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citivolus

macrumors 65816
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Sep 19, 2008
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For me the greatest attraction of Arm-based MacBooks will be improved battery life. At this early point, do we have any data to suggest an estimate of how many hours to expect?
 

Ma2k5

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Dec 21, 2012
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Hard to say, so many variables to determine the perf per watt that they they will offer.

So in the end your 10 hour MacBook might still last 10 hours on switch to ARM if:

i. They keep the power usage the same by having an even more powerful ARM to replace the Intel chip rather than a like for like chip performance wise
ii. Shrink the battery size due to increased battery efficiency of having moved to ARM to make a thinner or lighter laptop
 

citivolus

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 19, 2008
1,218
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Good points--I would think given Apple's recent decisions to beef up batteries in iPhones lately, they are finally getting the message that thin and light can still be balanced with sizable batteries. Therefore I would expect the Arm MacBook to maintain a similar physical profile as current MacBooks but deliver more battery life with similar/better performance. Out of the gate, I suspect the first generation probably will leverage the Apple silicon's best advantage over Intel which is battery life.
 
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Ma2k5

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Dec 21, 2012
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I hope they do. It would be great to have a laptop which actually has an 8+ hour battery life while doing actual work (rather than ~10 hours on WiFi/video stream battery tests in ideal conditions that is usually used as benchmarks, which translate to around 3-5 hours of actual work hours).
 
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