Apple removed the “battery time remaining” indicator from the battery status menu in the latest version 10.12.2 of macOS. Apparently it wasn’t accurate.
Did you know that MacBook batteries have a dedicated chip that keeps track of how much energy goes in and out of the battery during all times? For example, the 13″ MacBook Pro from 2015 uses a BQ20Z451 “battery fuel gauge chip” from Texas Instruments.
The article, which was on hacker news days ago and I read back then, is basically agreeing with Apple’s position. The indicator doesn’t account for power consumption of the chipset and processor. The quote is dramatic and implies that shenanigans is happening. Poor reporting.
My understanding is that Apple tried to estimate the battery life left based on guess at the average consumption over varying periods of idle time (regular browsing or text editing) and aggressive use (gaming, videos).
Of course such estimates are always ridiculously inaccurate, because no one knows the future. The level of power consumption will multiply by a big factor compared between light and very demanding use, so even fifteen minutes of hardcore will cut the idle battery life by an hour.
Sure – but after this many years, have users already been trained to understand the limitations of this estimate? Is “nothing” really better than a rough approximation? Should the same logic be applied to other UI elements (eg. estimated time to copy files?)
I’m pretty sure any multi-celled lithium ion battery has a chip responsible for even charging/discharging of the battery. It’s not news.