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Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery proble

Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically. They did it by adding another controller and an independent firmware to the battery itself, but there was no better tech at that time. M powered MacBooks added auto hold-off (discharge to 80%, keep it there) or postpone charge (because the battery is used too rarely), to the list of tricks they know, and these are just the visible ones to the user.

pkolaczk 3y ago
> discharge to 80%, keep it there Where? AFAIK this is a feature you need a third party app like Aldente for. The OS does not offer any way to control battery charging level. Yes, it tries to be smart and guess when you need full charge and sometimes decides to charge to only 80% but that doesnt work for all users except the ones with very regular routines and there is no manual control.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I meant the automatic one. My charge cycles are not very predictable, but periodically my Mac says that It'll hold-off charge, and uses battery until 80%, then uses power adapter. Then charges the battery fully later in the day if I'm connected. Sometimes it flat out refuses the charge. Then I disconnect and use the battery until 30% or so. Then charge when convenient (clarification: It'd possibly charge if I hit a certain percentage, but I always disconnected voluntarily, to give a good use to battery. I lasts a day. Why not?). My MacBook Air M1 has 165 cycles in 3 years, at 90% of design capacity. I think this is a very solid management of the battery for a computer used every day literally. My MacBook Pro is at ~85% after 8 years. I don't remember total cycles now.
  - dalore 3y ago
    > Why not? I find running on battery, lots of things are throttled or disabled. CPU is slower for example. That's probably a good reason for why not.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      I generally do mundane tasks like SSH sessions or zoom meetings when I'm on battery. Heavier tasks are always offloaded to my desktop system, most of the times, so running on battery here and there doesn't impact many things in my case.
      - dalore 3y ago
        A video call though isn't that mundane. Google Meet often has my cpu and fans spinning. I do prefer Zoom as it uses fewer resources. But of course, it will work on battery.
        bayindirh 3y ago
        For an M1 powered MacBook Air, none of them creates a significant power spike on the system. I use both regularly, generally one hour at a time, and battery percentage doesn't take a noticeable hit after the call, and the computer doesn't warm up.
    - nathanasmith 3y ago
      >I find running on battery, lots of things are throttled or disabled. CPU is slower for example. FWIW, the performance and CPU features are the same on Mx based MacBooks whether they're plugged in or not.
matsemann 3y ago
> Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. > M powered MacBooks added (...) Things that Lenovo laptops have had for a generation?
- bayindirh 3y ago
  IBM Thinkpads have "cap charge at n%" setting since 1999 or something, but it's not smart. You set it. It was also present in HP and Dell's business notebooks for quite some time, but again, it's not smart. Just a pre-defined percentage. Apple manages maximum charge capacity automatically depending on the way you use your computer.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    I've had smart charging in other laptops for ages as well. I'm not saying Apple isn't doing good, I'm just disputing the "Apple is on another league" sentiment, when it's mostly based on a lack of knowledge of what's happening outside the Apple ecosystem.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Well, I didn't witness on any other current generation device, at least yet. I'm not a fanboy. I'll be happy if others are doing this in some form, esp. if it's independent of the OS itself.
    - another2another 3y ago
      My colleague just had to replace his HP Elitebook Notebook because the battery had bulged so much it had cracked open the case. For this to be happening in 2023 means that some manufacturers at least, seem to be not managing this potential problem at all.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        N=1 doesn't really tell you much of anything about anything.
chrismorgan 3y ago
> My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically. That may or may not be noteworthy. Despite half my family using MacBooks, and some having had major battery problems, I’ve never heard of such a notification as you describe (including at least one where I’d certainly have expected to hear about it). And the similar system SMART for storage devices is notoriously unreliable: I’ve personally had devices with dire warnings chug along merrily for plenty more years, and observed one or two failures that never received any warnings.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I used three batteries on that particular MacBook and it always shown a "! Service Battery" warning before things went bad. The battery life, and shape of the battery was indicative of anything, either. Oh, don't bring up SMART. I remember long-testing >100 disks, and most of them passed (it took hours), and all of them failed within 10 days after facing real workloads. We needed a temporary storage for migrating things, but we lost no data, because it was just a copy operation.

