Hacker News Reader

Comment by xuki | Hacker News Reader

Performance per watt of this thing is INSANE, take a look at the battery left after compiling WebKit, compared to older Mac:

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WebKit-Com...

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...

IMO the all day battery will be THE killer feature of the new laptops.

View on HN

The takeaway quote I've been sending people from the TC article is:

> And, most impressively, the M1 MacBook Pro used [just] 17% of the battery to output an 81GB 8k render. The 13” MacBook Pro could not even finish this render on one battery charge.

It's insane, I've been playing games where on the previous Macs it would go full jet engine, but now it doesn't even heat up.

These gains are just through improvements in processors. Now, combine that with parallel leaps for battery tech... It's also good that battery tech hasn't jumped too far ahead already - the constraint has helped in the development in these mobile chips. The display panel is still the biggest energy draw on my laptop. There's a lot of chance for improvement there too. A 2 day battery in 5 years isn't that crazy.

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life.

Do you think that's still true in 2020? Seems like thinness hasn't been a major consideration for a couple of years now.

They're doing it again with the new iPhone. All of this year iPhone have a smaller battery.

And they all added hardware features to fill that space. Look at the iFixit teardowns and you'll see it wasn't to make the phones thinner. It was to make room for wireless charging, LIDAR, and other features.

As much as I dislike them doing it while disregarding other aspects, we need/want slimmer. A notebook PC should be as thin as a real notebook or maybe even less. And it should be sturdy enough, after all, a 5-6 mm plate of metal is quite robust.

Why? I could understand making tablets thinner since they can be used like a paper notebook, but laptops don't work anything like a paper.

Especially with 2 in 1 laptops, the line is very blurry.

It gets 18 hours battery life. For most people, that is 2 day battery life.

I think that's the right call, honestly.

I need to recharge my own wetware at least once a day. So there is a nearly guaranteed several hour idle period where I'm not using any technology and where laptops and phones can be recharging too.

I don't see much end user value in not taking advantage of that.

It's like if you parked your car literally at a gas station every night anyway. Would you really care about a fuel tank that could let you drive for more than 24 hours?

I would want a 2, 3, even 7 day battery. Why not? I don't want to bother about charging every day.

But my worry is that with more and more efficiency in computing and battery tech, if Apple instead decides to reduce the battery capacity? Especially with no competition in sight, or competitors trying to follow Apple, we may end up with smaller batteries instead of more battery life. They seems to be doing that with iPhone. Also 18 hour battery life can quickly degrade to few hours if some processes are spinning the CPU continuously which can happen knowingly or unknowingly with several apps open (Docker occasionally does that to my MBP).

With several days battery life, I can even go for short travels without even bothering about how to charge it.

External battery for cases when you need it, ultralight for cases when you need it. The ancient carpet the world vs wear slippers debate.

Especially now that thanks to USB-C, it's easier than ever to augment laptop batteries. For $60 you can grab a 100Wh RavPower battery pack that can double the lifespan of a MacBook.

The problem with multi day battery life is you never get in to a routine and you get caught out every time. I had a pebble watch which had a 10 day battery life and almost every 10th day it would go flat on me mid day or I'd get a warning about low battery while I'm outside and then forget about it when I get home.

Now I have an Apple Watch that lasts almost but not quite 2 days, I charge it every night and it has never gone flat on me and I find it no hassle since I take it off before bed anyway so I just drop it on the charger.

Kindles suffer this problem. The battery lasts forever so you never get in the habit of charging them. Then you get caught out and it's at 0% and you can't read your book. Too much battery capacity is surprisingly harmful.

The only device that I don't have this issue with is my logitech mouse which gets 70 days on a single charge. It shows a red light on the side when its at about 2 days charge left and I usually remember to plug it in when I leave for lunch.

If your mouse is compatible with the Logitech powerplay charging mousepad, you never need to plug it in again.

This is precisely why Kindles and similar devices should (a) use battery chemistries that are power dense so that they can charge quickly, and (b) come with a wireless charging mat that you can set up on an end table wherever you like to read (or where you put all your stuff when you walk in the door).

I fully concur having the same annoying wetware limitations

I think you're missing a world of possibility: your laptop having plenty of power to spare to charge all the peripherals.

It is really only charge my AirPods Pro every week or so. I much prefer having a bulkier case with battery I can forget about to a smaller case but more frequent need for charging.

It’s actually revolutionary for how I use a computing product. If i had to charge them everyday I assume they’d be dead 1/2 the time because it’s annoying to have yet another thing to plug in.

Yeah, I do this with my Tesla, and it’s a game changer: when I need to drive, my “gas tank” is always full and will take me anywhere I need to go for 90%+ of the driving I do regularly.

