Apple Removes the 'Time Remaining' Battery Indicator In New macOS Update (loopinsight.com)

Apple has removed the "time remaining" battery life indicator with the new macOS Sierra update following complaints from several users of new MacBook Pro models. Apple says it stands by its 10-hour battery life claim in the new MacBook Pro models, and adds that the battery life indicator didn't show accurate information. From a report on The Loop: You can still see the image on the top of the screen, and you can see the percentage, but you will no longer be able to see how much time is remaining before your battery dies. [...] Apple said the percentage is accurate, but because of the dynamic ways we use the computer, the time remaining indicator couldn't accurately keep up with what users were doing. Everything we do on the MacBook affects battery life in different ways and not having an accurate indicator is confusing. Besides the apps we are working on all the time, there are a lot of things that are happening in the background that users may not be aware of that affects battery life.

Comments

They can't dynamically figure this out?

[gameboyhippo]

My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[The-Ixian]

I don't recall seeing a Windows computer without this since... geez... probably Windows XP.

I am not sure that it has ever been all that accurate though.

I am surprised that Mac even had this indicator in the first place. The main difference I have always seen between Mac and Windows is that Mac tends to hide more stuff from you.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[damacus]

They can, and have been for years. I believe they're being petty - butthurt from all the backlash they've received over the clusterf- that is the 2016 MBP lineup.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[geek]

My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.

They're just copying Gnome 3

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[war4peace]

I have that feature on my Lenovo X240 but I haven't found it useful.
If anything, it would be misleading.
Here's an example: I was watching a movie and my laptop's battery was 15%, saying it can still hold for 35 minutes given the current load. So I went back to full screen mode, and less than 10 minutes later the laptop was at 5% so it went into hibernation. I guess some background process decided to fuck with the laptop resources because of "5 minutes idle" or something.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's the best-selling laptop of all time, right?

I mean, they said so themselves!

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Jeremi]

Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.

Well that's just it, isn't it? The time-remaining figure, even if calculated accurately based on what you're currently doing still likely bears little resemblance to the actual time you have left before your battery runs out.

Say I'm editing my source code in a text editor -- zero CPU / disk / network usage, very light load, and so my time-remaining figure is 9 hours.

Then I decide it's time to do a fresh compile, and my "make clean; make -j4" drives all cores to 100% and exercises the internal drive for several minutes. Now my time-remaining figure is 2 hours.

Then the compile ends, and the time-remaining figure is back to 8 hours.

Which of those figures was correct? Answer: none of them was. The only way to get a correct figure would be to predict how many times I'm going to recompile in the future. So why bother making up a number that clearly is not going to be correct anyway? It only confuses the issue.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has improved their estimation algorithm quite a bit then.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Lord Crc]

The only way to get a correct figure would be to predict how many times I'm going to recompile in the future.

Or it could quote you a range: time remaining with light load, and time remaining with heavy load.

It could also figure out what is "light" and what is "heavy" by your usage patterns.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.

Well that's just it, isn't it? The time-remaining figure, even if calculated accurately based on what you're currently doing still likely bears little resemblance to the actual time you have left before your battery runs out.

Say I'm editing my source code in a text editor -- zero CPU / disk / network usage, very light load, and so my time-remaining figure is 9 hours.

Then I decide it's time to do a fresh compile, and my "make clean; make -j4" drives all cores to 100% and exercises the internal drive for several minutes. Now my time-remaining figure is 2 hours.

Then the compile ends, and the time-remaining figure is back to 8 hours.

Which of those figures was correct? Answer: none of them was. The only way to get a correct figure would be to predict how many times I'm going to recompile in the future. So why bother making up a number that clearly is not going to be correct anyway? It only confuses the issue.

This. Exactly This.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[tlhIngan]

My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.

Therein lies the rub. What is "the same way"? Browsing the web can be tricky - some websites are nice and static and use little CPU and give plenty of battery life. Other websites have videos and sound and take more CPU and reduce the time. So "browsing the web" isn't the same way - I may go to YouTube all of a sudden and the battery life will have to drop.

And that's the issue - there's no point telling the user they have 5 hours of battery life because they'll think they have ... 5 hours of battery life. Then they launch Netflix and watch a 2 hour movie, and expect 3 hours of battery life left, but get awfully surprised when they're down to 1 hour or less.

Time remaining works well for relatively constant loads - a camcorder recording video can display time remaining when recording because it's all it's going to do. If it says you can record for 2 hours, then it will last two hours regardless of what you're filming. It won't suddenly drop to 1 hour because a kid comes into frame and recording cuteness takes more power.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo AC, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Apple had one of the best 2016 MBPs of all timeone of the best 2016 MBPs of all time!

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't certain about my Apple future so I got a used Think Pad w/ Windows 10. It's so bad I want to run back to Apple and say 'Shut up and take my money!' Granted it's a cheap old laptop and not the latest and greatest. Windows 10 will not be on the system for long. I intended to get this as a spare PC as I only have Macs now.

My immediate take away is despite some glaring flaws with Apple and irksome behaviors like taking away the battery estimate to try and make the battery controversy go away. I'm going to continue to pay the premium for their machines. I don't like the alternatives. I can run Linux on PC or Mac, but I tend to prefer Apple's hardware. I suddenly don't feel so bad about the thought of buying some USB-C dongles if I get a new laptop in the next couple of years. What is infinitely worse is being stuck with Windows 10 (shudders at the thought...)

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[smooth wombat]

he main difference I have always seen between Mac and Windows is that Mac tends to hide more stuff from you.

With Windows 10 that is no longer true. Microsoft has gone above and beyond hiding things from the user as well as relocating things which had been in the same place for successive operating systems.

Even worse, trying to get anything useful accomplished is almost an act of futility as you can't get to there from here. One has to take the longest most convoluted route possible to end up two feet from where you started.

DOS was easier to maintain and maneuver through than Windows 10.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

? Gnome shows me both how much time there is left on the battery and time to charge.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Jeremi]

Or it could quote you a range: time remaining with light load, and time remaining with heavy load.

Or better yet, a line graph, with battery-percentage-left on the y-axis and time on the x-axis, with accurate logged information up to the present moment, and speculative prediction into the future (the line getting progressively wider as it proceeds to the right side of the graph, to indicate the greater likely margin of error). You could even use statistics or a neural network to dynamically adjust the speculative algorithm based on past behavior to make it become more accurate over time.

