6 ms·

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life.

by xuki 6y ago

Brendinooo 6y ago
Do you think that's still true in 2020? Seems like thinness hasn't been a major consideration for a couple of years now.
- xuki 6y ago
  They're doing it again with the new iPhone. All of this year iPhone have a smaller battery.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    And they all added hardware features to fill that space. Look at the iFixit teardowns and you'll see it wasn't to make the phones thinner. It was to make room for wireless charging, LIDAR, and other features.
oblio 6y ago
As much as I dislike them doing it while disregarding other aspects, we need/want slimmer. A notebook PC should be as thin as a real notebook or maybe even less. And it should be sturdy enough, after all, a 5-6 mm plate of metal is quite robust.
- thekyle 6y ago
  Why? I could understand making tablets thinner since they can be used like a paper notebook, but laptops don't work anything like a paper.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Especially with 2 in 1 laptops, the line is very blurry.
ogre_codes 6y ago
It gets 18 hours battery life. For most people, that is 2 day battery life.
munificent 6y ago
I think that's the right call, honestly. I need to recharge my own wetware at least once a day. So there is a nearly guaranteed several hour idle period where I'm not using any technology and where laptops and phones can be recharging too. I don't see much end user value in not taking advantage of that. It's like if you parked your car literally at a gas station every night anyway. Would you really care about a fuel tank that could let you drive for more than 24 hours?
- murukesh_s 6y ago
  I would want a 2, 3, even 7 day battery. Why not? I don't want to bother about charging every day. But my worry is that with more and more efficiency in computing and battery tech, if Apple instead decides to reduce the battery capacity? Especially with no competition in sight, or competitors trying to follow Apple, we may end up with smaller batteries instead of more battery life. They seems to be doing that with iPhone. Also 18 hour battery life can quickly degrade to few hours if some processes are spinning the CPU continuously which can happen knowingly or unknowingly with several apps open (Docker occasionally does that to my MBP). With several days battery life, I can even go for short travels without even bothering about how to charge it.
  - jakear 6y ago
    External battery for cases when you need it, ultralight for cases when you need it. The ancient carpet the world vs wear slippers debate.
    - Analemma_ 6y ago
      Especially now that thanks to USB-C, it's easier than ever to augment laptop batteries. For $60 you can grab a 100Wh RavPower battery pack that can double the lifespan of a MacBook.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    The problem with multi day battery life is you never get in to a routine and you get caught out every time. I had a pebble watch which had a 10 day battery life and almost every 10th day it would go flat on me mid day or I'd get a warning about low battery while I'm outside and then forget about it when I get home. Now I have an Apple Watch that lasts almost but not quite 2 days, I charge it every night and it has never gone flat on me and I find it no hassle since I take it off before bed anyway so I just drop it on the charger.
reaperducer 6y ago
Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life. Hopefully the Era of Ive is over. There are promising signs around, but I'm not ready to believe it yet.
- threeseed 6y ago
  Ive doesn't unilaterally decide how thin the laptop is. It's a joint decision made by Hardware Engineering, Product Management, Design, Operations etc. And frankly everyone wants thin laptops just with top tier performance which it looks like we will get.
  - thekyle 6y ago
    I believe some of Apple's laptops have gotten thicker since Ive left. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/apple-is-finally-willing-to-make-gadgets-thicker-so-they-work-better.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/apple-is-finally-willing-to-...
    - bobobob420 6y ago
      lol I thought that said "since you have left"
AgloeDreams 6y ago
I'm not sure I or really anyone actually wants a 2 day battery life. Like, we can do that on smartphones right now but users have signaled that the 1 day device is fine for them, notably because of the human gap. You know the gap. If you charge your phone every night it becomes a habit tied to your daily routine. If you were to charge your phone every other night, you might lose track of what day you are on, not charge it and then the perceived battery life experience is worse. This is why smart watches with 3-4 days of battery have not prevailed over those with one heavy day of battery. They are annoying to know what day you are on so you might just charge it every night and if you do, the platform is trading off so much power that the experience is worse. Plus, then you have to carry 2 days worth of battery or have half the power envelope as a laptop with one day. the concept all sounds great but the reality of people using things really has honed in on the fact that these things need to fit into habit and use cases that make sense.
- twhb 6y ago
  Why are you assuming you need to charge a 2-day device every other day? You charge it every night, and in exchange you make it through heavy use days, late nights, and the times you forget to charge it. I had a 2-day phone and downgraded to a 1-day phone and my phone now dies on me much more often, including in each of those scenarios, and looking at the battery level and charging have become a bigger part of my life.
  - jackvalentine 6y ago
    I think it's implied in "two day battery life". If that's not what you actually want then just call it 'heavy use all day battery life' or something.
- xienze 6y ago
  > I'm not sure I or really anyone actually wants a 2 day battery life. I do, because that means it could probably do 8 hours at high load.
- jhloa2 6y ago
  My Garmin lasts about a week if I don't use GPS and it's by far the best feature.
samatman 6y ago
...maybe? The Air form factor is already pushing the limit of what you can do with aluminium and still have high confidence it won't warp when you shove it into your bag, or have it fall over when you open the screen past vertical. I could see them slimming down the battery to get more components in, maybe, rather than two day battery life. Which would probably be the right call. There just aren't enough circumstances where not plugging in your laptop while sleeping is necessary to justify it. Personally I'd like them to make a model with a cellular modem, with all-day battery life even reasonably far from a tower. That would be fun.
- nl 6y ago
  I'd expect carbon fiber reinforcement to add stiffness soon on some of these larger, ultra-slim devices. That's what we use for sports equipment, and CF+Al bonding is a well solved problem in manufacture.
Razengan 6y ago
Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop and improve the performance AND increase the battery life. Like they just fucking did with the M1 MacBooks.
- xuki 6y ago
  Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. They know the battery range they need and keep it there, to make room for other features.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Apple just increased battery life on the MacBook Pro from ~12 hours to 20 hours and kept the form factor the same. Likewise the MacBook Air. Feedback from people using them suggests gains are even bigger for people who use them on battery under load.
- et2o 6y ago
  But they decreased the batter size on the iPhone 12 due to power efficiency gains, so battery life is approximately the same unfortunately.

