Macbook with no battery powers up instantly, why?

[dintymoore]

I have a mid 2010 Macbook that I just bought. I was told the battery had expanded slightly (enough to slightly damage the case) thus the battery was removed. The battery icon indicates there's no battery. It works fine with the ac adapter.

When it's unplugged, even for overnight, and then I plug it in and hit return, or the space bar, something to wake it up, it's instantly ready to go. Safari is running like I was when I unplugged it and it's still connected to the internet.

I also have a mid 2010 Macbook Pro that has a dead battery since I bought it several years ago. I taped the ac adapter so that I can't accidentally knock it out, because if I do it needs to reboot OS X from scratch. That's the way all my other Mac laptops with dead batteries have been. Even when I wake my Macbook Pro up and it's still on Safari where I left it, if I do a refresh it will say it's not connected to the internet first before connecting and refreshing. The new Macbook doesn't need to do that, it's still connected to the internet.

How is it that the Macbook I just bought is not completely losing everything when it is unplugged? With no battery, where is the power coming from and why is it different from my Macbook Pro?

 

[grahamperrin]

… How is it that the Macbook … is not completely losing everything when it is unplugged? …

If a usable hibernatefile is written before you unplug, then the Mac has the ability to resume from the hibernation image.

Vaguely comparable to resuming from normal sleep, but reading from a file on disk will take longer than reading from memory. https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1.html

I often used an early 2009 MacBookPro5,2, sometimes with SmartSleep. Since the SSHD in that Mac failed, I occasionally use an early 2011 MacBookPro8,2 that has no battery.

Incidentally, do you ever find your mid 2010 MacBook Pro, without a battery, behaving as if it has neither its keyboard nor its trackpad?

 

[dintymoore]

Thanks, I don't really understand the gory details about that, but just knowing that it is explainable is enough for me. I had never seen that occur before, and I've had several Macs.

...Incidentally, do you ever find your mid 2010 MacBook Pro, without a battery, behaving as if it has neither its keyboard nor its trackpad?

No I haven't, but then I have rarely used the keyboard or trackpad. I bought that MBP for $100 when they were typically selling for much more. The reduced price was due partly to the bad battery, but more to the badly cracked screen glass, 5 missing keys and the case being so swollen (likely due to expanding battery disorder) that the trackpad is badly cracked, plus the case is all dented up. It looks like it was used for batting practice. Every slot on the left side is jammed full and I use a mini DVI to DVI adapter into that ridiculous DVI to ADC octopus to a 23" Cinema display. That's my Photoshop beast and it works flawlessly. I don't use the keyboard but instead use the ADB keyboard from my beige G3 with an iMate ADB to USB adapter. Those keyboards are like tanks and they have lots of space around the keys to tape up labels for all the key commands I'm somewhat fanatical about.

 

[grahamperrin]

Ha ha ha, that's by far the most memorable use case that I have encountered in years! Five gold Aqua stars for your combination of thrift and practicality.

The original Apple Cinema Display can be strangely satisfying as a primary device with notebooks of any sort. I have three work colleagues who – whilst aiming for the best possible modern high-res Apple notebooks – express absolutely no desire to progress beyond last century's relatively low-res displays.

 

[dintymoore]

Thanks. I do like the Apple Cinema Display in that it has a very non-reflective, matte finish. Other displays, like on my Macbook Pro have a mirror quality, I can see the wall behind me in the screen and if you work for hours on Photoshop with that it will drive you nuts.
Maybe because it was used by many graphic designers it became a standard, the colors I get when I print posters are dead on, or as close as you'd ever expect. With the printer company I use and their 1/2 million dollar printer I've never had any surprises. And since they print at 600dpi, unless a monitor comes out that exceeds that I will always be drawing at a different resolution than I'm printing at, so all the new monitors aren't really good enough. Plus that company will be going to 1200dpi soon, so a monitor that would interest me is probably years away. You need resolutions like that for the art to look good from 50', 8' and 2 inches, to compare to what you get with analog, although and most people don't realize this, the colors available on any computer screen or print are only a small fraction (less than half) of what we see in real life or available in paints.
Best part, the display with DVI to ADC adapter cost $70.