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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

#81

Post by the_pwner224 »

sahaskatta wrote: post #16
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.

The Dell XPS 13 also offers an interface in the BIOS that lets you set a charge limit, hours not to charge the laptop, and a bunch of other great controls. The only big issue is that they don't expose it through a friendly UI within Windows 10. It's nonsense that I need to go to the BIOS to tweak these settings.

There's an application named something like Dell Command Center (maybe Dell Power Manager on windows?) that comes preinstalled with the default xps win10. Or you can get it yourself from the dell website. It exposes all of the bios settings.

There's also a DCC package for Linux which can do the same thing. I made a thin Python wrapper which would read a number and set that to the maximum battery charge limit (e.g. $ battery.py 85). Unfortunately I got rid of the xps so I don't have the script, but it was very simple. Hard part was figuring out what the cmdline arguments to the DCC executable were.

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

#82

Post by leetcrew »

jb775 wrote: post #44

Why not just get rid of built-in batteries entirely? Not only does it lead to unethical business practices (linking battery life to hardware performance), but it facilitates a privacy nightmare.

the built-in battery is what makes an "ultrabook" possible. lenovo still makes laptops with removable batteries if you really want such a device. consumer choice is not really the hallmark of the apple brand.

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

#83

Post by rubber_duck »

eecc wrote: post #79
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…

Just search for it https://www.eidac.de/

This is fan control - but I want CPU/GPU power control - I wouldn't mind lowering my boost clocks to limit peak temperatures on heavy workloads.

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

#84

Post by teejmya »

geoelectric wrote: post #28
ben_w wrote: post #23

Huh. That explains why my MacBook Air is doing so much worse than I expected from the number of cycles it’s reporting. It’s a mid-2013, so I’m not expecting much, but a few times I’ve seen “100%” when waking it unplugged, only for this to be immediately followed by an emergency shutdown, and when the reboot completes it claims “42%”. It’s plugged in almost continuously these days.

If you check the power tab under System Information, you can find some battery health info that might be illuminating. For example, my newish MBP16: Charge Information: Charge Remaining (mAh): 8362 Fully Charged: Yes Charging: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 8647 Health Information: Cycle Count: 18 Condition: Normal Looking it up, specced full capacity is 8818 mAh, so I'm at 98% health right now--probably lost a point…

FruitJuice is a good app for this. https://imgur.com/dY0n6Uw

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

#85

Post by copperx »

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.

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

#86

Post by lloeki »

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.

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

#87

Post by shantara »

geoelectric wrote: post #28
ben_w wrote: post #23

Huh. That explains why my MacBook Air is doing so much worse than I expected from the number of cycles it’s reporting. It’s a mid-2013, so I’m not expecting much, but a few times I’ve seen “100%” when waking it unplugged, only for this to be immediately followed by an emergency shutdown, and when the reboot completes it claims “42%”. It’s plugged in almost continuously these days.

If you check the power tab under System Information, you can find some battery health info that might be illuminating. For example, my newish MBP16: Charge Information: Charge Remaining (mAh): 8362 Fully Charged: Yes Charging: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 8647 Health Information: Cycle Count: 18 Condition: Normal Looking it up, specced full capacity is 8818 mAh, so I'm at 98% health right now--probably lost a point…

8246 mAh after 34 cycles on my 16" 2019 MBP. That's a lot worse than I expected.

What's the best way to slow battery degradation if I use it for 8-10 hours daily for work? Run MBP from an outlet and do full discharges once a week? Run MBP from the battery and recharge the battery when it depletes? Run MBP from the battery, but charge it only to 80%?

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

#88

Post by adav »

lilyball wrote: post #54
adav wrote: post #39

Hey Apple, this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the clean USB-C ports arrangement on new MacBooks! Charging Mode 1) By plugging the charger into the rearmost port, full 100% fast charge please. Charging Mode 2) By plugging the charger into the other, nearer port, I’m indicating that we’ll be here for a while... please trickle my battery up to 50-75% to prolong the battery’s lifespan. Indicate which mo…

This is a great way to confuse 99% of customers. It also violates the idea that all 4 ports are identical, and also poses a problem if the user has stuff in the other ports because now they need to swap multiple cables every time they want to change charge behavior.

Agreed it could be confusing without some sort of prompt. Or maybe it could be opt-in from the settings just like the iOS “Optimised Battery Charging” toggle.

Wrt all the ports being identical, it’s a bit of an edge case but there are already plenty of MacBook USB-C oddities. Instructions for monitors strictly plugged in on either side springs to mind as an example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210754

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

#89

Post by haxxorfreak »

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…

I use a 15" 2018 MacBook Pro with the six-core i9 at work and Turbo Boost Switcher[1] has been my favourite discovery. It lets you disable the turbo boost function of the processor which means the fans never spin up and the battery lasts longer. I pretty much always leave it disabled unless I am going to be transcoding video or compiling something and can't notice a performance hit even with a couple of VMs running.

The only bad thing is that it requires a kernel extension so will stop working when they are deprecated in 10.16. Hopefully Apple introduces a similar feature as there were rumours of a "Pro" mode coming which would ramp up the fans and clock, my hope is they add a complementary "quiet" mode or similar to disable turbo boost.

[1] https://github.com/rugarciap/Turbo-Boost-Switcher

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

#90

Post by mjayhn »

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…

If it makes you feel any better I branched off to a XPS 13 2in1 4 months ago in between jobs (where I use the latest mbp) and used the thing for 2-3 months with no MBP as backup.

I absolutely hate it. It throttles constantly even after undervolting it. I had to do a bunch of black magic to get it to sleep properly (which is evidently happening to every Dell) and eventually gave up on that and just set it to hibernate any time the lids closed (it's 32gb so that adds about 30 seconds to the start up time). I've spent more time tweaking this thing, reading forums and reddit about how to make it perform DECENTLY than I did building my last hackintosh and I don't enjoy that experience ever. When you get past all these issues it's still Windows 10 which I just find to be the most annoying OS I've ever used.

Just got my new MBP yesterday and couldn't be more excited to be back on osx. I do really, really wish my MBP was smaller and a 2 in 1, though.

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