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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

#301

Post by incognito_limey »

ratww wrote: post #56
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…

I've been explained that this is because those computers might need more power than the AC Charger is able to provide, so the battery is also used as a "backup" for burst loads. This [1] seems to confirm it. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20081225111200/http://support.ap...

Thanks for the info. I recently discovered this by running folding at home on my 16inch pro overnight, and waking up to my battery being at 5%. I suspect running the CPU full bore over night was too much for the charger to keep up with.

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

#302

Post by lloeki »

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.

They were certainly more protected than the almost naked ones I see right now which I can singlehandedly bend (but won't given the fire hazard). And not LiPol batteries too, which are super nasty in that regard: the more energy-dense the battery is, the more of a hazard.

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

#303

Post by hrktb »

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.

So they are trying to automatise a system so people don't have to think about it, but a bulk of reactions are about finding ways to make it behave better in their specific use case.

Doesn't it mean Apple basically half-assed it ?

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

#304

Post by hrktb »

anamexis wrote: post #158
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.

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

They also needed to put the option to disable it. Now anyone who was pissed off by this behavior can disable it, which makes it a way better situation.

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

#306

Post by currysausage »

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…

At least, it would be nice if they told me about this requirement on the Settings sheet where I enable "Optimized Battery Charging". I was wondering why it never seems to kick in. Thank you for the clue!

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

#307

Post by neurostimulant »

fluffything wrote: post #275
freeqaz wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be worth trying Linux on that. At least you'd have more control over the sleep issues. I have a Dell Precision 7540 that I was having issues getting sleep to work. It would panic on resuming I think because of WiFi but I couldn't fix it. So I enabled "hybrid-sleep" which is like hibernate and sleep together. Before it sleeps, it flushes the RAM to disk. When it wakes up, it tries to boot from RAM and, if succes…

I have arch linux on that same machine and there are indeed a million knobs to tune these things. I haven't yet managed to make it work as good as a macbook, after putting in around ~100h by now into the problem. I went back to macbooks ~1 month ago. The Dell is still brand new (4 months old, ~4000$ fully spec'ed), but my employer does not want it back, so it is now sitting in a drawer in my office. I ended up billin…

Why did you use arch instead of other distro that known to work on many laptops, such as Ubuntu?

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

#308

Post by ekzy »

I've got a Mid 2014 MBP Retina and I'm happy with it, except for playing video games. I tried to upgrade to one of the new MBP last year and I hated it. I sent it back. I tried a windows with WSL, as well as an ubuntu setup, on a very powerful and sleek laptop, but I sent it back too. I'm back with my good old 2014 retina. If I really need a new laptop, for now the only viable option is a MBP Retina 2015, how crazy is that?

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

#309

Post by bb123 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #201
Razengan wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core thermal management of macOS seems to be better than Windows: https://youtu.be/LGOmbNRlZdM?t=495 (8:15) And I've always gotten better battery life on average on MacBooks than other laptops, and in macOS than in Windows on the same Mac. The problem is when there are bugs (of which there are many) in the other higher-level daemons and third-party apps that get stuck in some task and cause the CPU to unnecessari…

Running at 95C all the time is not "better".

If the hardware is designed to handle it, why not?

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

#310

Post by Hamuko »

philwelch wrote: post #241
ratww wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been explained that this is because those computers might need more power than the AC Charger is able to provide, so the battery is also used as a "backup" for burst loads. This [1] seems to confirm it. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20081225111200/http://support.ap...

This probably goes hand in hand with the unremovable batteries. Back when they had removable batteries you could run it on AC with no battery installed and it would work fine.

Do new MacBooks not power on with just AC if you take out the battery?
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