That would be a pretty cool Linux-style solution; but this is Apple; they prefer to make things simpler, not more elaborate, whenever possible.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit dramatic? Lol. If any is can actually affect your work that much (besides dev ops), it's time to re evaluate your process. Of course we like to bitch and moan the whatever is a cm off. Lol.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the angularjs sites with 50 open connections. Lol.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they advetise a 10 hour life, then it should show a countdown timer.
It doesn't do that because their battery life estimates are bullshit.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[sound vision]

I have a couple of Windows XP netbooks, they definitely have the time-remaining indicator. It could be that it was added in SP1 or SP2, but that's still a long time ago.
This is just another example of Apple oversimplifying things. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of how a computer works will understand that battery life will vary depending on how you're using the computer. Or, they could have added the word "estimated" in, so any English speaker over the age of 10 could understand. But I guess they deemed it more important to protect their customers from the split-second confused dissatisfaction of "What? Apple told me it had 10 hours and now it has SIX??"

Maybe that is good marketing. Maybe it improves the emotional state of their customers, leading to a couple percentage points more reporting "satisfaction" with the product. But it does make the product less useful for intelligent people.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[rtb61]

Everyone should be able to figure this one out. The pressure was put on Apple to produce a totally accurate battery meter, including life left. Now problems arise is that it will remind people they have a dying battery ie a battery at 80% of it's life will become 20% inaccurate in measurement, the older the worse, with fixed batteries designed to drive unit replacement, this becomes ever more problematic. So they simply allow download and install of free, supplied by others battery meters and deny any accuracy on conclusions to be drawn from that.

You know eventually the public will force the supply of generic user replaceable batteries because the current system is a gross psychopathic abuse of planetary resources, to feed nothing but insane greed.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[zalas]

I guess Activity Monitor doesn't show a prediction, but it does have a line graph of the percentage of remaining charge as a function of time over the past 12 hours. Not sure if that got removed in the new update.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales are off the charts!!!

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[brantondaveperson]

You know eventually the public will force the supply of generic user replaceable batteries

Literally the only product in the world that has generic replaceable rechargeable batteries, is cars. Maybe this is why car analogies are preferred above all others.

I mean, sure, some things run on AAs, but AAs are shit, and pretty wasteful of space, and mostly only used in toys and tv remotes. For a while you could get products that ran off NiMH AAs, and included charge circuitry, but not really any more.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still reeks of a cover up. Typical apple.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[MrLint]

DOS was easier to maintain and maneuver through than Windows 10. LOL Yeah manual IRQ resolution was awesome.. and ya know no network stack and no multitasking was spectacular... Features beget complexity.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a momentary lapse of courage on Apple's part. Eventually they'll have to come to the conclusion that the real problem is the battery itself. The outdated idea that portable computers "have to" include a battery has been alowed to continue for too long, and Apple is going to once again lead the industry in removing this decades old legacy technology.

And, look, before you start going on about how you need your computer to have a way to receive electricity, obviously there will need to be some kind of dongles or something to connect newer battery-free Macbook to your older battery-incumbered Macbook for the time being and pull power from it.

Ultimately, I expect Apple to achieve a computer that is simply a beautiful square piece of Titanium glued to an equally sized piece of glass. Removing he battery TTL indicator, and then the battery itself, is a first step in that direction.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

DOS had a kind of multitasking. You could terminate but stay resident, and you could be hooked to just as many interrupts as you like, including the timing interrupt. You had to roll a bit of your own, but when it was the dominant OS in PCs, plenty of programmers were willing to jump through that hoop.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Just average power consumption from the start of the session. Or something fancier if you want.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Kjella]

Since when is no estimates a subsitute for poor estimates? It's done when it's done, we'll get there when we get there, it'll run out of power when it runs out. Let's not try to find any answers because they'll be based on assumptions and have uncertainty and won't be perfect.

I agree that sometimes the estimates are as good as they get and the only way to know more is to actually try, but if you do say a 30 minute average and tell people it's an average of the last 30 minutes that's a reasonably good indication. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a silly example. Most users are not writing text then exercising 100% CPU load to do a build, and for those that do they know exactly what is going on and would appreciate being told they have 8-9 hours of code editing time left rather than '89% battery and you'll just have to remember how long that lasted you the other time you were editing code'. For most users, it is doing some web browsing, playing music and editing text. It is not hard for a battery gauge to give you a reasonable estimate of the time remaining as you move between those activities.

If Apple wants to absolve responsibility for all this, then they could at least show you the remaining Wh capacity and a graph of your watt usage. Then you could work out roughly how much you're using and how long you've probably got before you need to start hunting for a power socket. Or, you know, they could just do that rough calculation for you and present it in the form of a 'time remaining' display.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[mjwx]

I don't recall seeing a Windows computer without this since... geez... probably Windows XP.

I am not sure that it has ever been all that accurate though.

I am surprised that Mac even had this indicator in the first place. The main difference I have always seen between Mac and Windows is that Mac tends to hide more stuff from you.

Windows XP had a battery remaining time as standard, I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 did too. Cant remember Win 98.

I cant think of a Linux distro that cant do this either (AHCI command if you're not running a GUI, if memory serves).

This move is more likely to be that they don't want their users to notice that the battery lasts significantly less than the advertised time. Out of sight, out of mind, that kind of thing.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[AC-x]

My cheap as hell, several years out of date referb Acer does this too. There really is no excuse not to have it in a new high end laptop.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[ausekilis]

Or you can just add a small disclaimer to the prompt. If only we had a word that meant "uncertain, but here's our best guess given what we know right now." Or does Microsoft have a patent on the phrase "Estimated Time Left"?

Yes, there's lots of uncertainty when it comes to computers since the environment is always changing. Microsoft's file copy time estimate is notoriously bad (3 minutes, 5 hours, 357 days, 2 minutes 30 seconds...). Maybe people just need to be a little bit smarter and realize that if they hammer the battery with stuff like video games, video processing, compiling, encoding and other intensive tasks, then the charge won't last as long. Sure, I'd love 10 hours of Far Cry 4 on one charge, but I know that's not realistic.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[dmiller1984]

My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way. Light work naturally will show more time left than playing a video game.

That's exactly how it works on the Mac. It's frustrating that people can't understand that browsing the web and then switching to a videogame will change the amount of time remaining. I love the feature and will hate to see it go.

Re:They can't dynamically figure this out?

[tepples]

It's the same reason web browsers warn for self-signed certificates but pass legacy cleartext (the http: scheme) without a warning. The general principle is that a false sense of security is worse than a true sense of insecurity.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like my drug dealer.

