
Ask HN: Does Apple slow down old Macbooks as well? - jakobov
Has anyone actually tested it properly? If so what are the results
======
rbanffy
I keep thinking Intel should have something like big.LITTLE - chips with
fast/power-hungry cores with other slower cores with low-power running the
same ISA. Processes with lower priorities (or causing less load) could be
moved to the power-conserving cores while stuff that creates large loads could
occupy the faster ones. The threshold should be configurable so you could have
as much or as little running on your power-conserving cores as you want your
batteries to last. That, in addition to aggressively managing clock as we
already do for power/thermal reasons should yield a very interesting
generation of laptops.

~~~
reacharavindh
Never thought of that. But, I'm very sure Apple will use those big.LITTLE
chips and use a dramatically smaller battery to give you 10 hours of battery
life and thinner laptop. /S.

I feel like in the past few years, processors are remaining as fast but better
power efficient, but the end-user never sees longer use out of them. Because
manufacturers skimp on battery catching up with power efficiency :-(

~~~
rbanffy
If I built a computer as heavy as my first Thinkpad using a modern processor
and filling the rest of the machine with batteries, I'd have a month of
continuous use ;-)

~~~
froh42
There are regulations on how much li ion battey a machine may have to be
allowed in the cabin pn a plane. I think many companies won't cross that
limit. So something like the removable / modular batteries from the past might
be great

~~~
Joeri
[https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/passenger_info/media/Airline_passengers_and_batteries.pdf)

Up to 100 Wh / battery, up to 160 Wh with airline approval. All laptops I know
of have a 100 Wh battery at most. Macbook pro's used to have that size, but
the latest gen has a smaller capacity. You can carry spare batteries, as long
as they are for "personal use".

~~~
Spartan-S63
Word on the street was that the new MacBook Pros came with shrunken batteries
because they couldn't get the terraced design to fit within design spec
(thermals, I think) like they did with the MacBook. Hopefully in their next
design iteration, they'll be able to fit a 99.5Wh battery back in the laptop.

------
j45
I have a mid 2014 mbp i7 with almost 900 charge cycles that received a new
battery from Apple while in for a system board.

Running Sierra, I noticed an immediate speed increase on tasks I have done
hundreds of times. Everything was snappier again.

Comparing the i7 I have VS the latest i7, there is only about a 25% difference
3 years later. I can say my mbp likely dropped 25% in speed before the battery
swap.

I wish I had taken more geekbench diagnostics before sending the laptop to
Apple. I did notice several mbp's with the came cpu ad mine had a geekbench
score in the 6000's while the spec was in the 8000's. The battery condition
may be a factor.

It would be interesting to correlate geekbench (or something comparable)
scores to charge cycles. This question is likely worth asking with Google made
Android devices that have had battery issues like the Nexus 6p too.

------
izacus
Yes, it actually can happen that degraded battery will cause the CPU to be
locked into low power state. However on all the models I've seen that happen
it was also accompanied by a clear error message that battery is dead and it
should be replaced.

~~~
tedmiston
I have a 2013 rMBP in this state now with a bad battery. It strangely
alternates between "Replace Now" and "Service Battery" [1] depending on the
day, but I do think performance is degraded.

It seems less significant but still noticeable when connected to power than on
battery, even when the battery is full charged. IIRC my battery is around 50%
design capacity with 1000–1500 cycles.

It would be nice to be able to definitively tell if macOS is underclocking or
something.

[1]: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201957](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201957)

------
binaryapparatus
I asked the same yesterday in another topic. I have mid 2012 MacBook Pro that
behaves terribly with High Sierra, while it was fairly snappy with Sierra. Now
it takes about 5 seconds to start any app, even for simple apps like iTerm2.

Since I can't find too much complaints on the web about laptop slowing down
and the reply to my yesterday question was that some users don't see much
difference, I am now downloading Sierra and will install it on another
partition. This should answer this question precisely.

