I am actually working on my living room table (daily for 3-6 hours) every day. The only time when I am not using my computer that long a day is when I am on vacation for 2-4 weeks a year. But even then I use it for 1-2 hours a day if I get the time to.
Why should you not remove the battery if possible? This is what has been preached for years as the battery gets overcharged! I hae been told by hundreds of people over the years that if you don't need to run your laptop on battery, take it out and run it with the power cable to save the battery and increase the life of the same!
Did something change over the years? Or is this an Apple thing?
Let me get this straight, if I am at home I should keep it plugged in all the time?
Yes, when at home you should be plugged in all the time with one exception - you should use a MacBook on batteries once a month. Most people do that naturally so they have nothing to worry about, but if your MacBook is on your desk all the time, you should unplug it once a month.
Removing the battery on a MacBook has many disadvantages. One, the battery is part of the case, so your case is open and dirt and dust can come in. Second, if you are in an area where electricity is problematic, the battery nicely fixes this. Third, it is possible that for a short time (say half a second when the hard drive or DVD drive starts up), power usage exceeds what the power supply will supply. No problem when you have a battery. And because of that, Apple reduces the speed and therefore power usage of any MacBook when the battery is removed.
On a MacBook, the batteries will definitely not overcharge. Charging a battery is very carefully controlled by some chip that's in the battery; it will charge quickly when the battery is empty, slow down when it's 80% full, and stops when it is full.
So if a MacBook is on the living room table, you should plug it in if you can; it is not a big deal if you don't sometimes, but you should try to do it most of the time. Six hours on battery means one of the 1000 charges is gone. So you run out of charges in close to 3 years if you do this daily, but it takes 10 years if you forget to plug in twice a week.