Filed under: Macworld, Hardware
Speculation about MacBook Pro battery life
There's lots
of speculation about why Apple hasn't revealed expected battery life for the new MacBook Pro. The Apple site doesn't
offer any specifics on battery life. The specs simply state that the MacBook Pro has a 60-watt-hour lithium-polymer
battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs), and include an unenlightening footnote that "battery life depends on
configuration and use."I asked a couple of Apple reps on the MacWorld showroom floor about the MacBook Pro's battery life, but didn't get very satisfying answers. One rep said battery life is currently unknown, but speculated that it should prove to be longer than in PowerBooks because the MacBook Pro's battery is larger (60-watt-hours as compared to 50-watt-hours in the latest 15 inch PowerBooks), the MacBook Pro has better power management features, and the Yona chip is more efficient in terms of power consumption. What do you make of Apple's silence about battery life?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Michael said 10:33PM on 2-06-2006
Well, even though Apple has not spicifically said what the battery life will be, it is possible to find out. All you must do is go to an Apple Store and look at the demo MacBook Pro's battery guage in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Im going to go to a store in about a week to renew my .mac subscription.
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kevin said 12:53PM on 1-13-2006
it's odd, to say the least
makes me feel like they might be rushing this release after all and doesn't bode well for rev. A machines, as the tried & true methodology continues...
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John Laur said 1:03PM on 1-13-2006
Well seeing as these things are still basically prototypes and they wont be shipping the final hardware for at least another month did anyone ever consider that they just don't know yet and won't commit to something they can't back up with actual hardware? They want to tell you the biggest number they can but they want to make sure they can actually get to that number.
If you must speculate, just look at the announced battery life of similar core duo portables and realize that it will probably be as good if not considerably better than the current powerbook... And the current powerbook's battery life is nothing to write home about anyway, so it's not like people won't buy it even if it has poor battery life...
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Brian Rose said 1:05PM on 1-13-2006
I called Apple the other day and inquired about the battery life of the MacBook Pro. Apparently the official line is something along the lines of, "We have not yet disclosed that information as the MacBook Pro's specifications have not been completely finalized."
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Apple-Discounts.com said 1:07PM on 1-13-2006
"makes me feel like they might be rushing this release after all and doesn't bode well for rev. A machines, as the tried & true methodology continues..."
Definitely agree. The Macbook Pro seems put out there to add some "bulk" to Steve's keynote -- and that's about it.
Given the completely new processor AS WELL AS the highly-touted brighter screen, battery life will play a huge factor here. WE NEED TO KNOW, and with Apple not "telling", that's definitely reason for concern.
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Jim Gaynor said 1:25PM on 1-13-2006
Between this, and the reports that sleep mode wasn't working, it sounds like the power management system (be it the hardware or the firmware) is one of the incomplete things that's holding up the MacBook Pro until February. Without that complete, they can't do accurate tests on battery life.
Of course, everyone's making a big to-do about the beefier battery and power supply compared to the G4 laptops. I'd wager good money that - could you make a single-core Yonah to compare to a current low-power G4 - the G4 consumes less power. But the decision to go to Intel was based, in part, about lack of a low-power G5.
In any case, Apple's smart to make no claims whatsoever about battery life until they have it nailed down firmly. With Apple's current media prominence and fiscal solvency, people have shown they're willing to attempt to sue Apple for most anything (in hopes of a settlement to keep PR down).
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Mitch said 1:52PM on 1-13-2006
Another consideration is the new battery management update that just released for the G4 Powerbook. My 1.67GHz machine "seems" to do much better than before, but I have no empirical data. Maybe they slowed the G4 processor down to make the MacBook comparitively faster....nah!!!!
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Randy said 1:53PM on 1-13-2006
Sad to say, but I find that it's usually backlighting that kills battery life be it on a notebook, cell phone, PSP, etc. With this uber bright screen in the MacBook, I think the battery life will have a large range of possibilities - with the brightness turned up on battery life I'm expecting about 4 hours for writing; 3 for WiFi-on or XCode work.
JM2C based on past notebook usage.
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Chris P said 2:01PM on 1-13-2006
One of thing to notice is the new power adapter. The 15 inch PowerBook is rated at 65 watts. The Mac Book Pro uses 85 watts. Will these extra 20 watts help it charge faster?
It would be curious to see which laptop uses the most electricity when charging and running.
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clarus said 2:32PM on 1-13-2006
I think the new power adapter says it all. If the MacBook Pro didn't suck more power than the old one then a 65W adapter would've been fine. The fact that Apple expects the MacBook Pro to, at least sometimes, draw more power than the PowerBook tells me that battery life isn't going to improve and may even be worse despite the larger battery.
