MacBook Battery Time Remaining
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MacBook Battery Time Remaining
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Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#2Bring on the machine learning battery gauges?
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#3Love that Apple keeps adding "features" like this. Not even SlimBatteryMonitor still works thanks to this update.
What a time to be alive, watching Apple choke on their own arrogance.
Their one shot at a big comeback is the iPhone 10th anniversary edition. If it is as much of a smash hit as Robert Scoble keeps heralding then Apple will be golden for another decade.
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#4Having used and trusted the "time remaining" calculation in Macs for years, it's very hard not to be suspicious of the timing here. A series of less-than-stellar reports of battery life in the new MacBook Pros, and then all of a sudden the indicator is inaccurate? Nope, not buying it.
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#5The time remaining indicator was really useful. It was more than accurate enough. It allowed me to see at a glance if I had enough charge to finish the movie, if it would last for the rest of the train ride, etc. If I saw that the battery wouldn't last as long as I had expected, closing Slack would fix it.
The problem with the time remaining indicator was that people started reporting the displayed time as actual run time. I read a couple of blog posts where people claimed that the battery life time of the Macbooks was reduced, based on the estimates they saw in the battery menu. They didn't actually time the run time of their Macbooks, presumably because that would take 5-10 hours, or longer if you want to repeat the measurement. So Apple is claiming that these people are wrong, the indicator was inaccurate, and they removed it.
Of course, the problem is that most likely battery life actually is lower. The battery of the new MacBook Pro is significantly smaller than the predecessor's, but the components don't use significantly less power. With the increasing popularity of Electron based apps, average power consumption is probably even increasing.
For the user, this is a huge loss. We've learned to live with the battery time estimate, and we know that the time remaining isn't absolute; just like we know that the remaining range displayed on the dashboard of most recent cars depends heavily on the driving style.
Fortunately, there are 3rd party tools that display the estimate Apple removed -- I downloaded Coconut Battery. But I wish we wouldn't have to rely on 3rd party tools for such basic functionality. Macs used to come with "batteries included".
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#6I know why apple hasn't, but I'd kill for a $1500 macbook stuffed into a macbook pro case, and all of that spare space taken up by battery.
Give me a core-m, 8GB RAM, a high res display, and a massive battery.
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#7Love that Apple keeps adding "features" like this. Not even SlimBatteryMonitor still works thanks to this update. What a time to be alive, watching Apple choke on their own arrogance. Their one shot at a big comeback is the iPhone 10th anniversary edition. If it is as much of a smash hit as Robert Scoble keeps heralding then Apple will be golden for another decade.
I'm using Battery Monitor (http://www.rockysandstudio.com/index.html#freeapps) and it works great.
Of course, it would've been better if I didn't have to install a third-party app and I had one less icon in my menu bar, but whatever.
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#8The time remaining indicator was really useful. It was more than accurate enough. It allowed me to see at a glance if I had enough charge to finish the movie, if it would last for the rest of the train ride, etc. If I saw that the battery wouldn't last as long as I had expected, closing Slack would fix it. The problem with the time remaining indicator was that people started reporting the displayed time as actual run…
> Of course, the problem is that most likely battery life actually is lower. The battery of the new MacBook Pro is significantly smaller than the predecessor's, but the components don't use significantly less power
Exactly. Apple has always designed their devices to a battery life target. But as "wireless web" and "movie playback" both depend on use cases that get more and more optimized as Apple improve their software, they get more and more disconnected from the reality of pro users. How about a "editing a Swift Playground" battery life estimation? Or Photoshop? What Pro user spends all their day browsing the web and watching movies? Those make sense for the regular MacBook, not the Pro.
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#9Love that Apple keeps adding "features" like this. Not even SlimBatteryMonitor still works thanks to this update. What a time to be alive, watching Apple choke on their own arrogance. Their one shot at a big comeback is the iPhone 10th anniversary edition. If it is as much of a smash hit as Robert Scoble keeps heralding then Apple will be golden for another decade.
pmset -g batt
Bonus points: easy to add in tmux-powerline running fullscreen in iTerm2
Re: MacBook Battery Time Remaining
#10Have they never heard of averages?
Just show time remaining based on last 5 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, and all data.
Or does apple not like that kind of "complexity" and wants just a single number?