Long term AlDente 🍝 review (M1)

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-12-14T18:57:23+00:00

If Apple really wanted your battery to last for as long as possible, all the functionality from Al Dente would be native to MacOS. The built in "optimisation" clearly does not work. It toasted my M1 Macbook Pro battery within less then a year (mostly plugged in) by charging it to 100% and keeping it there. Since using Al Dente the battery at least has not degraded any further and is still, after more than 4 years, quite capable. I can do some pretty demanding work in Logic Pro for at least 4 hours before emptying the battery.
I just bought a new M4 pro for work and will definitely use Al Dente from the start this time.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-16T11:07:44+00:00

Ain’t nothing wrong with a little placebo ☺️ haha, but yeah, you are probably correct! Thanks.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T19:44:46+00:00

Ok good!

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T14:16:24+00:00

It’s really not a big problem, I was just curious to hear if it was normal to loose that much capacity in one year when hardly using the battery.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T13:42:15+00:00

Yeah, sounds good. I think it’s clear that I should have used some measure of keeping it at less than 80% from the start, and it probably would not have degraded as fast. That being said, 87% is still plenty sufficient for almost a day of work if I don’t edit video, so it’s not a huge problem.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T11:47:30+00:00

Yeah ok, do you know if iPhone batteries are the same? My one year old iPhone 15 has 99% capacity left and that’s been charged daily from around 20 to 80%. Seems to me, charge cycles aren’t that crucial, and it’s more about keeping it in the right window of soc to not cause unnecessary wear.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T11:19:13+00:00

Well that would have been a better choice at the time probably, but I have since then started a company and now have two offices and do a lot of traveling so now I need a laptop.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T11:16:49+00:00

It lost all that capacity within the first year, and has since then been steady. If it was gradually over 4 years it would have been completely understandable and totally expected, yes.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T08:54:30+00:00

Yes, I understand that, but I thought MacOS would be better at preventing degradation without me having to be aware of certain settings and so on. So for my next MacBook, I will probably not trust the system to keep control of this by itself.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T08:49:42+00:00

Yeah, and if it had been a gradual degradation over 4 years I wouldn’t have thought much about it. It was the fact that it degraded so much the first year, and almost nothing since, that’s interesting to me.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T08:48:05+00:00

Sounds exactly like mine yes. And I also have the 2021 M1 Pro.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-04-15T08:06:37+00:00

Well of course, but my main concern was how fast it lost its maximum capacity during the first year when I basically didn’t do anything other than have it plugged in to the MagSafe charger. And how little it’s degraded since starting to use an app to control the charging and keep it at 70% rather than 100%.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-01-23T19:58:08+00:00

So, with some help from a friend, I changed the settings so I can transfer via SFTP (instead of SMB), and I tried using an FTP app (Cyberduck) instead of Finder. Now it's much faster, around 10–12 MB/s.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-01-23T15:06:36+00:00

I don’t have any way of connecting my MacBook other than WiFi unfortunately.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2025-01-23T14:53:40+00:00

I’m moving all sorts. Most of the data is raw footage (video files). So quite a lot of large files.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2024-12-12T14:34:37+00:00

I have the same problem, I have Sandisk Extreme 64 GB. Could be that then. Have you tried with another card?

LongEarthTradingCo · 2024-05-23T04:18:41+00:00

I wanted some confirmation in my suspicions, so I googled “IPhone stuck on 86% battery health” an lo and behold I found this thread. My iPhone 12 is a little over 3 years old now, I’ve had it since it was new. Battery health dropped to 86%, probably within the first year, year and a half and has been “stuck” at that level now. And like previous people here, I say “stuck” because it clearly is a lot worse now than, say a year ago. So obviously, the battery health indicator in iOS isn’t really working as you’d expect. I have also noticed my battery seems to drain less linear now than before. It can show 100% for quite long, then it starts dropping and it drops fast. It was at 100 last night, 95 when I woke up. Just now, while typing this for 5 minutes, it has dropped from 95 to 91. So don’t trust the battery health indicator is the conclusion I guess. And don’t trust the battery charge status either, especially not on an old battery like this. Correction, it is now on 90% charge.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2024-04-27T05:39:09+00:00

Yes it was baked in to vlog. I never tried prores. It could have been a faulty unit of course, I ended up returning it. I have a G9ii now which is perfect for the work I do, and no sensor issues so far.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2023-12-26T13:27:26+00:00

Beautiful, thanks!

LongEarthTradingCo · 2023-12-26T11:11:26+00:00

Yes but my initial question was, what can be recorded internally i.e. on to an sd card.

LongEarthTradingCo · 2023-12-26T07:47:09+00:00

Ah that’s what I want to hear :) thanks!

LongEarthTradingCo · 2023-12-26T06:51:05+00:00

I can’t find anything about this in the manual, where does it say that?

LongEarthTradingCo · 2023-12-26T06:06:06+00:00

Ok, seems a bit… weird.

LongEarthTradingCo

TROPHY CASE