil Schiller: Apple Working With Consumer Reports to Understand MacBook Pro Battery Test
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That's dreadful.
Can I ask how long you have had the nrMBP and what model and spec
thanks
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Imagine this scenario at the next Fall Mac event...
"You know, for many years now, Apple has led industry hardware design in several ways, but one way in particular has come to be expected in every hardware generation: we've made our products thinner and thinner and thinner while maintaining key metrics important to our customers. That's very hard to do but we've been successful at doing it for a long, long time.
There comes a point though where the laws of physics trumps continuing to thin some of our products. For the last year or two, we've continued to prioritize thinner beyond those laws by removing things that some of our customer's tell us they miss. One thing we hate to do above all else is disappoint our customers.
So, today we are doing something revolutionary for the Apple you've come to know... today we are launching the next generation of Mac laptops that... are... thicker. Yes thicker. By adding just a few millimeters to the size- less than the thickness of 3 dimes stacked on top of each other- we are able to fill that space with more battery and more RAM. This MacBook's bigger batteries run not for 8 hours, not 10 hours, not 12 hours but 14 hours on a single charge.
And not just in our own lab tests. To talk about that, we're happy to have the most objective product review organization on Earth here today. Help me welcome <name> from Consumer Reports to the stage.
The CR guy then comes out, talks about getting a pre-launch review model to put through their tests, makes a joke about Apple's demands for absolute secrecy and then confirms 14+ hours of battery life in CR testing.
Is that an abhorrent fantasy sequence? Would any of us HATE the idea of trading a few millimeters for more battery?
In my head, a move like that helps Apple take the "must be thinner" pressure off themselves in one swing AND makes it appear that customer wants trumps nickel & diming profitability and/or the (Henry Ford faster car) "we know best" stance. Or more simply: the Apple that we remember- the one that appears to care about users more than shareholders (whether they ever really did or not)- appears to be back.
Do we consumers rebel because it's not "even thinner" by kicking other useful utility out? Or is that a "shut up and take my money" launch... that also relieves the growing(?) sense that the Apple we think we knew has been lost to the bean counters?
Just a fantasy by a long-term Apple product buyer. If you don't like this one, roll your own. Key concept with this one is that it is relatively easily accomplished... not depending on some kind of major battery breakthrough or similar. And frankly: I think we're well past the day that "thinner" should be at the top of the list for the next generation product development team.
"You know, for many years now, Apple has led industry hardware design in several ways, but one way in particular has come to be expected in every hardware generation: we've made our products thinner and thinner and thinner while maintaining key metrics important to our customers. That's very hard to do but we've been successful at doing it for a long, long time.
There comes a point though where the laws of physics trumps continuing to thin some of our products. For the last year or two, we've continued to prioritize thinner beyond those laws by removing things that some of our customer's tell us they miss. One thing we hate to do above all else is disappoint our customers.
So, today we are doing something revolutionary for the Apple you've come to know... today we are launching the next generation of Mac laptops that... are... thicker. Yes thicker. By adding just a few millimeters to the size- less than the thickness of 3 dimes stacked on top of each other- we are able to fill that space with more battery and more RAM. This MacBook's bigger batteries run not for 8 hours, not 10 hours, not 12 hours but 14 hours on a single charge.
And not just in our own lab tests. To talk about that, we're happy to have the most objective product review organization on Earth here today. Help me welcome <name> from Consumer Reports to the stage.
The CR guy then comes out, talks about getting a pre-launch review model to put through their tests, makes a joke about Apple's demands for absolute secrecy and then confirms 14+ hours of battery life in CR testing.
Is that an abhorrent fantasy sequence? Would any of us HATE the idea of trading a few millimeters for more battery?
In my head, a move like that helps Apple take the "must be thinner" pressure off themselves in one swing AND makes it appear that customer wants trumps nickel & diming profitability and/or the (Henry Ford faster car) "we know best" stance. Or more simply: the Apple that we remember- the one that appears to care about users more than shareholders (whether they ever really did or not)- appears to be back.
Do we consumers rebel because it's not "even thinner" by kicking other useful utility out? Or is that a "shut up and take my money" launch... that also relieves the growing(?) sense that the Apple we think we knew has been lost to the bean counters?
Just a fantasy by a long-term Apple product buyer. If you don't like this one, roll your own. Key concept with this one is that it is relatively easily accomplished... not depending on some kind of major battery breakthrough or similar. And frankly: I think we're well past the day that "thinner" should be at the top of the list for the next generation product development team.
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Customers on forums have already handed their money over, people reading laptop recommendations probably haven't, hence the difference in attitude.
No. I did not say that. What I said was that I want an independent party to do this testing, to verify the numbers. Fact and facts only.
Looks like all we gotta do to get Apple's attention is to have Consumer Reports diss on their products. All we need to do is get someone at Consumer Reports to "not recommend" Apple products at all, due to the lack of Mac Pro upgrades. Maybe that'll get Apple to freaking update their most important product already.
A surprising number of people have handed money and then had it handed back when we've returned them. That Apple has a set of five possible return reasons for the new 15" MBs on their point-of-sale terminals was telling.
This is so true, I saw this with some car recommendation from a few years ago. CR lost all credibility in my book.
With that said, I wouldn't give this story a shred of my attention if it was not for the many, many negative news/rumors about the 2016 MBP so far.
It has issues, it is hard to doubt that now.
"Was is because some tests used Chrome instead of Safari, which previous tests have shown can greatly reduce battery life?"
Time for CR to go back to grade school too, maybe Phil the Shill can educate them on that too.
Time for CR to go back to grade school too, maybe Phil the Shill can educate them on that too.
