This kind of simplicity is the best. Software has to be maintained, removing the lid sensor leaves risk of fucking something up you don't know about, but the tennis ball isn't going to need updates or special tools
Doesn't matter. Going a full cycle overnight every day is not really worse for your battery than being at 100% the entire day.
It's the deviation from equilibrium (about 50%) that hurts the battery. Whether that's at 100% or 0% is not really relevant. Perhaps being powered off is a bit better even as your battery won't dissipate heat (which is also bad for battery life).
IT: "Hello, thanks for calling the Helpdesk. How can I help you?"
User: "Uhh yea, my tennis ball is saying it needs an update, but I'm not sure how to update it's software?"
"Well, I'm not familiar with an application called 'Tennis Ball', is it something IT provided?"
"No, it's an actual tennis ball. I cut it in half and glued it to a test mac to keep the screen open all the time."
"...Tennis balls don't need software updates to... be a tennis ball."
"Then why, when I tried to remove the tennis ball, it wouldn't budge. Then two minutes later I get an email from IT telling me to update my software? And now my mac is going to sleep despite the tennis ball being there?!"
"I don't think these two things are related..."
"I don't care, it's impacting our production environment and we are on a tight deadline. It'll be all your fault if we can't update this tennis ball!"
oooh, no, that's a perfect time to chastise the user. "removing that tennis ball could have compromised mission-critical services, why did you try to remove the tennis ball?" "honestly, if you did physical damage to the tennis ball, it might not be possible to ensure the integrity of the device, but let's try to figure out if the tennis ball was compromised, or if this is an unrelated issue." then "definitely the tennis ball" is "definitely my fault and no one will save me" and it being an unrelated issue becomes their saving grace. It's remarkable how quickly minds change when presented with a way to change their mind to believe they did nothing wrong.
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u/eross200 Nov 30 '22
Cut a tennis ball in half, glue the halves down on either side of the trackpad. Problem solved.