I tried my MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz a few months ago and I found the only way to come CLOSE to the reference scores was to force the fans to run at full speed, and have them running a while before running the tests, also while having the computer raised up on a platform (so all the exhaust fans were clear), and had the computer next to an open window on a cold winter night. Without any of this, the scores would be much worse. My battery condition isn't great either and wasn't at the time. I haven't tried it with Windows but maybe I should.
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BatteryGate 2: MacBooks get slowed down by Apple when battery ages?
- Thread starter Intenditore
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If Apple are intentionally slowing your Macbooks down, the obvious next question is,'Why would they want to do that?'
With the phones it was to keep them working on the latest operating system.
True, they didn't give people the choice and they got into trouble for it and true, the are a bit close chested about communication and could handle things a lot better, but i would suggest to you that they did it thinking it was the best thing to do and for the right reasons.
I don't really understand all the suspicion of Apple. They aren't perfect but I've yet to find a better company in after sales of in respect to their customers in any field.
I like Asus for Windows machines but they aren't even in the same league as Apple and they are probably the most satisfactory Windows machines out there.
You may have seen articles in the press about the number of Android phones that are now vulnerable to malware and hacking because they can't upgrade to the latest OS. I think it's about 1billion.
This is the other side of not updating the OS: you don't get vulnerabilities patched and you also can't upgrade apps which are optimised to the latest OS.
So I repeat why would they want to intentionally slow your machine down? They haven't done it just to be nasty.
If you are a conspiracy theorist you might argue that it's to sell you a new machine I suppose.
But IF it is true, then it's much more likely to be to keep your machine working for longer.
You have been able to overclock Windows machines forever. It's one of the things a lot of people like about them. But it comes at an expense, the expense being they don't last as long. Not by a long way.
And updating to the latest OS in Windows isn't really an issue. Windows 7 was launched in 2009 (That's the equivalent of you still running Lion today.) and both 8 and 10 were nothing much more than cosmetic (to fix most of the things people don't like). Win 10 was released in 2015.
MS believe in legacy. It's a big thing to them which is why DOS was still running in the background in Vista and why Windows installs are so massive and need about 50 services running in the background. (It is actually funny to have to disable the services for a dial-up modem when you get a new machine.)
So which is it: a company that lets you run your machine as long as possible on their latest OS, or one that let's you run it as fast as it can go so it overheats and only lasts about 4 years?
Or do you believe that Apple is somehow fundamentally evil because I don't see it in anything they do.
That's IF it's true and it's not an anomaly caused by testing differences or something similar.
Do you actually see any difference when you use it?
Apart from looking at benchmark tests, how does your 2014 machine perform on 2020 OS and software?
I have genuinely never had a Windows machine work anything like good enough after 5 years.
I have had a couple I have struggled on for up to 7 years but in reality, something nearer 4 for a good experience was more like it but 10 years on a Mac is completely possible without seeing much reduced performance.
In fact, I've never had a Windows machine that didn't have at least 1 year of driver problems or OS bugs causing major headaches;
Maybe you are onto a major scandal but I personally would rather just get on with enjoying my machine for asl long as possible.
With the phones it was to keep them working on the latest operating system.
True, they didn't give people the choice and they got into trouble for it and true, the are a bit close chested about communication and could handle things a lot better, but i would suggest to you that they did it thinking it was the best thing to do and for the right reasons.
I don't really understand all the suspicion of Apple. They aren't perfect but I've yet to find a better company in after sales of in respect to their customers in any field.
I like Asus for Windows machines but they aren't even in the same league as Apple and they are probably the most satisfactory Windows machines out there.
You may have seen articles in the press about the number of Android phones that are now vulnerable to malware and hacking because they can't upgrade to the latest OS. I think it's about 1billion.
This is the other side of not updating the OS: you don't get vulnerabilities patched and you also can't upgrade apps which are optimised to the latest OS.
So I repeat why would they want to intentionally slow your machine down? They haven't done it just to be nasty.
If you are a conspiracy theorist you might argue that it's to sell you a new machine I suppose.
But IF it is true, then it's much more likely to be to keep your machine working for longer.
You have been able to overclock Windows machines forever. It's one of the things a lot of people like about them. But it comes at an expense, the expense being they don't last as long. Not by a long way.
And updating to the latest OS in Windows isn't really an issue. Windows 7 was launched in 2009 (That's the equivalent of you still running Lion today.) and both 8 and 10 were nothing much more than cosmetic (to fix most of the things people don't like). Win 10 was released in 2015.
MS believe in legacy. It's a big thing to them which is why DOS was still running in the background in Vista and why Windows installs are so massive and need about 50 services running in the background. (It is actually funny to have to disable the services for a dial-up modem when you get a new machine.)
