[wolfe]

The final sentence...
"The company has posted a Web page with details about the new battery technology it’s using in the 17-inch MacBook Pro."...
has a link that loops this story.
Perhaps you meant this link, or this link or this link.
The Apple product page sets the brightness at 50% for testing. On battery other components will reduce performance.
The new 17in MBP battery is designed to retain 80% of original capacity spec for the life of the battery. Eighty percent of 8 hours is 6.4 hours for 1000 cycles of 50% brightness, wireless surfing and editing in a word processing document using integrated graphics. It sounds too good to be true. You know what they say.

Apple does not recommend running the computer on power all the time. Run it while on a commute or run it the first hour at work while your desktop boots.

[rfsmit]

Derivatize: the quote in question was from Apple's own MacBook Pro 17" battery information page.

I'm certainly familiar with how much I understand about battery conditioning -- I wouldn't call Li-Ion charging circuits "conditioners", whether or not they use some techniques from the conditioning world.

As for conditioners for Li-Ion cells being available, of course they exist -- maybe not as products you can buy off a shelf and lick like you would a Mac, but instead with help from Mr. Soldering Iron... sorry to scare you. If they didn't exist, how would Apple arrive at its conditioning charging circuit?

Yes I know what gestalt means. Why not say "whole" instead? Why not say just "battery"? (I would also suggest you look up the spelling of "Li-Ion" and "misled" -- or were you talking about Molybdenum? (And no, I'm not going to explain an etymological joke to the likes of you.)) The fact you're talking about cell life as being somehow "unchanged" shows you have no clue about how cell life is changed by abuse or conditioning. The nominal life of a cell is going to be different to its observed life.

Battery life is, naturally, going to be lower than individual cell life, but no lower than the worst-performing cell's. Indeed, the better performing cells will have their lives affected by the worst performing cells, indirectly, due to the fact they'll be cycled more frequently than is completely necessary. But this is where cell-matching comes in. (Something else, I suspect, which is an alien concept to you until you look it up on Wikipedia.) Observed life of a battery of matched cells in a conditioning charging circuit is going to influence the manufacturer's nominal figure for battery life; hence, the fact it has a more advanced conditioning charger than comparable laptops allows them to make far longer predictions of battery life than its previous products -- so your claim that battery life is unchanged by the new-to-Apple charging circuit is simply untrue.

Yes, the MacWorld article is misleading. What did you expect from Mac journos? Objective reporting with a handle on current technologies?

(Message was edited by: rfsmit because I'd missed the fundamental misunderstanding in Derivatize's post.)

[moose_n_squirrel]

organime said:

And who need a removable battery if it lasts for 8 freakin' hours? I don't see anyone needing 16 hours of battery life before they find an outlet.

I think Pragone is on to something, you probably don't have to travel with your laptop. It is very common for power outlets to be scarce in airport terminal waiting areas. (Some airports are even removing outlets from public use!) And if you do find one of these scarce outlets at the actual gate you need to be waiting at, you'd better pray that two of the other 1000 laptop users in the airport are not plugged into it already. If it's a cross-country trip and you have to wait at a hub airport for a couple hours, and the battery isn't really lasting eight whole hours, you could be out of battery before you get on the second plane, finding yourself with a 7 pound brick for the rest of your trip.

[sigma8]

In response to Derivatize's post about battery technology..
{quote}DocNo wrote:
Based on what? Your interpreting their statements to fit your own notions. Have something more concrete then your gut feeling to back your assertion up?
...
Well, given the secrecy of Apple and the fact that they appear to be custom manufacturing their own batteries, how would anyone know about it before now?{quote}

The secrecy of Apple? Like how nobody saw the iPhone coming? Or new iPods. Or new laptop formfactors? Rumor sites generally have too many predictions, not too few...and I don't know if I read anyone saying Apple had developed the next generation of battery. Do they appear to be custom-manufacturing their own batteries? They don't manufacture their own laptops, that all happens in China. They're all designed in Cupertino, California, though--you might have noticed that when unboxing.

I have to agree with Derivatize on the battery. It's true, they do say "advanced chemistry" on this page: http://www.apple.com...17inch-battery/ but they also (more believably) outright say it's a Lithium Polymer battery. There's only so much you can change to a Li-Pol battery, and still call it a Li-Pol battery. My guess is nothing or very little. Battery technology moves at a glacial pace. Compare how long we've been using Core Duo's with how long we've been using Alkaline batteries. 2 years versus almost 50 years? Lithium-ion was developed in the 70's and 80's and didn't appear in consumer devices until 1991. Li-Pol devices didn't appear until 1996. Battery life is not like hard drive capacities or cpu speeds.

And the moment someone does make a major new advance, good luck keeping a lid on it. If they had discovered any new battery technologies on their own, we would have heard about it well before now via a patent submission.

