
Tested: The truth behind the MacBook Pro's 'terrible' battery life - tambourine_man
http://www.macworld.com/article/3157392/laptop-computers/tested-the-truth-behind-the-macbook-pros-terrible-battery-life.html
======
schappim
So far none of the reviews (including this one) have been that relevant for
makers/hackers.

I have the new MacBook Pro and yes the battery isn't great. On average you're
pressed to get 3-4 hours of realistic development use. I say "realistic"
because all the test I've seen have been very artificial and don't mirror a
typical hacker's environment (using Chrome/Firefox with a zillion tabs open)
multiple electron based apps (hear: Slack, Frontapp etc), with sublime and
terminals running.

This contrasts the 7-9 hours of realistic use I'd get with a 13" MacBook Air
(which I still think is Apple's best machine ever made, in spite of it's non-
retina screen).

Just a heads up the changes to the keyboard are terrible (especially the arrow
keys layout). Surprisingly the virtual escape key hasn't bothered me as much
as I thought it would, even in vim.

The other thing you should be aware is that this is the first MacBook where I
get unintentional input on the touch pad when typing. It's really annoying to
be writing and have the mouse jump the cursor position to another part of the
doc. This is something that I experience all the time on non-apple HW (and
scoff at), and it's really sad to see Apple's once perfect touch pad drop to
that level.

If you're thinking of buying the new MacBook Pro, my short answer is "don't",
see what you do about hanging out until the next revision or possibly switch
platforms.

~~~
jacobolus
Give Safari a shot. For me, it increases battery by at least 25% vs. Firefox
or Chrome with many tabs open, probably more like 50%+ sometimes.

Cutting the Electron apps might also help a lot.

I can’t imagine having many terminals open takes any appreciable CPU, unless
you’re using them to continuously run compilers or something.

You can also try reducing the display brightness, turning off bluetooth, and
poking around in the Activity monitor to see what other processes are using
lots of CPU time.

~~~
schappim
I actually do/did! I much prefer Safari for the iCloud Keychain syncing with
the iPhone. (Apple actually stuffed thr keychain app up too recently where on
the macs with touch bar keychain takes a few seconds to do a query). I have
been a huge proponent of Safari but currently there is a real annoying bug
where the URL/Search input won't register the "return/enter" key press for a
URL or query. This happens once every 20 or so times and to get round it I
need to close the window, reopen it and paste my query.

I've nuked the caches and removed extensions to no avail.

~~~
azinman2
That annoys me too :/

------
pyrophane
This sounds about right. They improved the efficiency of the machine overall
and they felt that they could decrease the size of the battery and retain the
same unplugged runtime under "normal use."

Add a "pro" workload with more frequent CPU or GPU intensive tasks, then those
efficiency gains count for less and you start to notice the smaller battery.

Did they make the right choice? The smaller battery does make the machine
lighter and probably contributes to the additional thinness they were able to
achieve, but you can also make a good argument that for pro users, heavy
workload battery life matters more.

~~~
mtgx
You would think they would've tested the battery life of a "Macbook Pro" for
"pro" work loads, wouldn't you?

If Apple has seen that most people buy their Macbook Pros as Facebook
machines, then maybe launch a new line that actually targets the pros, and
give it another name for differentiation purposes.

~~~
jsjohnst
At max CPU it's 15min less battery life. That's really not that much different
for any real purpose.

------
marricks
I got a non-touch bar 13" MBP and the tests back up what I've experienced over
the past couple weeks. Normal usage the battery is stellar, do something high
CPU bound for a long time and you'll suffer.

Coding I've been doing in my spare time (Euler problems) the battery life has
been 10 - 12 hours with medium brightness. Stellar compared to anything I've
had before,

Using the coconut battery app though I can see when my CPU is taxed (churning
out truncated harsahd numbers or w/e) I see the estimated battery life go down
to about half that.

I think that's pretty fair for the machine, and I doubt any other small
notebooks would fair much better under intensive tasks.

Looks like what really ate them was the 15" model could get the discrete GPU
stuck on without cause, which __kills __the battery.

~~~
jondwillis
I have been using gfxCardStatus [https://gfx.io/](https://gfx.io/) for years.
It offers a finer level of visibility and control over what's going on with my
GPUs.

~~~
kalleboo
Yep, gfxCardStatus comes highly recommended. I still don't understand why
Apple has a "Keep the dGPU on always" option in power settings but not "Never
use the dGPU".

There are also a lot of people with bad VRAM or a busted GPU that use it to
keep their machines from kernel panicing.

------
a13n
I have a new 15" MacBook Pro with touch bar and can confirm that this OS X
update (10.12.3) made a very noticeable improvement on my battery life. It
went from 4 hours on moderate usage to at least 8... This relieves the
majority of my anxiety with the new MBP and I'm now really happy with my
purchase.

~~~
dexterdog
Seems crazy that a software update can make that big of a difference. It
almost makes me think they held this back on purpose.

~~~
a13n
Extremely doubtful, considering how much negative PR they've gotten on their
new line of MBPs because of this... The costs must far outweigh the benefits.

------
moxious
Do many people do "pro" workloads on a battery? I always have a charger with
mine and frequently lots of peripherals; USB keyboard, mouse, monitor,
external HD, etc. and if I'm running 4 docker containers and a full stack of
software, it's getting pushed pretty hard. Not sure I'd really expect much of
the battery when you're whipping the machine like that.