"Be there in 5 minutes."
15 minutes later..
"Just left the house, be there in 5 minutes.
15 minutes later...
"Yo had to get gas, be there in 5 minutes..."
15 minutes later...
"Yo where are you? I'm here"

Me: I'll be there in 5 minutes.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has been hiding and moving shit for no good reason with every single new version of windows. I got so sick as a sys admin of spending my time relearning how to do things that I already knew how to do that I refuse to touch Windows now.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do you not understand the word "literally", you also don't know shit about car batteries.

Re: They can't dynamically figure this out?

[The-Ixian]

How big are the charts?

Confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

What about battery usage as at now? Then do the math on google.com.

huh?

[fluffernutter]

10 hour battery life doing what? I have a brand new macbook pro and it is more around 6-7 hours. It is undoubtedly the best battery life of any laptop I've had so far but not 10 hours.

Re:huh?

[damacus]

The big gripe here is that Apple's 15" 2015 MBP had a 99.5 watt-hour battery (rated for 9 hours wireless web) while the 2016 15" MBP has a 76 watt-hour battery that's rated for 10 hours. The 2015 model came very close to the rated time, which makes sense with its 31% larger battery.

Apple removing the estimated time, which it's provided for a long time, feels like a really childish response to the backlash they're receiving. It's been largely understood by most that these times are simply estimates based on the recent rate of consumption.

These 2016 MacBook Pros are great machines, but they should've been in the 'MacBook' or 'MacBook Air' product lines.. not Pro.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been largely understood by most that these times are simply estimates based on the recent rate of consumption.

Actually I don't think most people are aware of that. I am continually amused by the angry tirades written by some of them when complaining that the battery time estimate isn't accurate to a the second.

Re:huh?

[matbury]

The PR & marketing text probably says up to 10 hours. It's probably an unrealistic figure in the real world and more often than not comes out at less than 10 hours and in many cases probably a lot less. I guess they took out the battery life estimate indicator because it looked bad in the iStore or Apple Genius Bar(TM) or whatever it's called showing less than 10 hours on a supposedly brand new machine.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been largely understood by most that these times are simply estimates based on the recent rate of consumption.

Really? You expect people to understand the dynamic nature of power consumption when I work with people who yell "anon my keyboard stopped working!" only to find they knocked the fucking usb cable out?
People are god damn retards; you give them a battery indicator that bounces between 5 hours and 1 hour remaining they'll assume the indicator is broken, the laptop is broken or they're being lied to about the battery life - "I used it for 10 minutes and the time left went from 5 hours to 2 hours, they lied to me about the battery life!"

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

These 2016 MacBook Pros are great machines, but they should've been in the 'MacBook' or 'MacBook Air' product lines.. not Pro.

No they're not. You said it yourself, they should have been marked as anything other than Pro, which if they *were*, then sure they would have be great by the standard of the product line they were in. But since they're in the Pro line, they have to be held to the same standard as previous models in the same line, of which they end up not being great at all.

Yeah yeah my autism is showing, wanna fight about it?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been largely understood by most that these times are simply estimates based on the recent rate of consumption.

I think the issue is largely encapsulated by the following:

Many times, because it’s happening in the background, users may not be aware of what’s draining their battery.

Yet, instead of making it clear what background processes are draining your battery, and why that's killing your estimated time remaining, Apple goes it's usual "form over function" route and just hides all those nasty details.

Re:huh?

[TheFakeTimCook]

10 hour battery life doing what? I have a brand new macbook pro and it is more around 6-7 hours. It is undoubtedly the best battery life of any laptop I've had so far but not 10 hours.

Actually, Apple is pretty specific (e.g. "Brightness set to 12 clicks from the bottom, or 75%" (see below)) (unlike, say, Microsoft for the Surface Book, who only stated "Auto Brightness Disabled" for the biggest current-hog in the system...Right...) on their Product Page.

Here are the "Tech Specs" for the 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pro. Scroll down to the "Battery and Power" section (and don't forget to read Footnote 8).

Re:huh?

[berj]

Yet, instead of making it clear what background processes are draining your battery, and why that's killing your estimated time remaining, Apple goes it's usual "form over function" route and just hides all those nasty details.

You'd be 100% right.. except for one nasty detail which makes you 0% right.

There are multiple ways to find out precisely which applications/processes are draining your battery.

Here's one:

https://support.apple.com/en-c...

Here's another:

http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-con...

That second one is right there in the battery menu.

Nasty.. nasty details.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's go out behind the gym and fight!

- "where's the gym"
- "don't know. never mind, let's go out front by the front fence and fight"
- "I'll beat you"
- "No, I'll -- hey, have you seen the cool shadow pattern the fence is making on the pavement?"
- "stop stall--ooh"

(I am teasing.)

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, as soon as you click on the battery icon, it tells you what processes are draining your battery.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're holding it wrong.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are holding your macbook wrong if you don't get the advertised battery liftetime.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

NlGGER Book Amateur is designed and advertised for nlggers. Why would you buy a NlGGER Book Amateur? Are you a nlgger?

Re:huh?

[AmiMoJo]

Why give vague statements like "12 clicks from the bottom, or 75" when they could easily measure the screen brightness for easy comparison to other laptops? Oh, wait, never mind, answered my own question.

Re:huh?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Why give vague statements like "12 clicks from the bottom, or 75" when they could easily measure the screen brightness for easy comparison to other laptops? Oh, wait, never mind, answered my own question.

Because brightness specs could not be easily duplicated by most people, and wouldn't be that good for cross-comparison purposes anyway, because there isn't a correlation from one brand to another as far as energy-usage and the absolute brightness of the screen.

And call it "vague" all you want; but Apple's spec. Is FAR better than MS' "auto brightness disabled" with NO other conditions regarding the actual brightness setting (which tells me they simply set the brightness to MINIMUM).

And please show me a laptop that provides the information on battery life the way you are expecting Apple to do, ya know, for easy comparison.

For example, this Dell XPS 15, which I swear I picked simply because it seemed to be roughly equivalent to the 15" MacBook Pro, does even LIST battery life, and when you click the "more info" link on the "battery" section, you're treated to a nice, fat 404 Error. That's great for comparison. Now let's try HP:

The Spectre 15" (again picked simply because it looks roughly equivalent, CPU, storage and RAM-wise to the 15" MacBook Pro, (and because I couldn't make heads or tails of Lenovo's 50-thousand different models)). Under "Battery Life", it simply states "Up to 13 hours for FHD display; Up to 9 hours and 30 minutes for UHD display". That's it. No test-conditions, no footnotes, no asterisks, no NOTHING.

