
New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining - feelix
https://macdaddy.io/new-mbp-power-efficiency-impressive/
======
dperfect
> Reducing mA (power draw) rather than increasing mAh (power storage) is the
> most effective way to increase battery life, which would go a long way to
> explain manufacturers’ obsession with thinness (which, in electrical terms
> often directly translates efficiency (i.e., smallness)) in their devices
> rather than just giving us something that endures.

I think it goes the other way; the manufacturers' obsession with thinness (for
mostly aesthetic reasons) goes a long way to explain why they're focusing on
reducing power draw.

It's great that they are reducing power draw, but by making everything thinner
(usually translating into decreased power storage), those gains in efficiency
are largely cancelled out when it comes to battery life in real-world usage.

When creating these things, the designers, engineers, and marketing people
obviously have some kind of target battery life in mind, and it seems as
though the target is always "about the same battery life as the last
generation," whereas there's no end to the number of compromises and
engineering efforts that go toward cutting 1 mm off one dimension.

And of course, the tech bloggers all go nuts about how thin the newest
generation is compared to the last, and people buy computers based on their
recommendations.

Aren't these things thin enough already, at least for professionals? Why not
go for some truly earth-shattering battery life on one of these laptops? Do
people _really_ care more about that 1 mm than they do about potentially hours
of additional battery life?

~~~
M_Grey
Then, irony of ironies, people put their ultra-thin devices in cases to
protect them, carry multiple batteries for them, or external charging bricks,
and my favorite... the oversized extended battery.

 _Throws hands up in air_

~~~
scarface74
I can't speak for laptops but I can speak for the utility of having a thin
phone and a battery pack that makes it thicker and heavier than it would be if
Apple just included a bigger battery:

I've only used my battery pack four or five times in the year and a half I've
had my 6s. Most of the time I'm not far away from a plug - either at home, in
my car, at work, etc.

But when I travel, a slightly bigger battery wouldn't be enough. I would want
twice the battery life - something I can get by using a battery pack - but I
probably wouldn't get from a slightly larger iPhone.

If you have to optimize, why optimize for the edge cases instead of the most
popular case and give options for those times people need it.

~~~
arthurfm
Now that the MacBook Pro has USB-C is there any reason Apple couldn't
implement some type of fast-charging technology like you find in smartphones?
The OnePlus 3/3T in particular are amazingly fast. [1][2]

Since getting my Pixel XL I have a noticed I rely on external battery packs
less as I often have access to a power socket for at least an hour or two when
I travel.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbELsT1hfnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbELsT1hfnA)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0SU0Me4Fds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0SU0Me4Fds)

~~~
Eric_WVGG
The new MacBook Pro charges very, very quickly, 10 to 80% in 20-30 minutes by
my estimation.

I can count on running off the battery all day as long as I can get it plugged
in while I fetch a sandwich for lunch.

~~~
rz2k
Do you know if it will _slow_ charge from a low power usb power source?

If I plug mine into a 2 amp usb A charger it says that it is not charging, but
does that mean it is drawing zero watts, or only that it is only drawing 10
watts? It would be nice to charge it overnight if only a phone charger happens
to be around, or even just slow down the discharge rate while using the
laptop.

~~~
otheotheothe
It does slow charge, i use my external Anker Powercore Plus battery pack with
it, while its not able to charge it while running because the MBP draws more
Power than the Anker Battery can output it EXTENDS its battery lifetime very
noticeably.

~~~
ardaozkal
While that'd work, I'd advise against it as I feel like that'd needlessly heat
the battery and reduce its life.

~~~
unwind
If that were true, wouldn't it be the job of the computer's battery management
system to make sure it didn't happen?

Forcing user to learn all kinds of magic rules for how to "treat their
battery" seems very old-fashioned and strange.

------
Alex3917
I love the new 2016 MBP, and after using it think most of the purported issues
are BS.

