17 ms·

> Reducing mA (power draw) rather than increasing mAh (power storage) is the most effective way to increase battery life, which would go a long way to explain m

> Reducing mA (power draw) rather than increasing mAh (power storage) is the most effective way to increase battery life, which would go a long way to explain manufacturers’ obsession with thinness (which, in electrical terms often directly translates efficiency (i.e., smallness)) in their devices rather than just giving us something that endures. I think it goes the other way; the manufacturers' obsession with thinness (for mostly aesthetic reasons) goes a long way to explain why they're focusing on reducing power draw. It's great that they are reducing power draw, but by making everything thinner (usually translating into decreased power storage), those gains in efficiency are largely cancelled out when it comes to battery life in real-world usage. When creating these things, the designers, engineers, and marketing people obviously have some kind of target battery life in mind, and it seems as though the target is always "about the same battery life as the last generation," whereas there's no end to the number of compromises and engineering efforts that go toward cutting 1 mm off one dimension. And of course, the tech bloggers all go nuts about how thin the newest generation is compared to the last, and people buy computers based on their recommendations. Aren't these things thin enough already, at least for professionals? Why not go for some truly earth-shattering battery life on one of these laptops? Do people really care more about that 1 mm than they do about potentially hours of additional battery life?

M_Grey 10y ago
Then, irony of ironies, people put their ultra-thin devices in cases to protect them, carry multiple batteries for them, or external charging bricks, and my favorite... the oversized extended battery. Throws hands up in air
- tru3n0rth 10y ago
  Is that really a bad thing, though? It seems like it gives the consumer a choice between having an ultra-lightweight device, or compromising on that front in favor of more battery life and protection.
  - jhobag 10y ago
    Exactly. People that do tasks more intensive than watch youtube videos and work on spreadsheets don't need any more battery life so thinness is a priority for regular laptops. People doing intense work use t h i c c laptops
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dperfect 10y ago
    I agree with this point, but with laptop battery life, unfortunately the alternatives are all significantly worse than simply having a slightly thicker/heavier laptop. They almost always involve carrying additional devices (needing their own protective enclosures, cables, etc) and require additional cognitive load (Which spare battery is charged? Where did I leave that battery?). A bigger internal battery eliminates all of that. There are very few options (if any) in between.
- Tloewald 10y ago
  Here's the thing — of you want more endurance you can get extra batteries (and with USB-C you can probably start using interchangeable standard power bricks) but if battery life is adequate you don't need to. How is this worse? One of the things that has changed my life for the better is switching entirely to devices that can use any USB power brick or USB charger in a pinch. This includes my cameras, tablets, phones, audio gear, and so on. The only remaining outlier is laptops.
- scarface74 10y ago
  I can't speak for laptops but I can speak for the utility of having a thin phone and a battery pack that makes it thicker and heavier than it would be if Apple just included a bigger battery: I've only used my battery pack four or five times in the year and a half I've had my 6s. Most of the time I'm not far away from a plug - either at home, in my car, at work, etc. But when I travel, a slightly bigger battery wouldn't be enough. I would want twice the battery life - something I can get by using a battery pack - but I probably wouldn't get from a slightly larger iPhone. If you have to optimize, why optimize for the edge cases instead of the most popular case and give options for those times people need it.
  - qeternity 10y ago
    Or just have an external battery pack that powers any of your USB devices. As you say, this represents maybe 5% of my usage. Most of the time I don't worry about battery, but sure enjoy having a slim phone.
    - tmd83 10y ago
      Honest question what do you enjoy about the super slim phone? In the last years have you seen any phone thats too thick to hold or hard to put in pocket or just about don't fit in any place? Why slimmer, I honestly don't understand since it only makes it more slippery, harder to grip, more fragile. I don't see any use for further slimming than making a fashion statement or a notch for the marketing team. I can understand if someone says they want even lighter.