I can't leave High Sierra as is because it made my MacBook Pro unusable.

~~~
bluedino
Do a clean install. My 2010 runs just fine on HS with none of those issues.

~~~
binaryapparatus
Thanks. I suspect the same since I don't see too much complaints online. It is
most probably just a weird timing when I got fed up with slow MBP while we see
all the iPhone slowdown reports.

------
goombastic
I find it weird that there isn't enough outrage about this and it is already
beginning to be the new normal. In a more ideal world, Apple would have been
forced to issue a patch that reverses this forced obsolescence on consumers.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Except it's debatable whether it is forced obsolescence or a sensible approach
to battery management.

~~~
yulaow
They could just give the chance to change it while setting the default
behavior for better battery management. So the common user would be ok and the
power user could decide what to prioritize. The problem is, indeed, the fact
this is a no reversible decision atm

~~~
tedmiston
Definitely feels like an advanced setting they could bury in the battery
settings.

------
thepoet
Yes, when I got the Macbook battery needs servicing thing couple of years ago,
the processor was permanently in a low power state of 800Mhz. You can verify
it using the Intel Power Gadget thing or terminal.

~~~
jannyfer
I have a 2011 Macbook Air (13-inch) and my battery has a “Service Battery”
alert. It’s very slow when the battery is not at full capacity but it’s fine
when the battery is full.

I ordered a replacement battery off Amazon last week.

~~~
kristofferR
Be aware that most "genuine" replacement batteries are counterfeit. I bought a
replacement battery for my 2011 MBA too, but it only worked good for a couple
of months.

------
CyberFonic
In my experience my 2009 MBP didn't slow down as the battery wore down. But I
did read somewhere that if you remove the dead battery without replacing it,
then the MBP will only run at about half speed on mains power alone. Depleted
batteries have a habit of bulging and damaging the internals. I ended up
buying a third party replacement battery, but it never restored the MBP to its
original run-time capacities.

~~~
gambiting
That's because older MacBooks could draw more power under 100% load than the
power adapter could provide. Instead of shipping with a bulky 90W adapter,
apple decided that 65W one is sufficient for almost everyone, and if you need
to run your machine under 100% load it would just draw extra power from the
battery. Hence, if you don't have a battery or its dead, the machine will
never allow 100% load(this might be different if you actually plug in a 90W
adapter, but I don't remember the details now).

~~~
JamesMcMinn
So it was literally impossible to run the device at full load for extended
periods? Presumably the battery eventually hit 0 and the devices was then
power limited? That's insane. I assume thermals prevented it before the
battery did, however for premium devices, it seems like a profit protection
measure for Apple, rather than a cost saving feature for uses.

~~~
gambiting
If the battery was full and you were running at full load it would take over 5
hours to discharge the battery to zero - and if you are running CPU+GPU at
full load for over 5 hours on a laptop then I'd say you are probably on a
wrong device for this. I'd take a smaller (lighter) power adapter + max 5
hours of full load than a heavier adapter and unlimited full load. I actually
know someone who carries a 45w adapter with his macbook 15" because it's
smaller and the laptop runs from it fine unless you run some heavy loads on it
- for normal browsing/coding work it's fine.

------
tooltalk
Not sure about slowing down, but I'm afraid to update my mid-2012 rMacbook
anymore. High Sierra crippled my external 32" monitor earlier this year; I
spent a whole weekend downgrading it to El Capitan. Now my bluetooth devices
stopped working right after Security update 2017-05 last week.

~~~
j45
I generally have ended up staying 1 release behind the current MacOS for this
reason while keeping up with security updates.

Apple has a special talent of breaking what was working just fine. While I'm
sure some of it is is very worthwhile improvements under the hood that doesn't
get the appreciation it deserves, do the pros outweigh a laptop that no longer
runs for me?

The latest mbp's while looking great, have lead me to wonder if they are for
technical creators/pros anymore..

The cpu is regularly at least a generation behind.

