
Apple Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator in Sierra 10.12.2 - hartator
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/13/macos-sierra-10-12-2-battery-life-indicator/
======
rubyn00bie
I've been using this feature for years successfully and with the understanding
that if I context switch to something radically different the estimate would
be wrong (in practice this meant waiting until it updated reflecting the new
usage). I'm shocked that they think this is an appropriate solution to people
complaining about battery life.

I find its removal very, very aggravating. My workflow is typically very
consistent, e.g. terminal window open, iTunes playing, and a browser tab(s) or
Xcode. It was useful to see "based on my current workflow, I have roughly 45
minutes of power remaining." It has always been accurate enough...

The percentage indicator means NOTHING to me, it is just as bad as the time
indicator-- as most anyone with an iPhone can understand. How often does your
1% of battery last inexplicably longer than the previous 10%? I've had it last
over an hour at 1%. WTF?

I also have found it to be a useful metric for seeing the condition of my
battery or to help crackdown on rogue processes that are consuming too much
power. E.g. "Why am I only seeing 4 hours remaining instead of the usual 6?"

I love MacOS, and iOS, but I'm really starting to hate Apple. Truly hate them.
I feel trapped as I've yet to find a PC laptop I like as much as a Macbook Pro
(largely because of the trackpad). I've been using Macs as my primary machines
for 12 years... it makes me sad to feel this way but the "good" feelings I
used to get seem like a distant memory.

~~~
hellofunk
I just bought a brand-new 2015 model 15 inch, which Apple still sells. Best
laptop I bought, couldn't be happier. It's a lot less expensive, has all the
ports, extraordinary 12 hour battery for me doing C++ in Emacs all day. Still
has escape key for evil mode in Emacs. I thought about switching to a Windows
machine, but I'm really glad I stayed with Apple on this one. I think time
will tell on the most recent new models, and I bet Apple will address many of
the complaints. Many people are not early adopters of any new release by any
major manufacturer, specifically for this reason. The first iteration of major
new designs by most super large companies are often met with a wide range of
divergent opinions. I suspect Apple will be smart to listen to consumers and
improve the next iteration of this current new model.

~~~
davidf18
I've been using the same model, but I don't get 12 hour battery life. What is
your brightness setting?

The 2016 seems to have a longer battery life and the screen is far brighter
than the 2015 model which means one can run with the same brightness setting
on lower power.

~~~
hellofunk
I agree that the screen is brighter in the new 2016. I never use screens at
full brightness, it bothers my eyes. Emacs is very low power, so it uses a lot
less battery than CLion or Eclipse, probably. That probably helps. I don't
code to music, so that saves battery also.

Are you saying that 2016 has longer battery life than 2015? That seems
contrary to the current scandal.

~~~
davidf18
> Are you saying that 2016 has longer battery life than 2015?

Yes, that has been my reading and the review [1] confirms about 2 more hours
than the 2015 15" model.

The brighter screen is relevant for battery use, because the laptop can run on
even a relative dimmer setting with same brightness with perhaps even more
battery life.

10.12.2 update seemed to fix problems for some people. Others were complaining
not realizing high CPU of background processes. With new OS upgrade, e.g.,
10.12.1 I do a clean install.

Incidentally, I think the 2015 model is _an outstanding_ unit and a far better
deal than the 2016 model and great for most people. The extra battery life and
smaller, lighter is important for me.

[1] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Late-2016-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html)

~~~
hellofunk
That's a rather interesting conclusion the review has on the battery. If
that's true (which would be great), I wonder why there is such a controversy
going on about the batteries, if actually they last longer than the prior
models?

~~~
davidf18
I think it is true. The tables in the article that show power draw for
different tasks and models is informative. They compare the 2016 15" with the
2015 15" for idle, WiFi, X.264 video, etc.

I think a lot of people with new laptops didn't fully understand that
spotlight indexing and other things were going on in the background. Also, it
seems as if 10.12.2 update two days ago seems to have fixed problems for some.
There is a macrumors forum note with lots of replies confirms this for some.

I am a fan of fresh installs with each new OS release and I think that and
using Safari and not Chrome, using Ghostery and Adblock Plus (or whatever),
and some other things I do to take out unnecessary processes makes a
difference for me.

------
hartator
> 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.

I think that's the worst possible way to react against the new Macbook pro
battery life complaints.

~~~
bengale
In fairness, the reports from this update are that they actually solved the
battery issues.

~~~
mgkimsal
but how would you know? what are you comparing it to?

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anurag
If you still need a time-remaining indicator, try Coconut Battery:
[http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/](http://www.coconut-
flavour.com/coconutbattery/). It's free and works well.

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TrevorJ
The way they are going with feature removal, Apple products in 50 years will
be slate tablets. Made of actual rock.

~~~
ComputerGuru
>Made of actual rock

Aluminum, actually.

~~~
erelde
Magical revolutionary slab of wireless aluminum. Pairing seemlessly with
others magical revolutionary slab of wireless aluminum. Just put one atop the
other and they will stack automatically.

~~~
gommm
With infinite battery life even...

------
cjslep
> It seems Apple believes reports of bad battery life are largely based on the
> faulty indicator

So to use a car analogy, it sounds like Apple means one of two things:

If I remove the MPG indicator from my car I can get more MPG out of my car, or
If I remove the MPG indicator from my car I won't complain about its poor MPG.

Either way sounds stupid to me.

