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A comment on macOS Catalina 10.15.5. Parent comment

Re:macOS Catalina 10.15.5 by danieldk on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @09:10AM (#23322589)
I think this is false. Lithium-Ion batteries (in contrast to e.g. NiMH) do not have the memory effect [1]. It's actually charge/discharge cycles that reduce battery life for such batteries [2]. Older MacBooks were only rated for 300 charge cycles, nowadays up to 1000.

This also reflects my experience. In recent years, my MacBooks with the highest remaining capacity have been those that I had pretty much always connected to a charger, only using it on battery during meetings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201585

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Re:macOS Catalina 10.15.5 by AshamedCaptain on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @09:59AM (#23323328)
Do note, however, that keeping the battery _in_ while the device plugged in usually results in the battery kept "floating"; which results in many short charging cycles (i.e. discharge to 99%, then top to 100%, rinse and repeatt). This is what this type of "battery management" updates are designed to avoid, and many manufacturers allow configuring these cycles in ways that are much softer on the battery (e.g. avoid 100%).
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