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Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

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Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#161

Post by KCUOJJQJ »

leetcrew wrote: post #109
jb775 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it that an ultrabook is not "possible" unless it has a battery that cannot be easily removed?

check out this teardown of the new 16" macbook pro: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Tea... everything inside the chassis that isnt pcb, heatpipe, or fan is part of the battery pack. it takes up almost all the otherwise unused space inside the device. how would you design a battery door for this chassis that doesn't decrease the size of the battery or make the whole thing much bigger?

What if the laptop was hollow where the battery cells are. And what if something that looks similar to the Nokia 5165 battery would be put into this place. The battery would contain the same bag shaped cells.

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#162

Post by userbinator »

noisem4ker wrote: post #122
duskwuff wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. That was more for consistency with how storage devices are sold -- if a 10^30 byte hard disk is described by storage vendors as "1 TB", it's incredibly confusing to users to have it show up as "931 GB".

There's nothing wrong with letting users learn how hard disk marketers are ripping them off, instead of playing their game. But, as usual, Apple prefers to choose blissful ignorance for their sheep customers. Besides that, we have proper units for binary multiples: KiB, MiB, and so on. I've only seen KDE use them properly so far, and it's a shame.

Besides that, we have proper units for binary multiples

Approximately 0 average users know about them, and of the technical users, only the truly irritatingly pedantic are going to use them (which may be why they've shown up in Linux).

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#163

Post by Zak »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #7

PSA: If you have a thinkpad, the lenovo settings app lets you control this too. In lenovo vantage, go to Device > My Device Settings > Battery settings > Battery Charge Threshold.

For Linux users, there's TLP.

https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#165

Post by Zak »

floatrock wrote: post #117
rb808 wrote: post #105

Its amazing how dumb most charging is for smart devices. I plug my phone in every night and it does a quick charge then sits there and does nothing the rest of the night. It even knows my alarm clock time, surely it should be smart enough to slowly charge all night.

It's not necessarily that it's dumb, there's a bit of battery physics and chemistry involved. If you look up EV charging curves for example [1], the first bit goes fast and the last bit slows down. A rough analogy I've heard is it's like blowing up a balloon -- as it gets bigger, there's more back-pressure so it gets harder to fill up the last bit. That's why the EV roadtrip strategy is "frequent fast-charging" -- yo…

It's not that adding additional charge to the battery is difficult. It's that the current has to be tapered off when the battery is near-full so it doesn't go over its rated voltage.

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#166

Post by askafriend »

kohtatsu wrote: post #160
anamexis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing they screwed up on was not telling people they were throttling. They're still doing it (which is good).

To be fair that's a pretty big thing to screw up. I commend Apple for a lot (see my last 3 comments), but I think they cross the line of too-voodoo too frequently. I think they'd do well to dispel more magic.

That "issue" was way overblown.

Apple's change did the right thing. It fixed a ton of older phones which before were rendered unusable since they would experience random shutdowns due to naturally degraded Li-Ion batteries.

Every manufacturer should implement the kind of fix Apple did (and I'm sure at this point, they have).

They even mentioned the change in the original release notes for the iOS update.

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#167

Post by battery_cowboy »

floatrock wrote: post #115
atombender wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my understanding that modern EVs like the Kia Niro EV or the Chevy Bolt work this way. When nominally charged to 100%, the actual charge is closer to 80%. A 75 kW battery will typically only go to 64 kW.

During one of the last few hurricanes, Tesla did an OTA update that unlocked extra range for people trying to leave. I seem to remember it being something like the hardware capacity is one number but there's a software upsell that you normally need to pay to unlock full capacity. But it may have also been a "we'll push the normal operating parameters to give you this extra boost", don't quite remember.

With their Powerpack products, Tesla oversizes the inverters and capacity a bit to deal with reduced capacity over time, so if you have a 1 MWh battery, they might install 1.15 MWh and limit to 1 MWh so that in 20 years it still has a 1 MWh capability.

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#168

Post by alltimenoob »

vpEfljFL wrote: post #140
rubber_duck wrote: post #53

I got a top spec 15 MBP a year ago and I have to say the experience is appalling - 4000$ device that goes full airplane takeoff levels of noise at any serious workload, no ability to control performance (I would gladly throttle the CPU sooner to avoid everyone in the office turning my way when I start an emulator or keep the fans at lower RPM but constantly instead of letting the CPU idle at 60-70 degrees with no fan…

Laptops isn't designed for serious workloads. It's a small portable devices to hash some errands at starbucks. You can't change physics laws unfortunately to make all the heat disappear somewhere. Keep in mind Intel marketing as well which advertises CPU with way less heat than they expose in real life. The way you have this machines is because apple is commercial company and they should follow market demands. "10 co…

"10 cores", "silent": you can only choose one.

No. It's "10 cores", "silent", "5mm thick": choose two. Personally I don't see the point in having a laptop thinner than 20mm. I would pay very good money for a 25mm thick, reasonably powerful laptop with super quiet cooling.

The Thinkpad T440s was dead quiet. It was the first generation of thinkpads with a 15W CPU instead of 35W. A current mobile CPU configured to 15W TDP would be powerful enough for basically any task that you would throw at a single computer. Instead of keeping things quiet, manufacturers focus on making laptops thin enough to replace a knife.

On current laptops, the noise level tends to follow the system load very closely. Just putting a bit more thermal mass into the cooling system would allow for a much more steady noise level, which is much less annoying (and the fan would not have to spin up at all on short load bursts like starting a VM).

Re: Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

#170

Post by valuearb »

copperx wrote: post #85
wrs wrote: post #42

I've noticed that on newer (past few years) MacBook Pros, if their battery runs down too far they refuse to start up, even when plugged into the charger. The battery has to charge for 10-15 minutes with the "dead battery" icon on the screen. It's exactly the same behavior as iPhone/iPad. In past MacBook models, the battery could be dead--or even completely removed--and the charger would power the laptop fine. Anyone…

This is the most irritating thing about the iPhone. Phone shuts down in the middle of an important call? Sorry, you'll have to wait 15 minutes before you can call again. This doesn't happen in my Pixel phones. Plug it it, turn it on. I would be irritated to no end if this happened to my laptop.

Get a better charger
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