I got my new MacBook Pro yesterday and went to download Origin so I could play The Sims. (3 and 4) The only thing is, I'm worried that playing video games might ruin the laptop's battery. My old computer's (2015 HP) battery is shot, I suspect from playing The Sims and Skyrim for hundreds of hours. It also gets really hot whenever I play games. Basically, I want to play games on my MacBook, but if it'll kill the battery I'm not going to. Does anyone else run Origin and The Sims on their MacBooks? If yes, does it ruin the battery?
I've never had any of my Macs run hot (I have 7 different flavors of Mac machines at last count). But... I also don't game, so... My opinion probs not valid here.
I'm a PC gamer so I have no data to go on, but I assume there are different specs of MacBooks? You need a machine capable of playing the games you like to play, with fans strong enough to counteract the heat produced. Skyrim is a demanding game. I think @Link the Writer is a gamer, not sure if he has a Mac.
It'll only ruin the battery if the battery gets really hot or you're draining all the way down to nothing before recharging. Where are you playing these games that you can't simply connect to a wall outlet and run off the AC? On a macbook the graphics hardware is located under the left side of the keyboard and can run very hot. The chassis is aluminum, which is a terrible heatsink. It's also packed solid so there is almost no airflow inside. I would recommend buying a cooling pad: https://www.amazon.com/Laptop-Cooling-Pads-External-Fans/b?ie=UTF8&node=2243862011&tag=writingfor07a-20
Will leaving it plugged in for long periods of time ruin the battery, or is that just a lie on the internet?
Well, I did that with a Dell laptop and killed the battery. I don't know if the battery setup is the same in the New MacBooks, but I've been told that you should run the battery down as much as possible from time to time in order to let it recharge fully. Maybe that isn't true anymore with the newer batteries, though. What does Apple have to say about it? (I'm typing this on a three-year-old MacBook.) FWIW, here's something from the Apple web site: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2580475 but it's dated 2010, and they may have changed batteries by then. As for overheating, nine times out of ten, it's due to the laptop lying on a surface that won't dissipate heat, like a blanket on a bed. So make sure that you've left enough space under the machine for the air to circulate.
It may have a small effect, but it's negligible. Not something you'd notice, if your battery died prematurely, it was almost certainly going to do that anyway. Yes, putting your laptop on your bed while playing a game will overheat it.
This used to be a thing in the early days of laptops, like the ones that ran 486's, but fortunately battery technology has come pretty far since then. You can kill a battery by completely draining it, but most OS's have a safety feature where they actually shut the computer down when it hits somewhere around 5%, so completely draining the battery is a pretty laborious process of repeatedly turning the machine on until it automatically shuts itself off until it can no longer power itself up anymore. Which is what we used to do like 10 years ago to see if a battery had a bad cell in it, or if low battery life was another problem. But now, laptop batteries are basically like a bigger version of the batteries you find in cell phones, so if whatever you're doing to charge your mobile hasn't killed it yet, then your Mac should be fine under the same conditions.