      - hulahoof 10y ago
        Lighter is always my main concern, I never really hear other people complain but I often support the bottom of my phone with my pinky when using with one hand (bad habit) - and I definitely feel every extra gram ...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - 10y ago
- cgriswald 10y ago
  Even if devices weren't ultrathin they'd need to be in protective cases. Cases can be damaged and easily replaced. A damaged device is more expensive and less convenient to repair or replace. As for battery packs, I have multiple devices, but I carry one battery pack that can charge all of them as needed. My phone is much lighter in my pocket for not having to have a larger battery (that I don't usually need), my ipad is easier to handle, etc.
- caycep 10y ago
  My mom throws her 11" MBA in her purse, and charges it only at night.
retreatguru 10y ago
Precisely this. If the 2016 MacBook Pro I bought had been a tad thicker I would not have noticed. But I returned because of the dismal battery life under moderate load. Much worse than the previous generation. Did they even test this machine in the wild?
- Tehnix 10y ago
  I on the other hand wouldn't have bought the Macbook Pro, but ended up doing so because it had now become the "Macbook Air with retina" that I'd been waiting on for ages (...although a shitton more expensive). More battery would be nice, but thinness and espcially weight matter a great deal to me. I literally sometimes don't even have my charger with me, because that small amount of added weight annoys me a great deal. Although I'm probably a bit extreme in that regard.
- rayiner 10y ago
  The battery is 25% smaller. Not enough to go from not dismal to dismal. Likely the integrated GPU kicking in when it shouldn't.
  - retreatguru 10y ago
    I guess I was hoping the battery would last longer than my 5 year old battery in my older MBP. I was kind of shocked when it didn't.
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      That sounds like a bug of some sort (hopefully). MacBook battery life had a massive jump in the 2013 version.
- philliphaydon 10y ago
  The few people I know who upgraded from their 2012/2015 model to 2016 have complained about battery being worse :/
  - 10y ago
nsxwolf 10y ago
I recently carried an older 13 inch MacBook Pro around to a bunch of meetings in the city. I could not believe how heavy it started to feel after about a mile of total walking. I welcome powerful laptops that are as light as possible. Where are people working that they need a full day of untethered charge? I've never been to a client that didn't provide me with a power outlet. 4 or 5 hours of real world use for a developer workstation is just fine train commuting or sitting in a coffee shop in the morning.
- deleted 10y ago
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rayiner 10y ago
I don't really buy the "aren't they thin enough already" argument. I would've said my 15" MBP 2013 is small and light enough, but the 2016 model is notably more livable. The reduction in footprint (which also affects space for a battery) makes it a lot more manageable to spring for the 15". It's a pound lighter than the 13.3" polycarbonate MacBook I had a decade ago!
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Apple forces thinness because nobody else does. This differentiates their products. It also forces their engineers to make things smaller before anyone else. That, in turn, keeps them at the forefront of miniaturization.
- BoorishBears 10y ago
  When the MacBook Air first came out that might have been true, but fitting in a manila folder is no longer that impressive with the ubiquity of ultrabooks. Apple hasn't been aggressive with selling thin the way they were with the Air (back when the Air came out it really was a breathtakingly thin laptop, or at least the marketing made you feel that way) Apple doesn't even have the thinnest laptop anymore, that achievement is now in HP's hands with the 10.4mm thick Spectre (and before that it was HP's Envy)
djrogers 10y ago
> at least for professionals? Professional whats? Executives, salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians, beer distributors - all of these people are professionals, and all of them can and do benefit from smaller and lighter computing power. Clearly your idea of a professional is someone who is chained to a desk writing code or processing complex 3D graphics. No question those are professional uses as well, but the idea of a 'professional computer user' covers a lot more ground these days than your insular definition.
- nxc18 10y ago
