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2016 MacBook Pro Fails To Receive a Recommendation From Consumer Reports (9to5mac.com)
Consumer Reports has released its evaluation of the new MacBook Pro laptops, and it's not good. The 2016 MacBook Pro is the first MacBook to fail to receive a recommendation from the nonprofit organization dedicated to unbiased product testing. 9to5Mac reports: In a post breaking down the decision not to recommend the new MacBook Pros, Consumer Reports explains that while the new models held up well in terms of display quality and performance, the battery life issues were too big of an issue to overlook. The organization tested three MacBook Pro variants: a 13-inch Touch Bar model, a 15-inch Touch Bar model, and a 13-inch model without the Touch Bar. The general consensus was that "MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next." Consumer Reports explains that the 13-inch Touch Bar model saw battery life of 16 hours in one test and 3.75 hours in another, while the non-Touch Bar model maxed out at 19.5 hours, but also lasted just 4.5 hours in another test. The 15-inch model ranged from 18.5 hours to 8 hours. Generally, according to the report, it's expected for battery life to vary from one trial to another by less than 5 percent, meaning that the battery life variances with the new MacBook Pro are very abnormal. Once that was completed, Consumer Reports experimented by conducting the same test using Chrome and "found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs." While the organization can't let that affect its final decision due to its protocol to only use the first-party browser, it's something users may want to try.
It has been, every since they went the user-hostile route of gluing/soldering in all parts, to maximize profits on forced initial upgrades.
For a company the touts itself as being "green" it makes super expensive, disposable computers.
Finally, the Apple tax used to be $200-300 on an equally equipped PC, but now it's $500-$2000 more - freakin insane.
The batteries aren't big enough, and Apple's power saving features are too aggressive, leading to a situation where the slightest load that pokes the machine in the wrong way (ie, anything that causes the GPUs to switch, or more CPU cores to wake up) will cause your battery % to drop through the floor.
It's a shame, really. If they weren't so obsessed with thinness to the point of discarding RAM slots, SSD sockets, and battery capacity- it might actually be a decent machine.
I wonder how many people pointed out these issues prior to launch. The answer is either "lots" (who were summarily ignored), or "none at all" (because everyone was fearing for their jobs- thou shall not go against thy word of thy great Ive). Either way, this only serves to highlight the growing dysfunction within Apple. And I can guarantee you their response to falling Mac sales won't be to release the machine people want, but rather to cancel the whole lineup entirely.
I got the mid 2015 15" pro and I'm hoping it will last years. I've had Lenovo, HP and Dell through work and they are fine. The Macbook Pro on the other hand is really really nice to work with. Trackpad is just superb and Magsafe should be standard on all laptops (IMHO).
The only thing I would like different is more RAM (I use several VMs).
So when the new model arrived I was sure I would be a bit anoyed about the increased ram size and other new features that I would miss, but no.
I'm actually happy I got the previous model. It's so much better for my use.
I wouldn't even consider the new model. Who the f..k buys a pro laptop without any USB A ports? How isolated are you? Dongles? I hate dongles. I'm not spending that much money to carry around a bunch of dongles.
If Apple wants their Pro line to be used by bloggers then ok. They lost their way.
That would be a better response than their actual response: removing the battery life indicator from macOS. No, really, after reports of poor battery life Apple "solved" the problem by making macOS just not report how long the battery had left before it drains.
Plus that would involve Apple actually reading and caring about product reviews. They don't. iOS 10 is trash, the Apple Watch is useless, and this new MacBook Pro is a disaster - and they don't care!
Eventually they'll discover the lesson that Hillary Clinton discovered: you can't just ignore your "core supporters" on the assumption that they're dumb enough to keep buying the shit you're selling. Eventually they'll just abandon you for anyone else who promises them better.
The point at which I determined CR to be crap for automotive testing is when they gave the Honda pickup truck the recommendation because it had the most comfortable interior and smoothest ride. Of course, it had the smallest bed, the lowest hauling capacity, and the worst trailer rating, but why would you need any of that in a pickup truck?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
More importantly, the web browser makes the difference between recommended and not. Ignore all of the hardware, its the browser.
I'm curious now, exactly what they are testing. I'm guessing Facebook and YouTube, or similar. Ajax and video. Not my use case, but certainly a popular one.
I guess I won't make fun of Microsoft pimping their browser efficiency any more...
Of course I'm mostly hoping for funny comments (as of days of yore), but in the case of this specific article I was hoping to find something about the possible causes of the variability in battery life. The mention of Safari was quite speculative, but I guess it isn't the job of Consumer Reports to diagnose the problems, just find them?
Anyway, for what it's worth, I have a long history with Apple, but as of this writing I do not anticipate any future purchase from Apple. The company is now dedicated to monolithic Apple-style thinking, which I find rather humorous considering the slogan of their most famous advertising campaign. Anything resembling criticism of Apple is now regarded as double-plus-ungood. Shut uppa your mouth!
I'm not sure how much to blame Apple. I think it is the American laws that basically require big companies to become increasingly evil in order to survive. Being an evil company is not a guarantee of success and huge profits, but being a nice company has become an absolute guarantee of failure, usually via acquisition. (My current list of examples includes NetScape, Palm, Sun, and Nokia.)
I'll check back later, though my hope of finding truly funny comments is fading these years.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
And I think they did it for both reasons. And suspect someone at a board meeting described it as a "win-win situation."
Working as an Apple employee in the part of the company that performed non-user updates, how many times did you THINK you would encounter customers who wanted to do the upgrade themselves?
Why would Mac owners who wanted to upgrade their own hardware have even come into contact with you??
Says a majority of the people who buy pickups and who, by the way, never fill the bed, haul anything that can't be lifted by two people, or pull a trailer.
I was eagerly awaiting the new MBP release expecting it would support 32GB like everyone else (hell, you can buy relatively svelte laptops that supports 64GB from Dell). The 16GB limit, the fact that you can't upgrade the RAM or the SSD, the lack of ports... the new MBP was just a giant middle finger to the "power user" community. It's very apparent that the executive/senior management at Apple could give two sh*ts about their technical/professional user base any more and are more focused on users who are concerned about how their device looks. The recent article on Bloomberg.com bears that out. The thing is, from a business stand point it makes sense. The average users is, well, average, and represents a much larger user base than you or I. "Space Gray" and "Rose Gold" are much much easier and cheaper options to implement during assembly than multiple memory options, etc. You can either spend more on R&D to appeal to 10-25% of the market or you can appeal to the 75% of the market like my wife whose still happily chugging along on her 8GB MacBook Air. From a business standpoint it's a no-brainer. I'm disappointed, I loved my MBP's but it's time to move on.
Consumer Reports showed REAL courage in not recommending your product...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Consumer Reports isn't a tech rag. They don't give a damn about technical specs except as guidelines for what to buy (e.g. "get at least 8 GB of RAM").
They test products based on how the average person will use them. So if the average person spends 80% of their computer time in a browser on Facebook or YouTube, by God they're going to test how the laptop performs running a browser on Facebook or YouTube.