Let's see... just this year, I bought a 9.7" iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Apple Watch series 2 and the Airpods. And they are all working great for me.
I will say that Apple is serving this Apple fan very well.
Try to use your AW series 2 to adjust the AirPod volume during a phone call.
The reality is: The Mac is a dying platform. Apple only needs it to run Xcode to develop apps for iOS. In the near future, either iOS becomes self-hosting or they will port their development tool chain to Linux to save the costs of keeping macOS alive. Either way, it''s been obvious for quite a while now that the Mac does not have much of a future anymore under Apple's current management.
Apple are panicked. I bet the sales on these things are lame, if only because they are so pricey let alone the ludicrously lousy design and spec.
And some Galaxy Note 7s did not catch fire. But that doesn't mean that everyone is safe.
To a lesser extent, some reports of decent battery life don't mean the fair number of bad reports should be discounted. Bad reports should always be investigated.
My iPhone 6S had a fine battery at first. It degraded overly fast and was horrible. Apple replaced it because there were manufacturing issues. But it was not a mass recall...because every iPhone 6S battery wasn't affected by the issue. Thus, it's not a question of discounting good reports. Good reports are fine. But that doesn't mean other people aren't having serious problems that aren't originating from their usage or in their head's. It also doesn't mean that someone's good report now can't change in a month or too. Investigate. Take it seriously. That's why Apple is better than others.
To me, this snippet from the 2003 article from MacWorld (reviewing the new PowerBook G4) is one of the worst examples of Apple's QA that I've seen published:
Time to fire the cook.
First Christmas ever, nothing Apple under the tree. What a shame.
First Christmas ever, nothing Apple under the tree. What a shame.
The core issue is the MBP gets 16 hours... when it turns off 95% of its features through throttling, and is acting as a glorified calculator.
There are lot of 5-6ish hour laptops that could do the same if they did the same "Great battery when not being used!" sleight of hand.
There are lot of 5-6ish hour laptops that could do the same if they did the same "Great battery when not being used!" sleight of hand.
Adding my data point: I've had my 3.3Ghz touch bar MBP for one week and battery life is consistently terrible. I have yet to get over 5 hours and all I'm using is Safari and Mail app. Hell, I haven't even installed any other programs on it other than Office. I've currently been using Safari and Mail for the last 40 minutes and lost 20% of my battery life.
This is seriously bothering me. I justified not having my beloved MagSafe because my battery could last long enough to need to charge it once per day. Actually considering returning it.
This is seriously bothering me. I justified not having my beloved MagSafe because my battery could last long enough to need to charge it once per day. Actually considering returning it.
Yes I agree that there is always at least one issue w a component. My 07 white MacBook had the bad hd and the cracked palm rest and took them years to accept the issue w the palm rest. Still the machines issues came later on w use, but after jobs it's stuff that could have been seen in short Q&A testing periods to be rectificied. It's all about release dates issues nowadays from Samsung exploding batteries to Apple they are all suffering from issues that are seen in short periods of use. That is why I have to take my 6S now to change the battery. So I'm going to stand saying the major issue w Apple is that they went from a little Q&A to barely none.
It's just a media circus .
CR does not need to have the reviewers with specialised skills to test battery life. They have generic tests they just run across all laptops, those tests are fine. It's
Apple that has not disclosed how they achieved the 10 hours.
I think people with major battery problems deserve an explanation , cause the holiday return period ends 8th Jan and people want certainty with what the situation is. If is software say so, but to say there is no problem, id be returning mine.
Geeks don't care about CR, but most of apples user base is no longer geeks, older individual with money to burn will listen to CR
Executive summary. With the extended return window apple have to engage cause the returns could be significant .
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That does not work ?
Yes I expect them to do more testing considering they got such wild variations. It's one thing if they were consistently getting poor battery life but in some tests they were getting almost double what Apple claimed. I'm not aware of any other reviewer's that had such a wide variation.
For me, I've had four Apple products that suffered QA issues that were both immediate and wide-spread (i.e. not one-off production issues):
My "Hi-Res" PowerBook had the horizontal banding issue.
My 2006 MacBook Pro had the processor whine and ran stupidly hot (when idling). I returned it, got a MB.
My 2006 MacBook had the RSS (random shutdown syndrome) issue. I returned it, got a Mac mini.
My 2005 iPad nano had the aluminum back that scratched as soon as you unwrapped it.
All of those were from when Steve Jobs ran the company. I'm glad you've had better luck!
I had the same battery issue when my 3.3Ghz touch bar MBP was new. The extremely short battery life can be caused by Spotlight Indexing when new. With the latest macOS update, I'm getting 8 hour plus battery life.
Let's be honest Shiller doesn't care about Apple customers getting less than advertised battery life or a less than optimal experience. Leadership wants to cover this up ASAP so it doesn't affect sales. A much different mentality than when Steve Jobs was at the helm as he truly wanted Apple customers to have the best experience possible. The "Apple tax" felt more than worth it in those days.
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Lord.. stop shilling for Apple. They blew it, and like always they are trying to cover it up. See any past ----gate. Same pattern. They rushed a flawed product to market. Apple is letting Jony Ive design over-priced electronic art, not good computers. Before I returned my 13" i7/16g/256 MBP (and got a Dell XPS 13) I did everything Apple and this site said, and at best got 3 1/2 hrs out of real world use (no video editing). This is not a software issue, this is a flawed battery system. Unacceptable for a $2400 computer. I have been buying Macs since the 90's and will again when they start to make "Pro" machines again. My fear is Apple has become a phone company and the Mac is just an afterthought. Jobs must be rolling.
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This is an easy thing to answer. Your experience has not been the typical experience of many other people.