Consumer Reports Now Recommends MacBook Pros (macrumors.com) 164
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.
Bought and Paid for (Score:3, Insightful)
Cha Ching
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Man, at least one guy in the last thread on this topic called it hook, line, and sinker.
Re: Bought and Paid for (Score:4, Insightful)
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".
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Actually it says that it was tested with a beta version which would not be readily available to general public. So the pass is fictitious at least for now.
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does the general public enable developer mode and then disable caching? the test is "fictitious" in the sense that they need a reproducible way to measure battery life across hardware platforms. the numbers they produce are not applicable to real world conditions, but give a sense of how various laptops compare to each other.
Good point. CR should say that, "Because Apple fixed the bug for us that only appeared because of the way we do our testing, we approve of the test results - here they are..." CR's response is highly inappropriate for the situation at hand. Happy now?
Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
When we discussed this matter earlier, it was pointed out that this could very well be a software problem [slashdot.org] (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.
Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. (Score:5, 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?
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Seriously? Apple has a fantastic history of pretty damn accurate battery life estimates. That hardware underwent extensive testing before the public ever heard of it, and you are saying that an obscure software bug... probably one of the most common occurrences in technology... is less likely that some a pervasive hardware fault in a product from a mature hardware developer that does extensive testing on all of its equipment?
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Volkswagen started it. *ducks*
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Anonymous Coward often receives -1 troll,
That would be because ACs are mostly trolling Slashdot, not because there is a conspiracy against ACs.
so it's inappropriate then they should receive a 5 informative now
So, it is inappropriate that a post contributing to the conversation should be modded up because many ACs post trollish comments? That doesn't follow logically, perhaps you are confused about how this system works?
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Are you trying to claim that Apple don't produce faults? I have to kindly disagree with you here, Apple have just as many issues as other manufacturers.
Touch Disease
nVidia thermal cycling issue causing BGA mounts to crack and video to be lost
Numerous instances of batteries having thermal runaways
Every manufacturer has issues, Apple is not immune just because they have glowing fruit logos on their laptops.
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the groupthink is a problem on all of these comment voting platforms. It literally means mob rule. At least here it's a little harder since you need multiple people with mod points to shit on something you disagree with that much,
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I don't think scores need to be changed, but it is definitely annoying when idiots get to vote in numbers and "win" in ways that contradict provable facts just because there are more loud idiots than quiet smart people.* I lost a point (from +2 to +1) for taking the radical position of "[If] the results are inconsistent and non-repeatable... they should be tossed out until the root problem is discovered, regardless of if the fault is theirs or Apple's."
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
But no, CR would rathe
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home to cranky old people who hate technology, any big tech companies,
Home to experienced nerds that hate companies that manhandle other technology companies and are controlled by the marketing fucks.
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Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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> Oh please, if someone released a device that cured cancer 100% of the time, and gave it away
Except it's you lot that are pretending that an expensive brand name product is somehow different from it's cheap generic counterpart.
The fact that you're spouting complete medical gibberish is par for the course.
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CR found a defect in the product which caused them to not recommend it. The manufacturer of the product then took steps to fix the defect. When CR re-ran their tests with the fixed product, it passed, causing them to recommend it once more. In what way is that a concession? If Apple didn't fix the defect, but instead only insisted that they change their methodology (i.e. base their updated report solely on testing the MBP with caching enabled), then you would have an argument. But as they changed their reco
Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
lol are you new here? Anti-apple posts always get modded up, defending Apple will usually get you modded down. It's slashdot: home to cranky old people who hate technology, any big tech companies, the government, and kids on their lawns.
No, we hate bad technology and overpriced technology. Every single tech company that makes bad decisions around here gets criticized; every single one. Show of hands: who here likes Google's anti-microSD card policies? Who is willing to write a lengthy screed defending it and pretending that anyone who likes microSD card slots must be "an old person who hates technology" ?
This shit ONLY happens with Apple because only Apple has this contingent of fanboys who treat every conversation about flaws in its products as if it were a conversation about how ugly their mothers are.
