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MacBook Pro Touch Bar

It's not unusual for new hardware to have a few bugs to work out, merely Apple's response to the battery life problems its users have been experiencing with the MacBook Pro seems to accept the block. The macOS 10.12.2. update dropped today, and it contains a bevy of bug fixes and improvements — along with i puzzling removal. According to Apple tree, it'southward merely also hard to summate how much bombardment life a CPU has remaining, and the company has removed this characteristic from the latest edition of its operating system.

That's right. If you have a Mac, Apple will no longer tell y'all how much longer the bombardment might last. You lot'll nonetheless become a report on the percent of bombardment life remaining, merely naught else. Apple does think it's nailed down some graphical corruption issues that were plaguing users with AMD's RX 460, and there are some improvements to palm rejection and a few Touch on Bar changes.

The battery life issue remains puzzling, however, despite Apple tree's apparent lack of involvement in investigating the topic. Tech writers at The Verge report that their testbed Apple laptop could barely squeak through six hours of battery life, to the point that Apple agreed to send a replacement unit for testing. That unit failed to do whatsoever better, which puts these laptops well below the ten hours of battery life that Apple is claiming — and while no claim about battery life can be accurate to every single use-instance, Apple tree has a reputation for generally providing the bombardment life it promises.

MacBook Pro

What's even more unusual well-nigh this is that other sites and forum users have reported that their own battery life is fine and striking the 10 hr mark without incident. At that place are several possibilities here. First, there's a adventure that Apple tree chose to source sure components from different manufacturers, and that discrepancy is hitting battery life. While this isn't impossible, it doesn't seem very probable, either. Using a different screen or Wi-Fi solution might extend battery life by a small amount, but it wouldn't create a four-hour difference.

Second, it's possible that some systems aren't dropping into lower power states the mode they should be, possibly due to a software issue. Nosotros've seen issues like this before in mobile, where advert-supported games and apps drain bombardment life much more quickly than their paid equivalents because they don't turn the Wi-Fi modem off properly when ads aren't being displayed. Microsoft also fabricated much of the fact that Chrome, even after the work Google has washed to improve the situation, yet draws more power than Microsoft Border. It's entirely possible that the reason some users are seeing 10 hours while others are seeing v.v or 6 is related to a subtle software configuration issue or improperly configured driver that's knocking some systems out of power states more rapidly than information technology should.

In fact, this speaks to the cardinal upshot with the power management techniques now avant-garde by Intel, AMD, and various ARM vendors. The promise of this technology is that information technology can cut ability consumption dramatically by fine-tuning the SoC. When these systems work, all is well. When they don't work properly, or don't play nice with other system hardware, drivers, or spider web browsers, you end with a situation where some consumers clearly encounter a problem, others don't, and the company doesn't have a roadmap to resolve the issue.

I know there are some Mac faithful who will purchase whatever Apple tree churns out, no matter what. But betwixt the battery life, the dongles, and the decision to recycle Intel's older Skylake chips instead of holding for Kaby Lake this is the well-nigh troubled MacBook Pro update in years. If you bought ane of these systems, we'd be very interested to hear how your battery life has been, and whether you've institute any tricks for improving it (before Apple took away the actual battery timer, natch).