Mac Observer:
Apple took away the time remaining estimate from its Battery menu bar widget in macOS 10.12.2 presumably because it was inaccurate and confusing. That’s a problem because a lot of MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook users rely on the time estimate to get an idea of how long they can go before they have to find a power outlet. Even though Apple deemed the time remaining estimate unnecessary, other developers get that it’s an important feature. Read on to see three of TMO’s favorite battery monitoring apps.
Apple taking the estimate away, even if wildly inaccurate, is silly. Not fixing it, even more so. These apps aren’t necessarily any more accurate (testing will be required) but at least you’ll have some indication as to how much battery life you (might) have left.
To add to this, people already know that the amount of time remaining is based on what applications are open and/or active. I use this as a corrective tool – I see 2 hours remaining, I close my browser windows with Flash, MS Word, etc. Moving forward, Apple has stripped users of the ability to action this corrective behaviour.
I have been comparing the values between Apple’s (now gone) indication and the one (still) given by iStat Menus several times. There was never a relevant difference between the two, which led me to believe that they (and maybe the other tools) are relying on the same APIs / indicators Apple has been using?!
What I would like to learn is if there is something notably different in the newer CPUs or chipset architectures. Because estimates on my 2012 rMBP have always been pretty close, on the new model they are pretty much useless.
So if Tim Cook was in charge during AntennaGate, would he have just order the removal of the signal strength indicator instead of issuing bumpers?
Also – I really miss bumpers…
Well, Steve Jobs was in charge back then, and he issued a software update that changed the algorithm for how signal strength was calculated. They made it show a lower signal, because during the 3G-3GS era, Apple compensated for ATTs bad reputation by making the signal strength appear to always be “full.”
They also made the 1st and 2nd bars taller, since a more accurate signal strength meant users would be seeing 1-2 bar signals a lot more frequently.
But yea, Steve Jobs was a saint that never did anything to mask any shortcomings.
Does your 2012 have a discrete GPU? That makes a huge difference.
Call Phil Schiller. He’ll fix it.
Courage.