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Comment by imron | Hacker News Reader

I on the other hand wouldn't mind if they made the laptop a little bit thicker in exchange for better battery life.

When the discrete graphics chip is being used, plus a retina display, and or several dongles plugged in for ethernet, usb-a or whatever, battery life on my 2017 MBP while doing development work is maybe 3-4 hours.

It was quite a shock to go to that from the 8-9 hours I used to get from my older MacBook air. Whereas previously I would leave certain apps (notably image editing apps or VMs) open while developing, I now find myself opening them, doing a task and then closing them so as not to activate the discrete graphics chip and drain the battery.

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    I now find myself opening them, doing a task and 
    then closing them so as not to activate the discrete
    graphics chip and drain the battery.

Sounds like what's really needed here is a way to tell MacOS not to use the discrete graphics chip when on battery power.

Is there no way to do that? It's been a while since I used a MBP with discrete graphics. There used to be a menubar app for that, but I always felt it should have been an option baked into MacOS itself.

No. The 15" MBP uses Intel chips without integrated graphics.

> Is there no way to do that?

There is an app for that (https://gfx.io/), but it doesn't switch automatically when battery is in use so you have to enable it manually (and you have to close any apps that are using the discrete chip first).

Mostly though I just use that app to know when the discrete chip is enabled, and then quit whatever program enabled it when I've finished with it.

They can only make the battery 99WH, and still have it allowed to go on an airplane. The battery is already ~83WH, so sadly, there may not be much to gain there.

That's an interesting piece of information to know, thanks.

While it's technically true, it's worth noting that part of the weight & thickness savings in the 2016+ MBPr was from simply reducing the battery from 99.5 Wh to 76Wh. I strongly dislike this change.

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