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New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

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Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#101

Post by izym »

camdenlock wrote: post #79

When I bring my 2016 MBP into the office, it runs out of battery near the end of the day, and I have to plug it in for those final 2 or 3 hours. Very satisfied. My colleague with a new Surface Book has been shaking his fist at me, wishing he hadn't listened to the FUD and left the Applesphere. Apparently he gets frustratingly bad battery life on his SB. (To be fair, though, the SB's display ejection hardware is just…

What do you mean by "considering these workloads"? It sounds like a fairly light workload.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#102

Post by spiderfarmer »

tmd83 wrote: post #97
qeternity wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are lugging their laptop around all day, from meeting to meeting, or airport to airport. If you can keep battery life constant at ca. 10 hours, which covers an extended work day, then beyond that most people would prefer to have lighter/slimmer/cooler (less hot) devices than one that runs for 20 hours.

I can agree on lighter, cooler or even smaller (in length/width) but really slimmer? As I said in another thread, what does a slimmer laptop gives you in present day.

For a consultancy job I carry two notebooks around. A company provided Lenovo laptop and Macbook pro. Would love to have a lighter laptop, without resorting to cheap plastic. I don't want a smaller screen as I can't connect external monitors there and my eyes are not that great.

I love the fact that I don't have to carry a charger for the Macbook, even after 2 years of usage it still runs long enough to last a workday.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#103

Post by garrettgrimsley »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #86
Alex3917 wrote: post #24

I love the new 2016 MBP, and after using it think most of the purported issues are BS. That said, there is one very real issue that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: because of how thin they are, many of the minor issues that could previously be fixed in the Apple Store now require sending it out. I had an intermittently working key on my keyboard and took it in for something I assumed would take half an hour to fix…

I sloshed a bit of coffee on my keyboard, first such fck-up in over fifteen years. They want $620 to rub wipe the coffee off and put the keys back in place (they sent a photo). I'm praying that tomorrow morning I can talk them into mailing it back to uncleaned but still disassembled and let me pop them back in place....

Did they tell you that they were going to just wipe the coffee off and put it back together? I used to do Apple repairs and the $620 sounds in line with a full upper clamshell w/ keyboard replacement. Just "rub wiping" the coffee off wouldn't be satisfactory since you can't reach all of the places that the coffee penetrated, even with a full keyboard teardown.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#104

Post by deepGem »

rz2k wrote: post #88
deepGem wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think heat dissipation is often overlooked while making a buying decision. Regarding overall portability, I think the 13 inch MacBook air is a good compromise. The new 13 inch MacBook pro is about the same weight, but obviously a lot more powerful, and is smaller in dimensions. It's a breeze to work on planes with this machine. I'd rather see the next iteration of MacBook Pros with better heat dissipation a…

Thinner implies a better ratio of surface area to volume for dissipating heat. Though, I suppose a laptop could be thicker by including empty space with fans and airflow to exhaust the heat out the sides rather than conducting it through the surfaces touched by users.

Right, also heat dissipation is a function of the processors. I don't think Intel has any processor offerings in the i5 and i7 families which will enable fan-less laptop design. Asus seems to have swapped the Core M processors with the i5 and i7 families in their latest Zenbooks. At 700$ this laptop is a steal.

https://www.amazon.com/UX330UA-AH54-13-3-inch-Ultra-Slim-Pro...

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#105

Post by microtheo »

dperfect wrote: post #41

> Reducing mA (power draw) rather than increasing mAh (power storage) is the most effective way to increase battery life, which would go a long way to explain manufacturers’ obsession with thinness (which, in electrical terms often directly translates efficiency (i.e., smallness)) in their devices rather than just giving us something that endures. I think it goes the other way; the manufacturers' obsession with thinn…

Everybody always talks about thinness... I would argue that all they want is reduce the cost of the components. The smaller the battery for the same battery life, the cheaper it will be to produce. Everything is about rentability.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#106

Post by exergy »

djrogers wrote: post #64
dperfect wrote: post #41

> Reducing mA (power draw) rather than increasing mAh (power storage) is the most effective way to increase battery life, which would go a long way to explain manufacturers’ obsession with thinness (which, in electrical terms often directly translates efficiency (i.e., smallness)) in their devices rather than just giving us something that endures. I think it goes the other way; the manufacturers' obsession with thinn…

> at least for professionals? Professional whats? Executives, salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians, beer distributors - all of these people are professionals, and all of them can and do benefit from smaller and lighter computing power. Clearly your idea of a professional is someone who is chained to a desk writing code or processing complex 3D graphics. No question those are professional uses as well, but t…

Please explain to me how complicated and demanding is the workflow of these "salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians and beer distributors(!)" that you talk about? What exactly is stopping them from getting the smaller 12" MacBook? Or the infinite other ultrabooks available now? Something called the "Pro", and something that costs a pretty penny, shouldn't just cater to the ones out and about and only needing Excel.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#107

Post by retreatguru »

rayiner wrote: post #58
retreatguru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely this. If the 2016 MacBook Pro I bought had been a tad thicker I would not have noticed. But I returned because of the dismal battery life under moderate load. Much worse than the previous generation. Did they even test this machine in the wild?

The battery is 25% smaller. Not enough to go from not dismal to dismal. Likely the integrated GPU kicking in when it shouldn't.

I guess I was hoping the battery would last longer than my 5 year old battery in my older MBP. I was kind of shocked when it didn't.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#108

Post by metafunctor »

jordache wrote: post #72
Alex3917 wrote: post #24

I love the new 2016 MBP, and after using it think most of the purported issues are BS. That said, there is one very real issue that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: because of how thin they are, many of the minor issues that could previously be fixed in the Apple Store now require sending it out. I had an intermittently working key on my keyboard and took it in for something I assumed would take half an hour to fix…

Three fingers drag is buggy on the new trackpad. Control strip is buggy, especially when using external monitors. The software is not able to adequately deal with external monitors being connected and disconnected throughout the day.

Another anecdote: I have two LG monitors on my desk, and frequently connect and disconnect the laptop during the day. I've had no issues with this, the touch bar, or with the trackpad.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#109

Post by Someone »

exergy wrote: post #106
djrogers wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least for professionals? Professional whats? Executives, salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians, beer distributors - all of these people are professionals, and all of them can and do benefit from smaller and lighter computing power. Clearly your idea of a professional is someone who is chained to a desk writing code or processing complex 3D graphics. No question those are professional uses as well, but t…

Please explain to me how complicated and demanding is the workflow of these "salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians and beer distributors (!)" that you talk about? What exactly is stopping them from getting the smaller 12" MacBook? Or the infinite other ultrabooks available now? Something called the "Pro", and something that costs a pretty penny, shouldn't just cater to the ones out and about and only needing…

12" may be too small to show stuff to other people sitting around a table, or too uncomfortable on their eyes.

Re: New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining

#110

Post by berryg »

I have an older MBP. Hunting down processes and especially tabs in Safari or Chrome that cause the CPU to spike and to drain the batteries becomes a daily routine. A routine I don't like.

Is there a program that watches excessive CPU usage and battery drain over time, warns me and points me directly to the possible culprit and advices me to take action. For example to close a specific tab in Safari. I would even let the program automatically close Safari tabs for certain websites.

The goal would be to optimise battery usage in the most user friendly way.

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