5 ms·

I'm surprised that the author hasn't mentioned the positive effect it has had. After upgrading the OS and seeing the new menu entries I reported a number of ap

by icefox 11y ago

I'm surprised that the author hasn't mentioned the positive effect it has had. After upgrading the OS and seeing the new menu entries I reported a number of applications that would show up as using a lot of energy and within a few releases there was a change note usually mentioning some simple fix which dramatically reduces the wake up's of the application or removing a long running animation that didn't add any value. This little menu addition has probably helped the battery life for macbook users more than any other change.

wmf 11y ago
I suspect that's the real reason why Apple is weighting wakeups heavily and exaggerating the energy impact: it shames developers into making their apps more efficient.
- anologwintermut 11y ago
  Except Chrome, which on every laptop I've ever used seems to decrease battery life by about a 1/3rd compared to Safari and is always marked as using significant power. (Currently 10.9.5 with chrome 44 on a 2014 macbook air, but I've had the issue on newer computers at work)
  - icefox 11y ago
    If your a developer at Google that is looking for a 20% time project here is your opportunity! Make some fixes, write it up and post about it somewhere and we will up vote your story and give you sweet HN karma. :)
    - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
      20% time is more or less axed[0]. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/google-20-percent-time-policy-2015-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-20-percent-time-policy...
      - CardenB 11y ago
        thats not really true.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    At least for me, that's partly because Chrome makes it _so_ easy to "overuse" it. I'm right now writing this comment in a window with 29 tabs open, I have three other chrome windows with 22, 17, and 14 tabs open respectively. It's sitting there at 42.3 in the Energy Impact column and 32.23 in the Avg column - but to be fair it's got a whole bunch of stuff going on (two separate gmail instances and a fair few other javascript-heavy webapps as well). I've probably go more bogomips going on in this one browser window that all the machines I learnt to program on were capable of between them...
    - brobinson 11y ago
      I'm at 47.91 average impact for FF 40.0 with uBlock Origin and Ghostery, no Flash installed. Doing local web development and poking around some news sites to read about all these market crashes. Only a few tabs open at a time for me.
    - arm 11y ago
      Hmm… comparing that to the amount of tabs and windows I have open in Safari right now (which is actually pretty low for me since I usually have more than 250 tabs open) seems to make Chrome look even worse… Specifically (running Safari v7.1 on OS X v10.9.5), I have 18 windows open containing 2, 18, 26, 16, 2, 12, 17, 13, 21, 6, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, and 4 tabs for a grand total of 147 tabs. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it’s also downloading two files in the background right now. It’s showing up with 13.2 in the Energy Impact column and 4.47 in the Avg column. (Oh, and since I already have it open, I may as well mention that Firefox 39.0 shows up as around 14.7 in the Energy Impact column (although it keeps spiking to 23.9 every few seconds) and 2.99 in the Avg column with 2 tabs open in 1 window with no downloads).
  - bentruyman 11y ago
