Despite all the noise generated by Apple over Retina 5k and 4k displays in the iMac line, and all the power and connectors in the Mac Pro, and how little power is used by a diminutive Mac mini, Apple sells more Mac notebooks than everything else combined.
We live in a mobile device world, folks, and the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBoo Pro models make up about 75-percent of all the Macs sold worldwide every year. What do they all have in common? Batteries. Here’s a quick look at a Mac app which claims to improve battery life.
Must. Kill. Flash.
Today’s Mac notebooks have the best battery life ever. Even the tiny and somewhat underpowered new MacBook gets about 10 hours or so on a charge. Ditto for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. Wouldn’t you like to have 12 hours of battery life?
That’s the claim made by Endurance, a new Mac utility which pulls a few strings to stretch battery life an extra 20-percent or so (your mileage may vary, of course). Battery conservation is something of an art form for Mac road warriors; those of us who go almost everywhere with a Mac.
If we don’t need it, off goes Wi-Fi, Flash is blocked in Safari, and Application Monitor becomes your friend because it can shame certain Mac apps which use more than their fair share of battery juice. Endurance can automatically turn off energy hungry apps or utilities, dim the screen, hide background apps, and just plain quit those apps which are greedy.
Low Battery Mode can be turned on at a specific battery charge percentage, but you maintain control over which options Endurance can affect.
- Dimming Screen
- Monitor Expensive Apps
- Hiding Background Apps
- Monitoring Flash Plugin
- Slowing Down Processor
Personally, I’ve been able to squeeze and extra hour and nearly two hours from my MacBook simply by paying close attention to which apps are used, which remain open, which background processes remain open (or, need to be killed with a Force Quit), but it’s an ongoing, attention getting exercise.
Endurance does much the same thing automatically, although just ridding your Mac of the Flash plugin is good for about a 10-percent gain. This handy utility works, but as with anything battery related, your success depends much upon how you use your Mac, and every Mac user’s requirements are a bit different.
Even without Endurance installed I have been able to add an hour to a full battery charge, and more than that with Endurance, but, again, it depends upon how the Mac is being used, so how it works for you is also dependent upon how you use your Mac.