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life.

by xuki 6y ago

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life.

Do you think that's still true in 2020? Seems like thinness hasn't been a major consideration for a couple of years now.

xuki 6y ago
They're doing it again with the new iPhone. All of this year iPhone have a smaller battery.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  And they all added hardware features to fill that space. Look at the iFixit teardowns and you'll see it wasn't to make the phones thinner. It was to make room for wireless charging, LIDAR, and other features.

oblio 6y ago

As much as I dislike them doing it while disregarding other aspects, we need/want slimmer. A notebook PC should be as thin as a real notebook or maybe even less. And it should be sturdy enough, after all, a 5-6 mm plate of metal is quite robust.

thekyle 6y ago
Why? I could understand making tablets thinner since they can be used like a paper notebook, but laptops don't work anything like a paper.
- oblio 6y ago
  Especially with 2 in 1 laptops, the line is very blurry.

ogre_codes 6y ago

It gets 18 hours battery life. For most people, that is 2 day battery life.

munificent 6y ago

I think that's the right call, honestly. I need to recharge my own wetware at least once a day. So there is a nearly guaranteed several hour idle period where I'm not using any technology and where laptops and phones can be recharging too. I don't see much end user value in not taking advantage of that. It's like if you parked your car literally at a gas station every night anyway. Would you really care about a fuel tank that could let you drive for more than 24 hours?

murukesh_s 6y ago
I would want a 2, 3, even 7 day battery. Why not? I don't want to bother about charging every day. But my worry is that with more and more efficiency in computing and battery tech, if Apple instead decides to reduce the battery capacity? Especially with no competition in sight, or competitors trying to follow Apple, we may end up with smaller batteries instead of more battery life. They seems to be doing that with iPhone. Also 18 hour battery life can quickly degrade to few hours if some processes are spinning the CPU continuously which can happen knowingly or unknowingly with several apps open (Docker occasionally does that to my MBP). With several days battery life, I can even go for short travels without even bothering about how to charge it.
- jakear 6y ago
  External battery for cases when you need it, ultralight for cases when you need it. The ancient carpet the world vs wear slippers debate.
  - Analemma_ 6y ago
    Especially now that thanks to USB-C, it's easier than ever to augment laptop batteries. For $60 you can grab a 100Wh RavPower battery pack that can double the lifespan of a MacBook.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  The problem with multi day battery life is you never get in to a routine and you get caught out every time. I had a pebble watch which had a 10 day battery life and almost every 10th day it would go flat on me mid day or I'd get a warning about low battery while I'm outside and then forget about it when I get home. Now I have an Apple Watch that lasts almost but not quite 2 days, I charge it every night and it has never gone flat on me and I find it no hassle since I take it off before bed anyway so I just drop it on the charger.