  I see no reason why any of those people benefit from the slightly thinner form of the new mbp than they would benefit from better battery life. Everyone wants batteries that last longer. How often did you look at your last generation mbp and wish it was thinner?
  - qeternity 10y ago
    These people are lugging their laptop around all day, from meeting to meeting, or airport to airport. If you can keep battery life constant at ca. 10 hours, which covers an extended work day, then beyond that most people would prefer to have lighter/slimmer/cooler (less hot) devices than one that runs for 20 hours.
    - deepGem 10y ago
      Agreed. I think heat dissipation is often overlooked while making a buying decision. Regarding overall portability, I think the 13 inch MacBook air is a good compromise. The new 13 inch MacBook pro is about the same weight, but obviously a lot more powerful, and is smaller in dimensions. It's a breeze to work on planes with this machine. I'd rather see the next iteration of MacBook Pros with better heat dissipation and longer battery life than with 1 mm improvement in thickness.
      - rz2k 10y ago
        Thinner implies a better ratio of surface area to volume for dissipating heat. Though, I suppose a laptop could be thicker by including empty space with fans and airflow to exhaust the heat out the sides rather than conducting it through the surfaces touched by users.
michaelbuckbee 10y ago
I can only imagine there has been some study of how long between charges people go on average/median. I imagine most people aren't going all day without any chance to charge (the world seems to have gotten more charger friendly) and there are probably lots of weirdos like me who work from home and never take their MBPs anywhere.
memco 10y ago
> Why not go for some truly earth-shattering battery life on one of these laptops? Interesting to note that there are reports that there was a failed battery design that would have given these latest models even more battery[0]. However, I think your suggestion is more reasonable. If there's less space being used for components, fill it with more battery. Then they could possibly have offered the 32GB of ram they couldn't offer due to battery concerns[1]. [0]https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/20/larger-battery-gold-color-macbook-pro/ https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/20/larger-battery-gold-col... [1]https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-32gb-ram-mbp-logic-board/ https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-32gb-ram-...
zxcvb 10y ago
I travel a lot and I do technical work (sometimes) - it needs to be powerful (ish) and light with good battery life* * when I first owned a laptop the batter lasted around 1.5 hours - I can get 5 out of my mac, that's awesome.
gigatexal 10y ago
I agree. And thinness to me is more about minimalism than anything else. And that I laude Apple for.
jlarocco 10y ago
Thinner also (usually) means lighter, and a lot of people prioritize light weight over longer battery life.
microtheo 10y ago
Everybody always talks about thinness... I would argue that all they want is reduce the cost of the components. The smaller the battery for the same battery life, the cheaper it will be to produce. Everything is about rentability.
asafira 10y ago
This is a pretty common rant on HN and other tech enthusiast sites. My main qualm is your note that tech bloggers love the thinness and that people will buy it based on their recommendation. A) do most people really read tech blogs to figure out what computer to buy? Or do most people ask the best buy guy or their friend? (I would guess the latter, but I am not super sure so I'm gonna leave it as a question...) B) many tech bloggers to express their disappointment in manufacturer's obsession with thinness. (Examples: MKBHD, Android Police, maybe even Anandtech) (On a separate note, I have read way too many tech blogs...)
- sowpati 10y ago
  Regarding your first question, I'm not from a tech related field, and most people around me generally use Google for recommendations. And Google always ranks famous tech blogs higher on the list. So.. I would say yes.
seanp2k2 10y ago
Yep, they could have put a 99wh battery in it and gave it another ~33% battery life (the 2016 15" tbMBP has a 76wh pack while the 2015 had the 99wh pack). Given that 100wh is the largest you can easily bring on a plane, I'm sure many people would have been happier with "up to 13 hours of battery life" instead of "10" right now.
HNLogInShit 10y ago