That said, there is one very real issue that I haven't seen mentioned
anywhere: because of how thin they are, many of the minor issues that could
previously be fixed in the Apple Store now require sending it out.

I had an intermittently working key on my keyboard and took it in for
something I assumed would take half an hour to fix. They told me they needed
to mail it in and it would be 4 - 6 days, probably 4. It's now going on day
13.

Fortunately my last one was old enough that it had zero resale value, but for
anyone thinking of upgrading I'd highly recommend keeping a backup.

~~~
jordache
Three fingers drag is buggy on the new trackpad.

Control strip is buggy, especially when using external monitors. The software
is not able to adequately deal with external monitors being connected and
disconnected throughout the day.

~~~
refrigerator
I've found this too - connecting an external monitor messes up some of my
Touchbar functionality until I restart the whole laptop.

~~~
jordache
another solution is to run this command in terminal: killall ControlStrip

------
camdenlock
When I bring my 2016 MBP into the office, it runs out of battery near the end
of the day, and I have to plug it in for those final 2 or 3 hours. Very
satisfied.

My colleague with a new Surface Book has been shaking his fist at me, wishing
he hadn't listened to the FUD and left the Applesphere. Apparently he gets
frustratingly bad battery life on his SB. (To be fair, though, the SB's
display ejection hardware _is_ just plain cool...)

We're programmers, BTW, writing server-side software mainly using Go, running
several ancillary services locally on our dev machines using Docker to ease
the development process. I'm thoroughly pleased with my 2016 MBP's battery
life considering these workloads.

~~~
pawadu
Seriously, why would battery life even matter if you are sitting in the office
all day??

With that said, SB can easily do 10-12 hours once you turn off the always-on
camera:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3qxjrk/fix_battery...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3qxjrk/fix_battery_life_on_surface_book/)

~~~
whorleater
> Seriously, why would battery life even matter if you are sitting in the
> office all day??

Do you people chain yourselves to your desk the entire day? My office has a
the "open-office" trend, which pretty much prompts me to leave and to go
various parts of the office during the day, or maybe even the library, and
only come back in for meetings.

~~~
pawadu
> My office has a the "open-office" trend, which pretty much prompts me to
> leave and to go various parts of the office during the day, or maybe even
> the library, and only come back in for meetings.

To me this sounds as you don't really have proper working offices. Maybe that
is the problem you need to solve, instead of trying to maximize the battery
life of your laptop?

~~~
whorleater
I can change the battery life of my laptop by buying a different laptop.

I can't change my office layout without switching jobs.

------
camillomiller
I think a lot of people are talking about the new MBP as if they had one. It's
2017 and a too many power users still base their opinion simply on specs
divination -- that is, theoretical musings about this and that component will
perform. Especially with Apple, it should be clear that the whole thing is
much more complicated than a 1+1 based on a spec list.

~~~
fastball
I think that's been clear to anyone without their head in the sand for a while
now.

It's the same with iOS vs. Android. Early Android proponents did nothing but
talk up the specs and the "customizability". The reality is, iPhones have
always had such great hardware/software integration that they made using touch
screens feel like you were interacting with the UI physically. You press a
button, the phone almost immediately responded. A lot of this was the use of
capacitive touch screen, but there was a lot more to it. It took years for
Android to get close to this point, and I honestly think Apple still does it
better.

Why do I need 4GB of RAM on my phone, when 1GB runs every app I want it to and
gives me a lag free experience in the rest of the OS?

~~~
solidr53
Don't even start....

This must be a troll

~~~
fastball
I'd love to hear a contrasting opinion.

------
patryn20
Based on my (admittedly unusual) workloads, the effective charge time of the
2016 is awful. I already only get 4-5 hours out of a 2014 MBP. I bought a 2016
and only managed 3 1/2 hours. Maybe they've improved that with some software
fixes, but it's still a non starter. So I returned it.

