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Instead of making devices ultra thin I really wish manufacturers would simply fill up the freed space with batteries. Not only Apple MacBooks, this goes for mo

Instead of making devices ultra thin I really wish manufacturers would simply fill up the freed space with batteries. Not only Apple MacBooks, this goes for mobilephones as well. Samsung Galaxy half an inch thick and a runtime of one week please.

mahyarm 15y ago
A significant amount of laptop weight is the battery. If they gave that treatment to a 13" MacBook Pro it would probably be 10-15 pounds.
lukifer 15y ago
Apple's simplified product line is a very good thing, but they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs. The Air itself finally satisfied the sub-notebook market that Apple all but ignored for a decade, and it was fantastic for their bottom line. In a perfect world, they would have a 15 or 17 Pro model with an empty bay for BTO options, such as a 2nd battery, an optical drive, a platter HD, or a second SSD. But we all know they won't do this. They'll cook the SSD onto to the motherboard to make it as crazy-sexy-thin as possible, the tech press will ooh and ahh, they'll sell like hotcakes, and the power users will cling to the last generation as long as they can, hoping in vain that Apple will eventually come around.
- jschmitz28 15y ago
  I agree with the customizable bay idea but also that it probably won't happen. Whenever I hear rumors about moving the mechanical drive in the MBP to the SSD in the MBA, I wonder about how they're going to satisfy all of the people who don't care/know about read and write speeds but wonder why their storage space got cut in half.
  - lukifer 15y ago
    I wonder if Apple pays any attention to the users who put a 2nd HD in the optical bay? Anecdotally, it seems common among power users, but I'd be curious to find out just how widespread it actually is. And you're right, even regular users will be baffled when their shiny new laptop has less storage than their crummy old one. All I know is, unless affordable 2TB SSDs magically appear out of nowhere, I'm never going back.
    - jakeonthemove 15y ago
      I use an optical bay caddy, too. Maybe Apple is betting on Thunderbolt external drives - those look pretty attractive...
  - hmottestad 15y ago
    If you look at the ipod, where the ipod classic has maxed out at 160gb and hasn't seen a refresh for 2.5 years you can see that they don't cater to the top 0.1% of users. What they might have a problem with though is convincing the average user that their computers with 256 gb are actually better than the really cheap windows machine with 750gb, to a user that does seems like it's 3 times better.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    The best of both worlds would be to have an SSD for / and spinning metal for /Users.
- nknight 15y ago
  > they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs Do you have any clue what it costs to do a low-volume custom build of a product? Apple's margins would vanish in a puff of irrationality. > The Air itself finally satisfied the sub-notebook market that Apple all but ignored for a decade, and it was fantastic for their bottom line. You presume without evidence that a MacBook Air made with 2000ish technology would be wildly successful. I have no reason to believe that to be true, particularly because sub-notebooks were very much a niche product until the netbook fad, which is pretty much over. > power users will cling to the last generation as long as they can, hoping in vain that Apple will eventually come around And eventually the power users will come around. They always do. The cycle is quite predictable.
  - lukifer 15y ago
    You're presuming without evidence that an Air in 2005 or so would not be successful. Moreover, it need not be an Air as we know it, but simply a MacBook with no optical drive and a 10-11" screen. The tiny Vaios of the time did fairly well, and with healthy margins. I'll stipulate that I have no clue what BTO infrastructure costs. However, I do take umbrage with the notion that power users will simply see the light one day. Most of the time, it's not a matter of preferences or delicate sensibilities, but needing a tool to do a job. It is today impossible to have a modern Mac laptop with five extra batteries, harming a certain user segment's ability to work while traveling. Soon, it may be impossible to get a modern Mac laptop with over 512G of storage, which sucks for someone, say, editing video in the field. (Dangling an external HD sucks; you're one jostled cable away from serious data loss.) I have no issue with the "applianceification" of computing; in fact, I'm all for it. But because this has been Apple's focus, they've spent less effort in recent years on professionals for whom Macs are vital tools (see also the Final Cut fiasco). Maybe those users simply aren't profitable, which would be very sad indeed, given the alternatives. Hopefully, cheap and huge
    - lukifer 15y ago
      ... SSDs are around the corner, making the issue moot.
- sjwright 15y ago
