Consumer Reports Now Recommends MacBook Pros (macrumors.com)

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.

Comments

Loses credibility

[PhrostyMcByte]

If they had waited for the update to come out, I'd say it's great they're willing to keep their reviews up to date (even if it was due to pressure from Apple).

But if you're going to recommend a product based on a might-be-working-when-released beta, you lose some credibility to me.

Re: I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Slashdot "experts" who were wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong.

[thegarbz]

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?

Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong.

[dgatwood]

All of those smug commenters turned out to be wrong.

Actually, I don't remember anybody saying that it was entirely a hardware problem. It was very obvious from the very beginning that it was both. If it were purely a hardware problem, it would run down quickly all the time. The fact that it only happened when certain apps were running meant that software was causing excessive CPU utilization, which resulted in the battery running down much faster than you would ordinarily expect when running a typically power-thrifty app such as a web browser. And if it were purely a software problem, the remaining time estimate would be wrong, but the computer would continue to operate.

Clearly, it is also not only a software problem. If the hardware had been designed with a proper 100 Wh battery instead of the inadequate 75 Wh battery that they ended up using, then the worst-case battery life for the new MacBook Pro would be a few percent better than the worst-case battery life for the previous generation. Instead, as this software bug so clearly demonstrated, it is possible for CPU-hungry software to burn through the battery in only about 75% of the time that it took on the previous model, because as we all correctly pointed out, the battery is too small, and the CPU isn't significantly more efficient than it was in previous generations.

It is unfortunate that Consumer Reports retracted their complaint. As a result, no doubt a bunch of Apple apologists who don't actually understand how CPU power management works will falsely trumpet that there's nothing wrong with the hardware, when in reality, that couldn't be farther from the truth. The software bug exposed a fundamental design flaw in the hardware. The only thing that the software update fixed was the behavior of a single app (Safari). Although users who never run anything but a web browser can now rest easy in blissful ignorance, power users will still hate this new laptop because they'll still get three-quarters as much battery life as they did in the previous model, give or take a few percent. That's the harsh reality.

So no, the experts weren't wrong. You just didn't understand what we said.

Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong.

[Narcocide]

Yea uh, you missed the mark there by a mile. We don't hate technology - that's your fundamental error in judgment right there. We just hate overpriced, over-hyped consumer-grade usury. We're trying to protect people like you, who are so easily herded by advertising like so much cattle to the slaughter. Once you assume that because Apple gets grief from greybeards because of technology you've failed to make the critical mental distinction between good technology, bad technology, and marketing. When that happens, you've let the advertisers win control over your fundamental understanding of facts, which they will simply replace with much more easily manipulable emotions.

These planted emotions they've programmed you with are why you actually felt the need to make this post to which I'm replying. Take a few moments to think about it calmly and rationally in private, with no fear of reprisal. You deserve it.

Next, ask yourself if Apple really deserved to have a concession made to a testing procedure that no other company or product has previously ever received.

Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong.

[imidan]

First, I think it's important to point out that positive moderation on Slashdot doesn't necessarily mean you're right about what you said, it just means that your opinion is popular.

Second, it's also important for us all to understand that Slashdot mod points are not rare or valuable, they do not make or break a person's reputation, and nobody cares what your Slashdot karma score is.

Third, literally revising history to retroactively alter a person's karma score is actually crazy for a few reasons... the two listed above, plus the reason that going back and changing the mod points doesn't mean it actually happened that way. Even making the suggestion that this is what should happen seems to indicate a profound misunderstanding of cause and effect, and of the world in general.

Jesus, we don't just erase our past when people say things that turn out to be incorrect. You're advocating a fucking sci-fi dystopia.

Re: Bought and Paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter. This is Slashdot. Half of the commenting population here bash $large_company because they view them as uncool /no longer cool. Apple developer mode has a bug. They fixed the bug, since CR uses that mode to do their tests. With the bug fixed, the tests passed. Nothing to see here.
 
