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Why I think removing the "time remaining" indicator was a bad idea on apples part.

Noerdy

Noerdy

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 13, 2016
35
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Hi I'm Noerdy. I'm getting a 15inch 460 in a week or so, and I have been actively reading MacRumors for 6+ years so I thought I would make an account.

So in the latest version of MacOS Sierra 10.12.2, they removed the "time remaining" indicator. More info here. Anyway, we assume they removed this because it was never really accurate, and they must have received a ton of complaints or something.

I have found the time remaining to be somewhat accurate as long as I keep doing the same task I am doing. (Not going from like iTunes to heavy video editing). This (to me and many others) is just apple admitting that the new MacBook pros do not have all day battery life. I am quite worried about just spending thousands of dollars as a college student on a product that does not preform as well as I was told. (not to mention that fact that I do a ton of editing with adobe products, so I hope the GPU does not die on me, like it has for others, but I heard that was "fixed".)

Anyway, to me, the time remaining is like the "miles left" on your car before it runs out of gas. Of course, it is not accurate, but if you continue driving at the same speed, it is somewhat accurate. If you are using your computer, and it says there are 2 hours remaining, and you do not change what you are doing, there should BE two hours remaining. Of course it is rare that we use the same amount of power constantly, so there is some variation.


So yeah, those were just my thoughts on that matter. I hope to become more familiar with this forum in the future, and become a more active member. :)
 
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I agree. It's generally been accurate to me--or at least helpful on all apple devices I've owned, including my new 2016 15"--and so for this reason, I've not yet upgraded and don't think I will anytime soon.
 
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Noerdy said:
Removing one useful feature on a mac is not trying to "unify" their devices. Thats like saying they should remove the keyboard to unify them. Or if you want software, thats like saying remove finder or something.
Click to expand...

Well, when it comes to battery life, Apple IS unifying the experience. That's what I mean.

I'm not saying they're turning your Macbook into an iPhone.
 
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bopajuice said:
I agree. Trying to unify the whole ho hum user experience.

That's like saying if one person is unhappy then we should all be unhappy.
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That whole time remaining thing wasn't used as intended anyway. You could be surfing the net, get 10 hours remaining, then watch a 60 minute youtube video, and then end with 7 hours remaining afterwards.

I used the time remaining more as a benchmark for the health of my battery, which in reality should be gauged elsewhere.
 
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powertoold said:
That whole time remaining thing wasn't used as intended anyway. You could be surfing the net, get 10 hours remaining, then watch a 60 minute youtube video, and then end with 7 hours remaining afterwards.

I used the time remaining more as a benchmark for the health of my battery, which in reality should be gauged elsewhere.
Click to expand...

As I stated in another thread, I find it ironic that no one questioned the need for this inaccurate or needless feature until a new product released by Apple had issues with battery life.
 
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I have been having various battery issues on my new 2016 13" TB MBP for the last few weeks since I purchased it. 10.12.2 final released today fixed all of it. I am now getting at least twice the time. (from 5 before to 10 now) If you want to see the time remaining, use Coconut Battery (free.) It will show you a few different things. I have it currently showing battery percentage, wattage used by the Mac and battery time remaining. Very nice little app!

Good luck with the new toy!
 
happyslayer said:
I have been having various battery issues on my new 2016 13" TB MBP for the last few weeks since I purchased it. 10.12.2 final released today fixed all of it. I am now getting at least twice the time. (from 5 before to 10 now) If you want to see the time remaining, use Coconut Battery (free.) It will show you a few different things. I have it currently showing battery percentage, wattage used by the Mac and battery time remaining. Very nice little app!

Good luck with the new toy!
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Thanks for the info and suggestion! Are other people seeing an improvement with 10.12.2 in battery life?
 
happyslayer said:
I have been having various battery issues on my new 2016 13" TB MBP for the last few weeks since I purchased it. 10.12.2 final released today fixed all of it. I am now getting at least twice the time. (from 5 before to 10 now) If you want to see the time remaining, use Coconut Battery (free.) It will show you a few different things. I have it currently showing battery percentage, wattage used by the Mac and battery time remaining. Very nice little app!