So, there are two non cherry-picked examples for you.

I don't know about you; but by comparison, I'd say Apple damn-near publishes a whitepaper on their battery test conditions, so, I'd suggest you simply STFU.

Re:huh?

[AmiMoJo]

Brightness is the best metric. No need to measure it, just set it to your preferred level. That will be the same level regardless of manufacturer, it's just what you need to comfortably read the display.

Re:huh?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Brightness is the best metric. No need to measure it, just set it to your preferred level. That will be the same level regardless of manufacturer, it's just what you need to comfortably read the display.

In what environment? Your perception of "display brightness" will vary along with the ambient, because your own personal "aperture" (iris) opens/closes in an attempt at normalization of the overall level reaching the retina.

So, unless you have the laptops all sitting next to each other, PERCEIVED brightness level is less-than-useless when it comes to measuring battery life.

Apple at least gives you enough information to re-create their test conditions. No one else does this; a fact you conveniently ignored.

Re:huh?

[AmiMoJo]

Your perception of "display brightness" will vary along with the ambient

Yes, but obviously you will set your laptop to a comfortable brightness level. That level will be the same regardless of if there is an Apple logo or an NEC logo or a Dell logo on the back.

The point of giving a number is so that it is possible to make a direct comparison, like how cars have an MPG number. There is a reason why car manufacturers don't get to state "we drove to McDonalds and it used about 1/8th of a tank".

Are you the real Tim Cook? This argument is stupid enough for me to believe it.

Re:huh?

[TheFakeTimCook]

The point of giving a number is so that it is possible to make a direct comparison, like how cars have an MPG number.

But then you say your idea of "a number" is "a comfortable brightness". Which is it? Do you want an Objective number (x nits/lumens/mcd) or a Subjective "number" ("a comfortable brightness").

And yes, I am the Real Tim Cook. And as proof of my awsome powers, I was able to answer your previous post while simultaneously attending a meeting with the President-Elect. [/sarcasm]

Courage!

[Moridineas]

In before 'courage'!

In all seriousness, just another stupid and anti-customer decision by Apple.

1) People complain about battery life on new Macbook Pro, so remove battery time indicator.
2) ???
3) Profit!

Re:Courage!

[dgatwood]

So who wants to write the replacement widget that puts the time back? I mean it has to be what, a hundred lines of code, tops?

This is an absolutely idiotic response by Apple. It seriously diminishes the usability of the machine for people who currently use that indicator as a "My computer is using ten times as much battery power as it should be; what app has gone crazy?" notification.

I'm growing more and more concerned about Apple's leadership, and I say this as somebody who spent almost thirteen years working there. This is not normal Apple behavior. Something is very, very wrong in Cupertino.

Re:Courage!

[Alan Shutko]

iStat Menus still has the widget. So does the energy tab of Activity Monitor.

Agreed, this is stupid.

Re:Courage!

[duke_cheetah2003]

I'm growing more and more concerned about Apple's leadership, and I say this as somebody who spent almost thirteen years working there. This is not normal Apple behavior. Something is very, very wrong in Cupertino.

Been spending those thirteen years in the utility closet? This is EXACTLY what Apple does and has been doing since the first days of the Macintosh. You will use their computer in the way they intend, and no other way, and if it does something unexpected, it's YOUR FAULT, and they'll fix it so you can't do what you did.

Re:Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) People complain about battery life on new Macbook Pro, so remove battery time indicator.
2) ???
3) Profit!

This joke is so tired. It's right up there with 'Shhh! don't confuse the <political faction I disagree with> with the facts!'

Re:Courage!

[OhPlz]

They did the same thing many years ago when people complained that the latest iPhone got fewer bars of signal. They sent out an update that artificially added bars.

Fool me once.

Re:Courage!

[Moridineas]

Hey, I was in before courage, cut me some slack.

Re:Courage!

[Moridineas]

I switched my iPhone to show the numeric strength indicator instead. Much better than their crappy recalibrated bars.

Re:Courage!

[dgatwood]

I'm pretty sure the functionality they just removed predates Mac OS X. So this isn't something that suddenly stopped working, nor was it some sort of emergency that required immediate action to "fix". But some manager had a knee-jerk reaction in response to some article, and they decided to remove functionality that is decades old.

Ten years ago, this would have gotten shot down in UI review. It is unclear whether they could have even made such a change in a major OS release, much less a minor bug-fix release, which are supposed to have zero user-facing functional changes except in situations where a feature's schedule slips, and even then, only to the minimum extent required to enable that feature.

No, this is not "exactly what Apple does and has been doing since the first days of the Macintosh". It might occasionally appear that way to folks who have no idea how Apple works internally, but that's a different matter.

Re: Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

The retard always says 100 lines of code easy. Or my friend can write it in 15 minutes. You are the retard.

Re:Courage!

[duke_cheetah2003]

No, this is not "exactly what Apple does and has been doing since the first days of the Macintosh".

Actually, yes, it is. Always has been. It's exactly what makes Apple attractive. They make a fairly idiot proof computer for people who want to do -things- on a computer but don't want to ever know how to actually use it. This has been Apple's marketing since day 1 of the Macintosh. Apple is the computer for non-computer people. Sadly, in making their crap idiot proof, it's also rather draconian and offputting to computer enthusiasts.

Have you ever tried to disassemble an iMac? Those things are next to indestructible. They make their software much the same way. As a result, just like the iMac, MacOS isn't exactly "user-servicable."

Re:Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is very, very wrong in Cupertino.

Yep, human females.

Re: Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/bin/bash
while [ true ]
do
    capacity=`cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_full`
    batterylevel1=`cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_now`
    sleep 120
    batterylevel2=`cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_now`
    estimatedtime=$(( 2 * capacity / ( batterylevel1 - batterylevel2 ) ))
    kill "$yadpid"
    yad --notification --text="$estimatedtime minutes remaining" &
    yadpid=$!
done

Probably gets close on a linux system with acpi. Fancy it up by making yad pick an icon image related to the percentage left from a /usr/share/icons folder. Can't imagine it'd be much harder on a mac, it runs something similar to linux, right? 5 minutes, 12 lines. You're welcome.

Re:Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. As a software developer I've grown to like Macs because OSX is "Linux done right".

Decent application support with properly polished, out of the box usability. Not the brittle and opinionated clusterfuck which is Desktop Linux.

Re: Courage!

[JonJ]

OS X is largely "Linux done wrong".

Re:Courage!

