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