[kalleboo]

> Of course, the problem is that most likely battery life actually is lower. The battery of the new MacBook Pro is significantly smaller than the predecessor's, but the components don't use significantly less power

Exactly. Apple has always designed their devices to a battery life target. But as "wireless web" and "movie playback" both depend on use cases that get more and more optimized as Apple improve their software, they get more and more disconnected from the reality of pro users. How about a "editing a Swift Playground" battery life estimation? Or Photoshop? What Pro user spends all their day browsing the web and watching movies? Those make sense for the regular MacBook, not the Pro.

[whywhywhywhy]

> Or Photoshop

Consistent 20-30% processor usage no matter what the processor when not in focus and no files open.

[tajen]

It's natural that Apple designs a battery target for one usage. It's totally ok to tell '10hrs watching a movie', with actual figures being lower when doing other activities. PC competitors never ever hit the target, even for movie-watching, so we were perfectly happy to have 10 actual hours for one usecase.

Of course I don't get what customers gain from .07 nineteenth of an inch less of thickness. Next version Apple will provide a thinner macbook, with no battery, and the power supply will come from an NFC table...

[herbst]

There are several non apple products for years with way better battery life. My 6yo T420 easily makes 12-14 hours on Wifi. More if i disable stuff.

[kalleboo]

I just wish they'd show figures for a use case that matters to me. If you keep 10 hours of "wireless web" mostly by optimizing your web browser, that's great for people who spend their time browsing Facebook, but if that means I lose 2 hours of my usage, I wish they had some number that showed that as well. Of course, I get that if they show a "heavy productivity - 3 hours" then pundits will latch onto that and compare it to other makers' web browsing numbers... It's a crap situation.

You have a point that many PC manufacturers have fantasy numbers - I don't want Apple to venture into that realm. ("10 hours... as long as literally the only process you have open is Safari")

Phrasing it another way... I hope Apple doesn't optimize their batteries for their own benchmark, to the detriment of real-world use cases.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I don't get what customers gain from .07 nineteenth of an inch less of thickness

It is difficult to make thin, light and functional laptops. This results in fewer doing it, with those that do being able to command a margin for it.

It also amortises your product R&D. Minitiarisation continues, delivering not only more computing power but more in smaller form factors.

By focussing on thin and light, they can keep tweaking with decisions they had to make when putting a computer in a phone and then a watch and will need to face putting it into a contact lens, et cetera.

[mynewtb]

> PC competitors never ever hit the target

Start looking at proper business models maybe.

[mastax]

For example: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Revie...