I know I'm not a typical user, but I get much better battery life (with lower
productivity) out of my windows laptop. Which was not the case when I switched
to Macs years back.

~~~
cthalupa
Are you controlling for the screen having a higher maximum brightness?

I thought I was getting much worse battery life on my new MBP compared to my
old one, but then I paid attention to screen brightness - when I level match
the screens to the same level of brightness, I get the same battery life as my
older one.

I'm used to just jamming the screen to 100% brightness, so I've had to get
used to keep it around 70% or so.

~~~
snowwrestler
Mac laptops these days are built with backlights strong enough to compete with
daylight. In typical working conditions, 100% is way overkill.

For max long term comfort, your display should be no brighter than the ambient
light levels. Otherwise--if the display is way brighter--your pupils will have
to contract when you look at the screen, and dilate when you look away. Your
pupils are controlled by muscles and like any muscles, they can get tired.

I have a 2012 MacBook Air and I rarely have the brightness over 50% indoors.
And the new MacBook Pros have way brighter screens.

Sitting in my living room right now, my iPhone is at about 15% brightness.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
In a dark room I find the minimum brightness much too bright. Weird feature to
wish for, but I think they need to crank the minimum brightness down by at
least 25%.

~~~
axxl
You can hold option-shift while adjusting the brightness (or volume) to get
quarter increments. However it looks like it doesn't have any effect below the
1st level for brightness.

~~~
striking
If you open System Preferences, it has a handy little brightness slider. Just
Option-<brightness> opens the right pane.

------
40acres
Amazing news for someone who's about to pull the trigger on the non-touch bar
2016 MBP.

I considered many other options but couldn't find a company with similar build
quality and reputation for high quality in the mobile workstation space.

My only concern was the battery, it seems to perform at a high level.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Do not mistake power efficiency for long battery life. Power efficiency
doesn’t mean all tasks use little power and you will always have a long
battery life. Apple’s power efficiency shines in idle mode. When you put light
but constant strain on the machine, e.g. with IDEs and compile-on-save,
battery life goes down quickly, no matter how efficient.

Choose wisely. A MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) still has roughly the same performance
as a 2016 model but is much, much cheaper. I recommend you pick a used 2014 or
2015 model in good condition. Saves you a lot of money (> $1000).

------
010a
Everyone talks about the downsides of the new MacBooks. No one talks about
about how they reduced the size of the internal battery by 30%, effectively
added a second screen, improved overall performance, and still kept the same
battery life.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Wait, all anyone has talked about is how they have done all that... with the
exception of the "same" battery life.

A lot of people feel it ... isn't the same.

~~~
mgkimsal
or... arguably kept the 'same' battery life as previous devices, but added
more battery draining 'stuff'.

I had one, and returned it, partially for battery life. I'm doing a lot of
development (intellij/phpstorm/virtualbox/etc). The battery life wasn't _bad_
\- at heavy use, I could get perhaps 6 hours of 'real' usage, but... It was
$3700, which was a bit much for my blood given the battery shortcomings (and a
few other reasons). But mostly price/performance relative to my workload. For
$1200/less I got an approximately similar 2015 model with _more_ battery, and
a slightly heavier weight.

~~~
tracker1
I'd trade in a few ounces to get back user serviceable memory and hd/ssd
upgrades.

~~~
mgkimsal
agreed. the thinness was/is 'nice', but... would prefer hd swapping and memory
mods.

if price went down based on thickness, maybe it would be more welcomed...

------
mconzen
Have had one since November and this mirrors my experience. YMMV, but I find
that the 2016 MBP charges quite a bit faster than the 2015. For me, I prefer
the faster charging over the slight increase in overall battery life, with the
added bonuses of the '16 using a standard charging cable. Anyone with a newer
Android phone (and soon, airport shops and convenience stores nationwide) can
hook you up with a spare MBP charger in a pinch. External USB-C batteries are
also easily available and add as much portable charging capacity as you want
to buy. Anyone serious about needing to travel with their laptop will probably
find it easier to keep a '16 MBP charged than before.

------
berryg
I have an older MBP. Hunting down processes and especially tabs in Safari or
Chrome that cause the CPU to spike and to drain the batteries becomes a daily
routine. A routine I don't like.

Is there a program that watches excessive CPU usage and battery drain over
time, warns me and points me directly to the possible culprit and advices me
to take action. For example to close a specific tab in Safari. I would even
let the program automatically close Safari tabs for certain websites.

The goal would be to optimise battery usage in the most user friendly way.