So which is it: a company that lets you run your machine as long as possible on their latest OS, or one that let's you run it as fast as it can go so it overheats and only lasts about 4 years?
Or do you believe that Apple is somehow fundamentally evil because I don't see it in anything they do.
That's IF it's true and it's not an anomaly caused by testing differences or something similar.
Do you actually see any difference when you use it?
Apart from looking at benchmark tests, how does your 2014 machine perform on 2020 OS and software?
I have genuinely never had a Windows machine work anything like good enough after 5 years.
I have had a couple I have struggled on for up to 7 years but in reality, something nearer 4 for a good experience was more like it but 10 years on a Mac is completely possible without seeing much reduced performance.
In fact, I've never had a Windows machine that didn't have at least 1 year of driver problems or OS bugs causing major headaches;
Maybe you are onto a major scandal but I personally would rather just get on with enjoying my machine for asl long as possible.
I don’t know if they intentionally slow down machines or not, but it is something worth looking into, especially if the same machine running Windows performs better.
I know my Mac has slowed down with every OS X upgrade (even clean installs), compared to a newer Mac with lesser specs running the same system (or even a migrated system). I know that I am not the only one experiencing this, many other people I know have had similar experiences on their machines, and I saw it in person.
I also do know they keep pushing me to buy a new Mac every time I take my computer in for repair.
I do not know why any of this happens, or how. I do not know what’s going on.
To make your machine to feel old and sell you another one. As easy as that. And it's the same as with iPhones, there hasn't been a real deal to "save" battery by slowing your device. If my battery dies and I know it, I'll swap it. Apple didn't tell us it happens, manipulated our devices instead in a pretty dishonest manner. Here is the same thing.
I have to tell you I have my own pro-user vision on the topic and I wrote an article on the topic which I will try to share soon. In fewer words, Apple pushes us into some "future" which isn't there yet an breaks for pipelines doing that. Microsoft approach isn't that bad at all, Apple's isn't that good either. I can tell that as a power user of both ecosystems simultaneously. But I digress
Sure! In a major way!
Mojave will give Snow Leopard a run for its money on my late-2008 MacBook. So not sure what you are talking about. I believe it all comes down to how technically sound the end user is.
This is a load of conspiracy BS and you honestly have little understanding of the iPhone situation as well. First of all, the battery is used while plugged in to supplement power at peak loads, this is the design of all portable Macs for the last decade or so. On my Late 2013 15", Late 2016 15" touchbar MBP, and my Late 2019 16" MBP with the 91w charger I see the battery charge level depleting about 5% per hour while gaming in Windows on the built-in display. Some titles don't do it, some do, and the brightness of the built in display also affects the discharge rate. I've noticed it in Battlefield 1, Battlefield V, BeamNG Drive, Squad, etc. I have not gotten it to do the same in macOS because the power management is tailored specifically for the device, and because none of those games have native macOS versions to test. Overnight render sessions in macOS via DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Media Encoder don't seem to drain it either. Windows power management via boot camp is "dumb" - it cannot handle graphics switching nor use the integrated graphics (and is always drawing the ~20w for the dGPU) and doesn't have access to any of the software power or battery management that Apple has in macOS.
Sometimes things in Windows run better, faster, and more efficiently than things in macOS, including many 3D renderers and the entire Adobe suite (Premiere, After Effects, etc.), and sometimes the opposite is true. As of today on the same hardware, Premiere will export ~3x faster in Windows due to current optimization. That number could be 10x and I still wouldn't switch to Windows for creative work. It just is what it is, if you're gonna be obsessed with synthetic benchmark numbers go right ahead and use Windows or buy a Windows machine. Apple does not have to make any promises to you that every little benchmark has to reach some third party's designated (and meaningless) number, especially cross platform. It has very, very little if anything to do with real world performance.
And??? You are trying to form an opinion without getting down the basics first. You CAN'T compare even two different macOS, let alone macOS and Windows. Just make your choice and enjoy Windows, it is a free world out there.
I am sure I will be able to use my late-2008 MacBook for another 12 years. Are you still using your late-2008 Windows machine? But you still think you are smarter than Apple engineers, right?
Actually I remember running my Toshiba Satellite Pro A60 without battery and it performed very bad(Windows XP). Are you saying that Windows 10 is more efficient than Windows XP and requires significantly less power?
Try closer to 2 decades.
A couple of years ago, I sold a friend a spare 1ghz Titanium PowerBook from my collection. I sold it to him with full disclosure of the fact that the battery was completely shot in it, but I hadn't really used it other than powering it on and installing an OS.
He started using it, and claimed that it just didn't "feel" as fast he expected, and we compared notes on how fast certain specific things were on the 1ghz I kept.
