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

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that reducing thickness is a selling point/feature for a lot of people on Apple products, but the compromises made in exchange for thinness cause problems for people who don't value thinness over other things. Having said that, it's important to note that CR did not give the Macbook Pro a Recommended badge (think of it as the equivalent to "Editor's Choice"), it doesn't mean they're telling people not…

> The problem is that reducing thickness is a selling point/feature for a lot of people on Apple It's the Peter Principle for laptops. Laptops are made thinner and thinner, which is always an improvement, until the point when they no longer function properly. Fundamentally, people expect a certain amount of travel in their keyboard for comfort, and long enough battery life. Apple made a big mistake thinking these wer…

With respect to the keyboard, at least in the reviews I've been seeing, a lot of people seem to be OK with it after an adjustment period.

In terms of battery life, I'm with you, I'd rather see Apple get as much life out of the maximum sized battery that the TSA will allow on a flight (100Wh), but I don't know that I would call it a big mistake, since it hasn't hurt the sales of the new MBPs. I think they could do that in a chassis the size of the 2012 and earlier 15" unibodies. They'd also have plenty of room for legacy ports too. Those 15" unibodies were the sweet spot for me in terms of size and user upgradability.

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

#262
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, spotlight re-indexing mostly happens if you run out of disk space and the OS decides to drop spotlights caches in favor of swap space. If you keep an eye on the size of your swap files (in the /var/vm dir), you can see when things go nuts and take corrective action before the index gets whacked.

IMHO, this is a "bug" because if you are running on battery, the indexing is a problem and it is also a problem if you are using spotlight. Is there an option to ensure that the spotlight cache is not deleted?

Spotlight has given me so many headaches in the last few weeks that I'm seriously considering investing the time to understand it well enough to build an app to wrestle it to the ground and beat it over the head with a big stick. If only there'd be a reason to do it other than "gain control over my life again" ..

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

#263
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.

Rate me down... but do you disagree that despite this, the MBP will be a success?

Or am I being rated down for not knowing of a US Centric organisation?

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

#264
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been getting 6 - 7 hours average runtime on a full charge for the last few weeks, but I'm working (Xcode, vim and builds) and I don't think I have a representative work load - but I do note that this laptop 'seems' to be as long-lived without the charging cable as my previous machine. I suppose I'll pay more attention over the next week and see if its as bad as everyone makes it out to be - so far, I haven't eve…

What's your config?

rMBP 15" 2.7ghz i7, 16G RAM, 500G SSD, Intel HD 530, etc.

So far I haven't loaded the machine up with anything heavier than my preferred homebrew+iTerm+vim+cscope+make/XCode tools, and I've been able to work pretty well with it all week. Going to try to keep it as clean as possible.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has never gone with an open standard when a proprietary closed standard would do. More likely than using any sort of standard port would be Apple inventing yet another new proprietary port.

Apple has never gone with an open standard when a proprietary closed standard would do. False. USB 1.

Yup. Or...y'know...FireWire. Also known as IEEE 1394.

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

#266
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Apple would ship a version of Safari that so deeply affected the battery of their newest MBP is concerning, and perhaps illustrative of why many MBP afficionados are so upset about the situation.

No excuse for shipping buggy software, but it has to be said that Safari uses a lot less CPU than other browsers under normal circumstances. I wonder how they do it.

They do it by caring. And the reason they care is because it reflects poorly on the entire platform when one gluttonous app drains the battery. Other browser vendors couldn't care less about how their app makes the platform look, especially if it comes at a cost to their app's performance.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were some refurb 2015 models I wanted last night for about 4 hours, but I wasn't in a position to order right at that moment (driving, in meetings, etc). Got home, and they're gone! :/ Will keep looking, and ebay/CL generally have some decent ones now and then too. Benchmarks between 2015 and 2016 were within 1% on geekbench for most tests, and 2016 was often the slower one. Hard to justify $1000+ more for... n…

Thanks for the feedback! I hope you get a refurb 2015 soon, sounds like they are selling out rather quickly! I have a fully spec'd out 2013 MBP 15" and the battery last at most 3 hours under an intensive programming load. The cycle count is nearing 1,000. I thought about saving money altogether by replacing the battery / backing up the data on an external hard drive and resetting it to factory. I do like the sleek de…

Beware - it will dent that much easier too. And there were not (as of 2 weeks ago) any cases for the 2016 MBP available for purchase.

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

#268
This very thorough review: See under "Battery Runtime"

"Even though the battery capacity was reduced by almost 25 % compared to the predecessor, Apple still managed to improve the overall runtimes with the 76-Wh battery. Our WiFi test determines an advantage of 130 minutes, so little more than two hours." [1]

If you read actual users of the 2016 rMBP in this thread as well as reports on macrumors forum you'll see that there are a number of people who report good battery times and even exceeding those of the 2015 machine.

I would question the Consumer Reports review process given the review cited above, the reports in this thread and that in the macrumors forum.

[1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-...

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

#269
post #184
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten myself into a stupid situation where I have purchased something like 4 adapters that don't accomplish what I thought they would when I bought them. USB-C to DisplayPort -> DisplayPort to HDMI -> Monitor - doesn't work USB-C to DisplayPort -> DisplayPort to DVI-D -> Monitor - doesn't work USB-C to Ethernet - doesn't work I'm actually planning to just go to Best Buy today and try to find anything that will…

You can't expect an off-brand USB-C adapter to be able to fully support DisplayPort. USB-C does not natively contain DisplayPort. Also, don't daisy-chain adapters when you don't have to. Use a USB-C to HDMI adapter. Such as this one: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av...

While Tim Cook may be paying you to come here and blame people for "expecting" their computer to "just work," that in fact the Promise that Apple has made for years.

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

#270
> The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next.

It worked for nearly twenty hours, when advertised for just "up to 10"?

Presumably whatever bugs led to 4.5 hours can be fixed in software updates (occasionally I find my Mac running at full-CPU due to some boneheaded OSX process).

But if my new laptop has a best-case scenario of nearly 20 hours (and not "minimal brightness while not running anything")... then that's the best recommendation I've heard yet.

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