Category: Tech Musings

Long-term Notes on MacBook Pro Battery Usage

From time to time, I lurk on the r/macbookpro reddit group. Chief among the main worries of new MacBook Pro owners are battery life and battery cycles. These folks seem extraordinarily concerned about the battery cycle count, to the point of anxiety.

To them, I would say:

Batteries are a consumable item – they will degrade over time. Don’t worry about battery cycles or charging. Just relax and use your MacBook Pro as you normally would.

If you want to optimize your battery’s health, macOS Tahoe provides a new option to set your battery’s charge limit. I have mine set to charge up to 95% of the full charge limit. But, truthfully, I never even remotely cared about charge limit before.

After five years of extensive use, my M1 Pro MacBook Pro has 81% charging capacity. The battery’s cycle count is 115, and its condition is reported as normal.

While my MacBook Pro remains plugged in 80% of the time, I’m not afraid to run the MBP on battery juice when I’m out and about. It’s not uncommon for me to run my Mac’s battery completely down to the point where I have to plug it in. When it happens, I don’t worry about it. (The battery still lasts about 4 to 5 hours on one charge. Pretty impressive for a five year old laptop, all things considered.)

Bottom line: Don’t worry about your Mac’s battery cycle count. Just use it like you normally would.

It’s fine.

-Krishna

April 23, 2026
The Modern Automobile Dashboard is a Mess

Look carefully at the image above. It’s from the dashboard of a 2025 Toyota Camry. Littered across the cluster are a cacophony of icons, measurement gauges and more. It’s a mess. Sure, the speedometer, engine temperature and gas guage are useful – but even within a few of those elements, there’s a lot going on.

As I drove last week, my car’s dash made a sound. An audible “ding”, quite similar to a smartphone chat notification. I’ve heard this ding appear before, at seemingly random times while on my commute. I have no idea what this “ding” signifies. Not one clue.

Maybe the “ding” coincided with a visual cue on my dash? I’ll never know. Because the dash cluster has little in the way of hierarchy. Because I’m too focused on driving to glance down to decipher what’s seeking my attention. Or maybe it’s just bad UI/UX.

And don’t even get me started on the Camry’s propensity to randomly drop its Bluetooth connection to my smartphone.

Modern car instrumentation is a minefield of distraction. Give me old fashioned analog buttons, gauges and knobs any day.

How did we get here? Why is modern car UI so darn awful?

-Krishna

April 21, 2026
On Brevity

Jeffrey Zeldman writes:

What’s rare—what’s difficult—is knowing when you’ve said enough. Cutting the sentence that’s technically correct but doesn’t earn its place. Trusting the reader. Trusting the idea. Trusting the white space to do work.

Knowing what to leave out is just as important as what you keep in. Zeldman focuses on brevity within the realm of writing, but the idea is particularly potent to any creative undertaking.

Read the rest of his excellent post.

-Krishna

April 18, 2026
Mac Backups, Backups, Backups

“There are two kinds of tech users in the world: Those who have lost data, and those who are about to lose data.”

I’m paraphrasing a popular idiom here, but I find it to be true nonetheless. If you work with computers, you need a back-up strategy. Computers can be replaced, but the data it stores is one of a kind, whether its personal photos, important documents, creative media etc.

My back-up system is multi-faceted. It involves having both local back-ups and off-site back-ups. Local back-ups make sense: having more than one copy of data on an attached storage device provides peace of mind. But off-site back-ups are equally important. Should the unthinkable happen, and I lose my home due to a fire or natural disaster, I don’t want my data to go with it.

Hardware

For context: I have two Macs, a laptop and an M4 Mac mini with 512GB storage. The MacBook Pro is connected to an OWC ThunderBay 4 enclosure, which is populated with four drives.

I’ll use my Mac mini’s boot drive as an example here, but I apply the same strategy for any attached storage I connect to it. I have a separate 512GB external NVME drive attached to it, which serves as a clone of the internal storage. For every storage device I actively write data to (SOURCE), I have a separate storage device serving as its back-up (CLONE).

The ThunderBay 4 enclosure contains two SOURCE drives, with two corresponding CLONE drives.

My advice when buying new storage is to buy in twos. (Buy once, cry once.)

Software

For cloned back-ups, I use SuperDuper. It has been my go-to for reliable back-ups for more than a decade. SuperDuper lets me set a specific back-up schedule for each SOURCE drive on my system. At the scheduled time, SuperDuper will launch and make back-ups to the CLONE without my intervention. (From time to time, I will check the integrity of the back-up to make sure that my data is intact. No issues thus far.)

macOS includes Time Machine, a software back-up solution. I have assigned a separate drive for Time Machine, set to back-up specific files and folders on my MacBook Pro’s internal drive. Time Machine takes snap-shots of these files / folders, allowing me to “go back in time” to revert a file back to an earlier state. I don’t use this often, but it does come handy in the times I need it.

In addition to cloned back-ups, I also sync specific folders between my two Macs. This allows me to work on the latest files on either of my Macs. Syncing insures that the same files exist in two places, and for that task I use ChronoSync. Like my cloned back-ups, ChronoSync offers scheduled syncs.

