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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

#281

Post by saagarjha »

outworlder wrote: post #143
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why doesn't the UI report 80% as 100%? Because the last time they tried "silently manage the battery without the user being part of the decision" it didn't go over real well?

That wasn't even managing the battery, per-se(although it is power management, it wasn't strictly about health). It was reducing clock speeds to extend the amount of time the device would be on. They still do it even if the device has a healthy battery: drain the phone to 1% and you will see. Rather than running at full blast and shutting down, you can extract more runtime. Some EVs do something similar: the Nissan L…

> the Nissan Leaf, when the battery gets really low(and I mean it, far past the point where you lost all percentage and mileage indicators), will enter a reduced power mode (or popularly called "turtle mode")

TIL. I thought I was pushing it coming home with 2 miles left…

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

#282

Post by nonninz »

manmal wrote: post #278
p1necone wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the iPhone CPU thing was such a big deal. It's a perfectly sane power management feature. Apple had to choose between two options: A. Devices lose battery life per charge over time, eventually powering off randomly because not enough power can be supplied to run the hardware. B. Devices throttle their CPU over time to keep battery life per charge relatively stable, and avoid powering off. Apple…

It was such a big deal because Apple has a monopoly on „acceptable“ replacement batteries (the system shows a warning when you insert a 3rd party battery), and they charge 3x their actual worth.

If I buy an used iPhone I want to make sure all the parts inside are original.

The warning is there for that reason. The phone still works with 3rd party batteries.

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

#283

Post by saagarjha »

NullPrefix wrote: post #57
rusty__ wrote: post #36

I wish people would stop using the generic 'MacBook' when talking about 'MacBook Pro' and 'MacBook Air' - makes it very diffcult as a 'MacBook' owner to find support articles.

Don't they have specific code names? A9999X?

A1534.

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

#284

Post by rpastuszak »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #209
knodi123 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ha, well I've noticed my battery discharges if I play Civ 6, even when plugged in. so that confirms it too.

Are you using the smaller Macbook-vanilla charger or something? I game on my Macbook Pro + two monitors without discharge unless I accidentally use my girlfriend's OG Macbook charger instead of the Pro's charger that's twice the brick. And it can definitely handle Civ 6 (2017 and 2019 MBP).

Not sure about the parent, but my friend an I had exactly the same issue, both of us are on 16inch MBP 2020 (Civ 6 on Steam).

Incredibly annoying once your laptop suddenly slows down and dies after 5h of gameplay. How is this even acceptable? Regardless whether it's a $400 or $3k laptop, I'd expect it to work when charging. I'm two apps (photoshop, lightroom) away from switching to Linux.

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

#285

Post by dalemyers »

saagarjha wrote: post #277
hombre_fatal wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using the smaller Macbook-vanilla charger or something? I game on my Macbook Pro + two monitors without discharge unless I accidentally use my girlfriend's OG Macbook charger instead of the Pro's charger that's twice the brick. And it can definitely handle Civ 6 (2017 and 2019 MBP).

I believe some of the MacBook Pros ship with chargers that cannot power them when running at full tilt. (Interestingly, I believe the original iPad Pro did as well.)

Yup. I've got last years Macbook Pro, fully specced, and when I run lots of compilations in Xcode the battery steadily drains. I ran an intense script overnight a month or two ago and when I got back in the morning my battery was down to just a few percent. Thankfully the script finished just after that so I got incredibly lucky that it didn't run out all the way and lose all the progress.

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

#286

Post by rjvs »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #262
closeparen wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A removable battery requires its own protective shell, which costs weight and thickness. When it's not user serviceable, it can just be a bag of acid resting on the main board, piggybacking on the device's own case for the required protection.

The protective shell can be only the bottom side which replaces the bottom of the case. The internal laptop batteries are quite safe to handle if you don't use anything sharp on them. We let people handle phone batteries for ages and they weren't nearly as protected as those old laptop battery tubes.

The phone batteries that people handled did store a lot less energy though.

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

#287

Post by jankotek »

rpastuszak wrote: post #284
hombre_fatal wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using the smaller Macbook-vanilla charger or something? I game on my Macbook Pro + two monitors without discharge unless I accidentally use my girlfriend's OG Macbook charger instead of the Pro's charger that's twice the brick. And it can definitely handle Civ 6 (2017 and 2019 MBP).

Not sure about the parent, but my friend an I had exactly the same issue, both of us are on 16inch MBP 2020 (Civ 6 on Steam). Incredibly annoying once your laptop suddenly slows down and dies after 5h of gameplay. How is this even acceptable? Regardless whether it's a $400 or $3k laptop, I'd expect it to work when charging. I'm two apps (photoshop, lightroom) away from switching to Linux.

I would understand if $400 laptop had low power charger to cut price. But on $3k "pro" laptop it is just middle finger to customer.

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

#288

Post by radmarshallb »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #213
kohtatsu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Apple Store will take any phone in any condition and recycle it for you.

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

#289

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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…

Noticed this change straight away with my switch to the usb-c generation.

Really hate it, makes my laptop feel more like a “device” if you know what i means and makes it feel like the charger is insufficient for its job. Almost 20 years of using PowerBooks and even completely dead you could just plug them in and power worked straight away, now you have to do the 10 minute power button dance and the thing doesn’t even have a startup chime to tell you it’s worked.

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

#290

Post by sudhirj »

rpastuszak wrote: post #284
hombre_fatal wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using the smaller Macbook-vanilla charger or something? I game on my Macbook Pro + two monitors without discharge unless I accidentally use my girlfriend's OG Macbook charger instead of the Pro's charger that's twice the brick. And it can definitely handle Civ 6 (2017 and 2019 MBP).

Not sure about the parent, but my friend an I had exactly the same issue, both of us are on 16inch MBP 2020 (Civ 6 on Steam). Incredibly annoying once your laptop suddenly slows down and dies after 5h of gameplay. How is this even acceptable? Regardless whether it's a $400 or $3k laptop, I'd expect it to work when charging. I'm two apps (photoshop, lightroom) away from switching to Linux.

Probably more to do with FAA regulations than anything else. You can't put more than a 100W batter in a laptop, and the charger is 100W (96W, I think), but modern processors and GPUs need more than that at full speed with all cores, leave along fans and SSDs and screens. My similarly specced desktop runs at 400W, not including the monitor.

So yeah, we seem to have hit a limit with traditional chipsets. Probably why Apple is going full steam on their own ARM SoCs. The iPhones and iPads out now can do some pretty serious work, just imagine what could be achieved by bringing that power to the Mac.

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