Then came the new 17” MacBook Pro, without a removable battery. It gave Apple a very thin battery that allowed it to create the MacBook Air’s sweet form factor. I suspect this part of the equation has more to do with cutting costs than saving space though.Īpple first used this lithium polymer battery technology in its MacBook Air. Not only does this make the batteries more compact, but it also gives you greater capacity since you’re using all available chassis volume for the battery.Īpple also found that it was wasting space in the removable enclosure for the batteries as well, so its lithium polymer offerings are no longer user removable. Lithium polymer cells aren’t made of cylindrical cells (they’re rectangular), so there’s no wasted space. In order to continue to drive laptop thinness down, Apple started experimenting with using custom lithium polymer batteries instead of the industry standard lithium ion parts. This wasted space translates into larger batteries than are necessary, which makes for larger notebooks. The problem with these batteries is that they waste a lot of space within a notebook (try cramming a lot of cylinders into a box, you end up with wasted space). Standard lithium ion batteries are made up of cylindrical cells, similar to AA batteries.

The old specs used to be up to 5 hours.Īpple did some clever work on its own here. Look at the battery life row in the table above Apple is claiming up to 7 hours of battery on the new MacBook Pros. Of course there are different models within each one of these categories that you can purchase, but they are irrelevant to the discussion we’re about to have. There’s only a single MacBook model and it’s the white chassis that’s been around for a while now.Īpple added a 13” MacBook Pro to the lineup to fill in the gap, although it’s not clear to me whether this 13” MacBook Pro uses the same LCD panel as the old 13” aluminum MacBook or a derivative of the 15” MacBook Pro’s panel, which is superior. If you want an all aluminum body, you have to buy a MacBook Pro. I was so focused on the iPhone 3GS and Snow Leopard announcements from this year’s WWDC that I almost missed the gravity of the MacBook Pro announcements.Īpple announced price drops on nearly all of its laptops.

Macbook pro mid 2009 battery