Mac: Battery Myths

Hey guys, I've been reading up on Lithium-Ion batteries and how the the Mac operating system handles it; but there are still a couple questions that are quite ambiguous.

I was wondering if any of you would be so kind to clarify things, once and for all! So here they are:

- Nice guy OS X displays 100% charge when the battery is really at 80%, for more recharge cycles

- When fully charged and plugged in, your Macbook does not take energy directly from the outlet, but instead depletes to ~90%, then charges it back up, repeating the cycle (while still displaying 100%)

- When you're at 0%, you're really just at <10%, so functions like time and geo-tracking don't get disabled

- Instead of keeping your Mac laptop plugged in all the time, you should let the percentage stay between 30-70% to lengthen lifespan of battery


Thanks for clearing things up, been dying to know for awhile now, to avoid inconvenience and prolong the lifespan of my MBA. Thanks again!

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Aug 13, 2015 9:14 PM

Reply
2 replies

Aug 13, 2015 9:33 PM in response to steve.zzz

I'm not sure if I can clarify everything you're asking about, but here's what I know. For a long lifespan, ions in a battery should move—that happens when the battery is being charged or discharged. Constantly keeping the battery at 100% reduces its capacity. That thing I learned by mistakes: since I mostly use my MacBook Pro with an external display, I have to keep the laptop plugged in. After few months of such use, coconutBattery shows only 70% of the full capacity. So run your laptop on battery regularly in order to preserve the capacity.

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Mac: Battery Myths

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