Would a later terraced battery design piss you off as a first gen owner?

[thadoggfather]

If they squeezed a lot more capacity in the sucker?

apparently according to an article they didn't want to not meet holiday season deadlines and failing one test, (and Mac got no love for all of 2016 aside from incremental 12" bump)

 

[myscrnnm]

If the battery life increase is significant, I would be a little pissed considering how long I waited to get this computer. But realistically, I don't think a terraced battery design would drastically change the battery capacity of the MacBook Pro. The reason it works very well for the Retina MacBook is because of the tapered case. The MacBook Pro has a much more conventional shape where I imagine terraced battery cells would not be worth incorporating, at least in the near term.

 

[thadoggfather]

If the battery life increase is significant, I would be a little pissed considering how long I waited to get this computer. But realistically, I don't think a terraced battery design would drastically change the battery capacity of the MacBook Pro. The reason it works very well for the Retina MacBook is because of the tapered case. The MacBook Pro has a much more conventional shape where I imagine terraced battery cells would not be worth incorporating, at least in the near term.

yes, assume significant battery gains. of course thats subjective but lets say that is the implication within my question

thanks

 

[ocgirl]

I think in the end, it's like all new products : the next one will always be better, newer, faster.
I foresee the next one to have maybe a new gimmick (ex: added forcetouch in the 2015) like pencil support on that big a$$ trackpad and higher specs with eventually a cheaper price. But that's technology and evolution...

Now, if this happens in two months : I'm pissed. If this is part of Apple's "traditional" update cycle then it's fair game.

 

[Marshall73]

The terraced battery article sounds like BS anyway. The new Pros don't have a wedge shape like the 12" MacBook to justify the inclusion of a terraced battery.

 

[bizack]

The terraced battery article sounds like BS anyway. The new Pros don't have a wedge shape like the 12" MacBook to justify the inclusion of a terraced battery.

You can terrace a battery (or anything physical for that matter) along the X, Y and Z axis. Looking at the teardown, there's plenty of places where this would be applicable (and is currently, strangely void of battery).

 

[Rkuda]

If they squeezed a lot more capacity in the sucker?

apparently according to an article they didn't want to not meet holiday season deadlines and failing one test, (and Mac got no love for all of 2016 aside from incremental 12" bump)

All products created - ever - had to deal with design tradeoffs. Good updates to products try to improve or remove previous tradeoffs. And sometimes when you're almost done with engineering a product you get screwed and have to go with Plan-b.

It's silly to take a kernel of knowledge, or maybe complete BS based on how accurate most news sources are now a days, and make an assumption that Apple thoughtlessly pushed out something to get that sweet sweet holiday cash.

In case anyone has forgotten practically everyone on this forum was losing their ****ing minds the whole goddamn year because we did have a new MBP.

Real artists ship.

P.S. I bet we'd all care quite a lot if that one test that was failing was because the batteries were Samsunging themselves.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Of course it wouldn't piss me off. Whenever you buy any piece of technology you do so in the full knowledge that within a short period of time something better will replace it.

The only way to avoid this is not to buy any new tech it's that simple.

If this sort of thing pisses you off I'd imagine some sort of self introspection and a re-assessment of your priorities is in order.

 

[jk76]

Of course it wouldn't piss me off. Whenever you buy any piece of technology you do so in the full knowledge that within a short period of time something better will replace it.

The only way to avoid this is not to buy any new tech it's that simple.

If this sort of thing pisses you off I'd imagine some sort of self introspection and a re-assessment of your priorities is in order.

I'm actually more disturbed by the fact that there won't probably be an update of significant improvement before second half of 2018, if even then, since most progress on high-end CPU space has stagnated as silicon processes get harder and harder to improve in significant ways. There's more chances for improvement on other components, but betting that current-generation high-end laptops would be suddenly outdated is actually sort of a strangely optimistic pipe dream.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I'm actually more disturbed by the fact that there won't probably be an update of significant improvement before second half of 2018, if even then, since most progress on high-end CPU space has stagnated as silicon processes get harder and harder to improve in significant ways. There's more chances for improvement on other components, but betting that current-generation high-end laptops would be suddenly outdated is actually sort of a strangely optimistic pipe dream.

Why are you disturbed by this???

It's not as if it will impact you at all, as software developers will just have to stay within the hardware limitations.

I know what you mean about needing a new direction for cpu development but it doesn't really matter and it is going to be a few years before the next big breakthrough I think, so just enjoy the fact that yor old haswell machine is nearly as good as new one like I do.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

One must assume people bought the machines because they covered their needs. If they get sour due to technology improving in the future, then they should stick to pen and paper as it technology wise likely won't change anymore.