pkolaczk 3y ago

> discharge to 80%, keep it there Where? AFAIK this is a feature you need a third party app like Aldente for. The OS does not offer any way to control battery charging level. Yes, it tries to be smart and guess when you need full charge and sometimes decides to charge to only 80% but that doesnt work for all users except the ones with very regular routines and there is no manual control.

bayindirh 3y ago
I meant the automatic one. My charge cycles are not very predictable, but periodically my Mac says that It'll hold-off charge, and uses battery until 80%, then uses power adapter. Then charges the battery fully later in the day if I'm connected. Sometimes it flat out refuses the charge. Then I disconnect and use the battery until 30% or so. Then charge when convenient (clarification: It'd possibly charge if I hit a certain percentage, but I always disconnected voluntarily, to give a good use to battery. I lasts a day. Why not?). My MacBook Air M1 has 165 cycles in 3 years, at 90% of design capacity. I think this is a very solid management of the battery for a computer used every day literally. My MacBook Pro is at ~85% after 8 years. I don't remember total cycles now.
- dalore 3y ago
  > Why not? I find running on battery, lots of things are throttled or disabled. CPU is slower for example. That's probably a good reason for why not.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    I generally do mundane tasks like SSH sessions or zoom meetings when I'm on battery. Heavier tasks are always offloaded to my desktop system, most of the times, so running on battery here and there doesn't impact many things in my case.
    - dalore 3y ago
      A video call though isn't that mundane. Google Meet often has my cpu and fans spinning. I do prefer Zoom as it uses fewer resources. But of course, it will work on battery.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        For an M1 powered MacBook Air, none of them creates a significant power spike on the system. I use both regularly, generally one hour at a time, and battery percentage doesn't take a noticeable hit after the call, and the computer doesn't warm up.
  - nathanasmith 3y ago
    >I find running on battery, lots of things are throttled or disabled. CPU is slower for example. FWIW, the performance and CPU features are the same on Mx based MacBooks whether they're plugged in or not.

matsemann 3y ago

> Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. > M powered MacBooks added (...) Things that Lenovo laptops have had for a generation?

bayindirh 3y ago
IBM Thinkpads have "cap charge at n%" setting since 1999 or something, but it's not smart. You set it. It was also present in HP and Dell's business notebooks for quite some time, but again, it's not smart. Just a pre-defined percentage. Apple manages maximum charge capacity automatically depending on the way you use your computer.
- matsemann 3y ago
  I've had smart charging in other laptops for ages as well. I'm not saying Apple isn't doing good, I'm just disputing the "Apple is on another league" sentiment, when it's mostly based on a lack of knowledge of what's happening outside the Apple ecosystem.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Well, I didn't witness on any other current generation device, at least yet. I'm not a fanboy. I'll be happy if others are doing this in some form, esp. if it's independent of the OS itself.
  - another2another 3y ago
    My colleague just had to replace his HP Elitebook Notebook because the battery had bulged so much it had cracked open the case. For this to be happening in 2023 means that some manufacturers at least, seem to be not managing this potential problem at all.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      N=1 doesn't really tell you much of anything about anything.

chrismorgan 3y ago

> My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically. That may or may not be noteworthy. Despite half my family using MacBooks, and some having had major battery problems, I’ve never heard of such a notification as you describe (including at least one where I’d certainly have expected to hear about it). And the similar system SMART for storage devices is notoriously unreliable: I’ve personally had devices with dire warnings chug along merrily for plenty more years, and observed one or two failures that never received any warnings.

bayindirh 3y ago
I used three batteries on that particular MacBook and it always shown a "! Service Battery" warning before things went bad. The battery life, and shape of the battery was indicative of anything, either. Oh, don't bring up SMART. I remember long-testing >100 disks, and most of them passed (it took hours), and all of them failed within 10 days after facing real workloads. We needed a temporary storage for migrating things, but we lost no data, because it was just a copy operation.