[suss]

I guess they need someone acerbic in charge or they'll turn into Microsoft and take the easy way out on everything...

Re: Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet somehow it's a much better desktop OS than Linux...

Re:Courage!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friends who works there, but he won't tell me anything about what they're doing other than that he is in the laptop team (mechanical). The only comments I have had though is that industrial design runs the show. This sort of thing smacks of that. An extra 1mm on the machine thickness would have blown out battery capacity to a point where this wouldn't have been an issue, but Apple seems to have a culture where they will drive the engineering hard to get the 1mm out of there because ID wants it.

My friend was not there when Steve was around, but I wonder if Steve was better able to manage the two forces (ID and engineering), because it sounds like Ives has really taken over in a big way now.

Re:Courage!

[mjwx]

1) People complain about battery life on new Macbook Pro,
2) So remove battery time indicator.
3) Profit!

Fixed that for you.

The ??? part was pretty easy to figure out.

Re:Courage!

[ElephanTS]

Yes, yes, yes.
I've worked with Apple machines for 30 years, the last 15 in Mac support and solutions. This is another indication of something very wrong at Apple - it's becoming totalitarian and suppressing things it doesn't like instead of dealing with them as problems, finding solutions and moving on. I've become convinced that all they care about is fashion - and like any fashionista all the want is to be thinner with the option for different colours. The leadership is clearly hopeless, at this stage I think I could be doing a better job. Honesty and hard work is what's required not this weird self-referential cult denying dissent.
Virtually nothing any good has emerged since Steve's death and they are destroying confidence in the brand every day. Terrible shame.

Re:Courage!

[AC-x]

Next they'll accuse people of timing it wrong!

Re:Courage!

[Moridineas]

You mean I didn't invite that? Damn...

Will they remove the mini and mac pro next?

[Joe_Dragon]

Will they remove the mini and mac pro next?

and then being able to run non store apps?

Re:Will they remove the mini and mac pro next?

[Moridineas]

One has to wonder whether the thinking in Apple corporate hq is something like "Mac Pro and Mac Mini sales are cratering--let's kill the product line to save costs."

Well no crap, you don't update the MacPro for 4 years and your most recent (last?) update for the MacMini was a downgrade when compared to the 2012 model and you wonder why people aren't buying.

I've been an Apple user and occasional booster / apologist for a long time, but this is just ludicrous.

Re:Will they remove the mini and mac pro next?

[quenda]

How about the iPhone?
My turn-of-millenium Ericcson T28 give remaining standby and talk time.

Observation is bad, m'kay?

[fyngyrz]

(incoming comet threat, panic):

Let's burn the observatory down so this can NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!

Re:Observation is bad, m'kay?

[Hognoxious]

I used to work at a place where if you put an "Out Of Order" notice on something they'd fix it by removing the notice.

We (well I, they volunteered me because I used to work in a bar) once changed a water container (after waiting four hours for maintenance to do it). Fuck me, the song and dance they made how it could have caused a disaster and so on.

I will add that, unlike them, I did it properly; I peeled off the hygiene seal rather than leaving it in place so it got rammed inside the container by the spigot. Cunts.

Re:Observation is bad, m'kay?

[OhSoLaMeow]

I will add that, unlike them, I did it properly; I peeled off the hygiene seal rather than leaving it in place so it got rammed inside the container by the spigot. Cunts.

I used to be an operator on a Burroughs B4700 mainframe (which shows you how old I am). It used to blow these 100 amp fuses in the power supply cabinet periodically. We'd call Burroughs, they'd send someone out when they could fit it in their schedule and we'd be down for hours. Finally we found the spare fuses in the engineer cabinet so we'd pop the breakers and replace the fuses ourself. One day a Burroughs FE happened to be in when a fuse blew and we started to replace it when he blew a gasket, telling us how dangerous that was. He proceeded to start changing the fuse but neglected to throw the breakers - and knocked his ass across the room.

To stay on the subject: the B4700 did not have a battery indicator.

Re:Observation is bad, m'kay?

[Anonymous Coward]

To stay on the subject: the B4700 did not have a battery indicator.

Without the indicator, how did you know when the next fuse would fail? ;)

Re:Observation is bad, m'kay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! We worked in the same Federal Building!
What department were you in? I was in the "Creative News Story - Editing".

I'm so glad I got out before Obama investigates how much we helped
Hillary loose. He'd be pissed. Don't wanna disappear like some of Bill's
associates have in the past...

CAP === 'purses'

Re:Observation is bad, m'kay?

[Hognoxious]

It just shows that "authorized" personnel are not necessarily qualified, and "qualified" personnel are not necessarily competent.

Re:Observation is bad, m'kay?

[Ziest]

This reminds me of my days programming on a DEC VAX 11/780. A call to DEC field circus was always entertaining.

http://foldoc.org/field%20circ...

Re: Observation is bad, m'kay?

[Anonymous Coward]

You had started the process incorrectly, and he also incorrectly assumed you did this step. Two wrongs...

Remeniscent of Volkswagen.

[Anonymous Coward]

hashtag Endurancegate.

But is it accurate?

[SuperKendall]

My Surface Pro 3 dynamically figures out the time left. It will show me how much time I have left if I continue to use the computer in the same way.

That's what Apple was doing also. But that calculation is not as accurate as it used to be, partly because even if you "use the computer the same way" the computer may or may not decide to put some of the cores out of low power mode, or possible something the app is doing may suddenly activate the discrete GPU. I don't think the Surface is using the same CPU the new MacBook Pros are using.

I think they are still showing percentage of battery remaining, just not a number that may or may not reflect what you will actually get.

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of Dynamic do you not understand?

Re:But is it accurate?

[PopeRatzo]

But that calculation is not as accurate as it used to be, partly because even if you "use the computer the same way" the computer may or may not decide to put some of the cores out of low power mode, or possible something the app is doing may suddenly activate the discrete GPU.

Even with all that, calculating an approximate battery-time remaining shouldn't be an NP problem. I don't do this kind of system work, so I don't know how difficult it really is, but it seems like even with the variables you describe it should be something MacOS can do (considering other OS's do it).

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that calculation is not as accurate as it used to be, partly because even if you "use the computer the same way" the computer may or may not decide to put some of the cores out of low power mode

Well no, if you are using it in the same way it won't take them out of low power mode. If what you're doing is just reading news articles there is no reason to take them out of low power mode for example. If you start to do something different then the time remaining reflects the impact this change of task has on your resource usage.

or possible something the app is doing may suddenly activate the discrete GPU.