  I don't think you'll see a bay capable of supporting an optical drive -- they're gone, and few people care -- but I'd still expect the next generation MacBook Pro 15" to augment a cooked-on SSD with space for a user-fitted 2.5 inch HDD. And the 17" model should have space for TWO user-fitted 2.5 inch drives, as befits the model's target market. I'd also expect a next-gen MacBook Pro to have multiple Thunderbolt ports for connecting a multitude of monitors, storage and pro peripherals.
- batista 15y ago
  Apple's simplified product line is a very good thing, but they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs. I don't think so. People seem to believe ANY lost sale is lost money, but it is not so. Every sale comes with what is called an "opportunity cost" (wikipedia it). Making stuff for tiny niches is not worth it if you have a nicely streamlined production run going.
jakeonthemove 15y ago
I'd much rather like to see the new high-capacity cells hit the market - apparently, 4000 mAh cells have been pretty much ready for half a decade, yet mass production will only start in a few years. Right now, 3100 mAh is the most you can get out of a 18650 cell, and those are only made by Panasonic. Most laptop manufacturers use 2600 or 2800 mAh 18650 cells - obviously, there's not enough demand to accelerate the release of higher capacity batteries (which will also cost more). Then again, Apple might very well be waiting for solid state cells to become ready for production... As for smartphones, the RAZR Maxx is great with its 20+ hours life, hopefully other manufacturers will pick up on the trend.
- listic 15y ago
  Unfortunately, high-capacity cells are not enough if device manufacturers actively sabotage the potential for building longer-lived devices. The manufacturers can just add some power-hungry features instead. In 2004 Intel had CPU parts with TDP of 5W http://ark.intel.com/products/27609 http://ark.intel.com/products/27609, Pentium M ULV (ultra-low voltage) series. Now the lowest TDP in ULV series is 17W: http://ark.intel.com/products/54617 http://ark.intel.com/products/54617. Of course, over the course of this time the memory controller and GPU got integrated on the chip. And manufacturers are not eager to use LV/ULV parts in their laptops anyway. But still, given the progression of Moore's law I think that low power consumption is just not a priority of chip, parts and laptop designers.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    I don't think Apple is guilty of that. My wife was perfectly happy with her first-gen, 5 year-old C2D MacBook (we upgraded memory, hard-disk and battery) until a couple weeks back, when a small piece of the bottom casing fell off. Repairs will cost us about US$170 and it's still an excellent computer. I am quite sure she'll be happy with her MBP for the next 5 years.
    - listic 15y ago
      I agree, Apple is not particularly guilty of that; in fact, I think they are better than average. It's just that it looks like the average could be so much better, if only manufacturers and consumers cared.
batista 15y ago
Instead of making devices ultra thin I really wish manufacturers would simply fill up the freed space with batteries Doesn't make much sense. We get the same kind of battery life now that we used to have to carry 2 or 3 spares to achieve, close to 8-10 hours with some models. And it keeps getting better. Even my Air gets around 5 hours of running time, and that too will get better --so no need to compromise on weight for something that can be improved with better technology tomorrow. After a point, it makes no sense to add a larger battery. What use would I have for a 15-20 hour battery? So I can use my laptop in the desert? Not only Apple MacBooks, this goes for mobilephones as well. Samsung Galaxy half an inch thick and a runtime of one week please. Are you going for long stretches of time alone in the woods with your phone? Because even on the road, you can charge it in a car-charger, in a motel, etc. Carrying something heavy and thick is a real problem, because most of us carry our phones 24/7. Charging it every day or every other day, less so. So, I'd go for thin (within reasonable bounds) and light, over thich, heavy but with more battery time.
- overcyn 15y ago
  I want to be able to grab my laptop and not even have to think about battery life. 5 hours is still much to short for that. Going anywhere for an extended period of time means carrying a power cable around and being tied to an outlet.
  - batista 15y ago
    Sure, you need to carry a power cable. But tied to an outlet? No. Where do you go for "an extended period of time" that doesn't have a power outlet to charge after you're done working away from one? I can understand such a need for, say, photojournalists, or war correspondents, nature professionals and the like, but what is the use case for the ordinary guy? Or do you consider working on the laptop on the beach or in the woods for stretches > 5 hours?
    - overcyn 15y ago
      its not about being somewhere without an outlet. its having to find one and plug it in. Go to starbucks, a friends or the airport? now you have to find a seat thats next to a wall. Its a hassle that could be avoided. The only time my laptop should be charging is at night when i'm sleeping.