A missing escape key is humorous, while I can remap my escape key to the ~ key
if I had a touch bar..

The fact that there's no Apple made dock for a mbp's after a decade of having
flawlessly operating docks with HP. Apple display doesn't cut it for everyone
as a dock.

Still I continue to use macos because it's the most usable linux/bsd out with
respect to available apps. Maybe the Chromebooks will push on this front.

------
jc150
Can we get a positive answer from Apple that the company doest not slow down
the CPU for older MacBook Pros?

We just need a truthful answer from Apple when we do not have any evidence for
that, or it's hard to get an evidence.

I had the older MacBook Pros (mid 2012 and 2013) and they are getting slower
than years ago. So we need to make sure Apple is not doing the slow down like
it does to old iPhones.

------
azurelogic
All computers have the potential for slowdown as they age because 2 things
naturally happen: cooling systems clog with dust and thermal paste degrades.
Both of these eventually reduce the efficiency of the cooling system,
resulting in higher CPU temps. Unchecked, this can result in CPU throttling by
the hardware itself.

~~~
pixl97
3 things. Hard drive/SSD. Full ssds rUn slower naturally. Hard drives with bad
and remapped sectors can go dramatically slower.

------
shoover
I’ve been wondering the same thing about the iPad Mini. My mom and mother-in-
law both have the same vintage (v1, I think) and both complain of browser
crashes when loading some web sites and playing video on Facebook. My guess is
it’s a combination of terrible bloated sites and only having 512MB of RAM (a
2-year-old HTC Desire with 1GB RAM works fine for the same purposes), but
recent news does make one wonder if a battery would make a difference.

------
Fnoord
I haven't tested it properly, and n=1, but I recently cleaned a MBP 2010:
dedust, replaced battery (was at 85% with approx 900 cycles), replaced both
fans, and reapplied thermal paste (I'd already replaced the RAM and HDD with
SSD earlier, and dedusted numerous times already). If you follow iFixit guides
and have the right tools (mentioned in the guides) its fairly easy to do. I'm
not good with this stuff at all, and I managed. The problem was that the
machine got very hot very easily. It still gets hot very easily (seems to even
spike quicker now) but the fans need to work less hard.

The Nvidia GPU is also on life support on this machine due to a bug which
isn't covered under warranty. For that I use Gfxcardstatus and keep the
machine's GPU in Integrated mode (the slower Intel CPU). Its a widely known
problem with the 2010 series. All apps which use Electron or Chrome put the
machine's GPU at boot in Dedicated mode. Which is annoying. Firefox doesn't do
this, and since 57 yields good performance. Although I'm not sold on watching
videos in Firefox; Chrome/Safari might yield better performance on Mac
according to certain anecdotal evidence I found (including my own).

Now, there's a few reasons why _newer_ macOS versions are slower than older.
One reason being APFS [1] [2] (Reddit thread [3] [4]). Especially when using
FileVault. Keep in mind thats a state of the art MBP; its from 2017.

Regardless, we need benchmarks.

[1] [https://malcont.net/2017/09/apfs-vs-hfs-benchmarks-
on-2017-m...](https://malcont.net/2017/09/apfs-vs-hfs-benchmarks-
on-2017-macbook-pro-with-macos-high-sierra/)

[2] [https://malcont.net/2017/07/apfs-and-hfsplus-benchmarks-
on-2...](https://malcont.net/2017/07/apfs-and-hfsplus-benchmarks-
on-2017-macbook-pro-with-macos-high-sierra/)

[3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/72z2v5/apfs_vs_hfs_ben...](https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/72z2v5/apfs_vs_hfs_benchmarks_on_2017_macbook_pro_with/)

[4]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/6nnaex/i_made_some_ben...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/6nnaex/i_made_some_benchmarks_on_apfs_to_hfs_comparison/)

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Which battery did you get for it?

