Apple Event - October 27th 2016 (New MacBook Pros/Airs)

Li-ion batteries start decaying the minute they have been made and in general will have lost about half their capacity in 3 years. I don't see things improving unless there is actually a serious problem with the OS or apps causing this that gets patched.

Sad Professor wrote: »

Not to deny the battery issues that you and others are having, but there's a lot of problems with that article. Running an external display on battery, using well known battery hogs like Chrome and anything Adobe, playing Flash video, etc. That is not light usage.

Last night, I powered on the laptop, battery at 100%. I use PhotoMechanic for photo processing. This is a very basic application - import, caption, crop, ftp, etc. No major image editing. It's a very bare bones application. So, I used that for approx 1 hour, on and off, while I was covering a rugby game. That and TextEdit were the apps running (no browser and no Photoshop, etc). That drained the battery to a very large degree.

Near the end of the evening, I used Firefox to browse the web, and Photoshop on 4 images (closing it after doing the edits).

Just over 2 hours and the battery was down to 10%.

Now, my old late 2011 MBP can do all of that, and have about the same amount of battery left. Side by side, they seem to have similar batter performance now. When I bought the 2011 MBP, it would last at least 4-5 hours doing that kind of stuff. I could cover 2-3 games without needing to recharge.

I am totally unimpressed with the new battery. :mad:

Paulw wrote: »

Last night, I powered on the laptop, battery at 100%. I use PhotoMechanic for photo processing. This is a very basic application - import, caption, crop, ftp, etc. No major image editing. It's a very bare bones application. So, I used that for approx 1 hour, on and off, while I was covering a rugby game. That and TextEdit were the apps running (no browser and no Photoshop, etc). That drained the battery to a very large degree.

Near the end of the evening, I used Firefox to browse the web, and Photoshop on 4 images (closing it after doing the edits).

Just over 2 hours and the battery was down to 10%.

Now, my old late 2011 MBP can do all of that, and have about the same amount of battery left. Side by side, they seem to have similar batter performance now. When I bought the 2011 MBP, it would last at least 4-5 hours doing that kind of stuff. I could cover 2-3 games without needing to recharge.

I am totally unimpressed with the new battery. :mad:

You're not alone. Complaints of lousy battery life have reached Macrumors I see. There's a serious number of issues surfacing with these machines.

Great thing with Apple is that if you aren't happy with it you can return it hassle free.

I wouldn't put much stock into these reports, everybody will have different use cases. It could be a rouge app killing battery that won't affect your machine.

I haven't really heard much about battery life issues on the major tech sites, if it was really widespread they wouldn't hold them selves back from having another "-gate" scenario.

I haven't been getting anywhere near 10 hours. I assumed Chrome was part of the problem and have switched back to Safari now, hopefully that improves things somewhat.



That's pretty worrying. I just rebooted the machine and have nothing open apart from safari and Messages.

Now I don't know what is a reliable tech review sites looks like but here are a few tech sites saying that the battery life is good

http://www.zdnet.com/product/apple-macbook-pro-with-touch-bar-15-inch-2016/

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-15-inch

http://www.trustedreviews.com/2015-13-inch-macbook-pro-review-battery-life-page-3

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13616404/apple-macbook-pro-touch-bar-review-2016-13-inch-15-inch-laptop

@Paulw

I wonder was there a rough app running. Some people suggest doing a fresh install.

Sad Professor wrote: »

Check Activity Monitor. Click on the energy tab and see what's draining the most battery. You might have a rogue background process.

Yep, I checked. Nothing unusual at all, and nothing rogue.

Normally I use Firefox, but just to test, I opened Safari (closed all other apps), and watched Amazon Prime video. I got 2 hours 10 min before it warned me of low battery. That was just having video play, nothing else.

I can get that performance, using Firefox, from my 2011 MBP.

I'll run a test in the next day or two, of the two machines, side by side, running the same apps, and see which lasts best. I'm not exactly hopeful.

