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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.
nerds use linux, cool people use windows and gays use macs
Common, CR. You have to know what real courage is to understand and accept Apple products!
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
We let them know that a big bag of money under the table would help us rerun the tests, but they said no...so we stand by our findings!
Cuz I ain't using no wackbook.
I love Apple!
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.
Just wondering if these are the same Macbooks that have USB-C poert instead of standard USB ports, and have the touch bar that replaced part of the keyboard ? As I am not a (Cr)apple fan, I really don't care enough to look this up for myself.
Otherwise they would wok with the manufacturer to verify the results.
I have a brand new Dell laptop for work, and a brand new Macbook Pro for home. As a testt I used both in the same manner over the holidays, browsing the web, playing movies, listening to music, checking email.
Mac battery life was 2x better than the Dell/Windows laptop based on recharge cycles over several days. 8-10 hrs on the Mac, 4-5 hrs on the Dell. Same brightness, same wifi connection.
Pick whatever works best for you. But clearly Apple has better battery technology and energy saving features.
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
Sounds like they have stopped being "objective" and have moved on to "defensive".
HOWEVER, an interesting anecdote comes from reading another online forum (MacRumors.com), last evening, where a poster with a tbMBP 15" noted that, ONE TIME, when he unplugged an external Thunderbolt display (TB displays FORCE the MBP to use the dGPU), "Activity Monitor" said in the "Energy" tab that, instead of the 10 or 11 hours he was getting on average, it was showing that he was expected to get 3 hours.
However, no Processes were showing as being Energy-Hogs, and, he also stated that the "CPU" Tab showed that nothing was using over 1.5% CPU (which was reasonable for what he had running). And what he did have running SHOULD (and probably was) running on the iGPU. (???)
But, what was really "telling", was that he reported that the area under the "E" and "R" keys on the Keyboard was getting REALLY HOT. Hot enough that he panicked, and Rebooted the laptop.
Everything returned to normal, battery life report back to normal, no heating, hasn't happened since...
So, looking at the iFixit teardown of the 15" MBP, you can see in Step 6, that the components that would be under that area of the Keyboard would plainly be the AMD GPU (outlined in Yellow) (and not the CPU, which is over nearer to the "I" and "O" keys, basically).
So, something is (maybe) occasionally causing the AMD GPU, not the CPU, to run amok (or even be in some sort of power-guzzling "SCR-Lockup" state (hopefully not!)), sucking down the juice. Obviously, CR and others haven't triggered this behavior in the same way as the MacRumors poster; but there may be more software paths to this bug, likely involving switching between dGPU and iGPU modes, and/or power-savings involving same.
More than likely this is still a software issue; but it is not one that Users can see in Activity Monitor (other than it does seem to "know" that the battery is being drained by something, hence the low "Time Remaining" number). Apparently, Activity Monitor doesn't report separately on GPU Energy usage (they need to change that!)
Just an interesting little tidbit, that belies the assertion that a "retest" wouldn't make a difference (after Apple has a chance to address this issue, of course).
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.
At least when it comes to cars, most of their recommendations are as plain vanilla as you can get. Anything that generates even the smallest bit of excitement is usually voted down. Oh well, what did you expect from the company based in Connecticut?
https://slashdot.org/~TheFakeT...
Shall we wait for him to turn up, or does somebody want to go bait him?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Last week, Apple's VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller insisted that Consumer Reports' findings didn't match the company's field data"
What's he supposed to say? "Yeah, the whole battery thing is a clusterfuck and Consumer Reports is spot-on."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
At least Macbook Pro's aren't potentially deadly
can connect to it has to be fun The fruitlees Handy, you are free the project is in both believed that Whether you ASSOCIATION OF
Then anyone can run the tests CR refuses to re-run. If they're that confidently of their results, they should be happy to provide the detailed equipment and steps, along with corresponding results, to the public. This is the way science is done: if you make an assertion, then you have to provide the raw data to let someone else try to reproduce your results.
Anything less is unscientific anecdotal evidence.
Apple quest to be super thin needs to stop!
or at the very least not on the mac pro and maybe at least 1 mac mini system.
