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I found this statement interesting. >The new guts are getting you better performance but also better battery life with what Apple says is 10 hours of web brows
by cmiller1 11y ago
I found this statement interesting.
>The new guts are getting you better performance but also better battery life with what Apple says is 10 hours of web browsing or 11 hours of iTunes movie playback.
Movie playback used to be considered the de facto test of the most rigorous power use a computer would go through. Spinning DVDs and hard drives have been replaced with SSD, hardware accelerated decoding of video has replaced maxing out your CPU.
On the other hand, web browsing used to be considered a light use of power. Pull some network content into memory, parse some basic html, etc. Now with javascript EVERYWHERE and the rising complexity of web pages, web browsing has become one of the most taxing things you can do as far as power use is concerned. In fact, on my MacBook Pro now that OS X tells you which processes are using the most power, web browsers like Safari and Chrome are the only thing I ever see show up in "Apps using significant energy"
- massysett 11y agoIndeed, I use Safari because it seems neither Firefox nor Chrome are optimized at all for battery usage. Chrome is a huge power hog. I wonder if it's the same on the Windows side; has Microsoft optimized IE (or the new browser, whatever it's called) for power usage?
- allcentury 11y agoIf I'm traveling I also use Safari but prefer Chrome when doing web dev.
- freehunter 11y agoThat's why I use Safari as well. The difference in power usage is enormous between Safari and Firefox. I have Windows on Bootcamp but I don't know if Microsoft breaks down power usage like Apple does. I could compare Firefox to Edge, otherwise.
- Caprinicus 11y agoIt's almost purely a function of CPU usage especially if you have an SSD. I don't think the mac power usage thing takes into account GPU usage but for that you'd probably want to download something third party to check the watt usage itself.
- stcredzero 11y agoIn the early days of SSDs, power draw of an SSD was usually around the same as for a spinning platter. Has this changed?
- milankragujevic 11y agoAccording to OCZ's marketing material (http://ocz.com/consumer/ssd-guide/ssd-vs-hdd http://ocz.com/consumer/ssd-guide/ssd-vs-hdd), SSDs use 2-4 watts vs 7 watts for HDDs.
- chrisper 11y agoIt does in Windows 10
- digi_owl 11y agoWhat is the chance that MS and Apple access certain APIs that others can't? This either because they are not documented, or because of the amount of special case code that would be required.
- coldtea 11y agoNone. For one, Safari's rendering engine has been open source from the beginning. You can compile webkit from scratch, note the similar battery efficiency AND check it's code. What's it with Apple that brings out the conspiracy theorists in people? (other pet peeves: "they purposefully remove ports to sell more adapters", "they purposefully cripple mobile web apps", etc).
- WildUtah 11y agoApple really does do nasty things to drive short term profits while hurting user experience. Why does Apple charge $130 for a $5 LTE antenna on iPads or $100 for a $3 64GB SSD chip on iPhones? Why do they cripple entry level iPhones with only 16GB? Why do they have a long history (recently ameliorated) of selling Macs with far too little RAM to be useful and charging ten times the market price for upgrades? Just because they aren't guilty here doesn't mean Apple hasn't behaved badly at some point. And when a company prizes short term profits from loyal customers over long term profits and gains of market share, that isn't a conspiracy -- it's a strategy.
- coldtea 11y ago>Apple really does do nasty things to drive short term profits while hurting user experience. Why does Apple charge $130 for a $5 LTE antenna on iPads or $100 for a $3 64GB SSD chip on iPhones? Why do they cripple entry level iPhones with only 16GB? Because market segmentation. It's a concept in sales as old as Adam Smith.
- scholia 11y agoYou can do market segmentation without abusing your customers.
- kevingadd 11y agoEdge is very power efficient on Windows 10, assuming your drivers allow it to do full hardware acceleration. Their rendering stack and JS engine are very competitive.
- tim333 11y agoI find Chrome with uBlock origin and Ghostery installed is pretty low power. It seems to run at about 1% of CPU if I don't watch video. Without the extensions it uses way more.
- plaguuuuuu 11y ago99% of the effort is executing 50 tracking/analytics sites' JS, with most sites also including invisible flash applets somewhere on the page
- tim333 11y agoyeah - I'd forgotten I have flashblock too. That probably helps also.
- kilroy123 11y agoHell yes. That's why I use the Chrome extension, the great suspender: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...
- bostonvaulter2 11y agoIt bugs me that nearly all chrome extensions require "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit". No thanks.
- chongli 11y agoBlame Google for a lack of granularity in their permissions.
- JonathonW 11y agoThat's because Chrome's permission model isn't very granular. If you're doing something that needs to be able to interact with any website (like that tab suspender thing), you get that scary warning, regardless of whether or not it's actually reading or changing data on all websites, because the permission indicates that it can, and there's not a less granular option available to declare. The other option for extensions is to specify certain sites that they work with (this is the "read and change all data on 'x.com'" permission prompt). That only works for site-specific extensions (like Reddit Enhancement Suite, or Camel Camel Camel).
- seoguru 11y agoyou can get the source and check it out yourself: https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender
- compactmani 11y agoYou've highlighted one of the many advantages to browsing with javascript off by default. I think at this point it should really only be used for must-have cases.
