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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

#211

Post by hombre_fatal »

aj7 wrote: post #208

I have a loaded 2015 MacBook Pro. My wife insisted on it - we felt flush at the time. It spends 6 months unused, and six months as a desktop, plugged in. But if you go to use it mobiley, the battery life is about 40 minutes.

Sounds like you need to just get a new battery. That was 5 years ago.

I got 4-6 hours on my 2015 MBP depending on what I was doing after two years.

You could get a program like iStat Menus to keep an easy eye on your CPU to see if something is using it. I think it's required in 2020 where Spotify, Discord, Slack, Steam, a browser tab you opened last week, etc. will regularly decide to start eating a whole core in the background.

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

#212

Post by Zarel »

gruez wrote: post #144
greedo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps try https://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/ This can extend your battery a decent amount, and obviously would cut down on fan noise.

...at the cost of speed. A big % of a computer's performance comes from its turbo clocks. For instance, the 16" MBP with 6 cores is 2.6GHz base, up to 4.5GHz turbo. Disabling turbo in this means you're slowing down the computer as much as 40%. Also, it's questionable whether running at lower clocks saves power overall. Apparently it's more efficient to run higher clocks, but for shorter periods of time than it is to…

I think there's a difference between turbo boosting for short workloads and turbo boosting for long workloads. Especially since a big cause of turbo boosting for long workloads is because of a bug in some app I'm running, like an infinite loop doing nothing useful.

Turbo Boost Switcher's website says it can adjust Turbo Boost based on fan speed (only in its Pro version). This is probably the best way to do it: disable Turbo Boost only when it's running for long enough to turn on the fan.

I honestly think a "no fan noise" setting should be a built-in feature.

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

#213

Post by Polylactic_acid »

kohtatsu wrote: post #200
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the right thing. People thew out their phones because they were slow not knowing they could have been fixed cheaply with a new battery.

Hopefully nobody actually throws phones out. That bundle of molecules does not belong in a landfill. My library has a dropbox to refurbish old ones for blind people, for example, but I'm sure dozens of places will be happy to take them off your hands.

They certainly do, I have seen it often. I'm not even sure what to do with old phones. I don't know of any recycling places. I usually just let them sit in a stack in a draw. I once had a phone come with a bag to mail for recycling but I haven't seen something like that for a while.

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

#214

Post by dartdartdart »

leetcrew wrote: post #11
intopieces wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 50%?

the optimal charge state for long-term storage of a lipo cell is about 33%. 50% is a nice buffer on top of that if you use it unplugged for an hour or so, then put it away.

Manufacturers send products out at 60% so I assumed 50% would be the best if you're not expecting to lose charge over time

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

#215

Post by kalleboo »

varjag wrote: post #131
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of the original PowerBook Duo, which couldn’t run plugged in if the battery was missing.

I think this was a "feature" among all pre-Jobs Powerbooks.

Naw, I have a PowerBook 145B and 540c, both have batteries that are long-dead and removed and they run fine.

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

#217

Post by progman32 »

lloeki wrote: post #86
rootusrootus wrote: post #3

I wish they'd give us the option (on the iPhone and iPad as well) to arbitrarily set the maximum charge level. Just like on my Tesla, I'd like to be able to tell my phone not to charge above 80%.

iOS has made steps towards this by learning your charging habits (e.g at night), going to 80%, and wait to the last minute before topping up.

My Asus Zenfone 6 does this. It also seems to modulate the charge current to a low level if charging overnight. A tap on the notification engages full charge power.

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

#218

Post by progman32 »

praseodym wrote: post #111
duskwuff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones will selectively delay charging past 80% if you're at home and if your usage history indicates that the phone will be left on the charger for a while longer. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512

Apparently a notification will show up when optimised charging is enabled. I’ve never seen it, because the functionality also requires Significant Locations and other location services (listed near the bottom of the page) to be enabled. That seems to me to be quite unfriendly to privacy. And given that I always charge my phone overnight and use my phone’s alarm function, it could simply use that as the target time to…

My Asus Zenfone 6 just looks at my next alarm for this purpose.

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

#219

Post by EGreg »

I suddenly started getting this notification:

To reduce battery aging, iPhone learns from your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use it

What does that mean? The remaining 20% happens right before you wake up, otherwise the battery isn’t stressed so much?

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

#220

Post by adrianmonk »

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…

They aren't saying that the charging circuit is dumb because it slows down as it gets nearer to 100%. (That's how it works when it is trying to charge as fast as it reasonably can.)

Instead, they are saying it's dumb because it doesn't slow down when it can charge fast but doesn't need to charge fast.

If your phone is at 40% and you plug it in, it will probably finish charging in about 2 hours. But if you plug it in at bedtime, you don't need it to be done in 2 hours because you'll still be asleep. So why not figure out the lack of urgency, then take 4 or 5 hours and keep the battery temperature lower?

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