The mac pro is held back by being that thin that it can even run both video cards and it's cpu at full power. An bigger one with 2 cpu's will give them the needed pci-e for TB 3.0 or they just to back to the tower case and have an voodoo like look back cable to feed DP over the TB bus like how other pro workstations do it!
I canceled my CR subscription decades ago.
At the time, I disagreed with their conclusions on things I knew about ( PCs and cell phones come to mind ), I then realized, I shouldn't count on them for things I didn't know about.
On the PCs, they were recommending (at the time.. decades ago) much more powerful PCs than needed for email. Cell Phones, my experiences just didn't match theirs.
My issues were not with their integrity or testing, just commentary and conclusions.
Since this thread is full of fanboys rationalizing Apple's failures, I think I'll eat their mod points by recounting my personal experiences with their failures.
I bought a 2007 MBP. It's battery swelled and had to be replaced. Eventually, it's 3d graphics card died and the only way to use it was to boot into safe mode.
I bought a 2012 MBP. It's trackpad quit working and had to be replaced. The replacement trackpad also failed within a month, but by then it was out of warranty. I quit trying to get it fixed because I use a mouse anyway, and I'm sure those cunts would try to charge me because I didn't buy "Apple Care".
I was given a 2015 MBP. So far it hasn't failed, but it has behavior that is intolerable. With the lid closed, it goes to sleep unless there is a keyboard plugged in. Apple says "Fuck you, software KVM users". And even with a keyboard plugged in, it immediately goes to sleep if the power cord is yanked out. Apple says, "Fuck you, cat owners".
I have no interest in their new crippled laptop and its gimmicky function key overlay. That shit was lame when it was called the Optimus Maximus in 2008 and it is just as lame now. Apple says, "But muh innovation! Muh courage!"
My first laptop, a ThinkPad from 1998, still works and boots to a 2.4 kernel. (Many nostalgia, such rugged, wow.) My other Toshiba, Dell, and HP laptops also worked up until I got rid of them, and they all took way more abuse than my precious, delicate MPBs.
So this year, I bought a cheap laptop from Dell. I'm using Linux again for the first time in a decade, and it is liberating. Buh-bye Apple, you prissy, shark jumping freaks. I can't wait until I retire and never have to touch your shit again.
I forget now where I read it (might have been over on Engadget)? But supposedly, some employees at Apple spoke about this new Macbook Pro off the record, saying it was supposed to receive a multi-tiered, custom battery in it, similar to what Apple did with the new Macbook in 2015. Except at the last minute, they ran into some issues and were told they'd have to scrap that and just make a standard battery fit inside it instead.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if these odd power problems are a direct result. (Had no time to really re-optimize the system for a battery that wasn't going to supply as much power as what they intended all along.)
I'd have say I side with Consumer Reports on not recommending this notebook right now. I think the touch-bar is very cool and the computer looks great in the new "Space Gray" color option. Not a fan of losing all the ports besides USB-C, *but* if everything else was fine, I'd accept that as a downside I could live with. The problem is, this one seems to have fundamental flaws of the type that you won't see fully corrected until the next revision is released.
If you've been following things closely on the Mac-specific forums, you'd see there are some serious questions about this computer's video performance too. There's a guy on YouTube who put the high-end configuration through its paces running a number of modern 3D video games and the performance was, frankly, god-awful! In one title, he was only getting 3 or 4FPS! As he admitted himself, people aren't buying the new 15" Macbook Pro as a gaming machine. But they ARE paying a premium price to get the latest AMD Polaris series GPU in it, and that's supposed to be 2 generations newer than the best available mobile GPU AMD had to offer for any older laptops. The graphics performance in games is so abysmally bad though, it's clear something else is going on here. IMO, Apple probably underclocks the GPU to help conserve power and to control heat generation -- and may have done so far too aggressively, given the last minute battery change that had to be done.
Everyone seems to think this is a scam article by CR. It actually plays right in with Apple. Remember 3 weeks ago they removed the "highly inaccurate" time remaining indicator from OS/X. Now I realize it was because the new MBP was so random at battery usage they had no choice. It wasn't the indicator that was the problem, it was the MBP. The CR report just backs that up...completely.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Then why haven't they disclosed the full test protocol so that Apple could repeat it?
