[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20081225111200/http://support.ap...

Otherwise, what's the point of having those things?

Then it’s a question of how many are impacted and how often, how support for USB-C factors in to the decision to purchase, etc., etc.

It’s a trade-off - they COULD build a laptop which can run everything at 100% 24/7 indefinitely, but it’d be heavier and more expensive, with zero benefits to their target audience of "people who only run at 100% for a few hours per day"

If there was any added weight it would be with the charger, not the laptop so... Incredibly unlikely.

It's way more likely that Apple just didn't design the connector to be able to deliver that amount of power. So they'd have to add a second one or switch connectors/design a new one.

Both would be suboptimal as well.

That’s what I’m talking about too

> If there was any added weight it would be with the charger, not the laptop so…

Whether it’s charger or laptop, that’s still more weight that the end-user needs to carry around in their backpack, which 99.9% of them won’t need

Only too-clever-for-their-own-good-designers like automagic things. No user does.

I don't understand why this would be a design assumption, especially for a portable device.

This isn't even an assumption for running applications on servers, especially the kind that serve up things like web requests. If you have pegged the CPU, your application will already be unstable.

Sure, the server can handle being pegged 24/7 from a power and cooling perspective, but in practical use no sysadmin will allow that to happen for very long.

  Isn't this bad design?

It's also not just Apple. Lower wattage Lenovo chargers (including ThinkPad) have two-prong adapters and plugs.

Sure, some of it is due to improved efficiency of the components, but when combined with power drain while on a charger under high loads, it's fairly obvious.

If you use one of these[1] then your laptop will charge more slowly than if you just plugged in the power directly.

[1] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...

* charging block

* male USB A to male USB C cable

EDIT: I just clicked your link; no I'm not using that. The cable is plugged into the charging block on one end and the laptop on the other end.

I game on my Macbook Pro + two monitors without discharge unless I accidentally use my girlfriend's OG Macbook charger instead of the Pro's charger that's twice the brick.

And it can definitely handle Civ 6 (2017 and 2019 MBP).

Incredibly annoying once your laptop suddenly slows down and dies after 5h of gameplay. How is this even acceptable? Regardless whether it's a $400 or $3k laptop, I'd expect it to work when charging. I'm two apps (photoshop, lightroom) away from switching to Linux.

So yeah, we seem to have hit a limit with traditional chipsets. Probably why Apple is going full steam on their own ARM SoCs. The iPhones and iPads out now can do some pretty serious work, just imagine what could be achieved by bringing that power to the Mac.

Reminds me of the early brick-sized mobile phones. Sure you could be wireless, but if you wanted to use it more than few minutes, you had to find yourself a power socket.

Normally, I'd call customer support and assume it's an issue with my device specifically. HN saved me a bunch of annoying phone calls.

Yes, that's exactly what the situation was. I was just trying to confirm the phenomenon of "battery can discharge if the AC adapter is temporarily insufficient"- but the core problem was my fault for sure.

do you consider that to be a faulty behavior, or just par-for-the-course of heavy workloads on mobile platforms?

i'd hate for that to be the new norm, I use the hell out of my mobile computers, I don't need them draining before I even unplug.

My laptop is one of the older magsafe ones, so the people talking about USB-C might be a YMMV kind of thing.

They are usually constructed of layers of battery material, wrapped in kapton tape or an equivalent, with the entire package shrink-tubed and a pigtail coming out the side for the device interface.

One could easily crush the unit by hand, the construction offers little to no protection from physical forces.

From the tear downs I’ve seen, it seems like the primary motivation for the non-removable battery is so they can cram it into every spare piece of space.

Oh right, the laptop looks pretty and the battery can't be fitted in one area without adding some thickness.

Im so sick over this form over function crap that everyone copies.

Making stuff removable is a lot more work; you have to build a way to hold the thing while it's on, you have to put in connectors, etc. With non-removable batteries they can just glue them on & solder the wires.

Not really saying it's a good thing, but I understand the decision.

Though in practice, the magsafe connector wasn't cat- or human proof meaning when one of those gets as much as near the cable it's byebye unsaved work and in worst case byebye boot because of a messed up system. I ended up taping the connector to the laptop to avoid that. As to why I'd run without a battery: it was swollen.

That’s not the case I assume.

You'd want some minimum charge to, at least, safely start up and immediately shut down again. Maybe throw in a little extra to be on the safe side. The higher-performance MacBooks also operate within a an extreme width of power requirements, from about 5W to close to 100W. I'm not sure if they can throttle based on battery status. But if not, you'd need a buffer to accommodate load spikes.

I guess you could criticise them for not trusting you to keep it plugged in. But any UI to clearly communicate that unplugging now might cause data loss is bound to be a horrible sludge. It could also easily fail if you happen to trip over the cable or the power went off.

I have never experienced this behavior on any other laptop I have ever used. When I ran into this for the first time, I was completely appalled, it is a horrible user experience

I would be irritated to no end if this happened to my laptop.

Not making a personal jab at you -- just illustrating the difficultly that everyone who makes a product faces when managing user expectations.

They are annoyed because the phone is unusable for a period even when connected to a charger. Every Android phone I have ever used will work immediately after being plugged into a charger (even without a battery). This has nothing to do with "saving" them from having no phone (in fact, it effectively leaves them with no phone at all for a period of time), and everything to do with the phones inability to power itself directly from a charger.

Tough to make something for customers? Perhaps, but seemingly every other phone manufacturer gets this right.

Maybe other phone manufacturers are cutting off your "on"-time sooner than iPhone is, and you just don't ever see their phones getting to this state. You don't even get to make your 911 call, because Samsung chooses to turn your phone off sooner?

So again, in that case Apple would be giving you more usable time, but you're not happy with them for it.

Really hate it, makes my laptop feel more like a “device” if you know what i means and makes it feel like the charger is insufficient for its job. Almost 20 years of using PowerBooks and even completely dead you could just plug them in and power worked straight away, now you have to do the 10 minute power button dance and the thing doesn’t even have a startup chime to tell you it’s worked.

However, waiting for a initial charge has always been true if you use a smaller power adapter than the one that shipped with your MacBook. For example you use a MacBook Air 40w charger with your Pro

I’m a little bummed to learn that this apparently isn’t the (only) reason.