    This can be seen exceptionally when watching videos where some implementations prefer Flash. I often fall asleep to documentaries (maybe not a typical use case) and I've seen massive gains in battery life using Safari (using HTML5 video) vs. Chrome (using Flash). Granted, this isn't a fair comparison as one is using a "native" implementation and one is using Flash. But I've seen something like 250% gain in battery life – which sometimes means the difference between seeing the ending and not. It's interesting watching one's projected battery life climb from 40m to 1h 40m simply by swapping one application for another. However, it's unfortunate some websites prefer Flash-based implementations over their native counterparts. Although this trend seems to be shifting in favor of those that are native. And I assume the smart folks at Google are taking note. YouTube, for example, has done a particularly spectacular job at adding AirPlay functionality to their HTML5 player. (Disclaimer: I work for Apple)
    - suddenlyme 11y ago
      There is currently no good browser for apple. Safari (8.0.8) struggles with HTML5. Firefox (40.0.2) struggles with video/media of any sort and bogs down with multiple tabs. Chrome (44.0.2403.157 (64-bit)) drains your battery. I'm on a MacBook Pro (10.10.5, 13-inch, Early 2015). They are all uniformly disappointing.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >Safari (8.0.8) struggles with HTML5. What?
        marquis 11y ago
        No Stream API support for example http://caniuse.com/#feat=stream http://caniuse.com/#feat=stream
        suddenlyme 11y ago
        Struggles may have been the wrong verb. I meant this: https://html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome-44/safari-8.0.html https://html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome-44/safari-8.0.h... Straightforward things like pattern matching on form inputs http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-color http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-color http://caniuse.com/#feat=download http://caniuse.com/#feat=download
  - kristofferR 11y ago
    Chrome 46 will have massive improvements related to performance/energy usage: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/08/20/chrome-is-finally-getting-faster-on-mac/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/08/20/chrome-is-finally-gett...
    - mironathetin 11y ago
      <offtopic> Do you notice that this is the typical developer answer to bad software? I don't believe that anymore until I have the next version in my hand for a test (in case you might answer again, next version...). </offtopic>
      - s_kilk 11y ago
        Huge improvements to $TECHNOLOGY are always "just around the corner".
      - tdkl 11y ago
        Specially with Google: "Bugs in Lollipop ? Check out M, it's going to have 923 bazillion new APIs, coming out soon™ !"
- nnethercote 11y ago
  Exposing power consumption data is a great idea. Exposing inaccurate and opaquely-computed power consumption data is a less great idea.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Let's see if Cobra Effect will kick in.
    - mtmail 11y ago
      Adding info because I didn't understand the reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect "The cobra effect occurs when an attempted solution to a problem actually makes the problem worse. This is an instance of unintended consequences."
      - agumonkey 11y ago
        Thanks. Cobra effect often kicks in when someone tries to rig the game positively causing people to recreate the problem to benefit from it.
  - Angostura 11y ago
    What makes you think it is inaccurate?
    - nnethercote 11y ago
      Because I'm the author of the post that this comment thread is about, and one of my primary conclusions in the post is that "Energy Impact" is inaccurate.
- Someone 11y ago
  I am not sure they are weighting wakeups heavily. "but with a “tax” of 500 microseconds for each wakeup" could be a reasonable estimate of the time the OS needs after wakeup before it can hand over the CPU to the process that did the wake up. That time isn't spend in the process that wakes up the system, but can be attributed to it.
  - nnethercote 11y ago
    The article discusses this. Look again at the first table. Compare the power values (measured in Watts) which climb slowly, vs. the "Energy Impact" values which climb incredibly quickly. If "Energy Impact" was a good measure it would correlate closely with real power consumption. It doesn't.

