Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Consumer Reports Now Recommends MacBook Pros (macrumors.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the back-and-better-than-ever dept.

Consumer Reports has updated their report on the 2016 MacBook Pros, and is now recommending Apple's latest notebooks. MacRumors reports: In the new test, conducted running a beta version of macOS that fixes the Safari-related bug that caused erratic battery life in the original test, all three MacBook Pro models "performed well." The 13-inch model without a Touch Bar had an average battery life of 18.75 hours, the 13-inch model with a Touch Bar lasted for 15.25 hours on average, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar had an average battery life of 17.25 hours. "Now that we've factored in the new battery-life measurements, the laptops' overall scores have risen, and all three machines now fall well within the recommended range in Consumer Reports ratings," reports Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports originally denied the 2016 MacBook Pro a purchase recommendation in late December due to extreme battery life variance that didn't match up with Apple's 10 hour battery life claim. Apple worked with Consumer Reports to figure out why the magazine encountered battery life issues, which led to the discovery of an obscure Safari caching bug. Consumer Reports used a developer setting to turn off Safari caching, triggering an "obscure and intermittent bug reloading icons" that drained excessive battery. The bug, fixed by Apple in macOS Sierra 10.12.3 beta 3, is not one the average user will encounter as most people don't turn off the Safari caching option, but it's something done in all Consumer Reports tests to ensure uniform testing conditions. A fix for the issue will be available to the general public when macOS Sierra 10.12.3 is released, but users can get it now by signing up for Apple's beta testing program.

5 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re: I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They did not re-enable caching. There was a bug that only occurred when caching was turned off (which is why consumer reports got wildly different results than most people). Apple fixed the bug, and then consumer reports re-ran their tests using the beta and got decent results.

  2. Re:I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know it requires RTFA, but they did not change their tests. They applied the update (a bug fix) and re-ran their tests as-is. They didn't change their test to enable caching, it's still disabled, but with the bug fix they're getting acceptable battery life.

  3. Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    When we discussed this matter earlier, it was pointed out that this could very well be a software problem (with added emphasis):

    The article says that the testing involved Safari repeatedly loading certain web pages. How are you so sure that this type of testing doesn't, for example, sporadically cause Safari to do extra processing, perhaps due to a bug in Safari? If something like that is happening, and it isn't consistent, then it could very well be a purely software problem being mistaken for a hardware problem.

    This submission's summary now confirms that it was due to "an obscure Safari caching bug".

    How was that Slashdot comment, which turned out to be right, modded? -1.

    The same happened to several other comments that, it's now obvious, were correct. They're at -1, while a bunch of junk comments were modded up.

    It turns out that ddtmm was wrong. reanjr was wrong. fuzzyfuzzyfungus was wrong. Shane_Optima was wrong. lucm was wrong.

    All of those smug commenters turned out to be wrong.

    Now that we know what happened in this case, I think it would be appropriate for the Slashdot admins to go back and fix up the atrocious moderating that happened in that other submission. Mod up the comments that were at -1 to +5, because they turned out to be right. Mod down the users who were wrong, sending their comments to -1.

    Anybody who was responsible for such awful moderating should never moderate again. Strip them of their moderating privilege permanently. And since they screwed up so badly in this case, we should assume they screwed up every other moderating they ever did. Invert all of those moddings. Mod down anything they modded up, and mod up anything they modded down.

    It really makes Slashdot look worse than it already looks when such awful moderating goes uncorrected.

    1. Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because surprise surprise, sometimes the more obvious solution isn't the right one. Given history and the information at the time the odds of it being some obscure bug present in a browser triggered on only specific hardware was lower than the odds of new highly complicated hardware having a fault.

      Sometimes experts are wrong, that doesn't make their opinions any more valid. If we modded people up for every defence of Apple regardless of how likely or unlikely this place would be a cesspool. All the modpoints prove is that a few people with mod points sided with what was ultimately a more popular opinion in the first place.

      But then Slashdot also thought Trump had no chance in hell so maybe we're are just completely backwards?

  4. Re: Bought and Paid for by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1, Informative

    Bahama, I'm going to throw up.

    Don't worry, he'll be out of office in a few days.