Good luck with the new toy!
Click to expand...

Any hit to performance? Real life performance? It is a considered a PRO product you know.
 
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bopajuice said:
Any hit to performance? Real life performance? It is a considered a PRO product you know.
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I hope not. I mean sure, Apple could throttle the speed down 50% to get more battery, but I doubt even apple would stoop that low. I hope it's just a software issue that's causing poor battery.
 
bopajuice said:
"I am quite worried about just spending thousands of dollars as a college student on a product that does not preform as well as I was told".

I am more worried that instead of dealing with the issue, Apple swept in under the update rug hoping no one will notice. Pathetic really.
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Except they announced it and gave a reason. They didn't hide it at all.
 
I'm good with the move just because people seemed to take it as the gospel truth for how long they could run when it's really a indicator of your current workload so I guess I'm just glad we won't have to keep explaining this to people. It would have been cool if Apple offered two options for the estimation one that took your recent workload into account and one that took an average of your usage on battery since charging or something like that to give a longer term estimate. Problem with that is people would be doing intensive tasks and complaining that the battery life didn't last as long as the timer said because it would average intensive work with light work. So that just hast the potential to be "inaccurate" in a completely different way which is probably why Apple went the way they did.

Overall the best option I would like is just a option to show how many watts are being burned. That's really what the time estimate was getting at and what I used it for. If they show the current wattage it wouldn't create as much confusion either as that is clearly your current consumption. So in that case the % remaining would be your long term capacity measure and current wattage would be your short term measure of current impact on the battery.
 
powertoold said:
Your iPhone doesn't have time remaining. Apple is just trying to unify the experience.
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Odd coincidence in that people started complaining about battery life and suddenly the battery indicator that showed time remaining is removed.

If Apple were to move to unify the experience they'd be doing it in a much more obvious way and not limited to one tiny facet of the OS.
 
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I wonder what did the latest update change in order to improve battery life.
 
maflynn said:
Odd coincidence in that people started complaining about battery life and suddenly the battery indicator that showed time remaining is removed.

If Apple were to move to unify the experience they'd be doing it in a much more obvious way and not limited to one tiny facet of the OS.
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Yeah, the timing is a bit suspicious! I suspect it has something to do with people misunderstanding how the battery meter worked and complaining that it said they only had (say) 3 hours left when it should say 10

Either way, they've handled things badly on this one IMO
 
Phil A. said:
Either way, they've handled things badly on this one IMO
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That's the thing, nearly every thing related to the 2016 rMBP has been handled badly, whether, its the battery life, ram, or performance. Apple seemed to make matters worse when they tried to address the issues. Being a company that is so image conscience these missteps are out of character for them
 
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is there anyway now with the update to tell how many hours left? like another app/program I can download?
 
You can see it in the energy tab of the activity monitor. This seemed like the best place fore me to get info anyway as the average and current energy impact by application were really useful to me. That's how I saw that mail and photos agent were killing my battery the first couple days because they were running background updates.
 
Karnicopia said:
You can see it in the energy tab of the activity monitor. This seemed like the best place fore me to get info anyway as the average and current energy impact by application were really useful to me. That's how I saw that mail and photos agent were killing my battery the first couple days because they were running background updates.
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Thanks...good to know the update did NOTHING for me.... 95% battery, just browsing the web, 50% brightness.... 2.59 hours remaining
 
dilutedq said:
Except they announced it and gave a reason. They didn't hide it at all.
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Does that make it OK? They admit a problem, take away an OS feature that points out the problem, everyone goes along with it, and then claims the meter was not accurate anyways. If this is not the definition of drinking the cool aid then I am at a loss for words.
 
bopajuice said:
Does that make it OK? They admit a problem, take away an OS feature that points out the problem, everyone goes along with it, and then claims the meter was not accurate anyways. If this is not the definition of drinking the cool aid then I am at a loss for words.
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They didn't admit a problem. They took away a misleading feature of the OS in one location. What problem did that menu bar option lead to? It told me I had 15 hours of battery life. That must mean the 2016 laptops are better than advertised /s
 
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