by icefox 11y ago

wmf 11y ago

I suspect that's the real reason why Apple is weighting wakeups heavily and exaggerating the energy impact: it shames developers into making their apps more efficient.

anologwintermut 11y ago
Except Chrome, which on every laptop I've ever used seems to decrease battery life by about a 1/3rd compared to Safari and is always marked as using significant power. (Currently 10.9.5 with chrome 44 on a 2014 macbook air, but I've had the issue on newer computers at work)
- icefox 11y ago
  If your a developer at Google that is looking for a 20% time project here is your opportunity! Make some fixes, write it up and post about it somewhere and we will up vote your story and give you sweet HN karma. :)
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    20% time is more or less axed[0]. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/google-20-percent-time-policy-2015-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-20-percent-time-policy...
    - CardenB 11y ago
      thats not really true.
- bigiain 11y ago
  At least for me, that's partly because Chrome makes it _so_ easy to "overuse" it. I'm right now writing this comment in a window with 29 tabs open, I have three other chrome windows with 22, 17, and 14 tabs open respectively. It's sitting there at 42.3 in the Energy Impact column and 32.23 in the Avg column - but to be fair it's got a whole bunch of stuff going on (two separate gmail instances and a fair few other javascript-heavy webapps as well). I've probably go more bogomips going on in this one browser window that all the machines I learnt to program on were capable of between them...
  - brobinson 11y ago
    I'm at 47.91 average impact for FF 40.0 with uBlock Origin and Ghostery, no Flash installed. Doing local web development and poking around some news sites to read about all these market crashes. Only a few tabs open at a time for me.
  - arm 11y ago
    Hmm… comparing that to the amount of tabs and windows I have open in Safari right now (which is actually pretty low for me since I usually have more than 250 tabs open) seems to make Chrome look even worse… Specifically (running Safari v7.1 on OS X v10.9.5), I have 18 windows open containing 2, 18, 26, 16, 2, 12, 17, 13, 21, 6, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, and 4 tabs for a grand total of 147 tabs. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it’s also downloading two files in the background right now. It’s showing up with 13.2 in the Energy Impact column and 4.47 in the Avg column. (Oh, and since I already have it open, I may as well mention that Firefox 39.0 shows up as around 14.7 in the Energy Impact column (although it keeps spiking to 23.9 every few seconds) and 2.99 in the Avg column with 2 tabs open in 1 window with no downloads).
- bentruyman 11y ago
  This can be seen exceptionally when watching videos where some implementations prefer Flash. I often fall asleep to documentaries (maybe not a typical use case) and I've seen massive gains in battery life using Safari (using HTML5 video) vs. Chrome (using Flash). Granted, this isn't a fair comparison as one is using a "native" implementation and one is using Flash. But I've seen something like 250% gain in battery life – which sometimes means the difference between seeing the ending and not. It's interesting watching one's projected battery life climb from 40m to 1h 40m simply by swapping one application for another. However, it's unfortunate some websites prefer Flash-based implementations over their native counterparts. Although this trend seems to be shifting in favor of those that are native. And I assume the smart folks at Google are taking note. YouTube, for example, has done a particularly spectacular job at adding AirPlay functionality to their HTML5 player. (Disclaimer: I work for Apple)
  - suddenlyme 11y ago
    There is currently no good browser for apple. Safari (8.0.8) struggles with HTML5. Firefox (40.0.2) struggles with video/media of any sort and bogs down with multiple tabs. Chrome (44.0.2403.157 (64-bit)) drains your battery. I'm on a MacBook Pro (10.10.5, 13-inch, Early 2015). They are all uniformly disappointing.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >Safari (8.0.8) struggles with HTML5. What?
      - marquis 11y ago
        No Stream API support for example http://caniuse.com/#feat=stream http://caniuse.com/#feat=stream
      - suddenlyme 11y ago
        Struggles may have been the wrong verb. I meant this: https://html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome-44/safari-8.0.html https://html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome-44/safari-8.0.h... Straightforward things like pattern matching on form inputs http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-color http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-color http://caniuse.com/#feat=download http://caniuse.com/#feat=download
- kristofferR 11y ago
  Chrome 46 will have massive improvements related to performance/energy usage: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/08/20/chrome-is-finally-getting-faster-on-mac/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/08/20/chrome-is-finally-gett...
  - mironathetin 11y ago
    <offtopic> Do you notice that this is the typical developer answer to bad software? I don't believe that anymore until I have the next version in my hand for a test (in case you might answer again, next version...). </offtopic>
    - s_kilk 11y ago
      Huge improvements to $TECHNOLOGY are always "just around the corner".
    - tdkl 11y ago
      Specially with Google: "Bugs in Lollipop ? Check out M, it's going to have 923 bazillion new APIs, coming out soon™ !"
nnethercote 11y ago
Exposing power consumption data is a great idea. Exposing inaccurate and opaquely-computed power consumption data is a less great idea.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Let's see if Cobra Effect will kick in.
  - mtmail 11y ago
    Adding info because I didn't understand the reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect "The cobra effect occurs when an attempted solution to a problem actually makes the problem worse. This is an instance of unintended consequences."
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Thanks. Cobra effect often kicks in when someone tries to rig the game positively causing people to recreate the problem to benefit from it.
- Angostura 11y ago
  What makes you think it is inaccurate?
  - nnethercote 11y ago
    Because I'm the author of the post that this comment thread is about, and one of my primary conclusions in the post is that "Energy Impact" is inaccurate.
Someone 11y ago
I am not sure they are weighting wakeups heavily. "but with a “tax” of 500 microseconds for each wakeup" could be a reasonable estimate of the time the OS needs after wakeup before it can hand over the CPU to the process that did the wake up. That time isn't spend in the process that wakes up the system, but can be attributed to it.
- nnethercote 11y ago
  The article discusses this. Look again at the first table. Compare the power values (measured in Watts) which climb slowly, vs. the "Energy Impact" values which climb incredibly quickly. If "Energy Impact" was a good measure it would correlate closely with real power consumption. It doesn't.