Will Apple starts skimping the batteries on future Macbooks?

[ian87w]

We saw it on iPhone 12. Apple brings a more efficient Ax chip, and they took the opportunity to shave the battery size.

Right now, the first M1 Macs still sport the same shell as their intel predecessors, so battery size is probably the same. I'm not usually the person who's on the bleeding edge, but I'm afraid that Apple will make the excuse "oh our M chip is so efficient, we can put smaller battery" on future designs.

Should I go ahead with this first round of M1 Macs? I'm eyeing on the Macbook Air. Obviously I will wait for reviews as well. Oh and this will be my first Mac laptop, so app compatibility is not an issue.

Should I be concerned? Or should I just be patient and wait for the second revision/redesign? I'm in no hurry to replace my current Windows laptop, but the battery life of the M1 Macbooks are eye watering. It sucks looking for an outlet, even if I'm at home.

 

[Falhófnir]

I suspect with the iPhone 12 the squarer design necessitated a thinner build to stop them feeling too chunky, this was what informed the smaller batteries. A lot of people have commented they feel bigger in the hand than before.

They have retreated somewhat from the drive to make macs smaller, all of them got slightly thicker to accommodate the magic keyboard and the 16” is outright bigger than the 15” it replaced. Only time will tell but I don’t think they will want to regress too much on battery run time having made a big deal of it in the presentation and marketing of the first AS macs.

I think the Air will be a fine machine. Even if the next release is a redesign, first gen redesigns are often where bugs and design faults creep in, so in a lot of ways you’re better with this chassis that’s been around a while and just adapted for AS. Always good to wait for reviews and others experiences first though.

 

[ian87w]

I suspect with the iPhone 12 the squarer design necessitated a thinner build to stop them feeling too chunky, this was what informed the smaller batteries. A lot of people have commented they feel bigger in the hand than before.

They have retreated somewhat from the drive to make macs smaller, all of them got slightly thicker to accommodate the magic keyboard and the 16” is outright bigger than the 15” it replaced. Only time will tell but I don’t think they will want to regress too much on battery run time having made a big deal of it in the presentation and marketing of the first AS macs.

I think the Air will be a fine machine. Even if the next release is a redesign, first gen redesigns are often where bugs and design faults creep in, so in a lot of ways you’re better with this chassis that’s been around a while and just adapted for AS. Always good to wait for reviews and others experiences first though.

That’s a good point, about the current chassis is tried and true. Can’t wait for the reviews

 

[JW Pepper]

Well I would love to see the 24 hour laptop. Apple could do that. The iPads have a huge life with miniature batteries so I see no reason why the MacBook Pro could not hit this milestone.

 

[bobmans]

They fill up all the remaining space with batteries and I don’t see any reason why they would make the Macbook chassis any smaller.
What’s for sure is that they’re not going to increase battery size in the 16” MBP tho, it’s currently at the largest battery size that’s allowed on planes in some countries lmao.

 

[eelpout]

I predict now that they have eeked out some more battery life because of ARM, they'll finally add higher resolution OLED to the laptops and erase any gains.

 

[thenewperson]

Possibly.