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Consumer Reports Stands By Its Verdict, Won't Recommend Apple's MacBook Pro (mashable.com)
Consumer Reports took many by surprise last week -- certainly Apple -- when it said it doesn't recommend the company's new MacBook Pro models. The American magazine, which has garnered credibility over 80 years of its existence, said battery life on Apple's new laptops was all over the place -- hitting 19 hours in a test, but less than four hours in another. Last week, Apple's VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller insisted that Consumer Reports' findings didn't match the company's field data, and that Apple was working with Consumer Reports to understand its review. Now Consumer Reports has responded: The nonprofit organization is standing by its initial verdict in which it did not give the MacBook Pro (2016) its "recommended" rating. The organization has now said it doesn't think re-running the tests will change anything. "In this case, we don't believe re-running the tests are warranted for several reasons. First, as we point out in our original article, experiencing very high battery life on MacBooks is not unusual for us -- in fact we had a model in our comparative tests that got 19 hours," it said. "Second, we confirmed our brightness with three different meters, so we feel confident in our findings using this equipment. Finally, we monitor our tests very closely. There is an entry logged every minute, so we know from these entries that the app worked correctly," it added.
Consumer Reports has no incentive but to produce accurate reports on consumer products. Apple on the other hand has a motive to produce positive results with its product tests. But this is not the first time Apple has over inflated battery life and I am sure it's tests were done to provide a good specification under certain conditions. But my own experience with devices today has tended to be overly optimistic battery life tested under not so realistic conditions. Consumer Reports has always provided more accurate battery life results.
Consumer Reports, as they said, is pretty careful with testing. But even if they were not quite as careful as they are, as long as they tested different devices in the same way and used consumer purchased models, they results they found should stand.
Hopefully Apple will get to the bottom of what happened in the tests, and make the laptops better. Then they can get back on the list next year. It does seem like some mix of software and hardware has some quirk if you can find the range of times Consumer Reports found.
One thing I wonder is if it will even have much of an effect. Do many people really rely on consumer reports for laptop info? It seems like there are so many other sites comparing laptop hardware, that consumer reports is just one of many data points...
And for Apple in particular that matters even less, because if you want a MacBook Pro you are buying what they are selling. It may mean someone would wait another year. Or it might mean that you would possibly purchased an older model instead (I had read somewhere that refurbished 2015 MacBook Pros were selling really well).
I think Apple will iron this out within a month or so and then it really will not matter, but it makes me think more of Consumer Reports that they are willing to stick by results as they found them and not cave into pressure for a re-test.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is that Apple had no interest in actually sending the logs and test data to their engineers to figure out what went wrong and develop a solution. Instead, they wanted to solve the issue with PR: insist that CR somehow ran incorrect or non-stringent testing, have them re-run the tests according to how Apple wants them to be run, and have them revise their recommendation. Obviously I'm extrapolating a bit here, but it feels consistent with Apple's action up till now. Not to mention they put their head of marketing on the case, not any actual engineers. Good on Consumer Reports for sticking to their standards instead of caving to pressure.
Sigh. Apple does not have battery battery technology. Heck, they don't even make the Macbooks. Quanta does, and Quanta also makes laptops for all the other major brands.
Apple's battery life advantage is because of the limited number of hardware configurations they have to support. They can fine-tune OS X to run on a few dozen models with minimal power use. Windows has to support millions if not billiions of possible hardware combinations, so a lot of times has to sacrifice power-thriftiness in order to maintain compatibility.
And you can't just straight out compare battery life between laptops. Different laptops place a different priority on battery life. So some laptops simply come with smaller batteries since they're aimed at customers who don't care as much about battery life. But if you did want to compare how power-thrifty laptops are, historically several models outlast the Macbooks in terms of minutes per Wh of battery. Topping the list is, not surprisingly, the Microsoft Surface Pro. Like the Macbooks, putting the OS-maker in charge of picking the hardware allows Microsoft to fine-tune Windows to work best with the hardware.