The Cloud

For off-site back-ups, I use BackBlaze. There’s a monthly cost ($7US) associated with this, but BackBlaze offers unlimited data back-ups. Should I lose all of my local data, BackBlaze will overnight a drive with all of my data. I hope I never have to take advantage of this, but again – it’s really for my peace of mind.

Final Thoughts

Back-ups are important. New computers can be purchased, but your data can’t. Choose wisely.

-Krishna

April 18, 2026
My Favorite Sites for 4K and Higher Desktop Wallpaper Backgrounds

Desktop wallpapers are a terrific way to customize your computer. But great wallpaper sites are like hidden gems. You’ve really gotta look around to find the best ones.

Good news for you!

I’ve scoured the web (high and low) to find the absolute best places to find high quality 4K wallpaper, and lived to tell the tale. My recommendations are listed below.

1. Pexels.com features high quality royalty free images, cleanly categorized, with a leaderboard to quickly find the most viewed creators on the site.

2. Wallhaven.cc is perfect if your tastes skew towards pop culture. Truthfully, there’s something for everyone here, whether it’s landscapes or manga. What makes this site particularly notable (outside of the sheer volume of wallpapers) is its robust filtering system. Search by subject, resolution, and even color scheme to find your favorites.

3. unsplash.com is a great place to find drawing reference, but it also serves double duty by serving up top notch 4K wallpapers. Wallpapers are curated by the Unsplash staff, so there’s bound to be something you like.

4. Freepik.com is another terrific wallpaper resource. The site’s clean layout makes it easy to browse through its offerings. Beware that the site also includes AI generated art. Thankfully, there’s a toggle to exclude AI from your search results.

5. BasicAppleGuy is an Apple themed blog, with articles, reviews, custom stickers and more. You don’t have to be an Apple aficionado to like what’s here. But if Apple’s your jam, you’ll find many excellent iPhone, iPad, and Mac desktop wallpapers to choose from, created by the site’s owner. Kick in a few bucks into the site’s Tip Jar to let him know you dig what he’s putting down.

Chances are pretty solid that you’ll likely find your next wallpaper from one of the sites listed above. And, since you asked: My favorite wallpapers are those that feature colorful abstract designs or beautiful landscapes.

Another reason these sites made the list is for they don’t have: No pop-up ads, no re-directs or any of that other nonsense. Who’s got time for that?

-Krishna

April 13, 2026
Are Browser Bookmarks Still Relevant?

When was the last time you visited a bookmarked site from your web browser’s Bookmarks menu?

For me, it’s been so long that I can’t even remember. I still have a large list of browser bookmarks, each meticulously organized into appropriate folders. But I never go through them.

Pre-smartphone, I relied on my browser’s Bookmarks menu heavily for tasks like comparison shopping and academic research.

These days, my browser’s Bookmark menu goes untouched. Every website that I need frequent access to either exists within my fingertips or as Favorites that run across the top of my browser.

Browser profiles, coupled with Favorites, is how I do things now. I have configured separate profiles for work, tech, streaming, and more. Each of my browser’s profiles have their own set of collected Favorites.

And when I really need to look something up, I almost never search through my Bookmarks menu. It’s faster for me to use a search engine or AI.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad the Bookmarks menu exists. But I wonder how many people actually use it…

-Krishna

April 8, 2026
Web Hosting in 2026

Web hosting is something I haven’t really given much thought to, until this week.

As I wrote about earlier, nearly 16 years of content evaporated as a result of a successful hacking attempt on PC WEENIES.

Rebuilding will take some time, but I was able to get the basics of my site up and running within a weekend. Unfortunately for me, I did not have any recent site back-ups, so for all intents and purposes, I’m starting all over again, from scratch.

I host PC WEENIES on BlueHost, and this weekend I had to lean heavily on their customer support to get to the bottom of the issues that had plagued my site. Their phone support was not so good. I’ll chalk it up to the language barrier and a poor phone connection. I had much better luck with BlueHost’s live chat, where I chatted with at least 3 of their support agents. While nothing could be done to reclaim my old data, they were at least helpful in getting my new WordPress install up and running. I’ll give them a B+.

In addition to BlueHost, I have my portfolio site hosted on HostPapa. This morning I woke up to a nearly $1055 charge on my credit card. I was being billed for three years to the tune of $881.38, with an SSL Wildcard fee of $109.99 and backups at $47.99.

To say that I was shocked at the bill was an understatement.

Worse yet, there was no warning. No heads-up from the company. Just a charge, quickly followed up with an email invoice – all happening in the dead of night.

Thankfully, my credit card company alerted me and I immediately denied the charge. I did call HostPapa later in the day, and did get a chance to speak to a polite customer service rep. According to the invoice, I was placed under their “Pro” plan, which (in my view) seems beyond execessive for hosting a simple 5 page WordPress portfolio site.

My hopes are that the situation will resolve. If not, I’ll be looking at new webhosting.

-Krishna

April 6, 2026