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Apple employee advice

carjakester

carjakester

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 21, 2013
2,228
55
Midwest
I was at my local apple store with my girlfriend today and I overheard an Apple employee telling someone to unplug their macbook anytime it reached 100% in order to preserve the battery in the long run.

I know there are way too many ways people go about trying to protect battery life, but unplugging every time the battery reaches 100%? Ridiculous.
 
It's the simplest answer and "rule of thumb" to give the average layperson that would enter an Apple Store and ask such questions. The Apple Employee most likely told them that just to keep things simple for the customer, rather than go though a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo that they most likely would not have understood, or cared to know about in the first place.
 
OR the right way...

You can leave it plugged in...BUT, once a month, unplug it, and use the battery to maintain it. Apple has a read up on this.
 
carjakester said:
I was at my local apple store with my girlfriend today and I overheard an Apple employee telling someone to unplug their macbook anytime it reached 100% in order to preserve the battery in the long run.

I know there are way too many ways people go about trying to protect battery life, but unplugging every time the battery reaches 100%? Ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Best thing is to follow the official info from Apple at this link and ignore what anyone else says. :D

Apple recently updated this information so you might want to click through all the links on that page.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/
 
Can't expect perfection from human beings. The sooner that people realize that, I believe the happier everyone will be in general. Now, take me to your leader, because I come in peace.
 
carjakester said:
My point was, that you think apples own employees would know the correct information.
Click to expand...

The truth is, unfortunately, that a lot of the 'tech' staff working in retail stores don't really have a clue what they're talking about, only a sufficient amount of knowledge to sound smart enough to the lay person.
 
"Always unplug the machine at 100%" is the worst battery advice you could ever give someone aside from "stab it with a knife then light it on fire". There was just a thread on here where the OP wondered if it was normal to have over 500 cycles after owning the machine for just a few months. He'd been given this exact piece of advice and always unplugged the machine before using it.

Apparently Apple's finally updated their battery info. They used to recommend 1 cycle per month, but this was probably helping create the myth of more cycles = healthier battery, which is literally (I mean it this time) the opposite of the truth.

The way the charging system works (allows a small amount of drain, then small trickle charge) I believe you'd actually end up getting a cycle a month even if you never unplugged the machine. If that's even a real thing and not just recommended for calibration.

"The capacity of any type of battery will diminish after a certain amount of recharging. With lithium-ion batteries, the capacity diminishes slightly with each complete charge cycle."

^^^ Apple should make this page mandatory reading for all in-store and support employees.
 
There is so much information about battery care and such that pretty much if someone tells you its fine to leave the battery plugged in all the time or unplug it when it reaches 100% they are somewhat correct. Best thing to do is just use the machine :cool:
 
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