 

[jk76]

Why are you disturbed by this???

It's not as if it will impact you at all, as software developers will just have to stay within the hardware limitations.

I know what you mean about needing a new direction for cpu development but it doesn't really matter and it is going to be a few years before the next big breakthrough I think, so just enjoy the fact that yor old haswell machine is nearly as good as new one like I do.

(A bit off-topic, but nonetheless, here it goes...)

I am disturbed by it as an ICT market wide phenomenon. If the same hardware (non)scaling sickness eventually hits GPU, machine learning and network equipment sectors, it can have a major impact on relatively constant (but somewhat hidden) improvement of quality of life in developed societies in general.

The effect on the level of a single laptop buyer may improve longevity of their laptops, but for instance exascale machine intelligence may become permanently a domain of only the largest governments, instead of the "natural" assumption it'll eventually fit in pockets of us all. Top supercomputers two decades ago had equal computing power to that of a phone nowadays; if this pattern permanently falls apart, there are not only consumer-level, but also societal effects.

But to put it short: I don't expect much improvement on the market in coming year or two, and from the end-user perspective, it's mostly a positive thing, but worrying in the regard people have set their expectations on future progress (affecting quality of life) in larger and longer scales.

 

[eulslix]

(A bit off-topic, but nonetheless, here it goes...)I am disturbed by it as an ICT market wide phenomenon. If the same hardware (non)scaling sickness eventually hits GPU, machine learning and network equipment sectors, it can have a major impact on relatively constant (but somewhat hidden) improvement of quality of life in developed societies in general.

Yeah, I guess we must either significantly lower our expectations and future prognosis, or count on breakthroughs in quantum theory to improve our manufacturing processes. Maybe there're possibilities with organic materials, who knows. It wouldn't be the first time where a breakthrough paper leads us out of an exponential phase into an even steeper exponential phase.
Also, our society develops on so many different frontiers. We don't solely depend on die manufacturing, progress in energy gain might allow us to beat the problem by simply producing more of the same, brute force. For example: We could come up with a revolutionary technology to reuse almost all of the heat dissipation of large server clusters.

Then there's huge progress in genetic engineering, bioinformatics and such which indirectly might boost our scientific output ... lot of unknowns. I don't know, this topic is really complex and requires knowledge in a multitude of disciplines.

 

[cerberusss]

Why would it piss me off? A later product is bound to be better.

You know what would really piss me off? If my MacBook went Galaxy Note on me, because Apple rushed a new battery design.

This isn't a small 9,25 Wh phone battery, this is a 76 Wh battery. I do NOT want to see the result of that battery blowing up.

 

[Precursor]

As a 12" rMB owner I can tell you that terraced battery design has flaws. Because the battery consists many thin sections you don't get proper battery readings and the battery life degrades extremely fast (just check rMB forums)
Tbh I am happy Apple didn't switch to that design on MBPs.

 

[ocnitsa]

I don't know. If you wanna get upset, I can imagine a couple of ways to do it.

First, though, I understand the argument that new tech always comes along that's better than what you get. I think most of the time, with a company like Apple, you hope everything your getting is either top quality or selected for a trade off that provides gains all related to a unified vision for that model.

That said, part of the wow factor of this gen (allegedly) was going to be the battery life. Given some of the trade offs, this would have been an important positive...one that probably would have justified the price point. But, if there was a problem and it was rushed out with older tech, just to make a buck, that kind of trade off doesn't jive with Apple's often stated philosophy of excellence/design/care for consumer experience. I can imagine an Apple at one time that would have waited until they got it right the way they envisioned it (regardless of people clammoring for a new model). Further, it's been a LONG while between real iterations where you'd imagine a battery redesign may have had plenty of time to work on, had they started early. If it was done late in the game, then, yeah a big snag would cause a delay. So one could look at it as Apple rushing out a corners cut version of what they knew the product should be. It's perfectly fine to say it's still a great computer...I'm not implying it's crap. Just responding to folks who wonder why in the world they might have an issue with it all.

 

[Howard2k]

If they squeezed a lot more capacity in the sucker?

apparently according to an article they didn't want to not meet holiday season deadlines and failing one test, (and Mac got no love for all of 2016 aside from incremental 12" bump)

No. Technology marches on. It would be idiotic to get annoyed because a new device/feature came along.

 

[ihatetoregister]

I'm already pissed off at this dumb iteration of mbp so I guess it will be routine