~~~
Fnoord
This one (new) [1]. Note I'm from EU, so I bought it from the iFixit EU store
located in Germany. Delivery took a few days during Black Friday peak. Little
bit more than half a week IIRC.

When I first checked earlier this year they weren't in stock, so I asked when
they'd be in stock which was soon. Once they were in stock I lacked time IRL
so had to postpone order. Hence I only replaced it a good month ago. Had to
order some kit and accessoires to open up the machine (was on sale during
Black Friday) including the magnetic project mat which you can use to group
the screws (you can add notes as well on it). 10/10 recommend that! (I'm not
affiliated btw.) I recommend to just check the guides. They're good, and if
you need help you can ask questions over there. The people there are much more
knowledgable on this subject than I will ever be.

Only bad thing is that the guide told me to not worry about disconnecting the
iSight camera. I managed to break that cable. That was during thermal paste
application guide though; not battery replacement. The other disconnections of
cables all went very well or flawless. Nothing broken in these departments. In
a way, no iSight is a plus anyway.

[1] [https://eustore.ifixit.com/en/Parts/MacBook-Parts/Macbook-
Pr...](https://eustore.ifixit.com/en/Parts/MacBook-Parts/Macbook-
Pro/15/Unibody/Mid-2009/MacBook-Pro-15-Unibody-Mid-2009-Mid-2010-Replacement-
Battery.html)

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Thank you. Unfortunately I'm not in EU and package forwarders don't accept
lithium batteries anymore.

~~~
Fnoord
If you're in US, there's also iFixit US. Just check the main site [1] and see
if its possible. You can select language on top right.

[1] [https://www.ifixit.com](https://www.ifixit.com)

------
roadbeats
My 2011 iMac was quite fast until upgrading it. Now I can’t open anything
without waiting 10 seconds at least. It’s been painfully slow since the
upgrades.

------
limits
Do Apple operating systems updates slow down older Mac minis? My 2012 Mac mini
slows each time I update--and it has no batteries.

------
kmfrk
My MBA12 gets slow when the % charge is low, but I don't know whether they do
it based on absolute charge as well.

------
reacharavindh
Curious. Do older MBPs run Linux with better support? Perhaps longer battery
life with the laptop project and stuff...?

~~~
OJFord
Arch runs pretty well out of the box on my 2013 Air, it falls down slightly on
battery life (3-4h rather than 8-10h with macOS) and CPU fan running wild with
no load.

Both things are much more configurable under Linux than macOS of course, and
you should just be able to set it up once and forget it. (Or keep a note, in
case you want to replicate it on another machine...) But the flip side being
that it is something you'll have to configure.

~~~
peterisza
falls down "slightly"...

------
limits
Does Apple slow down old Mac Minis too? It seems to get worse after each OS
update.

~~~
grzm
Every† OS update includes new features: they're generally not just bug fixes.
These new features will generally increase the amount of work the machine
needs to do, and often is made feasible by the availability of the new
hardware.

If the older machine doesn't have the same power as newer hardware, it will
likely be slower: it's doing more work. Anyone developing a system needs to
make a choice: allow the new feature to run on older hardware and accept that
it may be slower, or don't allow it to run. They also need to make tradeoffs
in what feature sets they make available to platforms (e.g., version-x-for-
platform-a, version-x-for-platform-b). Each additional version/platform
configuration is additional work to maintain. You may disagree with the
choices they make, but they do have to make these choices depending on where
they want to distribute their resources as a company.

If the underlying assumption is that Apple is doing this on purpose to make
machines obsolete, I think that's mistaken. If OS updates make an older
machine run slower, that happens because the update includes new features
which requires more resources, and older machines may not have as many
resources available.

† At least major versions, and most minor versions.

------
cabothal
i am NOT TECH SAVY at all and am about to Purge all Apple products. My IMAC is
sooooooo slow now.......Freezes..... Mouse cursor not available etc.... And NO
not so stupid to not have check the batteries....... Can I save my IMAC?

