
MacBook Battery Time Remaining - konstruktors
https://kaspars.net/blog/electronics/macbook-battery-remaining
======
jakobegger
The time remaining indicator was really useful. It was more than accurate
enough. It allowed me to see at a glance if I had enough charge to finish the
movie, if it would last for the rest of the train ride, etc. If I saw that the
battery wouldn't last as long as I had expected, closing Slack would fix it.

The problem with the time remaining indicator was that people started
reporting the displayed time as actual run time. I read a couple of blog posts
where people claimed that the battery life time of the Macbooks was reduced,
based on the estimates they saw in the battery menu. They didn't actually time
the run time of their Macbooks, presumably because that would take 5-10 hours,
or longer if you want to repeat the measurement. So Apple is claiming that
these people are wrong, the indicator was inaccurate, and they removed it.

Of course, the problem is that most likely battery life actually is lower. The
battery of the new MacBook Pro is significantly smaller than the
predecessor's, but the components don't use significantly less power. With the
increasing popularity of Electron based apps, average power consumption is
probably even increasing.

For the user, this is a huge loss. We've learned to live with the battery time
estimate, and we know that the time remaining isn't absolute; just like we
know that the remaining range displayed on the dashboard of most recent cars
depends heavily on the driving style.

Fortunately, there are 3rd party tools that display the estimate Apple removed
-- I downloaded Coconut Battery. But I wish we wouldn't have to rely on 3rd
party tools for such basic functionality. Macs used to come with "batteries
included".

~~~
kalleboo
> Of course, the problem is that most likely battery life actually is lower.
> The battery of the new MacBook Pro is significantly smaller than the
> predecessor's, but the components don't use significantly less power

Exactly. Apple has always designed their devices to a battery life target. But
as "wireless web" and "movie playback" both depend on use cases that get more
and more optimized as Apple improve their software, they get more and more
disconnected from the reality of pro users. How about a "editing a Swift
Playground" battery life estimation? Or Photoshop? What Pro user spends all
their day browsing the web and watching movies? Those make sense for the
regular MacBook, not the Pro.

~~~
tajen
It's natural that Apple designs a battery target for one usage. It's totally
ok to tell '10hrs watching a movie', with actual figures being lower when
doing other activities. PC competitors never ever hit the target, even for
movie-watching, so we were perfectly happy to have 10 actual hours for one
usecase.

Of course I don't get what customers gain from .07 nineteenth of an inch less
of thickness. Next version Apple will provide a thinner macbook, with no
battery, and the power supply will come from an NFC table...

~~~
mynewtb
> PC competitors never ever hit the target

Start looking at proper business models maybe.

~~~
mastax
For example: [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/Revie...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/Review-chart-template-final-full-width-3.013-2.png)

------
azr79
Excuse me?!

That's how it worked for years and everyone knew that, and still it was useful
to estimate the current workload of your machine.

Why all of the sudden something that worked for years isn't viable anymore
coincidentally when people started complaining about new MBP's shitty battery
life? Nobody's buying it.

~~~
riprowan
Also the news today reports "Apple Working with Consumer Reports on Macbook
Pro Battery Issue" [1]

Reading between the lines:

"Apple Pressures Consumer Reports to Change its Story"

You don't need to "work with" Consumer Reports to fix the issue. Just fix it.

Why "work with"? Does Consumer Reports have engineers that will help Apple
understand the problem? Is Consumer Reports an isolated incident that just
needs some tech support to help them understand the computer? Smacks of
whitewashing to me.

[1] [https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-working-with-consumer-
report...](https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-working-with-consumer-reports-on-
macbook-pro-battery-issue/)

~~~
crisfine
Imagine for a moment that you thought you'd made a good device. Now imagine
that a respected organization did their own testing and said they couldn't
recommend it.

Would you want to work with them to understand why you came to opposing
conclusions?

There's no real chance of bullying, as CR buys the products they test, and has
decades of experience with huge companies not loving their reviews.

~~~
canuckintime
Consumer Reports already sent Apple their logs on the test machines before the
review. CR had already made a good faith effort to find the source of the
opposing conclusions. However:

> _In his tweet, Schiller linked to a story from iMore that says Consumer
> Reports was just going for a pre-Christmas headline and should have done
> more testing._

Apple is trying to bully/influence the public reception to CR's review. Gruber
has spent more time dissing the CR review (and distracting from Gurman's
expose on the Mac troubles which he hasn't linked to on DF)

------
shabbyrobe
Having used and trusted the "time remaining" calculation in Macs for years,
it's very hard not to be suspicious of the timing here. A series of less-than-
stellar reports of battery life in the new MacBook Pros, and then all of a
sudden the indicator is inaccurate? Nope, not buying it.

------
tekklloneer
I know why apple hasn't, but I'd kill for a $1500 macbook stuffed into a
macbook pro case, and all of that spare space taken up by battery.

Give me a core-m, 8GB RAM, a high res display, and a massive battery.

