Microsoft has Copilot Plus PCs loaded with AI, and rumors are that Apple is all in on AI, too, but if you don't want AI in everything you do, there is another option: Linux.
Do you remember when you could put your Mac to sleep, and when you woke it up a few days later, the battery would barely have dropped? Not now, because your computer never really sleeps anymore.
I assume that the Mac has some kind of hibernation function, and that that will reduce the battery drop to effectively zero.
Waking from hibernation is sooo much slower than waking from sleep. Apple silicon macs are very efficient in their S0 standby so they’ll go days before entering hibernation. Kinda odd that they bring that up now that Apple has fully transitioned to ARM machines where this isn’t really an issue. That said S0 standby on this 2019 Macbook I have for work is dogshit.
I have my Linux Thinkpad set up to just go directly to hibernation. If I flip the lid open, by the time I’ve closed up my laptop backpack, stashed it, pulled my seat out, sat down, and scootched up, it’s pretty much up. And if it’s hibernated, then you don’t wind up with a case where you leave it in your bag for a long time, it draws down a bunch of a battery, and next time you open the thing up, maybe away from a plug, you don’t have a big chunk of your battery slorped up.
does some timing
Booting up and responding after a hibernation is a little under 30 seconds.
Doing so after an S3 sleep is a little under 5 seconds.
Now, okay, that’s just the system being back up, and it’s gonna have to broadcast a query, wait for responses from WAPs, associate with a wireless access point and get a DHCP lease before the network’s up, so maybe there’s a little extra time until the thing is fully usable, but still.
I guess…hmm. I guess I can see doing a sleep-with-delayed hibernation for something like the case where someone’s moving between an office and a conference room. Like, wait 5 or 10 minutes, and if it’s still sleeping, then hibernate. What are the defaults?
goes looking
Hmm. Okay, so looks like on Debian, the default is to sleep (suspend) until the battery is down to 5%, then do a hibernate if it hits that critical level. Yeah, I never want to wait that long.
Aight, I’m gonna move from directly hibernating to a 5 minute sleep or 5% battery, whichever first, then hibernate. I guess that’s maybe a good tradeoff for a scenario where a laptop is being frequently closed and opened, but it still shouldn’t result in much extra power consumption.
The Intel MacBook waking up from hibernation is about 30 seconds to get to the login prompt, 30 seconds for the login prompt to actually work, then 10-15 seconds after entering the password to get to a usable desktop environment with the wifi generally connecting within that window. It’s now awful, but traditional S1-3 standby was so much better. S0 standby is great if you’re frequently opening and closing the device, but is unusable on higher power devices.
But that’s with only 8 gigs of ram on this MacBook, the more ram the longer it takes. The 32 gigs of ram in my actual work laptop (ThinkPad P1 11th gen i9) takes about a minute to wake from hibernation, and like 2 minutes for it to fully get situated. If I do that on battery that’s about 3-5% of my battery just waking from hibernation.
I assume that the Mac has some kind of hibernation function, and that that will reduce the battery drop to effectively zero.
Waking from hibernation is sooo much slower than waking from sleep. Apple silicon macs are very efficient in their S0 standby so they’ll go days before entering hibernation. Kinda odd that they bring that up now that Apple has fully transitioned to ARM machines where this isn’t really an issue. That said S0 standby on this 2019 Macbook I have for work is dogshit.
How seriously painful is that boot time?
I have my Linux Thinkpad set up to just go directly to hibernation. If I flip the lid open, by the time I’ve closed up my laptop backpack, stashed it, pulled my seat out, sat down, and scootched up, it’s pretty much up. And if it’s hibernated, then you don’t wind up with a case where you leave it in your bag for a long time, it draws down a bunch of a battery, and next time you open the thing up, maybe away from a plug, you don’t have a big chunk of your battery slorped up.
does some timing
Booting up and responding after a hibernation is a little under 30 seconds.
Doing so after an S3 sleep is a little under 5 seconds.
Now, okay, that’s just the system being back up, and it’s gonna have to broadcast a query, wait for responses from WAPs, associate with a wireless access point and get a DHCP lease before the network’s up, so maybe there’s a little extra time until the thing is fully usable, but still.
I guess…hmm. I guess I can see doing a sleep-with-delayed hibernation for something like the case where someone’s moving between an office and a conference room. Like, wait 5 or 10 minutes, and if it’s still sleeping, then hibernate. What are the defaults?
goes looking
Hmm. Okay, so looks like on Debian, the default is to sleep (suspend) until the battery is down to 5%, then do a hibernate if it hits that critical level. Yeah, I never want to wait that long.
Aight, I’m gonna move from directly hibernating to a 5 minute sleep or 5% battery, whichever first, then hibernate. I guess that’s maybe a good tradeoff for a scenario where a laptop is being frequently closed and opened, but it still shouldn’t result in much extra power consumption.
The Intel MacBook waking up from hibernation is about 30 seconds to get to the login prompt, 30 seconds for the login prompt to actually work, then 10-15 seconds after entering the password to get to a usable desktop environment with the wifi generally connecting within that window. It’s now awful, but traditional S1-3 standby was so much better. S0 standby is great if you’re frequently opening and closing the device, but is unusable on higher power devices.
But that’s with only 8 gigs of ram on this MacBook, the more ram the longer it takes. The 32 gigs of ram in my actual work laptop (ThinkPad P1 11th gen i9) takes about a minute to wake from hibernation, and like 2 minutes for it to fully get situated. If I do that on battery that’s about 3-5% of my battery just waking from hibernation.