> The batteries don't need that. I would imagine not. But the economics of digital-equipment design can be counterintuitive. Sure, we could put together a bit

> The batteries don't need that. I would imagine not. But the economics of digital-equipment design can be counterintuitive. Sure, we could put together a bit of custom hardware. But slapping an off the shelf microcontroller in there, and writing some firmware to run it, can be a little cheaper to design and just as cheap to build. And then after the equipment has shipped, if we need to fix a problem -- or even just tweak things a bit -- then our software solution is a lot cheaper. But then someone finds a security vulnerability in our battery: http://www.wired.com/2011/07/apple_battery/ http://www.wired.com/2011/07/apple_battery/