Concerns about the autonomy of batteries of the new MacBooks Pro were the subject of an article here MacMagazine some weeks ago. Shortly thereafter, Apple made macOS Sierra 10.12.2 available to all users and it brought a very controversial change: it removed the estimated battery usage time from the operating system’s menu bar.
You don’t have to be a genius to link one thing to the other, especially considering that OS X macOS had this estimate forever. To further contribute to the «coincidence», Apple last week opened job vacancies in search of battery specialists.
The problem is so serious that, for the first time in history, the Consumer Reports * no * recommends buying the new MBPs precisely because of these inconsistencies in the batteries. The three models tested by the organization – 13 inches with and without Touch Bar, and 15 inches with Touch Bar – have not passed their tests in this regard, with longevities ranging from 3.75 to 19.5 (!) Hours, while the expectation is that between tests the variation is not more than 5%. Apple’s official promise is “up to 10 hours” of autonomy, remember.
Perhaps one of the most convincing proofs that there are optimizations to be made (on the software side, which is reassuring) is that CR has achieved more battery autonomy with the new MBPs running tests on Google Chrome, instead of Safari. This makes absolutely no sense.
Apple, move.
[via Recode]
