MacBook Pro battery life problems news: Bug in laptops tested by Consumer Report caused the erratic battery depletion

Consumer Report tested the battery life on the new MacBook Pro laptops, and after reporting to Apple that their devices performed unsatisfactorily, the company evaluated the laptops and found a bug that caused the battery depletion. Meanwhile, Apple also says that the process used by Consumer Report may have caused the bug in the system.

Consumer Reports recently tested three MacBook Pros — two 13-inch models, one with Apple's new Touch Bar and one without, and a 15-inch model — in terms of battery lifespan.

Their results came out unsatisfactory as the battery life spans of each laptop were highly inconsistent from test to test. They ranged from as low as 3.75 hours up to the length of 19.5 hours.

Consumer Report then submitted the results to Apple, to which the company quickly took action of the problem and found out that the MacBook Pros being tested had a bug in their browsers.

Apple then cleared the laptops of the bugs by updating their software using Apple's Beta Software Program. The software update cleared the Safari browser of bugs, which enabled the MacBook Pros to deliver high results in terms of battery lifespan.

After testing it a second time, Consumer Report found that the laptops ran a range of 15.75 hours to 17.25 hours.

But Forbes reports that Apple points out that Consumer Report may have caused the bug to appear in the MacBook Pros' browsers.

Consumer Report turned off the local caching of web pages as part of their standard testing of battery life, and according to Apple, this caused the bug that fiddled with the laptops' battery life.

"This is not a setting used by customers and does not reflect real-world usage," Apple said in a statement to Consumer Report. Apple suggested that Consumer Report should be using "real-world parameters" that would be dependent on laptops and their manufacturers.