“The most exciting Apple announcement this week wasn’t a $10,000 smartwatch or a new, gold-colored MacBook,” Christina Bonnington reports for Wired. “It was a battery technology that could have major implications for how long all future Apple products last between charges—including your next iPhone.”
“Apple’s battery breakthrough is already paying dividends in Apple’s super-slender MacBook. In order to achieve that 13.1 mm silhouette—and still deliver reasonable battery life while powering a 12-inch Retina display—the company’s engineers had to develop something entirely new,” Bonnington reports. “What they came up with is a terraced battery cell, a unique design that adds 35 percent more battery capacity than would otherwise be achievable.”
Bonnington reports, “‘It might seem like a low level innovation, but it’s an incredibly clever design,’ Jeff Chamberlain, executive director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, told WIRED. In fact, it’s a whole new way of thinking about batteries.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: And this technology will migrate from MacBook throughout future battery-powered Apple products!
Who knows what shapes future devices will take….
Something car-shaped perhaps?
It might be new for a computer but one of the design features of using Lithium Polymer is that you can make a battery cell that is unique in shape and size.
I think polymer Li-ion batteries are film wound into a block shape. Looking at the pictures of Apple’s new battery, they look like the films are layered, which is something new.
I must admit the battery was pretty neat. Though, I was more blown away by the Force Touch trackpad and the keyboard which has butterfly switches and individual backlighting. I hope they bring the Force Touch trackpad and the new keyboard to the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro.
It would also be nice if they brought back the 768 gigabyte storage upgrade. I’d prefer to have more storage than 512 gigabytes, but I don’t want to pay $500 to upgrade to a terabyte. I’d be willing to spend $100-150 to upgrade to 768 gigabytes, but $500 is too much.
Me too. Want a force touch MagicTrackpad asap. 💥😍🚀😃
I agree that it’s a great step forward, but I think in looking back ResearchKit will be seen to be the most important.
That’s more software than hardware. We’re mainly discussing hardware here.
The headline says revelation, so mentioning software seems fair game too.
It doesn’t really matter which aspect is the most impressive. The real point is that Apple has announced a whole load of innovative ideas this week and they’re all welcome innovations.
stop making sense
I gots girlfriend that’s better than that.
Although it looks like a pretty slick product to me, they still say that Apple no longer has the ability to innovate. It would seem to me there are a number of innovative components in this MacBook, but maybe they were stolen from some other company. I really don’t understand why Apple is always said to be behind the rest of the industry. It’s a gorgeous-looking laptop from any angle. Maybe it’s just not the sort of laptop the industry is looking for. Not enough swappable stuff inside it? I’d have to get used to that force touch after using a track-pad that has vertical travel and an audible click.
“Not enough swappable stuff inside it?” A subtle change has occurred in computing devices that no one notes. Most families today have two or more “cars.”
20 years ago, nearly everyone was running a big rectangular box, which wasn’t all that fast. Now many people have a choice of a devices they own and they pick to carry the one that fits their current need.
A MacBook today is fit for travel, but is likely not the only Apple product a person owns, unless they are a student.
I imagine a lot of people seeing Model A Ford’s wanted a hand crank to start the engine, “just in case.”
Back in the late 50s our family’s second car was a 1953 Hillman Minx. Which had electric start, but also a backup crank, just in case the battery died on us.
It did use Lucas Electric parts, after all.
And my dad did have to crank start it a couple of times in wet weather.
Snap my mum had one of those. Behaved like a minx too.
And guess what? It’s practically impossible now, with modern cars, to work on them yourself.
I think you’ll be surprised at the vertical travel issue. Your fingers aren’t actually detecting vertical travel on a trackpad, they’re detecting the clicking feedback. Essentially, a trackpad that doesn’t move but gives the illusion of a click will do the same thing if properly tuned.
” … they still say that Apple no longer has the ability to innovate … ”
When looking at people’s observations, it’s always wise to look at their previous observations and then judge their opinion with the benefit of hindsight.
There are certain people who try to knock Apple at every opportunity and always will, there are others who are unable to spot true innovation, while others simply say things that will generate hits on their web site.
Great designers take inspiration from other designs that they respect. Some have observed that Jony Ive has been inspired by Braun products and it’s easy to see the resemblance between the speaker grille on the Braun DT1000 radio and the perforations on the older Mac Pro desktops. But the point is that Ive didn’t in any way make a copy of the Braun radio, he took inspiration from some details of it and applied those design principles to an entirely different product. On the other hand, a company like Samsung copies every detail of how an iPhone looks, how it works, it’s earbuds and it’s packaging and then tries to pretend that they didn’t try to make a clone.
Samsung suddenly started making iPhone lookalikes shortly after the iPhone appeared. There was no previous Samsung phone that looked like an iPhone because prior to that, Samsung had been busy copying Nokia, Blackberry and Motorola phones. That’s what Samsung do, they copy the market leader as closely as possible. They did exactly the same with vacuum cleaners. Their cleaners all used to look like Hoover and Electrolux cleaners and then when Dyson succeeded with it’s revolutionary designs, Samsung suddenly started making cleaners that looked like Dysons.