I've been getting 6 - 7 hours average runtime on a full charge for the last few weeks, but I'm working (Xcode, vim and builds) and I don't think I have a representative work load - but I do note that this laptop 'seems' to be as long-lived without the charging cable as my previous machine. I suppose I'll pay more attention over the next week and see if its as bad as everyone makes it out to be - so far, I haven't even noticed.
One thing I do really like though, is being able to charge from either side of the laptop. This actually improves things for me when in 'hacking in bed mode', since the previous left-sided configuration was inconvenient .. and is now not an issue.
rMBP 15" 2.7ghz i7, 16G RAM, 500G SSD, Intel HD 530, etc.
So far I haven't loaded the machine up with anything heavier than my preferred homebrew+iTerm+vim+cscope+make/XCode tools, and I've been able to work pretty well with it all week. Going to try to keep it as clean as possible.
One thing I do really like though, is being able to charge from either side of the laptop. This actually improves things for me when in 'hacking in bed mode', since the previous left-sided configuration was inconvenient .. and is now not an issue.