Information technology: TECH

All-day battery life? Only if your workday is about three hours long, claim some owners of Apple's new MacBook Pro.,

Owners of Apple's new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar are complaining that they're not getting anywhere near the stated battery life.,

Apple's own support community, along with sites such as Reddit, are ablaze with complaints that the battery is not delivering the promised 10 hours.,

A user posting to Apple's support forum claimed their battery ran down in three hours.

I just received my new 15" MacBook Pro with touch bar. The battery life is horrible!!! I have Safari open with 6 tabs and with 95% battery, I am told that I have under 3 hours of battery life left! I thought these things were supposed to get 10 hours? I ran the battery down in 3 hours last night only browsing the web. I wasn't watching videos, just browsing. Is there something wrong with my laptop.?

It is currently unclear what might be at the root of this problem, but an issue with the discrete Radeon graphics chip is suspected ( although far from confirmed ).,

So far, beyond keeping usage to a minimum or keeping the MacBook Pro connected to a power outlet, there are no fixes. It is likely that users will have to wait for a patch from Apple ( or return the MacBook Pro for an exchange or refund ).,

Rather than fix the time remaining estimate in its Battery menu bar widget, Apple removed it in the macOS 10.12.2 update. Here's how to get it back.,

Following complaints from owners of the new MacBook Pro that they weren't getting the battery life they expected, Apple decided that the problem wasn't with the hardware but with the code in macOS that calculated how long the battery would last.

But rather than fix the code, Apple decided to remove it. If you relied on that feature - no matter how inaccurate it was - then tough.,

Well, perhaps not. If you still want an estimate of how long your battery might last, then you have to turn to third-party apps for the answer. Here are two apps that will bring this feature back.

The first - and a firm favorite of mine - is iStat Menus 5., Along with showing you an estimate of how long your battery will last, iStat Menus 5 allows you to nerd out on a ton of data relating to your Mac, from real-time CPU, GPU and network usage, to temperature monitoring and the health of your storage drives.,

A single license costs $18, but there's a free trial for you to see what it's all about.

iStat Menus 5

The second app is Battery Health 2. This is a free app (with in-app purchasing to unlock more advanced features) that tells you pretty much all there is to know about your Mac's battery.