It's funny... "advanced chemistry" is so vague. My guess is that either the marketers who made that up have no idea what they're talking about, or they are just trying to sound extra fancy... If we're lucky, they really do have electrochemists over there, and they did make valuable contributions to figuring out how to most efficiently charge the battery (adaptive charging, or whatever it is they're calling it) and that it really is effective.

[DIESEL_X]

I'm getting one of these MacBook Pro 17" Unibody's soon.. Hope I'm doing the right thing!
I've previously 'pre-ordered' one, however for the last number of days the delivery details have permanently stated 'Ships: 7 - 10 business days' and this hasn't changed. Anyhow, the way I see it there is both 'good' and 'bad' points on the new unibody MacBook Pro 17", BUT why O why couldn't Apple just go all out for once to make all (or at least nearly all) of the features and points good! If it's one consolation the good points do seem to outweigh the bad ones even if you are still left feeling a little disappointed on its shortcomings.
The Bad Points first:
1. As you've all noticed, only one firewire port. Jesus! what's Apple's problem of late regarding firewire, they've disappointed an army of Apple User's by removing it completely from the new unibody MacBook's and now only one on the Pro version. They should have intergrated '2' (yes two) 800/400 ports with integrally separate bus architecture. I don't want to have to use the PC card slot for this because that will be occupied with my high-speed multi format memory card reader Pc Card.
2. As mentioned no Blu-ray! Its not a problem with countless PC Laptop and desktop manufacturers, so why does it still remain a problem for Mac's. Mac's have 'High Definition' video editing software such as Final Cut Studio yet not the means to burn your compilations to a High Definition media disk format! Daft, is the word that springs to mind.
3. Although the benefits of the uniquely new and different approach for the internal battery gives much reward in terms of longer battery life, it will take some getting use to the fact of not being able to swap the battery on-the-fly, instead having to plug in the power source, however I think the battery life may outweigh the disadvantage here.. Just be prepared and organized if you go mobile away from power sources.
4. I agree with someone previously, this new 17" Pro MacBook would have been fantastic if it were possible to integrate a quad-processor, EVEN IF it where only used when plugged in to a power supply because of the sheer power drain AND then reverting down to 'two cores' only when in battery mode.
5. Cosmetic I know, but I'm not keen on the black plasticky look of the keyboard buttons, yuk.. The metal look was nice (is it just me?) Anyway this is only small and cosmetic, but still annoying.
The Good Points (and they are good):
1. Firstly and obviously, the 8GB RAM option is fantastic.
2. But even better than the first good point above is the fact that the new memory module are almost twice as fast operating at a new clock/bus speed of 1066MHz wow! The previous RAM memory speeds in the MacBook Pro 17" models where nearly half that at 667MHz. I can't stress how much of an improvement this is.
3. Slight processor speed improvements, although was hoping for them to reach or pass the 3GHz by now for the new MacBook Pro 17" unibody.. better still as mentioned above, a quad processor (using 4 processors on a power supply and only 2 cores on battery power - knowing that 4 cores would be too much of a power drain at present). Although there maybe issues with heat.
4. The User removable/upgradable drive is finally a most welcome thing indeed. Hallelujah!
5. There is an option to upgrade to the super-fast SSD (Solid State Drive). Although Apple only describe this option as giving you more rugged secure protection i.e. from knocks or drops etc., there is in fact several huge benefits here, but they can't state this otherwise it could effect sales of their HDD only machines such as iMac's, MacBook's etc, etc,... Although admittedly a very expensive upgrade option, the main benefits are - A. super-super quite operation (it makes no noise AT ALL!) - B. The life span is vastly increased as there is no moving or mechanical parts for mechanical 'wear and tear' or mechanical failure - C. Safer data integrity, once again because there is no mechanical moving parts to damage i.e. read-write head colliding with disk platters if knocked or dropped or bearing failure/wear - D. less power drain as it takes some power to spin the disk platters and power the read/write head step-motor driven arm - E. did I mention that decent SSD (solid state drives) are blisteringly fast, the good ones are currently apprx 240MBs (Mega Bytes per second) Read, apprx 180 - 200MBs Write and 100MBs memory Delete which is important! Apple currently offer a 256GB SSD version option, however I am holding out for the Toshiba 512 GB SSD version which will be compatible with its 2.5" 9.5mm thickness form factor and possessing SATA II connection (model: Toshiba - THNS512GG8BB)
6. The internal graphics units are very impressive, one offers a decent level of every day power requirements to battery power ratio, while the other really switches on the power house factor and thus slightly freeing-up the CPU's power to concentrate on other critical tasks.
7. The new 'track-pad' is not all that bad, I've tried one on the previously released new 15" unibody MacBook Pro's and you can do some amazing things with it.. Admittedly it will take some getting use to, but the other plus is that it will take an increadibly long time for the track-pad to 'wear' with that special glass coating.
And there you have it.. Still a little bit disappointed about the lack of Blu-ray though and worse still only 'one' firewire port which is sheer madness and arrogance by Apple!