Apple Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator in Sierra 10.12.2 | Hacker News Reader

Apple Removes 'Time Remaining' Battery Life Indicator in Sierra 10.12.2

macrumors.com

61 pointshartator55 comments

I've been using this feature for years successfully and with the understanding that if I context switch to something radically different the estimate would be wrong (in practice this meant waiting until it updated reflecting the new usage). I'm shocked that they think this is an appropriate solution to people complaining about battery life.

I find its removal very, very aggravating. My workflow is typically very consistent, e.g. terminal window open, iTunes playing, and a browser tab(s) or Xcode. It was useful to see "based on my current workflow, I have roughly 45 minutes of power remaining." It has always been accurate enough...

The percentage indicator means NOTHING to me, it is just as bad as the time indicator-- as most anyone with an iPhone can understand. How often does your 1% of battery last inexplicably longer than the previous 10%? I've had it last over an hour at 1%. WTF?

I also have found it to be a useful metric for seeing the condition of my battery or to help crackdown on rogue processes that are consuming too much power. E.g. "Why am I only seeing 4 hours remaining instead of the usual 6?"

I love MacOS, and iOS, but I'm really starting to hate Apple. Truly hate them. I feel trapped as I've yet to find a PC laptop I like as much as a Macbook Pro (largely because of the trackpad). I've been using Macs as my primary machines for 12 years... it makes me sad to feel this way but the "good" feelings I used to get seem like a distant memory.

I agree with you. Those estimates were truly helpful and we could adapt in order to get more battery time. I don't feel good about Apple updates anymore. I used to be eager about beta tests and stuff, but nowadays I just hope they'll not touch anything else.

> I don't feel good about Apple updates anymore

I haven't felt good about Apple updates since leaving Snow Leopard... :(

> I've been using Macs as my primary machines for 12 years... it makes me sad to feel this way but the "good" feelings I used to get seem like a distant memory.

I was in the same boat and bailed earlier this year. Check out the Dell Developer Edition Laptops[0]. I find the trackpad is about on par with the pre-force-touch trackpads from MBPs a year or two ago. Slightly loud/heavy click but tracks well and filters out unintentional palm input well. The rest of the hardware isn't bad, either. PCs have come a long way from cheap, creaky cases and weak, floppy hinges.

Add elementary OS to it and you're set :)

I just bought a brand-new 2015 model 15 inch, which Apple still sells. Best laptop I bought, couldn't be happier. It's a lot less expensive, has all the ports, extraordinary 12 hour battery for me doing C++ in Emacs all day. Still has escape key for evil mode in Emacs. I thought about switching to a Windows machine, but I'm really glad I stayed with Apple on this one. I think time will tell on the most recent new models, and I bet Apple will address many of the complaints. Many people are not early adopters of any new release by any major manufacturer, specifically for this reason. The first iteration of major new designs by most super large companies are often met with a wide range of divergent opinions. I suspect Apple will be smart to listen to consumers and improve the next iteration of this current new model.

I've been using the same model, but I don't get 12 hour battery life. What is your brightness setting?

The 2016 seems to have a longer battery life and the screen is far brighter than the 2015 model which means one can run with the same brightness setting on lower power.

I agree that the screen is brighter in the new 2016. I never use screens at full brightness, it bothers my eyes. Emacs is very low power, so it uses a lot less battery than CLion or Eclipse, probably. That probably helps. I don't code to music, so that saves battery also.

Are you saying that 2016 has longer battery life than 2015? That seems contrary to the current scandal.

> Are you saying that 2016 has longer battery life than 2015?

Yes, that has been my reading and the review [1] confirms about 2 more hours than the 2015 15" model.

The brighter screen is relevant for battery use, because the laptop can run on even a relative dimmer setting with same brightness with perhaps even more battery life.

10.12.2 update seemed to fix problems for some people. Others were complaining not realizing high CPU of background processes. With new OS upgrade, e.g., 10.12.1 I do a clean install.

Incidentally, I think the 2015 model is an outstanding unit and a far better deal than the 2016 model and great for most people. The extra battery life and smaller, lighter is important for me.

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

That's a rather interesting conclusion the review has on the battery. If that's true (which would be great), I wonder why there is such a controversy going on about the batteries, if actually they last longer than the prior models?

