Question about MacBook Pro retina 13" battery life

Well, I've always followed Apple's recommendations for my MBPs (as well as my iPad or any other Apple product I have).

I can count at least 5 people a month mentioning that line you quoted, its ambiguous, vague, and leaves open a barn door for people to interpret it as = drain (dry).

Im sure you discharged yours,

other people are reading (in their minds) "take it off power and squeeze the battery until it squeals"

Apple's Adaptive Charging system uses a microchip inside the battery that measures the amount of charge inside each cell, passes that info on to the system controller, which then allocates the correct amount of charge to each cell.

http://www.google.com/patents/US6204634

And Apples 'magic' Adaptive Charging, doesnt prevent:

deep discharges from self draining

user abuse

parasitic top offs when always in sleep and on charge.

heat damage to chemistry from rapid discharges. ( = frequent gaming on batt.)

it does however put a brake on top and bottom maxes and final 20% charges, and better estimating.

Some things that should be mentioned in that link but arent are:

Rapid discharging

High perpetual SOC (however it says "Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.")

Parasitic loading (ala sleep and charge)

Heat (not environmental) due to rapid discharging which causes chemical breakdown

That your battery is subject to chemical aging regardless

That lithium cells dont like being low

That lithium cells dont like being always fully charged.

That a lithium battery is aging the very second its made

etc. etc.

As one battery tech once said "go ahead and hotwheel it, and squeeze it dry, we can always put in a new battery for you" 😊

See above what I said to baboa

Thats if the notebook is perpetually on charge (and off) .

However unfortunately that scant article on that link doesnt mention that fact.

also unfortunate that article is very poorly worded since MANY people have wrongly interpreted that to mean squeeze it dry (i.e. discharge the battery = drain it).

Most people dont know the connotation and or denotation between DRAIN (dry) and DISCHARGE (drop the charge from full).

As for any implication of "drain (wrongly connotated with discharge) the battery" VERY LOW, there is no battery expert on this earth that advocates that, encourages it, or recommends it.

That line from same is ambiguous, vague, and leaves open a barn door for people to interpret it as = drain (dry).

Thanks you proved my point I was making to Baboa 😍

In which case youd be doing the same as Baboa, the right thing.

other people are reading it another way, due to vague wording.....other people are reading (in their minds) "take it off power and squeeze the battery until it squeals"

~~~~~~~~~Anyway, in my case the MBP will be connected to power almost all of the time.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

"Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time."

no worries really no, dont squeeze it, dont always have it plugged in, and dont store it away long term with less than 50% charge and not more than 70% (roughly)

If you research Lithium battery chemistry, while not AS hard as low draining, lithiums do NOT like sitting topped off all the time at 100% or close to same.

JennySHS25 wrote:

the Macbook Pro uses a lithiom-ion battery. These batteries should be charged to 100% and then allowed to drain almost all the way to 0%. Then charge to 100% uninteruped. They need to run full-charge cycles.

Yeah, that is pretty horrible and wrong and battery-killing advice. It has not been recommended since the batteries were NiCad almost 20 years ago. It was correct for NiCads, but it is dead wrong for lithium batteries.

From BatteryUniversity.com:

How to Prolong Lithium-Based Batteries

If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses.

My MacBook Pro battery follows the shallow-discharge advice given by Battery University. It currently reads between 96% and 98% battery health after 291 cycles and almost 2 years. In contrast, my friend's MacBook Pro battery is getting a Service Battery warning. The difference?

She would drain her battery empty almost every time.

So after years of use, my shallow-discharged battery is acting like new, yet her deep-discharged battery is giving signs of death.

That's all the proof I need.

Its good to get backup on that important point..... TY 😍

Network 23 wrote:

So after years of use, my shallow-discharged battery is acting like new, yet her deep-discharged battery is giving signs of death.

That's all the proof I need.

@ Plotinus..

Thanks for your advice. Much appreciated!

I just need abit more clarifty on a couple of points you made (if you dont mind?) ...

When you mentioned ride the battery btwn 20% - 80% :

1. does this mean that you use the battery down to 20 and then recharge it back up to 80?

2. how often would you recomend riding the battery btwn 20 - 80?

3. how often would you charge the battery back up to 100%, (if at all???)

I will not correct you because you are correct.

Here is some Apple support information on batteries:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1446

Ciao.

Yes, you're mostly correct. But...

Doug Lerner2 wrote:

If once a month you let them drain down a bit I think that's all you really need for good battery life.

If you're talking about the long tradition of "calibrating" a battery, Apple says that calibration is no longer recommended for the non-removable batteries in the current line:

Apple Portables: Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance

Current Apple portable computer batteries are pre-calibrated and do not require the calibration procedure outlined in this article.

But if you were talking about just taking off the power cord and using it for a bit, then you were right on that one too.

Hi new mac user here. Great thread here thanks! just finding conflicting advice (may be due to my reading of it) between the following statements

"Keep it plugged in when near a socket so you keep the charging cycles down on your LiPo (lithium polymer) cells / battery, but not plugged in all the time. When not being used for several hours, turn it off."

and

"In a perfect (although impractical) situation, your lithium battery is best idealized swinging back and forth between 20 and 85% SOC (state of charge) roughly."

i would really appreciate if somebody could clarify this for me. Thanks in advance

aar-mbpro wrote:

Hi new mac user here. Great thread here thanks! just finding conflicting advice (may be due to my reading of it) between the following statements

i would really appreciate if somebody could clarify this for me. Thanks in advance

If you want authoritative information on Apple batteries and their care and usage, read these Apple support articles:

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/batteries_power/

This, I trust, will clear up any questions you may have and eliminate any misinformation or contradictions that you may have encountered.

Ciao.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I have read through the vast majority of that and wasn't able to find the answer before. is there any where in particular you could point me to??

Thanks