mahyarm 15y ago

A significant amount of laptop weight is the battery. If they gave that treatment to a 13" MacBook Pro it would probably be 10-15 pounds.

lukifer 15y ago

Apple's simplified product line is a very good thing, but they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs. The Air itself finally satisfied the sub-notebook market that Apple all but ignored for a decade, and it was fantastic for their bottom line. In a perfect world, they would have a 15 or 17 Pro model with an empty bay for BTO options, such as a 2nd battery, an optical drive, a platter HD, or a second SSD. But we all know they won't do this. They'll cook the SSD onto to the motherboard to make it as crazy-sexy-thin as possible, the tech press will ooh and ahh, they'll sell like hotcakes, and the power users will cling to the last generation as long as they can, hoping in vain that Apple will eventually come around.

jschmitz28 15y ago
I agree with the customizable bay idea but also that it probably won't happen. Whenever I hear rumors about moving the mechanical drive in the MBP to the SSD in the MBA, I wonder about how they're going to satisfy all of the people who don't care/know about read and write speeds but wonder why their storage space got cut in half.
- lukifer 15y ago
  I wonder if Apple pays any attention to the users who put a 2nd HD in the optical bay? Anecdotally, it seems common among power users, but I'd be curious to find out just how widespread it actually is. And you're right, even regular users will be baffled when their shiny new laptop has less storage than their crummy old one. All I know is, unless affordable 2TB SSDs magically appear out of nowhere, I'm never going back.
  - jakeonthemove 15y ago
    I use an optical bay caddy, too. Maybe Apple is betting on Thunderbolt external drives - those look pretty attractive...
- hmottestad 15y ago
  If you look at the ipod, where the ipod classic has maxed out at 160gb and hasn't seen a refresh for 2.5 years you can see that they don't cater to the top 0.1% of users. What they might have a problem with though is convincing the average user that their computers with 256 gb are actually better than the really cheap windows machine with 750gb, to a user that does seems like it's 3 times better.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  The best of both worlds would be to have an SSD for / and spinning metal for /Users.
nknight 15y ago
> they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs Do you have any clue what it costs to do a low-volume custom build of a product? Apple's margins would vanish in a puff of irrationality. > The Air itself finally satisfied the sub-notebook market that Apple all but ignored for a decade, and it was fantastic for their bottom line. You presume without evidence that a MacBook Air made with 2000ish technology would be wildly successful. I have no reason to believe that to be true, particularly because sub-notebooks were very much a niche product until the netbook fad, which is pretty much over. > power users will cling to the last generation as long as they can, hoping in vain that Apple will eventually come around And eventually the power users will come around. They always do. The cycle is quite predictable.
- lukifer 15y ago
  You're presuming without evidence that an Air in 2005 or so would not be successful. Moreover, it need not be an Air as we know it, but simply a MacBook with no optical drive and a 10-11" screen. The tiny Vaios of the time did fairly well, and with healthy margins. I'll stipulate that I have no clue what BTO infrastructure costs. However, I do take umbrage with the notion that power users will simply see the light one day. Most of the time, it's not a matter of preferences or delicate sensibilities, but needing a tool to do a job. It is today impossible to have a modern Mac laptop with five extra batteries, harming a certain user segment's ability to work while traveling. Soon, it may be impossible to get a modern Mac laptop with over 512G of storage, which sucks for someone, say, editing video in the field. (Dangling an external HD sucks; you're one jostled cable away from serious data loss.) I have no issue with the "applianceification" of computing; in fact, I'm all for it. But because this has been Apple's focus, they've spent less effort in recent years on professionals for whom Macs are vital tools (see also the Final Cut fiasco). Maybe those users simply aren't profitable, which would be very sad indeed, given the alternatives. Hopefully, cheap and huge
  - lukifer 15y ago
    ... SSDs are around the corner, making the issue moot.
sjwright 15y ago
I don't think you'll see a bay capable of supporting an optical drive -- they're gone, and few people care -- but I'd still expect the next generation MacBook Pro 15" to augment a cooked-on SSD with space for a user-fitted 2.5 inch HDD. And the 17" model should have space for TWO user-fitted 2.5 inch drives, as befits the model's target market. I'd also expect a next-gen MacBook Pro to have multiple Thunderbolt ports for connecting a multitude of monitors, storage and pro peripherals.
batista 15y ago
Apple's simplified product line is a very good thing, but they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs. I don't think so. People seem to believe ANY lost sale is lost money, but it is not so. Every sale comes with what is called an "opportunity cost" (wikipedia it). Making stuff for tiny niches is not worth it if you have a nicely streamlined production run going.