~~~
simonh
remaining battery isn't like MPG though, it's more like remaining range. The
trouble is computer use patterns can be way more bursty than car fuel usage in
normal conditions. The nearest equivalent to spot MPG (how does what I am
doing now affect endurance) would be the battery used by individual
applications, and I believe that's still there.

~~~
jmanderley
Doesn't everyone know this? It's still a useful gauge to have.

~~~
benjaminjackman
exactly, rather than remove it, if they must tinker, just add something like
"At current usage levels you have approximately xxx hours of battery life
remaining."

------
8draco8
According to performance tests and not just looking at battery life indicator
2016 MBP is not that bad

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Late-2016-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html)

------
puddintane
I'm curious as to why not instead measure average battery consumption by each
user to get a mean, and range which would allow a "range" of time to be shown
(at the start this would be a much wider range of course).

The user could then adapt to this range because they know the usage the best.
Considering the dynamics of the computer and how we use them a range would be
much more suited to fulfill this type of feedback from the system.

------
annnnd
Incredible. One would have thought that this is a solved problem. Of course it
depends on usage how long the battery will last - so what? It's not like OS
can't determine the power spending trend and draw conclusions about
approximate time left.

What is probably issue here is that Apple gets blamed for lots of things which
are outside of their control. But it would be much nicer if OS advised
customers how to fix these issues and get longer battery life. But yeah,
removing indicator is easier.

    
    
        Sheldon: "Your fix engine light is on."
        Penny: "Yeah. I really should put a tape across it."

~~~
givinguflac
For what it's worth, iOS battery settings will list off suggestions for
improving battery life, such as lowering display brightness if you keep it
high all the time.

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tomovo
Somehow I doubt that the percentage indicator is any better. At constant 100%
(or 50%) CPU utilisation, tracking the percentage, would you see a linear
graph going down, hitting 0 as the machine shuts down? I've never tested that
but it would be interesting to see the results for different models/OS
versions.

------
haddr
Yesterday, with the new update my mac was shut down unexpectedly, I haven't
seen any warning from the battery indicator :( I hope this is not a default
behaviour.

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TenOhms
This is sad, if true.

~~~
ctrlrsf
It's true. Installed 10.12.2 update this morning.

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24gttghh
Why not just show the user how many mAh are left?

~~~
Zhenya
"Mah what? mAh battery is going to last how long?"

It would be a meaningless number to non-engineers. Sounds like we need smarter
predictive algorithms based on previous usage patterns etc, not degrading the
"average user" experience.

~~~
24gttghh
I see no difference between mAh and MPG in terms of ability to understand for
most people. If we expect more of people, they can learn. If we constantly
dumb things down, all we do is create a depressing economy where no one
understands anything, and always has to have someone else fix their trivial
problems.

~~~
Zhenya
Miles and gallons are all measures most people have a relative understanding
of.

If I drive x miles I need y gallons. Easy-ish.

What about amps?

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
Are those LA miles or Wyoming miles? apple is dealing with users who see their
car is rated 30MPG for highway and then complaining when they only get 10MPG
in rush hour LA traffic.

~~~
Zhenya
Cars have 3 types of MPGs I can think of: -Instant -Average (over any given
length of time) -EPA Rated.

I've never heard someone complain they get bad mileage sitting in traffic and
not understand that instant mpg != EPA mpg for specific conditions.

This is why its strange that Apple removed this measure.

However, I am not sure what you are arguing. For displaying the mAh or for
bringing back the 'Time Left'?

------
debt
they removed it because it's inaccurate and useless. if i start rendering some
huge video then the time remaining goes down drastically. so it said 90
minutes, it now says 10 minutes.

useless.

~~~
erelde
But... That's logical.

It evaluates the remaining time using current ressource usage. It is
"accurate". It can't predict how much time your rendering will take, it can't
predict the future. But it does an accurate estimate of how much the battery
will last under the _current_ load.

(imo, _current_ load is better than trying to compute the load _trend_ )

~~~
debt
logical but still useless.

if a measurement like time remaining can change at random based on load and
the load can change at random based on user behavior then why show time
remaining at all?

if it jumps from 90 minutes to 10 minutes, what's the point of even showing
it?

"okay now i have 10 minutes left"

it would be more accurate to say "you have 90 minutes left at your current
level of cpu utilization" but i don't think that can fit in the menu

help me figure it out, i don't get why a user would need this functionality
ever.

~~~
erelde
Because "you have x minutes left _at your current level of cpu utilization_ "
has always been implied.

If user have forgotten that, it's no reason to remove it.

In fact there's rarely a reason to remove a feature if it doesn't cause
issues.

Taking your own exemple of video rendering, if I begin a render and After
Effect (or similar) says it will take 50 minutes to render, but the remaining
time says I only have 20 minutes left of battery ( _implying "at the current
load"_), I know I have to charge my laptop if I want to render the video.

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DoodleBuggy
Cool, reposted news from three days ago.

Just as dumb today as it was then.

