

Ask HN: Apple Battery Technology? - todayiamme

I just saw a live blog on the Apple keynote and one of the things that struck me was the battery lives of new Apple products.<p>It's like they are continuously packing something better in a <i>smaller</i> space while using Li-ion technology. What I don't understand is how the hell are they sustaining this? What technology are they using?
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Someone
I do not think they are doing anything special. They just are using everything
they can buy (at the right price, and in the right quantities), to make lots
of small improvements, one at a time. Some ways to get better products are:

\- Software optimizations mean less power usage. \- Moore's law means fewer
chips, means more room for batteries. (example: AFAIK, the iPad does not have
RAM outside of the CPU) \- Better batteries lead to higher power budgets. \-
Cooler operation makes denser packaging possible (I bet those new iPods will
feel really heavy in the hand) \- Non-replaceable batteries allow denser
packaging. \- Custom chips for e.g. audio or video decoding may use less power
than doing the same on the CPU.

They also are doing quite a bit to make their stuff look smaller than it is.
The iPad, for instance, is about twice as deep in the center than at its
edges. A custom-designed battery that is not a rectangular slab makes maximum
use of that extra 'hidden' space.

What makes them hard to beat at this game is a) they are really good at it and
b) they ship stuff in sufficient numbers to make the added costs of custom
designs bearable. For example, that built-in mains adapter in the new Apple TV
means that the device itself must be tested several times. It is way easier to
buy an external adapter that already has passed those tests.

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wmf
Supposedly batteries are improving at 8% per year according to Musk's Law. I
wouldn't be surprised if Apple aggressively adopts the latest battery
chemistries rather than just buying commodity cells.

