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JQ555888

macrumors newbie
Aug 20, 2020
2
0
The best way to make your battery last a long time is to leave it plugged into power and fully "charged".

If you do this, then it will do exactly what the original thread starter was trying to do - cycle the charge between 80% and 100% spreading the load around all the cells to prolong battery life as long as possible.


This only applies to a battery that is left in a drawer for months at a time and you should avoid doing so at all costs.

Leaving a battery unplugged at *any* charge level will damage it. The best thing to do is have it plugged into mains power so the complex charge circuitry can keep things active and prolong the life of the battery. Messing with how this works using custom software is a bad idea.


You're wrong. Not using the battery destroys it, the battery needs to be kept active, but not pushed very hard, to last as long as possible.

"1000" charge cycles is an approximate estimate of how long the battery will last with "normal" use. As soon as you do something out of the ordinary, such as never use the battery, that number goes out the window and does not reflect how many charge cycles you're going to use.

Bottom line, if you want the battery to last keep it plugged in as much as possible and do not try to mess with Apple's built in battery management, which is the best in the world.

I’m sorry but here I am in the middle of quarantine in this pandemic being saddened by how many uninformed people there are in this thread.

Like, for two months straight from now the only literal PC that I will have access to is my laptop as I don’t have a desktop computer in my college accommodation. I genuinely don’t see how letting the OS control my battery (fully charged then letting it slightly drip below 100% then charging it back to full again) will be any more beneficial than if I just tell it not to mess with my battery over this two month period. Sure the battery needs to be kept active but you must not forget that battery degradation takes place more significantly under frequent use and that’s just a no brainer problem. No seriously, how hard is it for people to just understand this. Heck people can have different use cases and I’m sure the OP has acknowledged all of this before. Yeah I’m confident Apple engineers spent tens of thousands of hours debugging and optimizing their battery but this scenario I can assure you is different from how most people use their battery. Just let OP ask his question ffs.
 

JQ555888

macrumors newbie
Aug 20, 2020
2
0
You're right, they're wrong. When the battery reaches 100% the charging stops and the Mac starts using the mains power, and it doesn't resume until the charge drops by a few percent BY ITSELF.

Using the freshly charged battery when there is electricity available from the outside would be stupid as hell. Seriously guys, have you even thought it through?

Pretty sure this is not true if I need to use my laptop plugged in for two months straight as a desktop PC because of quarantine measures. I’d rather if I can just use Apple’s private API and tell the system to not mess with my battery at all during this two month period. Tbh you know what, if he’s right then Apple wouldn’t have implemented an “Optimized Battery Charging” method in 10.15 in the first place. Why you fake technicians wouldn’t just leave the OP alone to ask his question is beyond my comprehension.
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,869
7,024
Perth, Western Australia
Pretty sure this is not true if I need to use my laptop plugged in for two months straight as a desktop PC because of quarantine measures. I’d rather if I can just use Apple’s private API and tell the system to not mess with my battery at all during this two month period. Tbh you know what, if he’s right then Apple wouldn’t have implemented an “Optimized Battery Charging” method in 10.15 in the first place. Why you fake technicians wouldn’t just leave the OP alone to ask his question is beyond my comprehension.

My MacBook Pro 2011 was plugged in almost exclusively for the first 4 years of its life. It has 87% battery health today. It hasn't really been used much at all since 2015.
 
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