The fact that TLP exists is a great step. It wasn't that long ago that I had a dozen different custom hacks in place to get better power usage while on battery, now TLP does all of them and more.
Still kind of disheartening that I get 10-14h battery life on my 13" 2015 Retina under macOS, but it drops to 4-5h on untweaked Ubuntu. I can push that to about 7-8h with the help of Powertop and TLP. That's still a vast, vast chasm to overcome for Linux. Yes, I know Macbooks do non-standard things with Wi-Fi and Thunderbolt controllers (special ACPI sleep modes etc.), that isn't a bad thing, Linux should attempt those as well. To end on a positive note: I do agree TLP (and other powersaving tools) are good progress.