Apple Releases Fix To MacBooks In Response To Consumer Reports' Test Results

Megalith

Megalith

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The battery life of the new MacBook Pros may not be as disappointing as Consumer Reports had suggested. Apple has released a fix to one of the issues, a Safari bug, but we will have to wait until second-round testing is complete to see just how much more consistent the battery life is this time around.

We have now downloaded the software fix and are rerunning our battery tests with the fix in place on the same computers previously tested. If the battery life results are consistently high, the ratings score for MacBook Pros would rise, and those laptops will then receive Consumer Reports’ Recommended rating given their performance in all our other evaluations. We communicated our original test results to Apple prior to publication on Dec. 22 and afterward sent multiple rounds of diagnostic data, at the company’s request, to help its engineers understand the battery issues we saw in our testing. After investigating the issue, Apple says that the variable battery performance we experienced is a result of a software bug in its Safari web browser that was triggered by our test conditions.
 
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JosiahBradley said:
No you are still wrong. CR didn't need to rerun their test because they had any errors. They are being nice rerunning it after doing the work discovering Apples' flaw. Your argument was that CR should rerun their test because it was returning odd results, when in fact their test were fine to begin with.
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The test didn't have errors, the way the test was designed exposed bugs that would not otherwise have occurred during normal use. This is what I was referring to, when I said "Maybe they stumbled on a CPU-eating bug that didn't exist in previous versions of the OS or something?" in my original post.

My biggest problem was CR's public (and apparently false) statement that they wouldn't be retesting the laptops or re-evaluating their rating.

I do admit that re-running the tests immediately wouldn't have made any difference (since the bug was still there at the time), but CR could have at least retracted their stance pending an investigation into the highly inconsistent results. Instead they plugged their ears and insisted they were right (a common trait of almost every business, even non-profits).

It's not CR's fault that they got the results they did (that's Apple's fault), but CR is still responsible for the way they reacted when those results were questioned.
 
sir-gold said:
The test didn't have errors, the way the test was designed exposed bugs that would not otherwise have occurred during normal use. This is what I was referring to, when I said "Maybe they stumbled on a CPU-eating bug that didn't exist in previous versions of the OS or something?" in my original post.

My biggest problem was CR's public (and apparently false) statement that they wouldn't be retesting the laptops or re-evaluating their rating.

I do admit that re-running the tests immediately wouldn't have made any difference (since the bug was still there at the time), but CR could have at least retracted their stance pending an investigation into the highly inconsistent results. Instead they plugged their ears and insisted they were right (a common trait of almost every business, even non-profits).

It's not CR's fault that they got the results they did (that's Apple's fault), but CR is still responsible for the way they reacted when those results were questioned.
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I bet Kyle could chime in on this. As an Evaluator I aint doing shit until they do the proper research.
 
sir-gold said:
The test didn't have errors, the way the test was designed exposed bugs that would not otherwise have occurred during normal use. This is what I was referring to, when I said "Maybe they stumbled on a CPU-eating bug that didn't exist in previous versions of the OS or something?" in my original post.

My biggest problem was CR's public (and apparently false) statement that they wouldn't be retesting the laptops or re-evaluating their rating.

I do admit that re-running the tests immediately wouldn't have made any difference (since the bug was still there at the time), but CR could have at least retracted their stance pending an investigation into the highly inconsistent results. Instead they plugged their ears and insisted they were right (a common trait of almost every business, even non-profits).

It's not CR's fault that they got the results they did (that's Apple's fault), but CR is still responsible for the way they reacted when those results were questioned.
Click to expand...
CR said that they reran the test without disabling the caching and the battery life was high, and they also will be disabling the cache and re-running the full suite of test again after applying the bug fix. So by changing the way they test the laptop they are acknowledging the way the test have an impact. And based on the original story, Apple immediately became defensive over the issue and said there is no issue with their product, where in fact there was an issue with their product hence the bug fix. I think you have it mixed up here.
 
Consumer Reports exposed an issue with the battery life. Apple denied it. CR quite rightly refused to do further testing without some investigation from Apple. Apple then investigated the issue after trying to blame CR's testing and admitted CR was right all along. CR then agreed to do more testing after the bug was fixed and will re-score it based on that updated testing.

I don't know how anyone could criticize CR's stance in all this. The only organization that "plugged their ears" in this was Apple, until they realized CR was going to stand by it's results and so they had to actually do something about it.
 
sir-gold said:
The test didn't have errors, the way the test was designed exposed bugs that would not otherwise have occurred during normal use. This is what I was referring to, when I said "Maybe they stumbled on a CPU-eating bug that didn't exist in previous versions of the OS or something?" in my original post.

My biggest problem was CR's public (and apparently false) statement that they wouldn't be retesting the laptops or re-evaluating their rating.

I do admit that re-running the tests immediately wouldn't have made any difference (since the bug was still there at the time), but CR could have at least retracted their stance pending an investigation into the highly inconsistent results. Instead they plugged their ears and insisted they were right (a common trait of almost every business, even non-profits).

It's not CR's fault that they got the results they did (that's Apple's fault), but CR is still responsible for the way they reacted when those results were questioned.
Click to expand...

Wrong. You are intentionally mis-reading and mis-understanding their statement. CR did not plug their ears. By the time that statement was made CR was already working with Apple to discover why the battery life was as it was. CR's statement was them standing behind their testing methods and explaining why they were confident in them being accurate. At the time saying no to a re-test was the right choice. They were also right not to promise a re-test any time in the future. Until Apple got back to them they would have no idea what the cause was and if any fix could be done for it. So they couldn't promise a re-test after Apple was done with their investigation since they wouldn't know if what was found would warrant a re-test. They don't even have to do a re-test now, they're doing Apple a huge favor by agreeing to re-test and re-score the laptop now that it's fixed.
 
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