~~~
shakna
Do you commute? I often run unittests and re-compile whilst on the train.

Depending on the tech stack, these things can be heavy, or unexpectedly heavy.

~~~
moxious
I hadn't considered that. Commuting by bike there's not a whole lot of unit
testing going on for me

~~~
ams6110
I have actually seen someone using a laptop while biking. Not that I'd advise
it.

------
tambourine_man
My Google-foo isn't working so I can't provide the link, but I read somewhere
that USB-C does't provide enough power so it will actually discharge your
battery _while plugged in_ if you run it under heavy CPU/GPU load for an
extended period of time.

Can anyone confirm this?

~~~
hashtagMERKY
I can't confirm from my own experience, but popular tech reviewer MKBHD
tweeted something similar[0].

[0]
[https://www.twitter.com/MKBHD/status/827182930954973185](https://www.twitter.com/MKBHD/status/827182930954973185)

~~~
plantain
If you read his followup tweets, he wasn't charging with the MBP charger, but
off of his monitor.

~~~
hashtagMERKY
Ah I hadn't read that far down. Thanks!

------
et2o
Mimics what I've seen on a maxed out 15" MBP. Author killed the battery in 83
minutes running a CPU benchmark and in 81 minutes with the GPU on Tomb Raider.

Browsing the Internet, I easily get 4-6+ hours of battery life. If I switch to
coding (RStudio IDE seems to be very intensive) or similar, battery life drops
precipitously.

I still dislike the keyboard after a few weeks of using it; I briefly switched
back to my old MacBook Air to move some files a few days ago, and it was
really much nicer.

Migrating from a MacBook Air, the biggest improvement (by far eclipsing
anything else) was the screen. It's incredible, although I can't compare it to
the previous generation MBP. The touch bar feels like a gimmick; I rarely use
it. At least it doesn't get in the way, and the virtualized escape key is
totally fine. I've also had palm rejection issues with the enormous touchpad
that I never had with my MacBook Air.

The weirdest issue I am having is that programs crash after resuming from
sleep. RStudio crashes almost 100% of the time. It's hard to interpret the
error messages, but I believe it might be due to a bad RAM chip ("memory not
mapped"). No Mac I've ever owned has done this before. I'd really appreciate
it if anyone had advice for this! It's getting to be problematic.

~~~
jmportilla
I'm a heavy rstudio and Python user and have been wondering how the new MBP
would perform with those apps rather than just video, thanks for posting

~~~
et2o
Python seems fine generally, but I don't use a Python IDE

------
timemachiner
I get at least 8-10 hours on my tMBP 15". I don't mind the keyboard. I this
point it seems like hating on the MBP is 'free karma' and the 'in-thing' to do
on HN. My experience has been otherwise.

~~~
schappim
I wish I could get those numbers! I only ever achieved those on a 13" MacBook
Air.

>> 'free karma' and the 'in-thing'

I hate to admit it but I have an "Apple Problem" purchasing pretty much
everything they've made. I'm event wearing right this moment a WWDC Apple cap!
What I'm trying to say I'm naturally much more biased towards Apple. It's safe
to say that this is literally one of the worst Macs I've had
(stability/battery/experience wise), and man I've had many! The device as a
whole seems really retrograde, and I'm hoping they can get it sorted out via
firmware/software.

Here's an example of the bugs I've seen:

\- Kernel-panicking when unplugging it from the LG 5K display. \- Not waking
up from sleep after unplugging it from the LG 5K display. \- Randomly
restarting when in sleep mode

I haven't seen the above issues "overly reported" like the battery issue is.

------
huangc10
After going through a few of these articles, this is my very general takeaway
summary:

"The new MacBook Pro's battery life is not as good as the previous generation
but is still decent for its class. The decrease in battery life, compared with
the older model, is mostly due to a brighter screen, better cpu/gpu, and
slightly smaller battery. Ultimately, it is up to the user and the user's use
case to gauge the actual battery life and tradeoffs of upgrading to the new
MBP."

~~~
gshulegaard
My only caveat is that the improvements to cpu/gpu typically result in _lower_
power consumption requirements. The screen is also lower resolution (compared
to 4k) and with brightness user-configurable, not sure how much it is to
blame.

I think the bulk of the issue is the almost 25% smaller battery (as noted in
the article). So the real trade off is thinness and weight for battery life,
not performance for battery life which is more typical of competing laptops.

I don't think the new MBPs are _bad_ machines, but I probably won't be
upgrading my current one to one of the new ones.

But sales figures seem to indicate the thinness trade off appealed to a
broader range of buyers...so ultimately it was probably the right business
decision for Apple.

------
rasz_pl
Video playback is no longer a benchmark with Hardware video decoding units
that let CPU practically shut down 80% of die space. People actually expect to
USE the laptop like a computer, not like a movie watching on a toiled tablet.
As the last test shows using CPU shows new laptops to be worse than the 2015
models.

Btw Did this macworld.com writer run out of bytes on the page? was that the
reason he had to split this article in two? or was it just for additional ad
impressions?

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah, I'd say video playback is no longer a benchmark because if I'm going to
watch video, I'll be doing it on my iPad, not on my laptop.

Or if they're going to make video watching a benchmark, at least make it use
modern streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. Who downloads a movie to
their drive and watches it from there anymore?

------
wattt
I'm not a Mac user, but bravo to the author for doing a really good analysis.
I run a skylake-based Asus running Ubuntu with Gnome and it performs well, but
the battery life does vary more than my Lenovo/haswell did. I'm able to get
minimum 5h of dev, max 10h, depending on a variety of factors, without using
powertop tuning. This post reminded me that my suspicions about Gmaps are
worth investigating. Try to always close maps... But now I will be more
careful!

------
jsjohnst
I'm going to throw something out there that I think might not be agreeable to
many, but I stand behind it either way.

Old Mac line

MacBook Air - "light" workload

MacBook Pro - "pro" workload

\---

New Mac line

MacBook 12" \- "light" workload

2016 MacBook Pro - "pro" workload

If you think of it in this light, the "Pro" moniker is very fitting. The 2016
MBP is very much the Pro version of the 12" MB.

Yes, it's not as good as older MBP for many, but it still very much earns its
name vs the 12".

------
zgramana
I'm surprised nobody has yet brought up the update that just came through
which fixes issues in graphics card switching in new MBP's. If it
preferentially uses the discrete graphics more than it needs to then, well,
you know, battery drain problems.

~~~
wmf
Nobody other than page 2 of the article you mean?

------
dbg31415
I've been using one of the new 15" with the touch bar for about 2 weeks now.

I agree there's a lot more hate in user forums than on professional review
sites. I don't know that either are 100% honest... but I think it's because
for so long Apple set the bar so high. My biggest gripe with my 2016 MBP is
that it doesn't feel like there's any room to grow. Every MBP I bought to date
felt like it was way ahead of the curve. The new ones... meh, they are fine.
Just nothing special. (I wouldn't have bought it for myself, but since work
was paying...)

1) I don't notice the battery life being any better (or worse). When I'm just
surfing the web / doing emails... it lasts a good 4-5 hours. I always plug in
when I'm at my desk and I can certainly go between meetings fine. When I play
a video, fire up a game, or do a site crawl (for a 250k+ page site) the
battery doesn't last. The old ones didn't either.

2) Keyboard took some getting used to... but I do like it now. I really didn't
at first. And I didn't like it until I went back to use my old computer and
the old keyboard just felt soft and loose -- the old-style keys had more give
to them, now typing on that feels like trying to drive a car with huge tires
on.

3) Dongles... I miss the MagSafe power plug... I really wish Apple would have
left that. But I bought a little hub for all my USB products and it's fine. I
have another dongle for HDMI cords. I don't love the new ports, I see no
benefit to them... but, I get it -- Apple wants to push the envelope where it
can. I carry a lot more dongles with me now that I have at any point in
history. Not a fan of this situation at all. I don't want to carry a bag full
of wires with me.

4) My old MBP had an upgraded graphics card, and the new one is just stock. I
think my 2013 with the upgraded card handles games better than the stock
2016... but that's not fair since I boot to Windows on my old computer. Macs
aren't for gaming... I know. But like... sometimes shooting a few aliens in
XCOM is a good way to kill time when a client bumps the meeting back. =P The
fact it can't run games from 2012 at max settings... this does bug me because
of how expensive this computer was. It handles "medium" settings about as well
as my 2013 with the upgraded graphics card did...

5) I don't use the touch bar. I just have it set to show function keys most of
the time. I miss a tactile "esc" key. I don't know, it's not really something
that I think about or have a gripe with. It's just different, but I can't say
it's better or worse than the old physical function key row.

6) The new touch pads are way too big. I'm still bumping it when I don't want
to. I have no idea how I'm supposed to use a touch pad this large... the old
ones were perfect, this was a clear case of "fixing what ain't broke."

~~~
selectodude
>1) I don't notice the battery life being any better (or worse). When I'm just
surfing the web / doing emails... it lasts a good 4-5 hours. I always plug in
when I'm at my desk and I can certainly go between meetings fine. When I play
a video, fire up a game, or do a site crawl (for a 250k+ page site) the
battery doesn't last. The old ones didn't either.

That's actually sort of surprising to me, I get like 15-16 hours just web
browsing.

~~~
dbg31415
Sorry I wasn't clear -- I always plug it in when I'm at my desk, and I'm
hardly ever away from my desk for more than 4-5 hours. So I know it works that
long at least. Past that... I mean I haven't deliberately not plugged it in
just to test...

I got through a movie and a handful of Rick and Morty episodes while on a
flight... Drove home from the airport late so I just went to sleep... hit the
"Lower Power Mode" warning as soon as I opened it the next day. It wasn't
plugged in that night... Battery life seems reasonable. It doesn't seem
amazingly better than my old MBP.