Aside from being more attentive with charge, another consequence of smaller battery is that you get more cycles per a given amount of total battery usage, and shallower cycles per a fixed interval of battery usage. All else being equal, a larger battery may be able to live longer.

Personally I would like a larger battery because that means i can leave my charger at home, or even use a weaker USB-C PD on the go just to reduce the drain rate.

The problem with the fuel tank analogy is that liquid gasoline is really heavy and your energy efficiency would drop dramatically, due to lugging around an extra 80 gallons of gasoline. That's not necessarily the case with a larger battery. You still have to carry the additional battery material, but the marginal costs IMO are nowhere near as high.

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life.

Hopefully the Era of Ive is over. There are promising signs around, but I'm not ready to believe it yet.

Ive doesn't unilaterally decide how thin the laptop is.

It's a joint decision made by Hardware Engineering, Product Management, Design, Operations etc.

And frankly everyone wants thin laptops just with top tier performance which it looks like we will get.

I believe some of Apple's laptops have gotten thicker since Ive left.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/apple-is-finally-willing-to-...

I'm not sure I or really anyone actually wants a 2 day battery life. Like, we can do that on smartphones right now but users have signaled that the 1 day device is fine for them, notably because of the human gap.

You know the gap.

If you charge your phone every night it becomes a habit tied to your daily routine.

If you were to charge your phone every other night, you might lose track of what day you are on, not charge it and then the perceived battery life experience is worse. This is why smart watches with 3-4 days of battery have not prevailed over those with one heavy day of battery. They are annoying to know what day you are on so you might just charge it every night and if you do, the platform is trading off so much power that the experience is worse.

Plus, then you have to carry 2 days worth of battery or have half the power envelope as a laptop with one day. the concept all sounds great but the reality of people using things really has honed in on the fact that these things need to fit into habit and use cases that make sense.

Why are you assuming you need to charge a 2-day device every other day? You charge it every night, and in exchange you make it through heavy use days, late nights, and the times you forget to charge it. I had a 2-day phone and downgraded to a 1-day phone and my phone now dies on me much more often, including in each of those scenarios, and looking at the battery level and charging have become a bigger part of my life.

I think it's implied in "two day battery life".

If that's not what you actually want then just call it 'heavy use all day battery life' or something.

> I'm not sure I or really anyone actually wants a 2 day battery life.

I do, because that means it could probably do 8 hours at high load.

My Garmin lasts about a week if I don't use GPS and it's by far the best feature.

...maybe?

The Air form factor is already pushing the limit of what you can do with aluminium and still have high confidence it won't warp when you shove it into your bag, or have it fall over when you open the screen past vertical.

I could see them slimming down the battery to get more components in, maybe, rather than two day battery life.

Which would probably be the right call. There just aren't enough circumstances where not plugging in your laptop while sleeping is necessary to justify it.

Personally I'd like them to make a model with a cellular modem, with all-day battery life even reasonably far from a tower. That would be fun.

I'd expect carbon fiber reinforcement to add stiffness soon on some of these larger, ultra-slim devices. That's what we use for sports equipment, and CF+Al bonding is a well solved problem in manufacture.

Apple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop and improve the performance AND increase the battery life.

Like they just fucking did with the M1 MacBooks.

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. They know the battery range they need and keep it there, to make room for other features.

Apple just increased battery life on the MacBook Pro from ~12 hours to 20 hours and kept the form factor the same. Likewise the MacBook Air. Feedback from people using them suggests gains are even bigger for people who use them on battery under load.

But they decreased the batter size on the iPhone 12 due to power efficiency gains, so battery life is approximately the same unfortunately.

Apple is slowly moving to mini led displays and probably micro led displays after that. That should also improve energy use.

Currently miniLED for backlight is power hungry compared to simple edge LED. It's used for high contrast HDR. MicroLED won't available for laptop near the future.

Imagine the day we have high-refresh, color e-ink displays to pair with high performance ARM chips.

will it? do people really spend that much time away from an outlet while on their laptop?

Yes. Even at home it's so much nicer to be able take the laptop anywhere without worrying about wires.

My school had a policy of no chargers at school due to safety regulations (Fires/tripping) so the macbook air made an excellent choice.

Wow! That would drive me batty! It also seems unfair to students who can’t afford the latest-and-greatest laptops and are stuck with laptops with lesser battery life (unless the laptops are all school provided).

This was a private school and the macbooks were school supplied (from your fees of course)

no charger at school but you're expected to use a computer to learn..

That's kind of weird.

Well they provided us with macbook airs which easily last an entire day of usage unplugged.

All day battery and very light laptop will change people’s behavior. Previously they might not bring the laptop out as much because of power constraint.

This metric is hilarious and perfect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com