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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.
The bit about Safari and battery life is telling of QC issues.It sounds like safari processes are getting stuck in a race condition and are probably eating 100% cpu on a core. (I've seen this happen with lots of browsers and not just Safari. Modern webpages with megabytes of shitty JS can do this easily)
But, if it's the browser, why is this only happening with the new Macs? I don't see anyone complaining about this problem with older Mac hardware. It certainly isn't something I'm seeing with my 2015 13" MacBook Pro - the battery life is consistently good.
I use Safari as my default browser, but I'm not on Sierra (I was, but rolled back after running into too many annoying bugs.
#DeleteChrome
I think you misspelled "MagSafe 2". The original MagSafe was much more robust against those sorts of things (ignoring its tendency to fail to show a proper charge light at times). It was only when Apple redesigned the connector to make the machine even thinner that its reliability started to suck. (Hmm. I'm sensing a pattern.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Hasn't the consensus been, recently, that chrome is the resource hog and safari was the faster, less energy using browser?
As someone that works in IT I've seen the number of replaceable parts get reduced over time. Today if there is a problem with a computer, and it's something other than a hard drive or it's a really high end computer, then the computer is replaced. If under warranty it gets sent back, if not then it's old enough to write off and send out for recycling. We keep some other parts for the high end stuff, but even that is shrinking.
We keep a pile of spare hard drives for all the newer computers. The CAD people have some big HP towers that we keep spare power supplies and video cards for. We have some old computers that get beat up because they are in workshops, and we keep some RAM for them that we pilfered from the ones that died before. Adding RAM and a new hard drive to an aging computer can mean getting a couple more years out of it. We had a large a pile of spare DVD drives for them but any more the stuff they need comes on USB flash drives. When we run out of spare internal DVD drives then I doubt we'll get more. Since the pile is small now we've become a bit reluctant to replace DVD drives that die.
The pile of spare DVD drives is larger than our pile of spare computers. Not because we have more DVD drives but because the computers are so small. These aren't pokey little things either, Intel i5, 4GB RAM, 250GB SSD, dual DisplayPort, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, USB3.0, and all in a little box smaller than those old DVD drives.
Come to think of it these computers aren't all that different than a MacBook. The only ports on it are video, USB, Ethernet, power, and a little threaded nub for a WiFi antenna if the one built in isn't strong enough. Since the video ports are DisplayPort and VGA we keep a box of DP++ to DVI adapters since most of the displays we have are DVI. If anyone wants a DVD drive, which is rare, we have a pile of USB DVD drives for them. On the MacBook the USB-C ports play the part of video, USB, and power. One would need the right kind of cable to plug into a display or whatever but that's something we'd have to do anyway. Hard drives don't die as often as they used to, I expect our pile of spares to last a long time. In fact we may never have to buy spares again, if trends continue.
I'm starting to feel like a horse veterinarian, if the horse is sick shoot it and get another.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.