Nobody, not even "bloggers" are "going nuts" about thinness. Thinness is a pathetically played-out gimmick with which Apple continues to embarrass itself and hideously degrade its products. The glued-together computers with soldered-in RAM, soldered-in SSDs, and chintzy, shitty keyboards (at ever-higher prices) serve NO ONE. Nobody was complaining that Apple's products were "too thick." Jony Ive should be fired. His ideas revolve around new ways to eliminate usefulness, and the public has voted his designs a failure. How do we know? The vast majority of customers bury their "thin, elegant" iPhones in a bulky, tacky case. And then they carry a power brick and wad of wire around, so they can beg bartenders to plug their phones in (or crawl under tables to do so themselves). It's sad.
pmontra 10y ago
Anecdotally, a customer of mine had to replace his MacBook and bought the new one with the OLED strip. He says that the battery lasts about the same as the old one. The only difference he felt is the USB-C connectors and the need to have a dongle for everything. He's not happy about that.
Shivetya 10y ago
well based on weight and size current generation laptops from Dell, Apple, and others, still has being doing a double take when picking up my laptop bag; as in is it in there? I think the battle over thinness and weight was well worth it but the next battle is getting workflow to work in a full touch screen interface similar to the surface pro do and not he half ass move Apple made with that touch bar. Applications and imagination are holding that up. I do not expect keyboards to ever go away completely but pointing devices are another thing entirely
tinus_hn 10y ago
Typically companies produce products that people want to buy. A vocal number of people on the internet keeps saying that everybody wants laptops with a bigger battery instead of thin laptops. Companies are producing thin laptops instead of big laptops with big batteries though, because that is what people are buying. So in reality, people do not want the bigger laptop with the big battery, they want the thin laptop. If you want bigger laptops, go out and buy the biggest one you can find. If all these people that say they want it do that, you can be sure the market will be flooded with laptops with a big battery.
deleted 10y ago
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Xixi 10y ago
I do care about that extra 1mm, when it comes to a latptop. I think most people who buy a laptop to use it on the go care about that. To be entirely fair I care more about the weight reduction than the 1mm. For instance the new MacBook Pro 13" is my first MacBook Pro, simply because it's the first that is thin/light enough for me to carry around. Before that I had a MacBook Air from 2011. The MacBook Pro is vastly more powerful, but to write code it doesn't help much. It's not like SublimeText was slow on the MacBook Air. It's however night and days when it comes to browsing the web...
- falcolas 10y ago
  Counter anecdote: I've been carrying around laptops since my 17", 13# Alienware "laptop". Ever since the release of the 13" MBP (the one with the CD drive), a decent backpack or messenger bag has effectively negated every thickness and weight gains from that point on. Frankly, I'm more annoyed by the bulk and weight of the power adapter than I am about 1mm or 1# off the laptop.
- yedpodtrzitko 10y ago
  You know why people complain? Because some time ago there was Macbook Air for people who prefer a thin and light machine, and then there was Macbook Pro for people who prefer more powerful machine (in whichever meaning). This separation actually made sense. But now they discontinued Air, and they are trying to make a single line full of compromises.
jfoster 10y ago
I actually do appreciate a thinner, lighter machine, but with phones and laptops they're at the point where I'd happily take a few extra mm in order to get something more rugged with significantly better battery life.
digi_owl 10y ago
I find myself thinking that i recall reading about certain thinkpads (or some other brand) had the option of an attached battery that would fit flush with the laptop bottom. Thus i find myself thinking about some way to do a combo of frames/cases and batteries so that one can add a frame to a laptop and insert batteries into the frame to extend overall runtime. The idea of the frames being that if one replace the laptop one only need to replace the frame but continue to use the batteries.
6t6t6t6 10y ago
I really do care about weight and dimensions. Before I used to buy the typical 3.5Kg laptops. When you carry an Acer around, you can feel the weight in your backpack, even when you walk around the office to go to a meeting. I switched to a MBA and I feel it like if it was a paper notebook. It is a huge difference. A perfect laptop for me would have the weight an dimensions of a MBA with almost the power of a MBP. As for battery life, I need enough battery to be able to go to meetings without having to take the charger with me. It's not usual for me to work 8 hours without having a charger near to me. Also, as far as I know, the new Macs with USB-C, can be charged from an external battery pack.