And the fact that this utter rubbish (from an AC, no less) has been modded up to +5 really gives the lie to your thesis here. As I explained elsewhere [slashdot.org], the crux of the matter is the AC here is/was attempting to claim that Consumer Reports is responsible for bugs in Safari.
People on the internet wrong (Score:3)
Oh my god people on the internet were wrong! The horror...
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Being smug and cynical is popular on slashdot. The moderators love it.
Of course, pointing out how other people are wrong is also popular on slashdot. You seem to be fond of it yourself.
Going back and correcting a mistake is just ludicrous. No way is anyone going to go for that. Save your effort typing about how it "should" be that way, how much better everything will be, etc.
It WILL NEVER FUCKING FLY. End of story.
Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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They fixed the superficial bug, but they didn't fix the root cause. The same underlying hardware deficiency still exists, and even if Safari doesn't tickle that bug, other CPU-hungry apps (e.g. Lightroom) do and always will, because the battery life under load is still about 25% less than it was in previous models. That root cause can't be fixed in software; the best you can do is pressure app developers to use less power, which isn't always possible (e.g. Lightroom).
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The root cause is fundamental to the very nature of CPU power management to extend battery life, and can't be fixed, but it can be ameliorated somewhat.
Fundamentally, CR was complaining about the difference between maximum and minimum battery life. That difference is caused by the OS shutting down unnecessary CPU cores and reducing the core voltage of cores when not in use or only just barely in use. The only way to "fix" that difference would be to do less power management, but if you did that, instead
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It was a software problem... it was not a hardware problem.... with the software only fix, the computer performs as advertised. And your comment, which contradicts all known information about this problem... is moderated a 5.
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If by "performs as advertised", you mean "performs as advertised while running Safari", you are technically correct—the best kind of correct. Now let's see benchmarks on Pro apps, which a Pro machine is supposed to be designed around.
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Says the person who doesn't even know enough to understand why he/she is wrong and I'm right.
Re:Slashdot "experts" who were wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Hysterical screaming from the RDF brigade (Score:5, Insightful)
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. [slashdot.org] 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...
#NotAll Apple users (Score:2)
And if you want to gently mention how this was an obscure bug that wasn't li
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I'm a very rare slashdot commenter. This comment was horrible so I just had to get in here and let you know :) Just admit you were wrong guy. And the rest of your righteous spiel comes off equally as bad.
This is such an asinine statement I hardly know where to begin. Even if there were no Safari bug and it were 100% Consumer Reports' fault, my initial statement would still be entirely correct because it was explicitly couched in an "if" and was responding to a hypothetical that someone else gave.
This is first and foremost a factual issue. I provided you with the link. My reasoning a couple weeks ago was clear and I have spelled it all out for you again in exacting detail. If you do truly believe that I
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Your quote "That's all well and good, but either way it's still Apple's fault. Not that their fans will care." is factually incorrect. The issue in question was whether Apples estimates on battery life were wrong.
This statement was and is entirely correct. It would have been correct even if it turned out that the Consumer Reports' result was the result of the tester smoking meth and deciding to type random stuff on his report. For the third (fourth?) time, I was responding to a hypothetical given by someone else. What the hell, I'm feeling charitable, let me try to give you some pointers on the bits I think you may be misunderstanding:
A. The "either" refers to the battery life being off (hardware issue of some
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I didn't mention "you're holding wrong"
It was a metaphor/comparison. You were talking about "in the way a regular user would experience" and insisting that CR tested it incorrectly. The parallels are clear, and I didn't put that bit in quote tags for a reason. That phrase is a meme now, in case you aren't aware. I was mocking you.
For the 3rd time the bug in the developer tools is the cause of Consumer Reports problems up but has no bearing on Apples battery estimates which are based on a system with "all settings left at default
A complete irrelevancy. I never said anything about Apple's estimates. The issue was about the cause of CR's findings. CR does not claim to test the computer in exactly the same way Apple does, nor should they.
? It has unequivocally nothing to with the variability in the CR tests
I ne
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Shane_Optima is quickly turning into a troll.
ACs often don't understand what common words mean. Film at 11.