So what's wrong with that? If what you are doing uses more resources than what you were doing before then this has an impact on battery life, obviously and you can extrapolate from there like has always been done.

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy enough to calculate given the currently available information, but what's the point in displaying a number that is only accurate in that instant?

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have more than just the information of that instant. You also (could) know the full usage history of the device. Unless the user suddenly switches to tasks they've never done before, calculating a range based on past behaviour should be doable; then conservatively take the low end of that range.

Re: But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the same as the mpg in the car indicator. Its averaged. And your time to arrive on your gps. Its averaged. Lol

The real problem everyone is a pc social warrior bitch and will complain about everything.

But removing something instead explaining it does show its a cover up - literally.

Apple has changed its colors and we will see the are changing to a manipulative faggot managed, feminine back biting blaming greedy no loyalty to its customers company.

Steve jobs was more than just loyalty. He was straight up and didn't bullshit. Times have changed.

Apple rose, then fell, then rose, then we will see. No fallout my for them. Their products don't suck.

They are just not great anymore. And yes, they were great.

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

E = P*t
timeleft = energyleft / power

This looks pretty hard, we better get a high schooler to spend ten seconds on it.

Re:But is it accurate?

[SuperKendall]

Well no, if you are using it in the same way it won't take them out of low power mode. If what you're doing is just reading news articles there is no reason to take them out of low power mode for example.

What if you have Dropbox installed? I often see CPU surges if someone puts something in that it has to sync.

Or a background web page, it's not infrequent I open up Activity Monitor and find a GitHub page I just left open for review later is constantly consuming 15% of my CPU.

It could well be you are just doing one thing, but generally people have other windows and apps installed that will be doing background tasks from time to time...

So what's wrong with that? If what you are doing uses more resources than what you were doing before then this has an impact on battery life, obviously and you can extrapolate from there like has always been done.

Yet i has always been done but the difference between near idle and full steam ahead appears to be much greater now, so the time estimate was no longer very useful and very probably misleading if it mostly read lower instant readings while the system would spike at times consuming a lot of power over short intervals you were not looking at the time.

Basically, look at all of the posts from Windows users saying how inaccurate they thought the battery time remaining estimates were. Why present a number that is just a lie? An absolute battery percentage is I think much more useful as I can estimate pretty well when I have the system under a lot of load.

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

With apple its easier to hide proof of a problem than admit the problem.

Re:But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you have Dropbox installed? I often see CPU surges if someone puts something in that it has to sync.

Or a background web page, it's not infrequent I open up Activity Monitor and find a GitHub page I just left open for review later is constantly consuming 15% of my CPU.

Why exactly do you think that matters? If you have a page constantly consuming 15% of your CPU then that impacts your battery life and is reflected in your time-to-empty.

Yet i has always been done but the difference between near idle and full steam ahead appears to be much greater now

Yes just like distance-to-empty in a car.

so the time estimate was no longer very useful and very probably misleading

No, that doesn't follow. Just because the difference between idle and full steam ahead is large doesn't mean you can't extrapolate based on your usage history. It's not as though it ever decided you only had 1 hour battery life because at some precise moment you were using 100% resources, it *never* worked like that, it always averaged over time, just like any time/distance to empty system.

Why present a number that is just a lie?

If you think it's a lie then why were Apple lying to begin with?

Re:But is it accurate?

[Plumpaquatsch]

You have more than just the information of that instant. You also (could) know the full usage history of the device

Or you could just display 10h*current_charge%

Re: But is it accurate?

[Plumpaquatsch]

But removing something instead explaining it does show its a cover up - literally.

https://support.apple.com/en-u...

The battery status menu updates frequently and changes depending on your screen brightness and system workload. You may see the time remaining drop significantly, for instance, if it updates while opening a very large file or starting up an application. It's important to remember it's an estimate based on what your computer is doing at the specific time it updates.

Published Date: Dec 6, 2016

Looks like Apple explained and some people still didn't understand. Funny how the same tolls that keep claiming all Mac users are utter morons now say nobody could be that stupid, and it must of course be Apple's fault.

Re: But is it accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're talking about doing is predicting the future. Ask any weatherman about that.

True issue is

[FFOMelchior]

"Time Remaining" indicator is correct, true issue is users reading it wrong.

Makes sense to me

[rgbscan]

I dunno, on both my Windows 7 laptop and my older Macbook (non pro) the time estimates are both way off. It seems they both take into account what I'm doing right now and project it across the remaining wattage. If I'm surfing the web it might show 4 hours left but if I fire up Starcraft she sure ain't gonna go another 4 hours. So what's the point of showing a time? I can play about an hour of SC2 on my Win7 laptop before I get warning about needing to plug it in. Even though it could go all day with just a browser. I don't do anything super hardcore on my mac other than ios programming but I imagine it's the same. That big swing in time remaining as you change from task to task isn't at all accurate. Seems kinda opportunistic for Apple to do it now, when they are indeed having battery issues, but it's generally an idea I can support.

Re:Makes sense to me

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the point of showing a time?

It's useful for those who are going to be doing the same thing on their laptop until the battery dies, and also for those who are switching tasks but have some idea how this will affect the time estimate.

Re:Makes sense to me

[Radical Moderate]

I agree. YMMV doesn't just apply to automobiles.

Re:Makes sense to me

[MacTO]

If you understand how the time estimate works, it is quite useful.

I frequently used the estimated time indicator to gauge how to use my Mac: "Oh, I have to push the battery life 30 minutes beyond what's left. Maybe I should decrese the screen brightness." Or: "Oh, there is only 15 minutes left on the battery. I should find an outlet pretty soon." It was never used as an absolute indicator, at least for me. It was used to alter my behaviour so that it was less likely to result in a dead battery at an inopportune moment.

Apple Missed a basic concept in battery life

[LeftCoastThinker]

This is just basic common sense. The fact that Apple built an app around a basic concept like battery life without grasping the basics (they apparently couldn't figure out that computers have dynamic loads that can change battery life dramatically) is just silly and an indication of the lack of leadership at Apple. A good leader would call a meeting with his lead engineers and say: I want this. Then listen to his engineers as they explained why it wasn't a good idea. If the experts tell you it is not a good idea, it generally is not.

Re:Apple Missed a basic concept in battery life

[kimvette]

You forget that Jobs was maniacal about motherboard (oh excuse me: "logic board") layout - not for efficiency or reliability but specifically so the board looked cool. That it often compromised performance and reliability was no matter. It had to LOOK good. Jobs valued form over function - which is stupid when you consider that a a computer is a tool. Sure, make the case look cool, but don't compromise performance, efficiency, or reliability for the sake of the inner components of a machine "looking cool."

