The new MacBook Pros were greeted with great fanfare by Apple fans, and with reason. The company, whatever its flaws may be, consistently makes excellent products, something reflected in their spotless recommendation record from Consumer Reports. Er, well, it was spotless, as the product watchdog has, for the first time, decided not to recommend a line of MacBook Pros.
Fans have been less than pleased with the Pro’s battery life, and Apple’s response so far, which has pretty much just been to remove the time remaining function from the battery indicator. And Consumer Reports is reporting some figures that are fairly shocking for any computer, let alone Apple, in 2016:
For instance, in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours.
Normally, Consumer Reports averages together their results to get a score on battery life. But the MacBook Pro was so wildly inconsistent that they were forced to average only the lowest scores, because as they put it: “It’s the only time frame we can confidently advise a consumer to rely on if he or she is planning use the product without access to an electrical outlet.”
Apple’s haters will laugh at this, but this should be deeply concerning, especially because it’s far from clear exactly why this is happening. Most theories have it tied to how the MacBook Pro handles graphics, as the system has a separate GPU as well as integrated graphics. Apple has been trying to fix this with software updates, but clearly that hasn’t been working. So if you have a MacBook Pro under the tree for someone, maybe have the receipt handy just in case.
(Via Consumer Reports)