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I do this to sharpen the mind and also sometimes to prototype stuff. Slashdot keeps comments forever and has no censorship to speak of, and I've already made use of my prior lengthy comments as quick cliff notes in discussions I've had elsewhere. Some of these posts will eventually turn into Youtube videos, so if you *really* wa
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Why can't you admit you were wrong? Do you have some kind of complex with being wrong??
It's a very human thing to be wrong... Come down to our level and let's talk.
This is white noise. Come at me with a real argument. I'm a +5. I say this not to brag, but to point out it is largely agreed that I was not, in fact, proven wrong about anything. The onus is on you to say something intelligent instead of these puerile games.
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I think the bigger story is an enterprise - consumer reports - actually got Apple to fix an issue for them.
While my enterprise - I'm current 0-2 on support cases with Apple...
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It's almost as if the wisdom of crowds does not apply when most people would produce a bad estimate....
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I don't like Apple, but review conditions normally mean "DEFAULT CONFIGURATION" Not "Let's turn some shit off that most users have no fucking clue about" so I'm going to say they weren't cheating, here.
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consumers union and consumer reports is a non-profit organization that accepts zero funding or advertising from the manufacturers or retailers of the products that they evaluate. while they may have given apple the benefit of the doubt with regards to the initial results of their testing and giving them an opportunity to correct the issues, they most certainly did not get paid for the 'recommended' rating.
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Don't worry, he'll be out of office in a few days.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What does this island nation have to do with an office? Also, why is AC stating that the island nation is going to make them throw up?
Loses credibility (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Loses credibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumer Reports' testing showed a problem, so they did not recommend it. Once they understood the cause of the problem they could see it would not affect normal users, so now they do recommend it. It's good that Apple is planning a fix, but CR would have changed their rating anyhow.
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They're recommending based on the fact that as near to zero percent of users as makes no difference will be disabling the caching that they did.
Normal users will not experience the same wildly varying battery life that CR did in their initial tests.
Those who *do* disable the caching may hit the bug that apple has identified and are fixing. But that number is going to be vanishingly small.
CR was right to update their review before the fix comes out.
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>"Normal users just seem to be experiencing battery life consistently around half of the advertised 10 hours instead of occasionally varying above."
Which pretty much matches the advertised battery life for every model and brand of computer and tablet I have ever purchased or used (from any company). In fact, I actually tell people- take what the manufacturer claims and cut it in half and that is a more realistic starting point.
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They didn't. The recommended a product based on a working and released beta. It wouldn't be the first time people have run a beta program to work around a flaw in product that has good recommendations.
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"But if you're going to recommend a product based on a might-be-working-when-released beta, you lose some credibility to me."
If you're going to send me a beta product to test and it fails, you're going to get panned. Don't want that to happen? Give me a finished product that had some A-Z quality control to test.
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Blowing away the moderations I have done in this thread because everyone is missing something REALLY important here: How do we know that Apple did not simply modify the non-caching mode to ignore the directive and use the cache anyways?
Granted, they probably did just fix a bug... but maybe they didn't. Maybe they just use the cache now even when caching is turned off.
The reason why I am piggy-backing on your comment is because it was deeply insightful and along the same lines.
the old: "you're testing it wrong" (Score:2, Insightful)
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defense
...and all defenses in that context include a large lump of cash in non-sequential bills handed under the table. Just not this time. ;)
IT still doesn't recommend them (Score:1)
In fact, IT has made it clear that the new MacBook Pros are too expensive to be considered for purchase. It's leading to a rush to try and get the old 2015 MBPs while they're still available, since a whole lot of developers that use OS X because it's a Unix that IT supports are rapidly having to find new solutions. (And, no, Linux is not an answer because it involves a waiver process before you can access the network.)
If Microsoft gets their Linux layer working, Apple is toast. The new MBP is too expensive
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If Microsoft gets their Linux layer working, Apple is toast.
If ...
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If MS implemented Wayland support in their display server, they'd out-buntu Ubuntu fairly quickly.
That'd cause only a minor dent in Macbook sales, admittedly.
