“Apple has a problem with batteries. In fact, the problem is so serious that the company had to make a radical decision in the latest update of macOS: they removed the battery time indicator,” Kirk McElhearn writes for Macworld. “This appeared when you clicked the Battery menu extra in your menu bar, and it displayed an estimate of how much battery time was remaining on your laptop. Apple claimed this was removed because it was inaccurate; yet that indicator had been present on OS X for as long as I remember.”
“What suddenly made it inaccurate? The fact that many users are seeing far less than the 10 hours of battery life that Apple advertises with the new MacBook Pro?” McElhearn writes. “It wasn’t just Consumer Reports that saw this problem; lots of users and reviewers have seen it as well.”
“Perhaps instead of removing the battery time indicator, Apple could work harder at designing computers that can last a full day for real users, not just in tests designed to meet specifications that they can use for marketing,” McElhearn writes. “Sure, that may mean a slightly thicker laptop (or iPhone or iPad) but I think more users care about battery life today than they do about thinness.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote over a year ago:
What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly?
Yes, we know Apple thinks thinness sets iPhone apart from all other so-called smartphones (actually, it’s the operating system, the software and the ecosystem), but the iPhone 6/Plus and iPhone 6s/Plus are simply too thin to house their camera assembly.
iPhone 6s is 0.28 inch (7.1 mm) thin. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is 0.27 inch (6.8 mm). The “thicker” iPhone 6s easily outsells the thinner Galaxy S6. Obviously, at this point, the selling point of “thinness” is overrated.
iPhone 6 and 6s has battery life issues for heavy iPhone users (hint: get an Apple Watch. You’ll use your iPhone less and the battery will easily outlast even the longest day).
The law of diminishing returns can also be applied to industrial design. Apple’s eternal quest for thinness eventually runs into issues such as bulging camera assemblies, battery capacity, strength (breakability), etc. – is Apple’s quest for thinness now bordering on the quixotic?
So, is it “you can never be too thin” or is it “thin enough is thin enough?”
SEE ALSO:
Open thread: What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly? – December 21, 2015