He dug into some more intensive benchmarks, and then finally found a few things backed up by contemporary Apple support documents. At that point, the battery was completely dead-neither OS 9 or OS X would even see it, so even installed it was effectively like not having one. The system would automatically down-clock to 667mhz and disable the L3 cache.
With a good battery, the performance returned to what was expected.
On Intel systems where the battery can easily be removed, you can see/feel the performance hit to the point where they can become nearly unusable without one. Even at that, I picked up a 2011 17" not too long ago(I know, a ticking time bomb, but I'll enjoy it while it still works and then disable the dGPU) and it arrived with a swollen and dead battery. The initial set-up was miserable, but with a new battery(and I bought a good one from Newertech) it is everything I expected.
On the other hand, I have a 2010 15" MBP where the battery will charge up and register 100% with perfect health, but it's "hiding" that the battery is actually near dead. When unplugged, the computer works for about 5 minutes without registering in drop in charge status then suddenly shuts off. I did a small experiment the past week where I powered up a program that can peg the CPU and that I've seen drain the battery even when plugged in-Folding@Home. Plugged in, it will run 20-30 minutes before the computer will just shut off.
And throughout the whole thread I don't see anyone mentioning "thermals".
My MacBook under Windows causes the fan to run at max speed (sounds literally like a jet engine) and it still gets super hot to the touch. Even when I'm just sitting there staring at the screen. My battery life under Windows is rated for about 4-5 hours.
Ubuntu is slightly better than Windows but still causes the fan to rev up to max speed. Battery life seems to get about 6-7 hours.
The same device under MacOS almost never makes a noise, and this is true even if I'm watching Youtube video up to 1080p in Safari. The device gets slightly warm at worst. Battery life? 12-15 hours. THREE times higher than whatever I got on Windows.
This is with a good battery. So which OS is "more efficient" again?
My MacBook under Windows causes the fan to run at max speed (sounds literally like a jet engine) and it still gets super hot to the touch. Even when I'm just sitting there staring at the screen. My battery life under Windows is rated for about 4-5 hours.
Ubuntu is slightly better than Windows but still causes the fan to rev up to max speed. Battery life seems to get about 6-7 hours.
The same device under MacOS almost never makes a noise, and this is true even if I'm watching Youtube video up to 1080p in Safari. The device gets slightly warm at worst. Battery life? 12-15 hours. THREE times higher than whatever I got on Windows.
This is with a good battery. So which OS is "more efficient" again?
I don't have to be an Apple engineer in order to keep using my 12-year old MacBook without complaining that it is "getting slower" or it "can't run a recent macOS". That's exactly the point.
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I don't mind being gullible but I did not quite understood your advanced-intermediate English. What do you mean by "everyone's using Windows computers 2008 and newer or something"? I never really cared what everyone else is using to be honest.
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"Are you still using your late 2008 Windows machine"
What exactly are you trying to say?
That there are no users with Windows laptops/desktops that were made in 2008 or earlier? Your statement seems to suggest that windows computers don't last as long as Macs.
If that was what you were insinuating, then you couldn't be further from the truth
I asked topic starter a question.
Now I am asking you. Are you still using a pre-2008 Windows laptop as a main machine? You can only speak for yourself, everything else is a hearsay like Judge Judy would say.
From my personal experience I can say that my Windows laptop did not last very long(2-3 years). This is actually the very reason I bought my first Mac and 12 years later I am still using it as a main machine.
What is your personal experience?
I do have about 3 laptops (2 - 2006 and 1 from like 2001) that are still very much in good use.
I have a MacBook pro from 2012 still working fine. With recent updates, it's almost dead but I believe an upgrade to SSD will give it some life again.
There really isn't anything like a Mac will last longer than a Windows machine. Yes, general build quality will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer but even in a specific production line, variation still occurs. Just like you, there are others who had the opposite experience where their Mac might have failed and then they got a windows PC that was better for them. So, like you said, to each his own.
You rightly told the OP to use whatever they would enjoy using. Your last paragraph in that reply just seemed like you were throwing out a one sided opinion.
So now that you've heard that pre-2008 machines running Windows still exists, do you now have a more neutral mindset?
No I don't. I don't go by emotions or hearsay. I only go by the facts. The fact is that even in 2020 I still ONLY need my late-2008 MacBook for all my consumer needs. Sure I used my mid-2012 MacBook Pro to handbrake my DVD collection 24/7 non-stop for two months. It would have taken 4 months to do it on my late-2008 MacBook.
Why are you trying to change my mindset? All I am saying is that having a late-2008 MacBook ensures that I will never ever have a need to own a Windows laptop.