I think it is true. The tables in the article that show power draw for different tasks and models is informative. They compare the 2016 15" with the 2015 15" for idle, WiFi, X.264 video, etc.

I think a lot of people with new laptops didn't fully understand that spotlight indexing and other things were going on in the background. Also, it seems as if 10.12.2 update two days ago seems to have fixed problems for some. There is a macrumors forum note with lots of replies confirms this for some.

I am a fan of fresh installs with each new OS release and I think that and using Safari and not Chrome, using Ghostery and Adblock Plus (or whatever), and some other things I do to take out unnecessary processes makes a difference for me.

I have the 2015 rMBP 15" basic model.

I constantly have activity monitor showing CPU in the dock to see if CPU consumption is increasing for some reason.

You can check the activity monitor CPU tab and the Energy tab for energy consumption issues. There are also 3rd party battery monitors (e.g., Coconut) which will tell you the up-to-date energy consumption.

> Apple believes that the battery life indicator in macOS Sierra is ultimately inaccurate and has led to some confusion about battery performance, and so it has been removed in macOS Sierra 10.12.2.

I think that's the worst possible way to react against the new Macbook pro battery life complaints.

Gee, it's not like this is the first time a Apple product problem has been blamed on a faulty formula: https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02Letter-from-Apple...

In fairness, the reports from this update are that they actually solved the battery issues.

but how would you know? what are you comparing it to?

If you still need a time-remaining indicator, try Coconut Battery: http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/. It's free and works well.

The way they are going with feature removal, Apple products in 50 years will be slate tablets. Made of actual rock.

>Made of actual rock

Aluminum, actually.

Magical revolutionary slab of wireless aluminum. Pairing seemlessly with others magical revolutionary slab of wireless aluminum. Just put one atop the other and they will stack automatically.

With infinite battery life even...

> It seems Apple believes reports of bad battery life are largely based on the faulty indicator

So to use a car analogy, it sounds like Apple means one of two things:

If I remove the MPG indicator from my car I can get more MPG out of my car, or If I remove the MPG indicator from my car I won't complain about its poor MPG.

Either way sounds stupid to me.

remaining battery isn't like MPG though, it's more like remaining range. The trouble is computer use patterns can be way more bursty than car fuel usage in normal conditions. The nearest equivalent to spot MPG (how does what I am doing now affect endurance) would be the battery used by individual applications, and I believe that's still there.

Doesn't everyone know this? It's still a useful gauge to have.

exactly, rather than remove it, if they must tinker, just add something like "At current usage levels you have approximately xxx hours of battery life remaining."

This makes sense though. Your MPG will drop significantly if you go up a hill or slam the accelerator down.

Similarly, Apple can't say for certain how much time is left, but it can say that the battery is low.

And my car adjusts the mile-remaining indicator appropriately. If I drive with a lead foot, the mileage remaining drops faster than if I drive like a granny.

I think the trouble is where a computer’s power use differs from a car’s fuel use.

Almost everything affecting fuel use in a car is observable by the driver. Terrain, speed, load, &c.

But while many things that affect battery use are observable by the user (streaming a movie, compiling, &c.), some are not (background tasks).

Also, there’s a much broader distribution in the expertise of users in judging battery life, than in the distribution of expertise in drivers judging what will and will not affect vehicle range.

I would not want to use the expertise of anybody on Hacker News as a proxy for the expertise of Apple’s median customers.

According to performance tests and not just looking at battery life indicator 2016 MBP is not that bad

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

I'm curious as to why not instead measure average battery consumption by each user to get a mean, and range which would allow a "range" of time to be shown (at the start this would be a much wider range of course).

The user could then adapt to this range because they know the usage the best. Considering the dynamics of the computer and how we use them a range would be much more suited to fulfill this type of feedback from the system.

Incredible. One would have thought that this is a solved problem. Of course it depends on usage how long the battery will last - so what? It's not like OS can't determine the power spending trend and draw conclusions about approximate time left.

What is probably issue here is that Apple gets blamed for lots of things which are outside of their control. But it would be much nicer if OS advised customers how to fix these issues and get longer battery life. But yeah, removing indicator is easier.

    Sheldon: "Your fix engine light is on."
    Penny: "Yeah. I really should put a tape across it."