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iDean said 2:39PM on 1-13-2006
its possible they really dont know...Heck they maybe be 2 hours longer with all the new power conservation tech in the MacBook...
They also could be working on a more dense battery, to add more juice...maybe they dont know if it will work out so they dont put out ant numbers?
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Steve Rhodes said 2:40PM on 1-13-2006
I was told by one of the Apple staff at the booth that they haven't made the final production unit and can't legally give a number for battery life on a pre-production model.
He said they will release the info in a few weeks.
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iDean said 2:47PM on 1-13-2006
That sounds about right #10.
I hope its better than the G4. However Ill buy it anyway ;-)
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Kirbdog said 3:01PM on 1-13-2006
I think most people are over looking the fact that the new MacBook uses a Lithium Poly battery. This battery technology is increadable! Where current NiMH currently hold about 4000Mah the LiPo cells can store close to triple that, translating into very long discharge times. These cells have the potential to DOUBLE the battery times we are currently used to.
The delay, in my opinion, is in the new charging system for these new generation of batteries. They require a very specific charging and monitoring. If they are not cycled and charged properly their life can be shortened dramatically. Thanks for reading my 2 cents worth.
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iDean said 3:04PM on 1-13-2006
#12 I though NI needed to be power cycled etc. and Li didnt need to have this done?
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Don Wilson said 3:24PM on 1-13-2006
In a recent video demoing the MacBook Pro one of the demoers stated that they cannot disclose the battery life information frankly because the units on the showroom floor are mere prototypes.
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James said 3:32PM on 1-13-2006
They're still testing the batteries. Remember, this is an entirely new configuration for Apple and even for the Sony Vaio engineers who are working on it. The product is definitely being rushed out onto the market, otherwise the battery life would have been announced with the MacBook itself.
On a side note, I actually purchased a decked-out MacBook Pro on Emergence Day, but cancelled the order the next day in light of this battery debacle and several other related statistics concerning the features that the new MacBooks lack. Hopefully April 1 will shed some more light on the whole situation.
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DanielEran said 3:42PM on 1-13-2006
Several MacWorld demo people offered me rather convincing reasons why no specs have been published:
The MacBook Pros on display were prototypes, and both the hardware and power management software are still being completed.
How hard is that to figure out?
I noticed that the energy saver said 66 minutes remaining after I pulled the plug out, but since that number is only accurate after calibration, and the machines were running with unfishinished power management software (possibly even disabled), that means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The machines were running quite hot. Since battery life has everything to do with how well the processor and other hardware is managed in software, we have absolutely NO BASIS for intelligently speculating on the battery life one could expect from the MBP.
We do know however that Apple recognizes battery life as critically important, and that the company has excellent hardware and software engineering at its disposal, both within the company and from their Intel partners who are interested in making the Core Duo compare as favorably as possible to the former PowerPC laptops.
Apple could follow tech industry convention by publishing unrealistic figures they pulled out of their butts, but who would that benefit?
Given that Apple just released another power management update for the 15" Al Powerbook, which is now 2-3 years old, there is and will be continual room for improvement.
I think it is AMAZING that Apple delivered half their product line 6 MONTHS EARLIER than they said, and it was not just an ANNOUNCEMENT, but they actually are SHIPPING the iMac and the MBP is shipping NEXT MONTH.
Any yet, all one hears about is incessant complaining from the home-engineers who know nothing about how power supply wattage or battery technology/rating/volume relates to actual experience, but offer plenty of opinions stated as facts.
With "fans" that like, who needs enemies?
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Mark said 3:45PM on 1-13-2006
12:
Aren't the current PB batteries LiIons? It's been quite some time since NiMHs were used in laptops. Sure LiPoly could add more, but the new features seem to take advantage of this fact. The display brightness alone would be a huge draw, unless they did some fancy dance with the screen that carries the light behind it. (which is what I think led to the current PB 15" screen issues that were debated a while back.) OF course we also have the fact that everything is faster, including the video chipset, and that means higher consuption on a higher capacity battery.
Personally, I have a feeling the time will drop to 4 hours, which would still be fine for the specs.
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Scott said 3:58PM on 1-13-2006
Hmmm... Still only in prototype stage only one month from its' shipping date? That's a little scary for a product this complex. Working in manufacturing, sounds to me like the staff in the MacBook Pro group are going to be spending a lot of 16 hour days till their drop dead ship date. Hopefully this is the only detail left and/or the ship date is more like the 28th and not the 1st. Especially important as this is the pro model that Apple is going to be judged by as to wether they deliver intel based systems.
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