Slashdot Mirror


Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes

Phil Schiller delivered the keynote at MacWorld, the first after the Steve Jobs era of keynotes. Here is Engadget's live blog. The big news, predicted by many rumor sites, was the introduction of the unibody 17" MacBook Pro. As rumored, the battery is not removable, but it's claimed to provide 8 hours of battery life (7 hours with the discrete graphics): "3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard." $2,799, 2.66 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, shipping at the end of January. There is a battery exchange program, and there is an option for a matte display. The other big news is that iTunes is going DRM-free: 8M songs today, all 10+M by the end of March. Song pricing will be flexible, as the studios have been demanding; the lowest song price is $0.69. Apple also introduced the beta of a Google Docs-like service, iWork.com.

2 of 1,079 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Battery?! by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 1, Troll

    Do you have anything in the way of facts to back up your statement, or are you just spouting an uninformed opinion about a technical matter?

  2. Re:Battery?! by itsdapead · · Score: 1, Troll

    There is no trade off. You make the battery removable. You might get a seam on your casing. Oh no. But you most certainly do not lose 28.5% of your space!

    Please tell me you're not an engineer.

    Its not just a seam: if the battery can be removed, people will remove it, so you have to ensure not only that the battery is robust (can't be crushed, the terminals can't be shorted) but that the computer with the battery removed is also robust (both mechanically, and proof against foreign objects getting in).

    Lets say the space available for the battery is 20cm x 10cm x 1.5cm giving a volume of 300 cm sq,

    Now make it removable. You have to put a rigid case around the battery and a wall around the battery compartment. Lets say that, together, they are 1mm thick - that loses you 2mm in every dimension.

    The volume available for the new battery is 18cm x 8 cm x 1.3 cm = 187.2 sq cm.

    Whups, there goes 40% of your battery volume!

    Plus, the bigger you make the battery, the thicker you have to make the case and the more removing it weakens the laptop.

    --
    In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.