jakeonthemove 15y ago

I'd much rather like to see the new high-capacity cells hit the market - apparently, 4000 mAh cells have been pretty much ready for half a decade, yet mass production will only start in a few years. Right now, 3100 mAh is the most you can get out of a 18650 cell, and those are only made by Panasonic. Most laptop manufacturers use 2600 or 2800 mAh 18650 cells - obviously, there's not enough demand to accelerate the release of higher capacity batteries (which will also cost more). Then again, Apple might very well be waiting for solid state cells to become ready for production... As for smartphones, the RAZR Maxx is great with its 20+ hours life, hopefully other manufacturers will pick up on the trend.

listic 15y ago
Unfortunately, high-capacity cells are not enough if device manufacturers actively sabotage the potential for building longer-lived devices. The manufacturers can just add some power-hungry features instead. In 2004 Intel had CPU parts with TDP of 5W http://ark.intel.com/products/27609 http://ark.intel.com/products/27609, Pentium M ULV (ultra-low voltage) series. Now the lowest TDP in ULV series is 17W: http://ark.intel.com/products/54617 http://ark.intel.com/products/54617. Of course, over the course of this time the memory controller and GPU got integrated on the chip. And manufacturers are not eager to use LV/ULV parts in their laptops anyway. But still, given the progression of Moore's law I think that low power consumption is just not a priority of chip, parts and laptop designers.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I don't think Apple is guilty of that. My wife was perfectly happy with her first-gen, 5 year-old C2D MacBook (we upgraded memory, hard-disk and battery) until a couple weeks back, when a small piece of the bottom casing fell off. Repairs will cost us about US$170 and it's still an excellent computer. I am quite sure she'll be happy with her MBP for the next 5 years.
  - listic 15y ago
    I agree, Apple is not particularly guilty of that; in fact, I think they are better than average. It's just that it looks like the average could be so much better, if only manufacturers and consumers cared.

batista 15y ago

Instead of making devices ultra thin I really wish manufacturers would simply fill up the freed space with batteries Doesn't make much sense. We get the same kind of battery life now that we used to have to carry 2 or 3 spares to achieve, close to 8-10 hours with some models. And it keeps getting better. Even my Air gets around 5 hours of running time, and that too will get better --so no need to compromise on weight for something that can be improved with better technology tomorrow. After a point, it makes no sense to add a larger battery. What use would I have for a 15-20 hour battery? So I can use my laptop in the desert? Not only Apple MacBooks, this goes for mobilephones as well. Samsung Galaxy half an inch thick and a runtime of one week please. Are you going for long stretches of time alone in the woods with your phone? Because even on the road, you can charge it in a car-charger, in a motel, etc. Carrying something heavy and thick is a real problem, because most of us carry our phones 24/7. Charging it every day or every other day, less so. So, I'd go for thin (within reasonable bounds) and light, over thich, heavy but with more battery time.

overcyn 15y ago
I want to be able to grab my laptop and not even have to think about battery life. 5 hours is still much to short for that. Going anywhere for an extended period of time means carrying a power cable around and being tied to an outlet.
- batista 15y ago
  Sure, you need to carry a power cable. But tied to an outlet? No. Where do you go for "an extended period of time" that doesn't have a power outlet to charge after you're done working away from one? I can understand such a need for, say, photojournalists, or war correspondents, nature professionals and the like, but what is the use case for the ordinary guy? Or do you consider working on the laptop on the beach or in the woods for stretches > 5 hours?
  - overcyn 15y ago
    its not about being somewhere without an outlet. its having to find one and plug it in. Go to starbucks, a friends or the airport? now you have to find a seat thats next to a wall. Its a hassle that could be avoided. The only time my laptop should be charging is at night when i'm sleeping.