Can't accurately predict time left...

[Computershack]

...but can apparently predict the time it takes to charge to full. Just updated to 10.10.2 and it is showing the time taken to charge to full.

Re:Can't accurately predict time left...

[nicolaiplum]

So they can even predict the time to charge the battery to full, when that varies by how you use the laptop? Try flogging the CPU and graphics as hard as you can, and you'll see how much longer it takes to charge from empty to full!

Nothing to see here, users, move along, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, listen only to the Great Wizard of Jobs.

Re: Can't accurately predict time left...

[Anonymous Coward]

One has nothing to do with the other. It will charge at a constant rate.

Re: Can't accurately predict time left...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it won't.

Re:Can't accurately predict time left...

[Anonymous Coward]

When charging the power supply bypasses the battery.

Re:Can't accurately predict time left...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just gathering the courage to remove that functionality on next version. You as a Apple user are so dumb that you get confused by those pesky numbers and your life is better without them.

Re:Can't accurately predict time left...

[tepples]

The power sent to the battery is often limited for safety reasons. If the power supply is enough to run the computer at near-peak performance plus charge the battery at maximum rate, then it won't take any longer than if I were to put the thing in suspend while charging.

Re: Can't accurately predict time left...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lithium batteries absolutely do not charge at a constant rate.

How Orwellian...

[the_skywise]

Battery life is up! :)

Re:How Orwellian...

[ElephanTS]

This is right. Its the hallmark of a totalitarian regime. Shows that Apple are rotten and will continue to decline.

Remember we mentioned 'courage'?

[Provocateur]

We said courage is removing the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Now, we ask for so little: We want you, beloved user, to join us: We want you to live. On. The. Edge.

We want you to stare down at that sliver that's even less than 3.5mm wide: the last remaining hair of your precious: the juice that is about to beat you to the :wq finish!

Together we will rule the dark side!!
T. Cook

first they....

[Anonymous Coward]

- First they take away my Note 7 charging ability and limit it to 60%
- Then they take away my battery indicator on my MacBook
- Then they stop my Note 7 from charging at all

what next???

Accuracy is not required

[alispguru]

I use it to tell me when the damned Government-required anti-virus scanner starts up in the background.

That's when the time remaining value drops by about half.

Re:Accuracy is not required

[tsa]

Effing virus scanners. That's why I never use one. The amount of inconvenience you experience daily from them is worse than whatever any virus can throw at you.

Translation

[damn_registrars]

Apple makes more money off their customers when said customers have facebook open than not. Letting them realize the impact it has on battery life is therefore detrimental to profit.

Can't fix it?

[ilsaloving]

Can't fix it? Hide it!

Love to hear what the Apple apologists have to say about this move. Hey FakeTimCook! Do we "not get" this either? Do we not have enough courage?

a bit much?

[Gravis Zero]

I feel like every time Apple scratches their collective butt that there is a post about it on Slashdot.

WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple removed it because... well, yeah.

Now you honestly don't know HOW long the battery will last. You don't know any ETA on how long until your computer will decide to force itself into a sleep/steand-by mode... or even power-off itself until it happens.

Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

It just works..... until it doesn't.

They're sure it's at least 10 hours?

[hawguy]

Since they are so sure that their 10 hour battery life estimate is correct, then there's no need to estimate battery lifetime in real-time, they can just start a simple 10 hour countdown timer when the laptop goes on battery, then the user knows exactly when their 10 hours of battery life time expire. If it's a little inaccurate and the user gets more than 10 hours, they can just call it bonus time.

In summary...

[XSportSeeker]

"We are allowed to guesstimate battery time for our advertisement campaigns, but you are left to guess what those means".

I mean, I get it... they need to put some number in the ads. But I have to thank reviewers with consistent methods to know how long devices will last on a single charge...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why not a battery gauge in electrical units?

[swb]

I'm sure the general population is much too ignorant, but why don't they allow a battery gauge that shows actual electrical consumption in actual electrical units?

It makes sense that time remaining would always be misleading (and likely gamed by vendors anyway).

But if you had a 75 watt-hour battery and your gauge was in watt-hours, you'd have a reasonably accurate measure of how much battery capacity you had left.

Re:Why not a battery gauge in electrical units?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this idea

Re:Why not a battery gauge in electrical units?

[Anonymous Coward]

because battery gauge alone is useless, it needs to be converted into time. How many minutes and how many hours does a 48% battery mean? This depends on CPU usage and what peripherals are active. Not just that, it becomes more complicated when we consider that internal heat can reduce battery life too.
I remember the battery issue of a blackberry device when an OS update was done to a middle east country. The battery is drained quickly, which turns out a spying blackberry application was installed to all customers of a certain ISP.

Re:Why not a battery gauge in electrical units?

[swb]

The problem with time is that it's a dependent function based on usage patterns and past usage may not be representative of future usage. On my recent Windows portables, the time remaining for battery varies a lot including during use. I may have 6 hours left, do something intensive, and it goes down to 2.5 hours, do something very light, and it's back up to 4.

Think of this way, cars have always had a gas gauge which was a generic graph representative of the fuel level in the tank. Nobody really worried about "how far they could drive" and we didn't have legions of people stuck out of gas.

Modern cars usually have some kind of trip computer that shows how much range is left, but I don't know anybody who actually drives to this figure. When I fill up my car resets to a value that is close (10-20%) to what my actual miles were at last fill (and I'm prone to running to within 1-2 gallons of empty), but it also seems to represent whatever my mileage was on the last tank which may not represent the mileage driven on my next tank, let alone long-term MPG.

I'm fine with including a "time remaining" value, too, but it'd also be nice to see historical statistics on power consumption -- past hour of use, since last charge, 7 days, heaviest use, and lightest use and be able to pick the time remaining based on the power consumption stats that represented their likely use patterns.

An attempt to "force" a time remaining measurement seems likely to be misleading at best or completely inaccurate. At best, the system should base power remaining on your actual usage pattern power consumption and the measurable state of battery charge, but is your average usage actually representative of how you plan to use the system, or worse, do you have extreme usage patterns of very light vs. very heavy?

At worst, they don't even work that hard to gather statistics and use numbers from internal research which may suffer from the "nobody is average" problem where averages don't represent any actual person's use, and they would likely also be inclined to game these figures to make people feel good about the product.

