The Mac battery and its urban legends

Technology advances steadily and steadily. In the last decade we have gone from having a telephone to call and send SMS to having an entire multimedia center in our pocket, not to mention GPS applications. The biggest problem with new technologies is that, logically, they need energy to function and this energy comes from batteries. The problem is that batteries do not advance as fast as the technology they have to supply and it exists in practically every device that uses them. Apple MacBooks enjoy a lot of autonomy, and more since the latest models, but we also have another problem: the lack of information. That is the reason we wrote this article, to explain the myths that surround the Apple laptop battery.

But let's start with the basics. There are still people who have doubts about when to charge their computer battery for fear of charging it when it should not. This must be forgotten. Problems of this type were present in older batteries, where we had to fully charge a Nokia 3310 after having let it turn off by itself. Currently, although it is said that full cycles are worthwhile, batteries do not suffer from this problem, so in normal use, we can load them whenever we want.

If you are going to store your MacBook for a long time, leave it half charge

If we are going to store our MacBook, we will have to take into account several aspects:

• If we are going to have the computer stopped for a long time, it must be taken into account that the battery can lose autonomy if we do not turn it off at a suitable time. You don't have to be very precise, if not you don't have to turn off the MacBook with the battery on either end, Neither fully charged nor with a dead battery completely.
• If we turn off the computer when it has no battery left, it could enter a full discharge status Or, in other words, much simpler and to make it clear, he could die. On the other hand, if we turn off the computer when the battery is fully charged, it will lose autonomy.
• It is also important do not save it in any of the idle states. As little as they consume, these states are to save battery, not to cancel consumption. Eventually the battery would be completely drained and could go into a completely discharged state (die).
• Regarding the place where we are going to store it, we must take into account that it is not a humid place, neither too cold nor too hot. What must be taken into account more is that the ambient temperature does not exceed 32º.
• If we are going to keep it for more than six months, we must charge the battery over 50% every six months. This is necessary, since the batteries discharge over time even if we are not using them.
• If we've had it stored for a long time, it may need to be charged for about 20 minutes before it responds. Patience, nothing happens.

Extreme ambient temperature can influence the battery

Electronic devices, such as MacBooks, are designed to be safe at normal room temperatures. Problems may appear more at prolonged high temperatures. Whenever possible, we have to keep our MacBook at a temperature less than 35º, but that will not always be possible depending on the area and the season of the year.

If we expose our MacBook to prolonged high temperatures, we could see its effectiveness drop permanently, which means that if before it took an hour to run out, later it will run out in 50-55 minutes.

In any case, this section usually has a greater margin than the manufacturers advise us, but prevention is better than cure.

If you use a sleeve on your MacBook, it is not necessary to take it off, but ...

Check don't get too hot. Some cases are very well designed from an aesthetic and / or ergonomic point of view, but they are not so well designed to let computers breathe. These covers can cause the device to get too hot, something that is not dangerous because it is not likely to cause a fire, but, as we have explained in the previous section, high temperatures as a habit can cause autonomy to decrease over time. .

No need to calibrate the battery

As stated by Apple, devices with built-in batteries do not need calibration. They are already calibrated as soon as we take them out of the box, but only in models from 2009 onwards, which are the following:

• 13-inch MacBook (late 2009).
• MacBook Air.
• MacBook Pro with Retina display.
• 13-inch MacBook Pro (Mid 2009)
• 15-inch MacBook Pro (Mid 2009)
• MacBook Pro 17-inch (early 2009).

If your MacBook is older than previous models and you experience strange battery behavior, you can calibrate it. To do this, we will follow these steps:

1. We connect the power adapter and fully charge the computer. We will know that it is 100% charged when the battery indicator lights turn off and the adapter light turns from amber to green.
2. We disconnected the power adapter.
3. We use the computer until it goes to sleep.
4. We reconnect the adapter and let the computer fully charge.

To avoid confusion, it is always advisable to have the updated operating system. Although it is also true that it is possible that an update arrives with a new bug, the news usually includes performance improvements and bug fixes, so it is easier for an update to correct an autonomy problem that adds it to us.

In any case, if the problem is serious and occurs while the computer is still under warranty, it is best to schedule a call with the Apple support and that they give us a solution. Sometimes we fix the problem during that call and in the worst case it will be fixed or replaced with a new computer.