We are sure that all Apple and Mac users know the details of what happened with the new MacBook with Touch Bar and the tests carried out by the consumer organization in the United States Consumer Reports. In any case and to explain a little above what happened, Consumer Reports performed typical battery life tests on computers and resolved that these they were not recommended for purchase due to irregularities in the battery related to the different durations obtained «19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours.»
Apple stepped up explaining that would collaborate intensively with Consumer Reports to find the problem and fix it, and a few hours ago Consumer Reports was showing the results of its tests rectifying the aforementioned in the first test and recommending the purchase of new equipment as to date it had done with all Apple MacBooks.
Once the issue has been clarified a bit and more or less made known to all, there is various questions that arise along the way and several points that we want to try to discuss with all of you so use the comments to share your opinion on the case.
The first thing and before we start to warn that it is about giving an opinion, nothing more than that, we are Apple users just like you and when there are problems we like them to be solved so we understand that if Consumer Reports (which we will call CR from now) had not directly published these results, Apple could have dispensed with looking for the problem that some NOT all users They contribute with little autonomy and we would say that of «nothing has happened here». In reality we will never know this from CR's publication in the media, but in all the years that we have been using equipment from the guys from Cupertino we are clear that they usually respond to problems almost always.
Another detail that "we are not taking into account" are the tests carried out the first time by CR, in them you can see a really good autonomy reaching 19,5 hours in the 13 ″ device with Touch Bar, but in the next test it drops to 4,5 hours, so there is something wrong with these equipment and therefore it is recommended not to buy them. Here we are presented with several options but they took the direct one; as CR had never had problems with MacBooks, they could pass the results obtained to Apple and work more discreetly with them to solve the failure and not raise the commotion that they have raised but it was not like that and now the problem is more on the roof of CR than on that of Apple.
And it is that if someone has been damaged on these second tests carried out, it is CR, okay, it is true that they can rectify and do everything possible to demonstrate that the problem is solved and they only limit themselves to performing the tests, but Apple is a company dear as well as hated and the cloud of comments on the possible "payment under the sleeve" that CR has received for changing his mind in these second tests it is what is being read the most on the net.
Is this autonomy really real?
Here we are faced with another obvious question, and that is if the second tests carried out by CR had gone wrong in the models analyzed, would they not have said that the results were still bad? They already did it the first time, why couldn't they do it again if the tests had really turned out the same? In this second round of tests the results obtained for the 13-inch model: “The new average battery-life results are, in order, 15.75 hours, 18.75 hours, and 17.25 hours” so that Using macOS Sierra 10.12.3 Beta (16D25a) the problem for users who are affected by battery life should go away. In any case, 15,75 hours far exceeds the 1o that Apple announces on its website, so we imagine that they are "different" tests from the use that a real user makes with their Mac, since this time of 15 hours I doubt that it will arrive nor with the 12 ″ MacBook that have a spectacular autonomy ...
This is now the wait we have left, see and compare the autonomy that we have in our MacBook Pro Late 2016 once we have the version officially launchedBut the blemish in this case for Consumer Reports we believe is larger than on Apple itself, as the credibility of the following tests conducted by this consumer association will be called into question. And you, what do you think?
Here are the direct links to the results of tests conducted by Consumer Reports on these computers:
Test results of December 22 in which they do NOT recommend the purchase of MacBook Pro 2016
Test results of January 12 in which they do recommend the purchase of MacBook Pro 2016