Apple Removes "Time Remaining" in New OS Update

Perhaps you might have heard stories about some of the people who'd bought the new MacBook "Pro" models with the Touchbar and nothing but USB-C ports having power problems. Specifically, many people were apparently having extremely short operational life with their new units, like 3-4 hours instead of the "up to 10 hours" number that Apple advertises.

Perhaps that Touchbar is a huge, always on battery suck?

Anyway, Apple released an OS update to address some bugs that are supposed to help with the battery life issue. One of the things that they fixed -- and I saw this on Macrumors before I actually installed the update and saw it in real life -- they removed the "Time Remaining" calculation from the battery utility in the menu bar.

Why? According to MacRumors,

Apple said the percentage is accurate, but because of the dynamic ways we use the computer, the time remaining indicator couldn't accurately keep up with what users were doing. Everything we do on the MacBook affects battery life in different ways and not having an accurate indicator is confusing.

Admittedly, it's true. The time remaining is and always has been inaccurate. It's a guess, sort of like that Mileage calculation that your car makes based on how your driving at the moment. It's performance is pretty crappy when you accelerate -- or launch an app say. Still, to remove it?

It reminds me of a worse version of their solution for the AntennaGate issue, where they just changed the software to not be as dynamic in reflecting your cell signal. Oh, that fixed it...

Seriously, most of us Pro users benefit from having the time remaining -- it's a helpful estimation if your somewhere like, on a long flight with no power. It can give you guidance to turn the brightness down on your display. Or save that presentation rather than starting another slide. It's a much easier to read battery speedometer than percentage.

I put this one in the FAIL category.