~~~
tomsthumb
for chrome, The Great Suspender does an alright job if you have a lot of
sprawl and an internet connection stays available.

------
baobrain
I will attribute this to Intel's advances and focus in low power processors,
not much credit goes to Apple in my mind.

The Macbook pro 2014 used Haswell processors which are notably more power
hungry on idle than Broadwell and its successor Skylake, as Intel really
focused on power draw with Broadwell.

------
amluto
Why is it reasonable to make claims about the current draw going down without
discussing voltage?

There are only two useful figures here: power drawn from the battery (probably
mW) and time the battery would last at idle. The current is meaningless unless
you know that the voltage (current voltage, not nominal voltage) of the
batteries on the systems being compared are the same. Given that battery
voltage _changes_ during a discharge cycle, this is far from a given even the
batteries are completely identical.

If Apple really wanted to halve battery current, they could just change the
cell configuration to double the voltage. Bingo!, except the laptop won't
actually run any longer on a charge.

------
konceptz
Very happy to hear that idle is better. Very unhappy to hear that usage is
worse.

I would prefer not to think about my usage patterns and just sit back knowing
my new laptop (2016 mbp) is always better than my old (2015 mbp) one in all
cases.

~~~
astrodust
The first generation "Retina" machines were not without their drawbacks
either, but those were ironed out quickly enough. If you update every single
year you'll be intimately aware of these problems. If, like most, you're on a
3-5 year cycle it's largely irrelevant.

People used to buy cars every two to three years as well, but now it's common
to retain them for a lot longer unless you're leasing.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
If you are on a 3–5 year cycle it is relevant because you would be stuck with
it for 3–5 years. Unless you like the hassle of migrating to your new MacBook
Pro, test it for a week, and then return it. If you are unlucky, you can’t
migrate back because the newly upgraded macOS, iTunes library or Photos
library is not compatible with your old macOS, iTunes library or Photos
library. So you won’t be able to migrate back or open your libraries.

~~~
astrodust
You have 14 days to decide you don't like it and take it back, no penalty,
which is nice. Plus if you're on a 3-5 year cycle skipping a year is no big
deal.

It's also unlikely you're OS locked on a 3-year old machine. My 2012 MacBook
Pro still runs current versions of macOS.

------
dbg31415
Until you steam a video or play a game, like Civilization or XCom (from 2012).
Then the battery just dies at a near 1% per minute rate. "Great battery! ...
until you actually go to do something that uses power." I did a side by side
test and the battery on my new MBP lasts the same as my 2013 MBP for streaming
conference calls -- under 2 hours for both. (I had them call each other with
cameras aimed at each other while both streaming Netflix.)

~~~
ciaranm
Have you updated the OS? I found battery to be a problem on my 15" until
10.12.3, wherein it's much improved.

------
konstruktors
It's 76Wh in 2016 vs 99Wh in 2015 -- a 24% smaller battery. To have the same
battery time, it must draw 24% less current than it did with the 2015 model.

Secondly, we should always compare watts instead of amps unless we know the
batteries have the exact same voltages.

For example, for a battery life of 18h it must draw 4.2W on average
(76Wh/18h). I don't think that's possible because only the 2016 MacBook uses
that little power -- 4.1W (41Wh/10h).

~~~
kogepathic
Let's compare the numbers quoted by the author:

619mA * 11.1V = 6.87W

430mA * 11.1V = 4.77W

So it's the difference of about 2 watts between the 2015 MBP and the 2016 MBP,
or roughly 30% less consumption.