Re: Why not a battery gauge in electrical units?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because battery capacity depends on discharge rate. Your 75 Wh battery might be 85 Wh under light load, or 60 Wh under heavy load.

Doing Stuff we're not 'aware of'

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...but that's why I don't buy Apple shit & try to stay away from Windows shit. I want to KNOW what the hell is going on 'in the background', no doubt there's a lot of 'system stuff' happening but I want an idea of what that stuff is too. If I'm not reading a file why would the filesystem be active, if I'm not using the network why would the network be active etc. etc. I want to know what all this shit is doing.

Apple

[ThatsNotPudding]

Where everything new is Windows again.

now I know for sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has completely lost the plot.

Apple: Cuz math is HHHHAAAAAAAAARRRRRD!!!

[Chas]

Apple is trying to tell you that it can't do a simple algorithm that checks battery levels, draw, etc and produce a decent, semi-accurate time remainder on battery life?

Get the fuck out!

This is what they get for sweatshopping their code to China and India.

Re:Apple: Cuz math is HHHHAAAAAAAAARRRRRD!!!

[joh]

This was exactly how this worked up until now. You got a semi-accurate time of battery life. But the remaining time depends on what you do and the dynamic range between "hardly any load at all" and "full throttle" gets bigger and bigger. Which makes the time more and more pointless: If you just sit there and type you get a very long remaining time which will shrink down to a fraction of that as soon as you start to do more demanding things.

This is true for all modern computers with some decent power management, they all only sip power if the load is small and gulp it down as soon as you do something harder, making the remaining time totally unreliable.

Re:Apple: Cuz math is HHHHAAAAAAAAARRRRRD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

>...and produce a decent, semi-accurate time remainder on battery life?

Well people bitched about it 'only' being semi-accurate. The algorithms are accurate- but user activity, temperature, signal strength (affecting bg processes), and a host of other crap are so various that 'being close enough' was not good enough and people bitched.

Is not the best indicator at least the red-battery icon? And you should also feel from your own repeat experiences how much time you have left? Plug that thing in, or spend a few coins on that emergency spare battery- (which are all the rage & big money business already).

Look, it's not just Apple. Even their competitor has the same issue and also the same complaints from people, and also the same response. What does that mean? The estimates are TRUELY affected by variables out of the algorithm's control, a true estimate... and that's normal & expected.

- http://superuser.com/questions/43562/windows-file-copy-dialog-why-is-the-estimation-so-bad
- http://lifehacker.com/5888664/why-you-cant-rely-on-progress-bars
- https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040106-00/?p=41193

_

News at 11

[invictusvoyd]

apple just sneezed. just right now! . no one knows how and why that sneeze occurred.

Apple won't be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple won't be happy until the UI is dumbed down so all you have is a window with one "buy" button to click. There will be no description or specs or anything but just a photo of some sort of thing they pretend is a gadget but is really just a useless block that looks cool. It too will feature just a touch screen with a single "buy" button so you can buy additional proprietary charging cables.

And Macinmaniacs will still buy them.

Apple has lost the value equation.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the new MBP is the price. Otherwise it is a nice machine that I'd be happy to upgrade too from my 2013 MBP. When I bought my current MBP I was upgrading from a 2 year old Thinkpad. The MBP was expensive, but the screen, lightness and battery life were a lot better than what you could get on even quite expensive PCs, so it didn't seem unjustified in price unless those things weren't important too you. The new MBP is simply not that much better than other PCs, or even last year's MBP, yet the price jump is basically exploitative.

It will take a lot to get me to move back to Windows (I cling desperately to my un-telemetry adulterated copy of Windows 7 running in Boot Camp), but if MS keep doing what they're doing with Surface and Apple keeps being greedy, then I can see a day I might have to have a look.

So? Hop over to the Mac App Store

[Plumpaquatsch]

And replace it with any of the battery tools available there for years, most of which replace the default Menu Bar Icon indicator anyway. I have been using https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-monitor-health-status/id836505650?mt=12 for a couple of years now. Oh look, there is even a 5 star review headlined "Very accurate time-remaining ".

Re:So? Hop over to the Mac App Store

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno about that. One of the nice things about MacOS is that it's quite a complete operating system. For example, you don't need to install nasty software like Adobe PDF reader.

Re:i.e. "We lied and don't want to get sued"

[mjwx]

NT

This is about OSX, not Windows NT.

Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the assumption that you will use your notebook the same over its remaining charge as you did for any part of the charge consumed has no logical basis, and there is no reliable methodology to predict your usage, this seems entirely reasonable and justifiable.

People did not distinguish from the fact (50% of batter charge consumed) and a baseless estimate (4:30 hours remaining)

So eliminating the guessing results in clear actionable information, and removes information that was inaccurate.

If you need further proof, look to the next Samsung devices, which will have independently implemented this feature as well as removing the headphone jack.

A lot of NSA background activity

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want you to track the background NSA activity on your phone. When My phone is stored far away from me, in a quiet location, the battery lasts forever, but if it's in earshot, it goes dead constantly.

Last macbook pro 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

my machine needs another cpu fan replacement, when I get tired fixing this mac book pro its over for apple on my side, hardware battery indicator removed from new machines - check, removable battery removed - check, use replaceable ram modules removed - check, hard drive replaceable - forget about that one, mag safe removed - check, usb ports removed - check, memory card reader removed - check.

and don't start what the new os ... the damn think send data to apple like there is no tomorrow, open safari - send status to apple, open mail - same shit, actually most of the apple programs running on the new os send data to apple, thank you it was a nice crazy ride since 1999 on this side of the fence and its time to let you go and move on with a free os, its the same story with the like appliance ios devices, see you on the other side!

 

I don't even use the standard battery indicator

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Bartender hide thee macOS standard battery indicator.
I'm using the battery indicator from the Fruit Juice app. It still shows time remaining (currently 2:12 @ 97%).

Why Is My Battery Estimate Never Accurate?

[Plumpaquatsch]

http://www.howtogeek.com/27584...

Laptops, tablets, and phones never seem to know exactly how many hours of power they have left. The estimate may jump from two hours to five hours before dropping back down to one hour. Even worse, the battery may suddenly die without warning.

Remember kids, this is only a problem for Apple.

Fixed!

[Anonymous Coward]

cause you cant see it!

Capacity is not measured in hours

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in "bars" either (bars are now hPa anyway). Capacity is measured in mAh.
For an estimate of how much longer your battery will last, it's much more useful to show a capacity over time graph with some kind of extrapolation into the future.