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The Specs are BETTER than the older version,
Compare the battery specifications, then try your comment again.
Re: IT still doesn't recommend them (Score:1)
Funny, I have a new MBP and it's a beast of a machine. Handles multiple VMs plus Xcode plus web browsing with a million tabs just fine. Battery life has been great so far. For me it's perfect... a little pricey but given the value I get out of it it's well worth it.
I've owned a lot of laptops in my time and this is by far the best I've ever owned. Obviously your use case may be different.
What it takes to get a bug fixed (Score:1)
Apparently, you need to shame Apple publicly in a magazine that quite a lot of people read and seriously consider before making a purchase. Apple still is very much a hardware company, and if CR says their hardware isn't good, their sales will go down.
So, if you find a bug in one of their many software products, don't report the bug as usual. Instead, make an argument that the bug causes unacceptable battery performance and report it to Consumer Reports instead. Then, maybe Apple will start fixing software
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You got that right! This is exactly what I came here to say.
I was going to ask this: How many years would pass before Apple actually fixed that bug if Consumer Reports didn't exist?
To me, this alone justifies their existence.
Still should not recommend it (Score:1)
It's still very expensive due to the new touchbar that hasn't proven its worth as yet. The build quality is still there, certainly, but it still fails for not being the latest Intel hardware (yes, I know the issues with low TDP Kaby Lake packages at the time of launch) and a poor AMD graphics chipset. It's the iPad 3 of the Macbook Pro line, and hopefully will be replaced by August with a Kaby Lake version. I don't hold much hope for a Nvidia 1060 version, but those two changes would be the only reason for
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Apple could solve a lot of the problems by releasing an iOS development environment that could run on Linux or a BSD operating system.
Using their iOS development environment to leverage Macintosh sales is foolish. They end up with only pro-Mac martinets in their development community.
The Original Flaw in the Method (Score:1)
I find the whole thing a terrible example of a once respectable online outlet jumping into the clickbait world: CR used to have near print-level standards - where at least the dollar-centric parts were constrained away and didn't govern the copy (Remember what 80% of your print PC mags used to be?)
The reality was that the testing method was *evidently* at fault: they couldn't reproduce the issue reliably, they couldn't reproduce it with Chrome (which is the dominant browser on most platforms) - but rushed t
Oh well.. (Score:3)
Doesn't line up with our testing. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Exactly - The previous generation was already thin enough. I do not need it to get any thinner. I need it to get better, faster, and last longer. I made a similar decision not to upgrade my MBP until it either dies or Apple releases a laptop worthy of my time and money.
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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.
This is not a valid objection because, under full load like that, 3 hours is better than most laptops on the market right now. Most laptops with a GPU like the one on these machines, firing all cores, get an 1hr of battery life under that scenario. You just don't play games on the battery.
How Do We Know Apple Isn't Pulling a VW? (Score:2)
Aww! (Score:2)
Damnit. You mean that the first result set WASN'T released just to prompt Apple to give them a bunch of cash for a BETTER result? It was really a bug? Shucks. The economy isn't working like it used to anymore. /sarcasm
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Can you please provide evidence that Apple provided anything other than a fixed product that was previously broken, in exchange for an updated review?
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Can you please provide evidence that Apple provided anything other than a fixed product that was previously broken, in exchange for an updated review?
I don't need to because you missed the point - the comment ended with /sarcasm. Historically and based on numbers and Human behavior, it would be expected to have a company pay to shut people up or have an opinion changed because it's faster and easier, or because they just want to. In this case, they actually fixed a bug and got a better review as a result. I'm not used to seeing that.
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My apologies. There seem to be enough Apple haters in this thread who do honestly believe that CR gave Apple special treatment for one reason or another that I couldn't choose who to reply to. And I made a mistake by choosing to reply to the one person making that argument sarcastically.
What this whole story is about (Score:2)
What this whole story is really about is that a bunch of Apple haters got a reason to gloat, and are now feeling ripped off when their reason to gloat was taken away from them. The actual technical reasons behind the original decision and the decision to reverse the decision are beside the point.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Consumer Reports now admits they were holding it wrong.