M_Grey 10y ago

Then, irony of ironies, people put their ultra-thin devices in cases to protect them, carry multiple batteries for them, or external charging bricks, and my favorite... the oversized extended battery. Throws hands up in air

tru3n0rth 10y ago
Is that really a bad thing, though? It seems like it gives the consumer a choice between having an ultra-lightweight device, or compromising on that front in favor of more battery life and protection.
- jhobag 10y ago
  Exactly. People that do tasks more intensive than watch youtube videos and work on spreadsheets don't need any more battery life so thinness is a priority for regular laptops. People doing intense work use t h i c c laptops
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dperfect 10y ago
  I agree with this point, but with laptop battery life, unfortunately the alternatives are all significantly worse than simply having a slightly thicker/heavier laptop. They almost always involve carrying additional devices (needing their own protective enclosures, cables, etc) and require additional cognitive load (Which spare battery is charged? Where did I leave that battery?). A bigger internal battery eliminates all of that. There are very few options (if any) in between.
Tloewald 10y ago
Here's the thing — of you want more endurance you can get extra batteries (and with USB-C you can probably start using interchangeable standard power bricks) but if battery life is adequate you don't need to. How is this worse? One of the things that has changed my life for the better is switching entirely to devices that can use any USB power brick or USB charger in a pinch. This includes my cameras, tablets, phones, audio gear, and so on. The only remaining outlier is laptops.
scarface74 10y ago
I can't speak for laptops but I can speak for the utility of having a thin phone and a battery pack that makes it thicker and heavier than it would be if Apple just included a bigger battery: I've only used my battery pack four or five times in the year and a half I've had my 6s. Most of the time I'm not far away from a plug - either at home, in my car, at work, etc. But when I travel, a slightly bigger battery wouldn't be enough. I would want twice the battery life - something I can get by using a battery pack - but I probably wouldn't get from a slightly larger iPhone. If you have to optimize, why optimize for the edge cases instead of the most popular case and give options for those times people need it.
- qeternity 10y ago
  Or just have an external battery pack that powers any of your USB devices. As you say, this represents maybe 5% of my usage. Most of the time I don't worry about battery, but sure enjoy having a slim phone.
  - tmd83 10y ago
    Honest question what do you enjoy about the super slim phone? In the last years have you seen any phone thats too thick to hold or hard to put in pocket or just about don't fit in any place? Why slimmer, I honestly don't understand since it only makes it more slippery, harder to grip, more fragile. I don't see any use for further slimming than making a fashion statement or a notch for the marketing team. I can understand if someone says they want even lighter.
    - hulahoof 10y ago
      Lighter is always my main concern, I never really hear other people complain but I often support the bottom of my phone with my pinky when using with one hand (bad habit) - and I definitely feel every extra gram ...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- 10y ago
cgriswald 10y ago
Even if devices weren't ultrathin they'd need to be in protective cases. Cases can be damaged and easily replaced. A damaged device is more expensive and less convenient to repair or replace. As for battery packs, I have multiple devices, but I carry one battery pack that can charge all of them as needed. My phone is much lighter in my pocket for not having to have a larger battery (that I don't usually need), my ipad is easier to handle, etc.
caycep 10y ago
My mom throws her 11" MBA in her purse, and charges it only at night.

retreatguru 10y ago

Precisely this. If the 2016 MacBook Pro I bought had been a tad thicker I would not have noticed. But I returned because of the dismal battery life under moderate load. Much worse than the previous generation. Did they even test this machine in the wild?

Tehnix 10y ago
I on the other hand wouldn't have bought the Macbook Pro, but ended up doing so because it had now become the "Macbook Air with retina" that I'd been waiting on for ages (...although a shitton more expensive). More battery would be nice, but thinness and espcially weight matter a great deal to me. I literally sometimes don't even have my charger with me, because that small amount of added weight annoys me a great deal. Although I'm probably a bit extreme in that regard.
rayiner 10y ago
The battery is 25% smaller. Not enough to go from not dismal to dismal. Likely the integrated GPU kicking in when it shouldn't.
- retreatguru 10y ago
  I guess I was hoping the battery would last longer than my 5 year old battery in my older MBP. I was kind of shocked when it didn't.
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    That sounds like a bug of some sort (hopefully). MacBook battery life had a massive jump in the 2013 version.
philliphaydon 10y ago
The few people I know who upgraded from their 2012/2015 model to 2016 have complained about battery being worse :/
- 10y ago

nsxwolf 10y ago

I recently carried an older 13 inch MacBook Pro around to a bunch of meetings in the city. I could not believe how heavy it started to feel after about a mile of total walking. I welcome powerful laptops that are as light as possible. Where are people working that they need a full day of untethered charge? I've never been to a client that didn't provide me with a power outlet. 4 or 5 hours of real world use for a developer workstation is just fine train commuting or sitting in a coffee shop in the morning.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

rayiner 10y ago

I don't really buy the "aren't they thin enough already" argument. I would've said my 15" MBP 2013 is small and light enough, but the 2016 model is notably more livable. The reduction in footprint (which also affects space for a battery) makes it a lot more manageable to spring for the 15". It's a pound lighter than the 13.3" polycarbonate MacBook I had a decade ago!

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Apple forces thinness because nobody else does. This differentiates their products. It also forces their engineers to make things smaller before anyone else. That, in turn, keeps them at the forefront of miniaturization.

