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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

#171

Post by jonny383 »

My 2017 13" Macbook Pro has seriously had garbage battery since the day I got it. I'm lucky to get 4 hours from it doing light browsing in Safari.

Comparatively, my 2014 13" Macbook Air had the best battery I've ever had. Routinely got 10 hours + doing the same thing.

And now, I have "service battery" in the tray icon. Cycle count: 101. After the battery is below 60%, any kind of "heavy load" (i.e. gcc) will just turn the thing off like a power cut.

Worst part is I can't even take it to get repaired because I'm stuck in SE asia under lock-down.

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

#172

Post by AshamedCaptain »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #136

So many people on here seem to be intent on micromanaging their device's battery. IMO the whole point is to let macOS handle it so you can focus on actual work. I know Apple has screwed up in the past with throttling iPhone CPU's (bad). At this point they know not to go to those lengths again.

What part of "setting a charging threshold" is "micromanaging". The entire motivation of being able to set a charge threshold is to get the software to do it, instead of being just plain silly by forcing yourself to change your plug in / unplug habits.

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

#173

Post by floatrock »

Zak wrote: post #165
floatrock wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for the clarification, the analogy clearly isn't very good.

Out of curiosity, have you found a better ELI5 analogy that doesn't bend over backwards with a rube goldberg setup of pipes and waterflow? I've struggled explaining this phenomenon to people buying EV's, where charging behavior become a regular thing people need to figure out.

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

#174

Post by dnr »

For Thinkpads running Linux, you can do this (somewhat manually) with tpacpi-bat:

https://github.com/teleshoes/tpacpi-bat

I set mine to stop charging at 85% and not start again until it drops below 75%. If I know I'm going to be away from power for a while (e.g. traveling) I manually tell it to charge up to 95%.

Anyone know if there's something like that for Android?

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

#175

Post by yakkers »

askafriend wrote: post #166
kohtatsu wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with how Apple did it originally was that it was completely opaque to the user. As far as the average user was concerned, their phone was slowing down for no reason.

The Battery Health menu should have been implemented from the start, and the controversy probably would have been completely avoided.

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

#177

Post by zozbot234 »

dnr wrote: post #174

For Thinkpads running Linux, you can do this (somewhat manually) with tpacpi-bat: https://github.com/teleshoes/tpacpi-bat I set mine to stop charging at 85% and not start again until it drops below 75%. If I know I'm going to be away from power for a while (e.g. traveling) I manually tell it to charge up to 95%. Anyone know if there's something like that for Android?

IIRC, F-Droid has a battery charge limiting app but the support is quite hit-and-miss depending on your hardware and it generally requires root access. There are some Android phones that offer this as a stock feature, e.g. in the ASUS "Zenphone" M series.

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

#178

Post by lilyball »

KCUOJJQJ wrote: post #157
lilyball wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not just get rid of built-in batteries entirely Built-in batteries allow for custom battery shapes that increase battery life or allow for thinner computers at the same battery life. They increase laptop durability by not requiring a removable battery cover. They allow for putting other components on top of the battery as well to better take advantage of the space inside the enclosure. > it facilitates a privac…

>Built-in batteries allow for custom battery shapes that increase battery life or allow for thinner computers at the same battery life. Why not putting these bag shaped battery cells in a plastic case? Couldn't this case still have any shape?

Besides wasting space, it also means the battery has to be a single monolithic entity, can't be too flat (or the case would use up the entire space the battery occupies), and can't have any components over it.

Take a look at this image: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/cBFfrfQPrPBFgV1s.h.... It comes from the iFixit MacBook Pro 15" Touch Bar Teardown (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Touch+Ba...)

It's 6 different cells, that span the entire width of the laptop. They're glued in, and they use pretty much every bit of space they can. There's also a ribbon cable going over them, which I believe is the trackpad cable.

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

#179

Post by mthoms »

askafriend wrote: post #166
kohtatsu wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

No, they didn't. The amended the release notes after the fact.

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/02/06/apple-on-ios-10-2-1...

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

#180

Post by vpEfljFL »

alltimenoob wrote: post #168
vpEfljFL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 T…

> Instead of keeping things quiet, manufacturers focus on making laptops thin enough to replace a knife

They focus on what customers want. If they want 10 cores 5mm thick notebooks, they'll get it. It'll be noisy but who cares. It'll be used to like facebook posts anyways. Professions will buy stationary computers for the heavy lifting anyways.

T440 is an awesome machine although X1 is more popular, which is kind of slender version of t440.

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