Doesn't sound defensive to me. Why should they re-run the tests for one particular company?
Sigh. Apple does not have battery battery technology. Heck, they don't even make the Macbooks. Quanta does, and Quanta also makes laptops for all the other major brands..
You don't know the first thing about the difference between Design and Manufacturing. Apple Designs all their Products in-house. But, ever since the early 21st century, I don't think they actually manufacture any of them, except possibly the Mac Pro.
You're a moron. Go away.
0xdeadbeef, you're really just complaining about bad luck that could happen to anyone, regardless of buying Apple products.
I've been using Apple since around 2001, and owned 6 of their computers at once, at one point in time. I currently work for a company that has deployed about 60 of them to mobile workers and I do support for them (along with another 60 or so using Windows machines).
The 2007 MBP you're speaking of with the battery that swelled? There were a TON of defective Li-On batteries out there, used by all manufacturers. It's not like Apple has anything directly to do with the battery manufacturing process (certainly not back in that time-frame). So that's really nothing you can pin on Apple, as opposed to pinning on owning a laptop that used a battery. The 3D graphics card that died? That, too, was an industry-wide issue for a while, especially with one series of nVidia GPUs out there. A design flaw in the BGA (ball grid array) design of the processor, essentially. Didn't hold up under the stresses of heating and cooling cycles over time.
Your 2012 MBP with trackpad issues? I don't know what to tell you there, really? That sucks and sounds like especially bad luck if it went bad only a month after being replaced. But I'm not sure I've ever run into a similar trackpad issue with ANY of the Mac laptops in service where I work that were purchased in 2011-2013, nor with the one I owned personally. I follow sites like MacRumors pretty closely too, and don't recall trackpad problems coming up as a collective issue on their forums either.
You can complain about "AppleCare" and its cost all you like, but all you'd REALLY be saying is that you feel Macs should give you a full 3 year warranty for the price you pay for them, rather than only 1 year. The fact is, if you DO buy AppleCare, you get coverage for 3 years instead of 1 for stuff like the trackpad failures you had. It's just an "extended warranty" that may or may not turn out to be a good decision to purchase. I don't believe I got more than a 1 year warranty with the Dell XPS 13 laptop I purchased last year either though -- so not sure how this is such a major issue? It's been my experience that if you DO spend extra for the AppleCare, it adds to the resale value of the computer if you decide to resell it while it has warranty left on it. So you can recoup some of that cost in those cases.
Now, I'm using a 2015 MBP "Retina" to write this message on Slashdot, right now. And yes, it will go to sleep if you close the lid if it doesn't have AC power attached. I've honestly never minded that a bit. In fact, it's served to "warn" me when I thought I was running on AC power at my desk but realized the power strip wasn't on or what-not when it went to sleep upon shutting the lid. If your cat keeps unplugging the cord while you're trying to work? I fail to see how that's a situation Apple should be expected to take care of for you? My friend's dog used to chew on his video cable to his external monitor off of his Dell laptop. Is the fact Dell didn't address that by armoring the video cords against dog bites a "Fuck you to dog owners!" on Dell's part?
I already made another post on here where I think I made it clear I'm with Consumer Reports on not recommending this latest MBP from Apple. I'm no fanboy. I've just worked with a whole lot of computers from many manufacturers over the last 2+ decades, and work in Linux, Windows and OS X all in the same day, on a regular basis. And from all of that, I can assure people that Apple made a computer that was just as good as anything else on the market, if not superior in some respects to competitors. What they're releasing in the last couple years is more suspect, IMO -- and shows their lack of focus on Macs, vs. iOS devices, watches, etc. Tim Cook clearly lacks the imagination Steve Jobs had to push the company to build new products. Apple is in decline right now, IMO ... at least at building desirable computers that are good performers AND stylish. But a 2012 or 2015 MBP wouldn't qualify in my book as an example of this problem.