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Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

businessinsider.com

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Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#11

Post by eli »

coldtea wrote: post #6
otalp wrote: post #2

> 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. What could possibly the reason for such drastic…

When they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video t…

That's a crazy high level of variation to blame on relatively small differences in tests.

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#12

Post by otalp »

coldtea wrote: post #6
otalp wrote: post #2

> 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. What could possibly the reason for such drastic…

When they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video t…

From their website:

"Consumer Reports tests hundreds of laptops each year, using identical procedures in highly controlled conditions.

For the battery test, we download a series of 10 web pages sequentially, starting with the battery fully charged, and ending when the laptop shuts down. The web pages are stored on a server in our lab, and transmitted over a WiFi network set up specifically for this purpose. We conduct our battery tests using the computer’s default browser—Safari, in the case of the MacBook Pro laptops.

During the tests, we set each laptop screen to remain on. We use an external meter to set the display brightness to 100 nits—a typical level you might use indoors or out. And, we turn off any automatic brightness adjustment in the laptop’s settings."

While not explicit, it does seem to imply that they conduct the same test multiple times.

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#13

Post by sprite »

coldtea wrote: post #6
otalp wrote: post #2

> 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. What could possibly the reason for such drastic…

When they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video t…

They say at the end of the test they use Safari, but got much better results with Chrome:

"Once our official testing was done, we experimented by conducting the same battery tests using a Chrome browser, rather than Safari. For this exercise, we ran two trials on each of the laptops, and found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs. That’s not enough data for us to draw a conclusion, and in any case a test using Chrome wouldn’t affect our ratings, since we only use the default browser to calculate our scores for all laptops. But it’s something that a MacBook Pro owner might choose to try."

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#14

Post by Daviey »

I'm not really a fan of Mac's, but I don't think too much weight should be put on this. Everything that Apple delivers is greeted with negative reports, and yet it turns out to be successful.

Also... i've never even heard of "Consumer Reports" before.. but the name is pretty subjective.

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#15

Post by canuckintime »

coob wrote: post #10
coldtea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video t…

Doesn't seem fair to base a test on using Chrome when Apple bundles a more power efficient browser with the OS.

Read from the orginal source[1]. They do their laptop tests with default browser, Safari, and got those highly variable results. They then did tests with Chrome and got more consistent results (but still lower than Apple's promised estimates)

[1] http://www.consumerreports.org/laptops/macbook-pros-fail-to-...

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#16

Post by otalp »

coob wrote: post #10
coldtea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video t…

Doesn't seem fair to base a test on using Chrome when Apple bundles a more power efficient browser with the OS.

This is where it gets more bizarre. They did not use Chrome. According to their website: "We conduct our battery tests using the computer’s default browser—Safari, in the case of the MacBook Pro laptops."

They proceed to find serious aberrations with battery life under Safari.

Then they say, "Once our official testing was done, we experimented by conducting the same battery tests using a Chrome browser, rather than Safari. For this exercise, we ran two trials on each of the laptops, and found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs."

Chrome giving much better battery results than Safari? That is unheard of. It's not a software issue either. I can confirm that with the latest Chrome my Air runs for about a third of the time that it runs with the latest Safari(I have the most recent Sierra).

So this makes very little sense.

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#17

Post by sprite »

eli wrote: post #11
coldtea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video t…

That's a crazy high level of variation to blame on relatively small differences in tests.

It sounds like a bug in Safari causing the cpu to kill the battery. Possibly a race condition since it's random. Guessing this will be fixed in an OS X update shortly.

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#19

Post by mmjaa »

I've had mine for a week now, and have been able to use it alongside my late-2014 rMBP, which has been a solid workhorse. I'm starting to notice very subtle preferences for the 2017 model creeping in - after an hour of typing, for example, going back to the old keyboard feels really, really inefficient and antiquated, and my typing rate is lower than on the new rMBP.

I also really enjoy the Touchbar - it hasn't been too intrusive, and binding ESCAPE to Caps Lock has been an acceptable re-configuration for me as a vim user.

Speed: okay, it seems slightly faster than the old machine, but then the old machine is 95% full while new-rMBP is not even 5% full yet, so .. no indexing hassles. (old-rMBP would often become unusable during Spotlight re-indexing..)

All in all, I'm happy with the upgrade - but with one huge big fat caveat: I didn't buy it. My work did. If it weren't for this fact, I'd be very reluctant to upgrade..

Re: Newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

#20

Post by reustle »

Daviey wrote: post #14

I'm not really a fan of Mac's, but I don't think too much weight should be put on this. Everything that Apple delivers is greeted with negative reports, and yet it turns out to be successful. Also... i've never even heard of "Consumer Reports" before.. but the name is pretty subjective.

Consumer Reports has been around since 1936, worth checking out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports
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