Big Apple battery buzz
The usage specifications of Apple’s new batteries are causing a lot of buzz in the industry. They are long-lasting, powerful, and exactly what everyone has been looking for in batteries.
It seems that everybody in the tech industry is talking about the new batteries that were unveiled at Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference this week. The batteries in question are those in the new line of MacBook Pros, and they really have people gushing, according to a Fortune article. Here are some comments about the new batteries:
“This kind of battery life is reserved for iPods and mobile phones, not laptops. Who cares if the battery is sealed in?” – Leander Kahney in Wired’s Cult of Mac
“Battery life to die for!” – AnandTech review.
“Battery technology simply doesn’t advance this fast.” – Seth Weintraub, Computerworld.
Why are people raving about the new batteries in MacBooks? Because Apple has managed, in one fell swoop, to extend MacBook battery life from five hours to eight hours. That is an increase of about 38 percent in a category that has been inching upward in tiny 5 percent intervals over the last five to seven years.
Part of it is indeed new battery technology. Apple has moved from lithium ion to lithium polymer batteries in the MacBook line. Every one is used to lithium ion; that’s what we’re all using now. What is lithium polymer? In laymen’s terms, they are a special type of rechargeable batteries, technologically evolved from lithium-ion batteries. In these new batteries, the lithium-salt electrolyte is not held in an organic solvent as it is in the lithium-ion design, but in a solid polymer composite such as polyethylene oxide or polyacrylonitrile. The advantages of Li-poly over the lithium-ion design include longer life, lower cost manufacturing and being more robust to physical damage.
They are not replaceable by users in the Apple laptops, but Apple technicians will replace them in-store for $120, about what the current lithium ions cost to buy. Apple’s claims of 708 hours of normal use have been verified by independent tests. Their claim of a usable life of five years has not yet been verified, but that lifetime far exceeds the life of a normal notebook in the marketplace anyway. It looks very much like Apple has pulled off another technical marvel.
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