~~~
canuckintime
All these years I've wanted a lightweight 15" (or 17") MacBook/Air but Apple
insists on segmenting the larger laptops at more expensive prices. Apple won't
even offer a 15" MBP without the dGPUs now.

Apple should simply offer two lines of laptop:

11"/13"/15" MacBooks optimized for thinness

13"/15"/17" MacBook Pros optimized for power

------
ebbv
Is this really news to anyone? Of course it's hard to estimate, the same goes
for MPG/miles until empty in a petrol or diesel car.

That doesn't make the measurement of current estimate useless. It's still a
useful tool. Users understand if they close windows in their browsers, or shut
down Battlefield 958 that will prolong their battery life and that if they
turn up screen brightness that will cost them battery life.

Apple chose the lazy way out of this problem. The estimate was not any more
inaccurate than it ever was in the past (at least I haven't seen any evidence
that it was), and user's aren't any dumber. Apple just didn't like the press
and made a stupid change to try to correct that issue. Lame.

------
frankomonster
Love that Apple keeps adding "features" like this. Not even SlimBatteryMonitor
still works thanks to this update.

What a time to be alive, watching Apple choke on their own arrogance.

Their one shot at a big comeback is the iPhone 10th anniversary edition. If it
is as much of a smash hit as Robert Scoble keeps heralding then Apple will be
golden for another decade.

~~~
johansch
This hilarious Scoble piece?

[https://virtualrealitypop.com/im-inside-tim-cook-s-head-
but-...](https://virtualrealitypop.com/im-inside-tim-cook-s-head-but-i-really-
wonder-what-s-going-on-inside-mark-zuckerberg-s-head-5babf01c5713)

I wonder what he has been smoking.

I love this sentence:

"You pop it into a headset which has eye sensors on it, which enables the next
iPhone to have a higher apparent frame rate and polygon count than a PC with a
Nvidia 1080 card in it."

~~~
matt4077
That's quite an insult to pot. Robert Scoble is just an idiot.

~~~
Nekorosu
Definitely not pot. Probably bath salts.

------
kalleboo
Bring on the machine learning battery gauges?

~~~
Jack000
if it runs on the GPU it will have to take its own power draw into account

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> if it runs on the GPU

It will struggle to function at all seen as no Apple machine ships with a
decent CUDA card.

------
ars
Have they never heard of averages?

Just show time remaining based on last 5 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, and all
data.

Or does apple not like that kind of "complexity" and wants just a single
number?

~~~
SFJulie
Average makes bad estimations for non linear phenomenon. And nothing can be
done about it.

Math 101.

And what could be better? Well, nothing we don't have the math for that
problem in the first place. If we had, we could predict weather accurately
with a time window bigger than 24hours...

24 hours is the accuracy weather forecasts are having since decades even with
Moore laws multiplying the power of processors...

Even by throwing more money and engineers at them some problems cannot be
solved.

The only way to average non linear phenomenon is to scale the problem to an
extra large population or make prediction on ultra short time.

Actually I guess that if users were seeing there battery lifetime sucked
dramatically every time they use WiFi, or GPU it would create an adverse
effect on computer users of making them anxious (human beings are weird
animals) and some of them would use less their computers.

Imagine if SUV were showing an estimation of mileage dropping sharply when you
make a big acceleration? People would stop accelerating like mad men, hence it
would kill the SUV/sport car market. You don't want to kill a really good and
rational economy, do you?

Sellers don't want you to be economical in your use of anything, else it kills
the market as sure as a pair of crocs lasts for years.

We live in an era where consumers and producers want to use moar resources,
moar energy and feel good about it, not anxious.

Does the planet have limited resources, is it irresponsible?

No! Let's throw more money and engineers at a problem and we surely can solve
it.

I guess immortality and super powers are just around the corner. lol.

~~~
bluedino
>> Imagine if SUV were showing an estimation of mileage dropping sharply when
you make a big acceleration?

That's how it works with any vehicle that has a real-time MPG readout

------
justapassenger
Oh, easy - we're just holding our macboocks wrong, that's messing with battery
estimates.

------
ourcat
Exactly. It's like a car manufacturer saying how many miles to the gallon
you're going to get, without knowing that you're a terrible driver who never
gets out of 2nd gear ;)