BobbyT28 wrote: »

Another thing to note is that you don't here anyone who bought the 13' version complaining about battery life.

Really hope this is a software issue and the battery life gets better with updates.

I have the 13" touch bar version. It's now telling me it has 9.5 hours left at 90%.

Paulw wrote: »

Yep, I checked. Nothing unusual at all, and nothing rogue.

Normally I use Firefox, but just to test, I opened Safari (closed all other apps), and watched Amazon Prime video. I got 2 hours 10 min before it warned me of low battery. That was just having video play, nothing else.

I can get that performance, using Firefox, from my 2011 MBP.

I'll run a test in the next day or two, of the two machines, side by side, running the same apps, and see which lasts best. I'm not exactly hopeful.

Sounds like you should return it.

Just got shipping notification. Was seriously contemplating cancelling ah well.

Delivery says 14/12 seems long enough for DHL. Should I receive it earlier do you reckon?

I believe an update came out for Sierra yesterday or so. Can any confirm if they installed it and did it fix any issues?

DubDJ wrote: »

Usually the carrier dispatch dates are accurate. As yours was a custom configuration there's a chance it's coming from China which could explain the long ship date.

I don't believe an update was released yesterday, a beta was released but the actual update is supposed to be out in the next week or so.

What I will say, get the MacBook and test it out. After a few days if you're not happy with performance get into Apple and get a refund. It's usually hassle free. At the price your paying, you'd need to be completely happy to keep it.

Lets hope it fixes those battery issues.

I would be happy with 6-7 hours but not too optimistic from recent reports but fingers crossed done updates soil sort some of those issues out

DubDJ wrote: »

Your MBP might not have any issues. It could be faulty batteries in some or just specific usage and apps draining it on others. I've a 2015 MBP 13" here and I get roughly 10 hours on a full charge, doing normal everyday stuff.

You should be expecting anywhere from 8-10 hours tbh, anything less and I would be annoyed too. 8 hours is enough to get you through a typical work day so I find that's a decent benchmark to set.

Wait and see, after a few days, see what range your battery life is in and then decide. Don't let a few random reports discourage you.

I am actually expecting less than last year's model, purely because of the smaller battery, brighter screen and OLED touch bar. I think 7-8 would be good going.

Very hard to it ore all the bad reports but there are a lot of people who have no issues. I think K myself there must be a bad batch of battery's, even though apple say up to 10hrs I wouldn't expect this. But I think macbooks dying after just 3-4 hours is excessive to say the least

Sad Professor wrote: »

Good advice, DubDJ.

A batch of faulty batteries wouldn't surprise me, especially with the iPhone 6s battery problems that are starting to raise their head now. It's possible as well that there's a software issue. Like maybe the touch bar, which runs a version of iOS, can excessively drain battery in some instances.

When you get it, Bobby, set it up as a new machine. Don't restore from Time Machine if you can help it. Also use Safari instead of Chrome and think twice before you install apps that you don't need, especially ones that run in the background. And be aware that if you are syncing photos, email, iCloud, etc, that it can take several hours to a day before you'll see normal battery life.

Yeah I'm thinking battery issue alright, if but it could be a software issue

Thanks for the advice folks. Will let you know when I get it and how I'm getting on.

Paulw wrote: »

My little update.

This morning I turned on the laptop. Full 100% charge. In the Activity Monitor, it gave me an estimated time remaining of 4 hours batter life, with the "normal" apps I run.

So, I opened a tech support case with Apple. Talked to a tech for a while going through how I installed/setup the MBP from when I got it, went through my activity monitor reports, checked what was running, using CPU, using power, etc. Restarted a few apps.

Did an SMC reset. And then checked again. Since then, the machine seems to be performing much better, and battery life is reporting time remaining as 12 hours!!!

So, I am now feeling a lot better about the machine. But, I will wait and monitor it's performance over the coming days.

Great to hear. Hopefully that's sorted it for you.