I knew it wouldn't take Apple long to fix the bug in the RDF.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Consumer Reports was benchmarking a debug mode. That should not be a legitimate config to represent typical usage.
Re: (Score:2)
Consumer Reports was benchmarking a debug mode. That should not be a legitimate config to represent typical usage.
The long version: Safari caches downloads to safe battery life, as they should, and as any decent browser would. This is nice for users. It is not nice when you try to measure battery life by cycling through 20 pages because very quickly everything is loaded because the battery lasts forever.
So they decided to turn a very hard to find developer setting to disable caching downloads. The app now uses a lot more energy and battery life goes down. The same would happen if a user with download cache enabled d
Re: (Score:2)
People who are testing laptop performance should be able to use any and all existing functionality of the product without random stuff breaking. I gave a car analogy in my other reply.
Assholish Apple Apologia (Score:2)
Methodologies should assume that features do what they say they do and nothing more. If I press the hazard lights on my car and (somehow) the muffler falls off and I report that the muffler fell off while I was driving (not realizing that pressing the hazard lights was what triggered it), my methodology isn't flawed. Clearly, the car company is at fault for creating a flawed product. "But most people never even use the hazard lights! You should have tested it withou
Re: I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports (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.
Re: (Score:1)
Uh, the article on Consumer Reports's own website said they reenabled caching and were rerunning their tests. Are you suggesting they rereran the tests with caching redisabled?
Re: I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports (Score:1)
Really, because at they state:
"With the updated software, the three MacBook Pros in our labs all performed well, with one model running 18.75 hours on a charge. We tested each model multiple times using the new software, following the same protocol we apply to hundreds of laptops every year."
"Same protocol" implies to me that they did not reenable caching, and they do not mention changing the test at all except for running the updates OS. But you know that's just the official statement from consumer report
Re: (Score:2)
Reread the article then as you are wrong...
Re: I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports (Score:1)
In other news, reviewers found that MacBook Pros don't need battery power at all!
Instead, after rigious testing, Consumer Reports found MacBook Pros can run off Apple's cash supply indefinitely by plugging the MacBook into the wall or using wireless charging and simplying manipulating it's review report, given enough cash. Yay!
Re: (Score:2)
From the article, it doesn't sound like the fix was to turn on page caching. There was some bug caused by turning off caching that was fixed. What that is....idk. I can only imagine some guy coded a spinloop wrong.
Re:I can no longer recommend Consumer Reports (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.
But you can recommend the Hatorade! (Score:2)
Consumer Reports does testing for....consumers. To see what the consumer experience with a product is going to be. As the bug would never affect a normal user, it should not have been used to give the program a poor review.
Re: (Score:2)
Consumer Reports does testing for....consumers. To see what the consumer experience with a product is going to be. As the bug would never affect a normal user, it should not have been used to give the program a poor review.
In particular, they should not be changing any browser settings. What percentage of users will do that at any point during their lifetime? I'm guessing it's single-digit.
Re: (Score:2)
How fucking dense are you? It's been explained already multiple times why they couldn't get consistent and meaningful results in this test with caching on.
So you perform the test 2089723923092379 times, until you have enough results to be meaningful. If the test doesn't happen in real-world conditions, it's totally useless. Like, say, EPA mileage estimates, or stationary emissions testing.
Re: (Score:2)
This is sketchy. Tests typically involve disabling the cache and reloading pages to measure the overall impact of visiting lots of different pages.
You should be happy to know that caching remains off. All that was identified is that caching triggered a bug, it was the bug that was fixed and the test was then repeated in the exact same conditions as they always have done.
I can no longer recommend anyone gives any mod points to ACs.
Re: (Score:2)
You should be happy to know that caching remains off. All that was identified is that caching triggered a bug, it was the bug that was fixed and the test was then repeated in the exact same conditions as they always have done.
Caching didn't trigger the bug. Not caching didn't trigger the bug either. Using the "disable cache" setting triggered the bug, it didn't have actually anything to do with caching or not caching.
Re: (Score:2)