 _> I’m impressed that the new MBP will happily sit at a 500 mA power draw for
long stretches of time._

It's virtually useless to tell people the amount of current something is using
without also mentioning the voltage. I don't know why the author is discussing
this in terms of current instead of watts.

5W isn't overly impressive for a laptop. My 2012 Dell (admittedly without
retina display, but with 5 year old components) idles in Linux at ~7W with the
brightness at 50%. If you close the lid to turn off the display, this will
drop to 5W.

So, 5 years, a HDPI display, and Apple is down to 5W.

Anyone with a Dell XPS 13 or XPS 15 who can comment on power consumption? I'm
not overly impressed by this number from Apple, it seems par for the course
for Intel hardware over the past few years.

The biggest problem for laptop battery life is Windows. My Dell came with
Windows 7 and I wouldn't get 3 hours on the 6 cell battery (65Wh). I installed
Linux on it and now I can get 6-7 hours comfortably.

Maybe Windows 10 has improved this somewhat, but Windows 7 is terribad for
laptop battery life.

------
holografix
Cant wait for the new round of MBPs. This one just seems like a catastrophe...
I can deal with the butterfly keyboard, anemic CPUs, and USB-c and even the
outrageous price. Just not all as a package!

------
losvedir
Interesting, and nice to hear a little good news for once about the new MBP's,
heh.

I actually am thinking about upgrading my old MBA, and have considered the
non-touchbar MBP. At this point, though, I'm not sure if I should be waiting
for Kaby Lake. Does anyone have stats on how much that should improve
performance or battery life? It's likely the next revision of MBP, maybe later
this year (?), will support the newer processors, right?

------
herghost
With mine, on the plus side I am getting about 14 hours a day of work - that's
connected to WiFi, using a Citrix VDE for about 9 hours, along with local
office suite, email, browsing, iTunes, etc.

On the negative side, if I'm playing Civ 5 whilst plugged in the battery is
still discharging - albeit very slowly. I'm not sure what would happen if it
actually got to zero. I assume it would switch off, despite being plugged in?

------
graiz
I suspect that 'BatteryTimeRemaining.c' is used in both iOS and OSX builds. It
seems unlikely that a MacBook would have an extra battery pack.

~~~
duskwuff
If it's plugged into a UPS (silly, but possible), it sort of does!

------
lucaspiller
Why is the power draw measured in milliamps, wouldn't watts be more
appropriate? The voltage of the battery drops as it discharges, so 500mA when
it's fully charged isn't the same as 500mA when it's nearly empty. Unless that
is taken after the voltage has been regulated, but in that case again why are
we measuring the capacity in amp-hours instead of watt-hours?

------
tim333
The suggested Battery Guru app is cool - running it now on my Air. Just found
charging the phone increases the draw from 450 mA to 1200 roughly
[https://macdaddy.io/mac-battery-guru/](https://macdaddy.io/mac-battery-guru/)

------
rasz_pl
Its very efficient _at doing NOTHING_. Start using CPU and its 1 hour max.

~~~
umanwizard
The overwhelming majority of the time, most users' CPUs are idle. Idle drain
matters.

~~~
rasz_pl
Macbook Pro used to be for Power Users, not 'most users'. Power users do not
drop $3K on a laptop to let it sit idle, they compile stuff, run multiple VMs,
convert videos etc.

------
var_chris
I ordered the 2016 MBP w/touchbar and had it completely die within 2 weeks.
Just came back from lunch and it wouldn't power on. I don't think this has
been as widespread of an issue as low battery performance. It was a bummer
because I have been using macs for quite a while and really like to develop on
them but now I am having doubts on getting another one. Would probably prefer
a MacPro if they ever updated them.

~~~
gnou
One of my friend had the same problem, took him several weeks to deal with it,
this might be a quality control issue.

