MacBook Pro 17One of the more provocative news items to come out of Macworld this week was the retooling of the MacBook Pro 17” to no longer house a removable lithium ion battery. Instead, Apple engineers custom-designed a lithium-polymer cell battery and essentially built the battery in to the laptops under-carriage. According to Apple, doing so has eliminated the huge space requirements standard removable batteries normally require:

They built the battery right into the computer, eliminating the space-consuming mechanisms and housings that standard removable batteries require. The result is a battery that’s 40 percent bigger than the previous generation and offers up to 8 hours of wireless productivity on a single charge — all in a notebook that’s less than an inch thin, weighs just 6.6 pounds, 3 and remains the same price as the previous-generation model.

This is certain to be the major talking point for the foreseeable future – people will most definitely complain about how Apple is increasingly making it more difficult to self-service your gear. iPod batteries are not changeable and are perceived to have a short lifespan, so consumers will likely have similar feelings about this transformation.

But the real question is this: how many times have you ever used a second battery? How many people even own a second battery? I bet the answer is inconsequential, hence why we are where we are today.

Think about it – Apple probably has a large number of metrics on the number of second lithium ion batteries purchased for the previous MacBook Pro 17” generation (presumably for all their laptops). Apple obviously crunched numbers and came to the conclusion that, yes, the number of laptops sold vs. the number of ala carte batteries sold is trivial and not worth sustaining. Thus their decision to modify the design and use a non-removable battery.

If you have previously purchased an Apple laptop but not a secondary battery, guess who’s to blame? Yup, you! You have nobody to blame but yourself for this situation.

I firmly believe the existing MacBook Pro 15” product line will be modified to house a non-removable battery in the near future as well. It only makes sense for Apple to migrate their entire laptop strategy to this design paradigm.

This transformation is great for the industry overall too. Expect non-removable batteries to become the norm rather than the exception. Most other computer manufacturers take their design cues from Apple – this one is sure to become the new standard.

What I like best about the new battery is that on a full charge Apple says it will last up to 8 hours without requiring a recharge. The lithium-polymer cell battery is capable of withstanding over 1000 charges throughout it’s lifecycle before requiring replacement. I am curious to see the results of independent tests to verify the accuracy of this claim – that will go a long way in silencing the critics of this move.

To put the charge time in to perspective, with WiFi enabled, my current, 1.5 year old 2.4Ghz MacBook Pro 15 can last roughly 2.5-3 hours on a single full charge. Watching multimedia files drops the time down to about 2-2.5 hours. Normal usage is roughly 3-4 hours, depending on what I am doing.

Frequent flyers should love the new battery specs. Magsafe Airline Adapters are no longer a requirement when travelling. Hell, it is painful to try and find an open seat in coach equipped with a plug. The new battery specs all but eliminate the need for an adapter, and should work perfectly for even international flights. Imagine being able to watch movies all throughout your flight without worrying about running out of battery!

What do you think? Smart, revolutionary move by Apple? Or is this decidedly consumer-unfriendly?