BoorishBears 10y ago
When the MacBook Air first came out that might have been true, but fitting in a manila folder is no longer that impressive with the ubiquity of ultrabooks. Apple hasn't been aggressive with selling thin the way they were with the Air (back when the Air came out it really was a breathtakingly thin laptop, or at least the marketing made you feel that way) Apple doesn't even have the thinnest laptop anymore, that achievement is now in HP's hands with the 10.4mm thick Spectre (and before that it was HP's Envy)

djrogers 10y ago

> at least for professionals? Professional whats? Executives, salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians, beer distributors - all of these people are professionals, and all of them can and do benefit from smaller and lighter computing power. Clearly your idea of a professional is someone who is chained to a desk writing code or processing complex 3D graphics. No question those are professional uses as well, but the idea of a 'professional computer user' covers a lot more ground these days than your insular definition.

nxc18 10y ago
I see no reason why any of those people benefit from the slightly thinner form of the new mbp than they would benefit from better battery life. Everyone wants batteries that last longer. How often did you look at your last generation mbp and wish it was thinner?
- qeternity 10y ago
  These people are lugging their laptop around all day, from meeting to meeting, or airport to airport. If you can keep battery life constant at ca. 10 hours, which covers an extended work day, then beyond that most people would prefer to have lighter/slimmer/cooler (less hot) devices than one that runs for 20 hours.
  - deepGem 10y ago
    Agreed. I think heat dissipation is often overlooked while making a buying decision. Regarding overall portability, I think the 13 inch MacBook air is a good compromise. The new 13 inch MacBook pro is about the same weight, but obviously a lot more powerful, and is smaller in dimensions. It's a breeze to work on planes with this machine. I'd rather see the next iteration of MacBook Pros with better heat dissipation and longer battery life than with 1 mm improvement in thickness.
    - rz2k 10y ago
      Thinner implies a better ratio of surface area to volume for dissipating heat. Though, I suppose a laptop could be thicker by including empty space with fans and airflow to exhaust the heat out the sides rather than conducting it through the surfaces touched by users.

michaelbuckbee 10y ago

I can only imagine there has been some study of how long between charges people go on average/median. I imagine most people aren't going all day without any chance to charge (the world seems to have gotten more charger friendly) and there are probably lots of weirdos like me who work from home and never take their MBPs anywhere.

memco 10y ago

> Why not go for some truly earth-shattering battery life on one of these laptops? Interesting to note that there are reports that there was a failed battery design that would have given these latest models even more battery[0]. However, I think your suggestion is more reasonable. If there's less space being used for components, fill it with more battery. Then they could possibly have offered the 32GB of ram they couldn't offer due to battery concerns[1]. [0]https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/20/larger-battery-gold-color-macbook-pro/ https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/20/larger-battery-gold-col... [1]https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-32gb-ram-mbp-logic-board/ https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-32gb-ram-...

zxcvb 10y ago

I travel a lot and I do technical work (sometimes) - it needs to be powerful (ish) and light with good battery life* * when I first owned a laptop the batter lasted around 1.5 hours - I can get 5 out of my mac, that's awesome.

gigatexal 10y ago

I agree. And thinness to me is more about minimalism than anything else. And that I laude Apple for.

jlarocco 10y ago

Thinner also (usually) means lighter, and a lot of people prioritize light weight over longer battery life.

microtheo 10y ago

Everybody always talks about thinness... I would argue that all they want is reduce the cost of the components. The smaller the battery for the same battery life, the cheaper it will be to produce. Everything is about rentability.

asafira 10y ago

This is a pretty common rant on HN and other tech enthusiast sites. My main qualm is your note that tech bloggers love the thinness and that people will buy it based on their recommendation. A) do most people really read tech blogs to figure out what computer to buy? Or do most people ask the best buy guy or their friend? (I would guess the latter, but I am not super sure so I'm gonna leave it as a question...) B) many tech bloggers to express their disappointment in manufacturer's obsession with thinness. (Examples: MKBHD, Android Police, maybe even Anandtech) (On a separate note, I have read way too many tech blogs...)

sowpati 10y ago
Regarding your first question, I'm not from a tech related field, and most people around me generally use Google for recommendations. And Google always ranks famous tech blogs higher on the list. So.. I would say yes.

seanp2k2 10y ago

Yep, they could have put a 99wh battery in it and gave it another ~33% battery life (the 2016 15" tbMBP has a 76wh pack while the 2015 had the 99wh pack). Given that 100wh is the largest you can easily bring on a plane, I'm sure many people would have been happier with "up to 13 hours of battery life" instead of "10" right now.

