Apple comments on Consumer Reports faulty MacBook Pro tests

Back in December, Consumer Reports issued a statement saying they could not recommend Apple’s new MacBook Pro because the latest batch of MacBook Pro laptops exhibited “battery life results (that) were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next.”

Many people saw issues with the tests as soon as they were published, and as it turns out, they were right. Consumer Reports were using hidden settings meant for developers, instead of using the normal settings that people use everyday, to test the battery.

“We appreciate the opportunity to work with Consumer Reports over the holidays to understand their battery test results,” Apple said in a statement provided to The Loop. “We learned that when testing battery life on Mac notebooks, Consumer Reports uses a hidden Safari setting for developing web sites which turns off the browser cache. This is not a setting used by customers and does not reflect real-world usage. Their use of this developer setting also triggered an obscure and intermittent bug reloading icons which created inconsistent results in their lab. After we asked Consumer Reports to run the same test using normal user settings, they told us their MacBook Pro systems consistently delivered the expected battery life. We have also fixed the bug uncovered in this test. This is the best pro notebook we’ve ever made, we respect Consumer Reports and we’re glad they decided to revisit their findings on the MacBook Pro.”

Consumer Reports updated their MacBook Pro page, but they are blaming the bug for the previous faulty results. The true problem was their methodology.