- 83457 11y agolike voting on hackernews?
- anujanpan 11y agovoting works with javascript off
- ascagnel_ 11y agoCorrect. Voting works, but the arrow icon will not update.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoNo, that's not true. Voting works properly, at least in my experience. My current config: OS X, Firefox 45.0.2, NoScript 2.9.0.11. What doesn't work properly is the search at the bottom of the page. For that I switch to Safari (with JS enabled).
- charlesdm 11y agoIsn't like 90% of the web broken these days without JS?
- giancarlostoro 11y agoYes, but that's why I use an extension like NoScript. If it's too badly broken I enable domains 1 by 1 till I get enough content, sometimes websites just look odd or behave odd but still give you what you came for. It also helps to have FlashBlock as well, which will stop plenty of flash adverts from loading in the background.
- blumentopf 11y agoI assume the videos available on iTunes are encoded in an H.264 profile that can be decoded entirely on the GPU, so the CPU would indeed be mostly idling during playback.
- izacus 11y agoYep, you'll also get H.264 served on Safari, while Chrome will get VP9 which isn't hardware decoded and will cause the fans to whirr. There's a h264ify chrome extension that forces YouTube to serve H.264 to Chrome on OS X so it can be hardware decoded. It significantly reduces battery drain.
- gchokov 11y agoCool tip! Thank you.
- Relys 11y agoWhy is there no official support? Don't you already pay for the license for the hardware decoder?
- wolf550e 11y agoYou get accelerated H264 in Chrome which you paid for (through Apple), but YouTube prefer to serve vp9 if you can decode it, to save their own licensing fees. MS Edge only reports being able to decode vp9 if you have hardware acceleration for it, for battery life.
- astrodust 11y agoThe "not invented here" principle strikes again.
- magicalist 11y ago> but YouTube prefer to serve vp9 if you can decode it, to save their own licensing fees There are no licensing fees for distributing free/ad-supported h264.
- Intermernet 11y agoInterestingly, the thing that drains my battery most is running a VM in virtualbox, even when it's doing nothing. I'm not really surprised by this, but it would be interesting to see how much Virtualbox hooks into the power-saving functionality on the host machine, and if this can be optimized. I'd have thought that a VM that's pretty much idle would be able to somehow utilize the host computer's power saving methods. Maybe it can, but I haven't enabled it in the VM settings... Any tips?
- fpoling 11y agoIf you want to prolong battery life with VM, use Parallels or Fusion, not Virtual Box [1]. I suppose VB just does not implement power saving hooks or, perhaps, implementing them brings too much complexity into the software. [1] http://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/13/ http://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-f...
- tachion 11y agoOr, if you want even longer battery life, use Veertu instead Parallels or Fusion ;)
- fpoling 11y agoIs there a benchmark that shows power consumption savings from Veertu in a realistic settings? In any case, until Veertu support USB devices it is not much use for me.
- tmaly 11y agoI just use homebrew and skip the virtualization all together. I only use 2-3% of my battery while riding the train and working for 90 minutes.
- coldtea 11y agoWhat does homebrew have to do with virtualization? Homebrew is not for replicating a deployment environment in your work machine.
- tedmiston 11y agoI'd be curious to hear how the 10 hour benchmark with Safari compares to using Chrome.
- jkmcf 11y agoI tried Safari for a while, but there were many annoying quirks, some which may be fixed now (every n new tabs open slowly, safari sync slowing things down, some important-to-me sites not rendering properly, ...) With Chrome, The Great Suspender[1] seems to work well at reducing background tab CPU. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...
- make3 11y agoI feel it also tells a lot on the progress of "mobile" gpus
- Jare 11y agoGo to https://www.shadertoy.com/ https://www.shadertoy.com/ and show those smug GPUs who's boss!
- BallinBige 11y agogmail especially! in chrome
- stcredzero 11y agoNow with javascript EVERYWHERE and the rising complexity of web pages, web browsing has become one of the most taxing things you can do as far as power use is concerned. Javascript has become the new Flash!
- rayiner 11y agoMovie decoding is substantially offloaded to dedicated hardware circuits in the GPU that can do the job with minimum power. HTML rendering runs on the CPU.
- mseri 11y agoServo might change this in the distant future :)
- lazyjones 11y ago> On the other hand, web browsing used to be considered a light use of power It would make a better test if they reported battery life when web browsing both with and without ad blocking. It'll certainly make a noticeable difference.
- CamatHN 11y agoYou can pretty much guarantee their web browsing wouldn't be very intensive. Probably flicking around some lightweight pages on the Apple site.
- ethbro 11y agoI feel like there should be a Law out there somewhere that, given multiple choices, marketing will invariably pick the scenario that results in the largest number. I heard the sentiment from Conte at Georgia Tech with regards to Amdahl and speedup, but it seems to hold generally whenever any type of numeric performance measure is presented.
- mrmondo 11y agoI have a rMB from 2015, I easily get 10-13 hours out of it unless using flash of Java. It's a great portable laptop but BADLY needs 16GB of RAM, it would / could just be so much better if you weren't limited to 8GB especially with browsers / websites the way they are these days you chew that up in no time.