HNLogInShit 10y ago

Nobody, not even "bloggers" are "going nuts" about thinness. Thinness is a pathetically played-out gimmick with which Apple continues to embarrass itself and hideously degrade its products. The glued-together computers with soldered-in RAM, soldered-in SSDs, and chintzy, shitty keyboards (at ever-higher prices) serve NO ONE. Nobody was complaining that Apple's products were "too thick." Jony Ive should be fired. His ideas revolve around new ways to eliminate usefulness, and the public has voted his designs a failure. How do we know? The vast majority of customers bury their "thin, elegant" iPhones in a bulky, tacky case. And then they carry a power brick and wad of wire around, so they can beg bartenders to plug their phones in (or crawl under tables to do so themselves). It's sad.

pmontra 10y ago

Anecdotally, a customer of mine had to replace his MacBook and bought the new one with the OLED strip. He says that the battery lasts about the same as the old one. The only difference he felt is the USB-C connectors and the need to have a dongle for everything. He's not happy about that.

Shivetya 10y ago

well based on weight and size current generation laptops from Dell, Apple, and others, still has being doing a double take when picking up my laptop bag; as in is it in there? I think the battle over thinness and weight was well worth it but the next battle is getting workflow to work in a full touch screen interface similar to the surface pro do and not he half ass move Apple made with that touch bar. Applications and imagination are holding that up. I do not expect keyboards to ever go away completely but pointing devices are another thing entirely

tinus_hn 10y ago

Typically companies produce products that people want to buy. A vocal number of people on the internet keeps saying that everybody wants laptops with a bigger battery instead of thin laptops. Companies are producing thin laptops instead of big laptops with big batteries though, because that is what people are buying. So in reality, people do not want the bigger laptop with the big battery, they want the thin laptop. If you want bigger laptops, go out and buy the biggest one you can find. If all these people that say they want it do that, you can be sure the market will be flooded with laptops with a big battery.

deleted 10y ago

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Xixi 10y ago

I do care about that extra 1mm, when it comes to a latptop. I think most people who buy a laptop to use it on the go care about that. To be entirely fair I care more about the weight reduction than the 1mm. For instance the new MacBook Pro 13" is my first MacBook Pro, simply because it's the first that is thin/light enough for me to carry around. Before that I had a MacBook Air from 2011. The MacBook Pro is vastly more powerful, but to write code it doesn't help much. It's not like SublimeText was slow on the MacBook Air. It's however night and days when it comes to browsing the web...

falcolas 10y ago
Counter anecdote: I've been carrying around laptops since my 17", 13# Alienware "laptop". Ever since the release of the 13" MBP (the one with the CD drive), a decent backpack or messenger bag has effectively negated every thickness and weight gains from that point on. Frankly, I'm more annoyed by the bulk and weight of the power adapter than I am about 1mm or 1# off the laptop.
yedpodtrzitko 10y ago
You know why people complain? Because some time ago there was Macbook Air for people who prefer a thin and light machine, and then there was Macbook Pro for people who prefer more powerful machine (in whichever meaning). This separation actually made sense. But now they discontinued Air, and they are trying to make a single line full of compromises.

jfoster 10y ago

I actually do appreciate a thinner, lighter machine, but with phones and laptops they're at the point where I'd happily take a few extra mm in order to get something more rugged with significantly better battery life.

digi_owl 10y ago

I find myself thinking that i recall reading about certain thinkpads (or some other brand) had the option of an attached battery that would fit flush with the laptop bottom. Thus i find myself thinking about some way to do a combo of frames/cases and batteries so that one can add a frame to a laptop and insert batteries into the frame to extend overall runtime. The idea of the frames being that if one replace the laptop one only need to replace the frame but continue to use the batteries.

6t6t6t6 10y ago

I really do care about weight and dimensions. Before I used to buy the typical 3.5Kg laptops. When you carry an Acer around, you can feel the weight in your backpack, even when you walk around the office to go to a meeting. I switched to a MBA and I feel it like if it was a paper notebook. It is a huge difference. A perfect laptop for me would have the weight an dimensions of a MBA with almost the power of a MBP. As for battery life, I need enough battery to be able to go to meetings without having to take the charger with me. It's not usual for me to work 8 hours without having a charger near to me. Also, as far as I know, the new Macs with USB-C, can be charged from an external battery pack.