Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improve battery health

Re:Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improv... by haxxorfreak on Thursday April 16, 2020 @05:12PM (#22893623)

I use a 15" 2018 MacBook Pro with the six-core i9 at work and Turbo Boost Switcher[1] has been my favourite discovery. It lets you disable the turbo boost function of the processor which means the fans never spin up and the battery lasts longer. I pretty much always leave it disabled unless I am going to be transcoding video or compiling something and can't notice a performance hit even with a couple of VMs running.

The only bad thing is that it requires a kernel extension so will stop working when they are deprecated in 10.16. Hopefully Apple introduces a similar feature as there were rumours of a "Pro" mode coming which would ramp up the fans and clock, my hope is they add a complementary "quiet" mode or similar to disable turbo boost.

[1] https://github.com/rugarciap/Turbo-Boost-Switcher

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Re:Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improv... by mettamage on Friday April 17, 2020 @01:48AM (#22896565)

Thank you for mentioning this. I've been wondering for years how to get my fans down. I'm almost considering to submit this to HN.

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Re:Apple changes default MacBook charging behavior to improv... by rubber_duck on Thursday April 16, 2020 @05:22PM (#22893707)

I have the same machine and I used this option with volta - it was the most reliable in turning down the heat while keeping the system stable but at the same time it made the system considerably slower even in day to day tasks (with just a few of background build watchers and server + a YT video on the second screen the RubyMine become unresponsive regularly)

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