  Unless your a beard-growing slashdot hippie that doesn't fully understand how software, networks, or browsers work. Then "APPLE PAID CR! THEY ARE ALL ASSHATS SINCE THEY CLEARLY PAID CR OFF!!".
 
  Rediculous posts get modded up since the cloud here is cynical of Apple, and the worthwhile posts get modded down since the don't conform to "hipster culture world-view".

Doesn't line up with our testing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got 20 of these things seeing daily use as testing machines within our company, with the potential to purchase anywhere between 4K and 20K machines should they be deemed acceptable.

Right now, they are not.

So far, every single user that has a testing unit has complained about dongles at least once. Nearly half of them have complained about accidentally activating the touch bar, simply because their fingers accidentally brushed across it. We've also seen three laptops outright fail- the touchbar would randomly hang up, severely reducing the usability of the machine (apparently it's controlled by an embedded computer running it's own OS, rather than being accessible as a second display of pixels through the host OS).

However, the current show stopper is the battery life.

If you use these machines lightly, they're great. We get anywhere from 10 to 15 hours of use. If you load the machine down in any significant way- be it causing the GPU to kick in, or all the CPU cores to fire up- battery life drops to a measly 4-5 hours, sometimes as low as 3.

It's pretty clear that Apple has implemented some very aggressive power saving features, but at the same time this appears to be something they had to do to get any kind of reasonable battery life out of these machines- it's not something they did to extend an already excellent battery life, because if you're actually using the hardware then the runtime isn't that stellar. This is in line with what CR originally found, regardless of any Safari bugs. The machine simply isn't capable of lasting that long if you're using the hardware, regardless of what that use is caused by (be it a stray daemon sucking up 100% of a CPU core, or a Safari bug doing something similar, or anything else).

As it stands right now, these are going to be the first Apple laptops our company won't purchase for any of our employees. The hardware just isn't capable of consistently meeting our requirements. I get the feeling that Apple would have loved to have crammed netbook quality hardware inside this thing for thinness, but they knew that was marketing suicide so they came up with this machine instead, where you've got impressive specs and it works well as,long as you don't try to use them.

It's a shame, because if they'd made the machine a bit bigger with a higher capacity battery, we wouldn't have any complaints. 7-8 hours of life under moderate to heavy use is great, but that's nowhere near what we're seeing with these units.

Hysterical screaming from the RDF brigade

[Shane_Optima]

Shane_Optima was wrong.

I most certainly was not wrong. I said that if it was a software bug in Safari (as alleged) that it was obviously still Apple's fault. I didn't address the possibility of CR screwing up one way or another. And guess what? According to TFS, Apple *did* screw up.

Apple is responsible for Safari bugs. That was my assertion then, and it's my assertion now.

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

Wow. So you're complaining that an Anonymous Coward (you?) speculating baselessly (yes baselessly, because no preliminary observations or experiments were mentioned) about the possible cause of the poor test result and then implying that Apple should be let off the hook if it's a Safari bug received a single -1 downmod instead of being modded up to +5, Nostradamus?

No one is going to have their mod privileges revoked. Instead, try re-working your tone to sound less like a perpetually whining fanboy.

I mean, for many years I liked Google (still do, in some ways) but I don't flip the fuck out when people criticize, for example, their decision to drop microSD card slots from their devices. That was a horrible anti-consumer decision and I made sure to mention it any time I talked to someone who was thinking about buying a Nexus device. There's a reason why Apple fanboys have the reputation that they do. No other tech company on Earth inspires this kind of rabid and unthinking loyalty.

Incidentally, if you register for an account people are around here will be less likely to assume you're a blithering fool or astroturfer.

The real moderation tragedy is that your comment here is currently modded up to +4. "Admins, go back and fix the moderation and mod everyone else down! My speculative Apple apologia turned out to be correct in fact [just not in conclusion]!", Jesus fucking Christ...