CR has decades of experience with companies pulling shit like VW ... and worse. Maybe you trust that the "you're not holding it right" company would never, ever try to game a test whose results they have demonstrated they care about, but CR is right not to trust.
It's basically a revision one product. Long-time Apple fans know what that means.... Better to wait for the second rev. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
As a long time Mac user, this is exactly what I'm doing. It's not only over-priced, but I truly see no advantage to upgrading from my current Macbook Pro to the new one. If anything, I'd have to buy tons of adapters which I'm not keen on doing, and until GPU performance is fixed on laptops, there's no way I'm going to upgrade.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
...but they seem to have real problems with hi-tech.
I remember when they rated the Atari home computer to be the worst of the bunch because of the "nonstandard Basic." Once the advantages of Atari Basic were pointed out to them they completely reversed themselves and decided that the Atari computers were the best of the lot, especially for learning how to program. but this was listed as a correction to the cover story in the previous issue and the adage had already been done.
They have a reputation for testing camera lenses by pointing them at newspaper spreads and looking for aberrations when there are already much more reliable and accurate tests for such variations.
I have dismissed Consumer Reports as any kind ofd testing expert since I found the Wirecutter.
they held back on RAM because of battery life and they still blew it. they should have gone with a bigger battery and more RAM.
I've owned a couple of iMac computers but never a MacBookPro. Everything else I've owned has been Windows based and mostly Dell. Having said that, from what I've read, Comsumer Reports did a test and it didn't come out well for MAC. Well that's fine. Mac has 2 things, they can either call it bunk, or they can find out what the problem is and fix it. They shouldn't be asking for a retest unless they take the machine back, find the problem, and return the same machine for a test.
I've always believed Mac's are over-rated. If you pay the extra money required to own a Mac, you have a right to expect a superior machine. All I've ever run in to is compatibility problems. I have to buy this software or that software that is specific to Mac and, in most cases, it's just not as good. You buy Microsoft Office for Mac and you can't get Outlook you have to get Entourage for e-mail. It's just a pain. Now it may be purposely so, but you really have to be committed to Mac to put up with that crap. I can buy a top of the line Dell, with an I7 processor, great memory and a lot of hard drive, and still be below the cost of a MacBookPro. I just could never justify the cost.
And can you blame them? They know which country they're in.
I believe you misread the GP to say "Consumer Reports has no incentive to produce accurate reports on consumer products," meaning that CR doesn't necessarily want to be accurate.
What it actually said was "Consumer Reports has no incentive but to produce accurate reports on consumer products," meaning that CR really wants to be accurate.
I suspect that, if you had read and understood GP, you would have found your erroneous reading of the sentence inconsistent with the rest of what GP was saying, read it again more carefully to see why the sentence would be so out of place, and realized your mistake. At least, one would hope that members of the Slashdot community would put a little more thought in before posting. Would make for a higher level of collective intelligence (and maturity).
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
You want Asus, Lenovo, or Toshiba, in no particular order.
No, you definitely don't want Toshiba. Toshiba is a dead company walking. It's been hurting for some time, first from market decline, then from an accounting scandal. Now it's bleeding from a bad nuclear-power deal. The company has lost US $6.8 billion in market value since mid-December.
And their laptops are pretty crappy. The last Toshiba laptop I bought, just over a year ago, ate its hard drive within three weeks. And it was a Toshiba hard drive.
I don't know whether the new Macbook Pro is a good computer or a bad computer; I've never seen one and won't be replacing my current laptop for quite a while yet.
But, I do have some expertise in a few other fields. And I have to say that with regard to non-computer equipment I know like the back of my hand that Consumer Reports evaluates ... well ... they haven't a clue. They recommend junk and hate excellent product. I don't know why, but they do.
So, whether they love the new Macbook Pro or hate it, or lay somewhere in between, is irrelevant to me. They have shown themselves to earn near-zero credibility in my books. Which leaves me with coming to my own conclusions, and I'm OK with that.