reaperducer 6y ago

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life. Hopefully the Era of Ive is over. There are promising signs around, but I'm not ready to believe it yet.

threeseed 6y ago
Ive doesn't unilaterally decide how thin the laptop is. It's a joint decision made by Hardware Engineering, Product Management, Design, Operations etc. And frankly everyone wants thin laptops just with top tier performance which it looks like we will get.
- thekyle 6y ago
  I believe some of Apple's laptops have gotten thicker since Ive left. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/apple-is-finally-willing-to-make-gadgets-thicker-so-they-work-better.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/apple-is-finally-willing-to-...
  - bobobob420 6y ago
    lol I thought that said "since you have left"

AgloeDreams 6y ago

I'm not sure I or really anyone actually wants a 2 day battery life. Like, we can do that on smartphones right now but users have signaled that the 1 day device is fine for them, notably because of the human gap. You know the gap. If you charge your phone every night it becomes a habit tied to your daily routine. If you were to charge your phone every other night, you might lose track of what day you are on, not charge it and then the perceived battery life experience is worse. This is why smart watches with 3-4 days of battery have not prevailed over those with one heavy day of battery. They are annoying to know what day you are on so you might just charge it every night and if you do, the platform is trading off so much power that the experience is worse. Plus, then you have to carry 2 days worth of battery or have half the power envelope as a laptop with one day. the concept all sounds great but the reality of people using things really has honed in on the fact that these things need to fit into habit and use cases that make sense.

twhb 6y ago
Why are you assuming you need to charge a 2-day device every other day? You charge it every night, and in exchange you make it through heavy use days, late nights, and the times you forget to charge it. I had a 2-day phone and downgraded to a 1-day phone and my phone now dies on me much more often, including in each of those scenarios, and looking at the battery level and charging have become a bigger part of my life.
- jackvalentine 6y ago
  I think it's implied in "two day battery life". If that's not what you actually want then just call it 'heavy use all day battery life' or something.
xienze 6y ago
> I'm not sure I or really anyone actually wants a 2 day battery life. I do, because that means it could probably do 8 hours at high load.
jhloa2 6y ago
My Garmin lasts about a week if I don't use GPS and it's by far the best feature.

samatman 6y ago

...maybe? The Air form factor is already pushing the limit of what you can do with aluminium and still have high confidence it won't warp when you shove it into your bag, or have it fall over when you open the screen past vertical. I could see them slimming down the battery to get more components in, maybe, rather than two day battery life. Which would probably be the right call. There just aren't enough circumstances where not plugging in your laptop while sleeping is necessary to justify it. Personally I'd like them to make a model with a cellular modem, with all-day battery life even reasonably far from a tower. That would be fun.

nl 6y ago
I'd expect carbon fiber reinforcement to add stiffness soon on some of these larger, ultra-slim devices. That's what we use for sports equipment, and CF+Al bonding is a well solved problem in manufacture.

Razengan 6y ago

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop and improve the performance AND increase the battery life. Like they just fucking did with the M1 MacBooks.

xuki 6y ago
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. They know the battery range they need and keep it there, to make room for other features.

ogre_codes 6y ago

Apple just increased battery life on the MacBook Pro from ~12 hours to 20 hours and kept the form factor the same. Likewise the MacBook Air. Feedback from people using them suggests gains are even bigger for people who use them on battery under load.

et2o 6y ago
But they decreased the batter size on the iPhone 12 due to power efficiency gains, so battery life is approximately the same unfortunately.