For what it's worth, iOS battery settings will list off suggestions for improving battery life, such as lowering display brightness if you keep it high all the time.

Somehow I doubt that the percentage indicator is any better. At constant 100% (or 50%) CPU utilisation, tracking the percentage, would you see a linear graph going down, hitting 0 as the machine shuts down? I've never tested that but it would be interesting to see the results for different models/OS versions.

Yesterday, with the new update my mac was shut down unexpectedly, I haven't seen any warning from the battery indicator :( I hope this is not a default behaviour.

This is sad, if true.

It's true. Installed 10.12.2 update this morning.

Why not just show the user how many mAh are left?

"Mah what? mAh battery is going to last how long?"

It would be a meaningless number to non-engineers. Sounds like we need smarter predictive algorithms based on previous usage patterns etc, not degrading the "average user" experience.

I see no difference between mAh and MPG in terms of ability to understand for most people. If we expect more of people, they can learn. If we constantly dumb things down, all we do is create a depressing economy where no one understands anything, and always has to have someone else fix their trivial problems.

Miles and gallons are all measures most people have a relative understanding of.

If I drive x miles I need y gallons. Easy-ish.

What about amps?

Are those LA miles or Wyoming miles? apple is dealing with users who see their car is rated 30MPG for highway and then complaining when they only get 10MPG in rush hour LA traffic.

Cars have 3 types of MPGs I can think of: -Instant -Average (over any given length of time) -EPA Rated.

I've never heard someone complain they get bad mileage sitting in traffic and not understand that instant mpg != EPA mpg for specific conditions.

This is why its strange that Apple removed this measure.

However, I am not sure what you are arguing. For displaying the mAh or for bringing back the 'Time Left'?

because mAh aren't magical

That's effectively what they're doing when it says "57%" remaining. Just multiply .57 * 54.5-watt-hour.

The laptop doesn't know that figure. What it knows is how much voltage the cells are currently putting out. From that it extrapolates things like % left, time remaining, and yes, a theoretical mAh figure. But if time remaining is too imprecise of an estimate, then trying to put it into a precise-looking mAh figure would be way more so.

they removed it because it's inaccurate and useless. if i start rendering some huge video then the time remaining goes down drastically. so it said 90 minutes, it now says 10 minutes.

useless.

I think it is (was) a handy feature to estimate the current load/power usage. I found it to be rather accurate.

I think the time remaining reflects estimated time with current usage. I don't think having a estimate of how much longer I can browse HN before needing to plug in is useless.

But... That's logical.

It evaluates the remaining time using current ressource usage. It is "accurate". It can't predict how much time your rendering will take, it can't predict the future. But it does an accurate estimate of how much the battery will last under the current load.

(imo, current load is better than trying to compute the load trend)

logical but still useless.

if a measurement like time remaining can change at random based on load and the load can change at random based on user behavior then why show time remaining at all?

if it jumps from 90 minutes to 10 minutes, what's the point of even showing it?

"okay now i have 10 minutes left"

it would be more accurate to say "you have 90 minutes left at your current level of cpu utilization" but i don't think that can fit in the menu

help me figure it out, i don't get why a user would need this functionality ever.

Because "you have x minutes left at your current level of cpu utilization" has always been implied.

If user have forgotten that, it's no reason to remove it.

In fact there's rarely a reason to remove a feature if it doesn't cause issues.

Taking your own exemple of video rendering, if I begin a render and After Effect (or similar) says it will take 50 minutes to render, but the remaining time says I only have 20 minutes left of battery (implying "at the current load"), I know I have to charge my laptop if I want to render the video.

That sounds like the opposite of useless. You now know how long you have left based on your activity and can adjust accordingly with this new information

Of course. The MPG indicator in your car will change if you start flooring your accelerator. That doesn't mean you get rid of it.

The reality is the new MBP w/Touchbar have worse battery life than the previous generation and people called them out on it. Instead of owning it they have chosen to remove the indicator, a useful tool for many of their users.

Apple truly has lost their way.

actually the MPG-style indicator would be more appropriate in this case i think. they're similar but aren't they different?

one shows rate and the other shows the amount of gas left? it might be accurate to change it from "time remaining" to watts per hour or something idk.

Cool, reposted news from three days ago.

Just as dumb today as it was then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com