Apple's 2009 MacBook Pro: Battery Life to Die For
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 12, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Other Hardware Changes
I was excited when Apple finally introduced an easily accessible drive bay for the MacBook Pro. Apparently that was short lived because it’s no longer there on the new unibody MacBook Pros.
The old removable battery and HDD bay, both gone
While the lack of any screwless removable panels makes the new MacBook Pro even more sturdy than its already herculean predecessor, it does mean that to swap hard drives you need to remove ten screws to get the bottom cover off then another two to get the hard drive out.
The base of the new MacBook Pro...just like the old MacBook Pro
The new MacBook Pro. Remove 10 screws and you can access everything. HDD (lower left), memory (center) and battery (lower right)
The integrated battery is actually very easy to remove, provided you have the right screwdriver. After you remove the bottom cover there are just two screws between you and removing the battery. There’s a big sticker telling you not to and doing so would probably void your warranty, but you can at least get to it if you’d like to. According to Apple, you wouldn’t have to for around 5 years though.
Two of these 5 tipped star screws hold the battery in place
The hardware hasn’t changed much since the Fall 2008 MacBook Pros. Apple ditched the ExpressCard/34 slot and replaced it with a SD card slot. The SD slot is nice but I do most of my shooting with a CF based DSLR, so I still need an external reader for my CF cards.
The old MacBook Pro
The new MacBook Pro, note the SD card slot.
All of the CPUs got a speed bump. The Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz used to be in the entry level 15-inch MacBook Pro, now it’s a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo. It’s barely more than a 5% increase in clock speed, so I wouldn’t expect anything more than a couple percentage points of a performance boost in apps. A quick sanity check on performance confirmed that; the new model is in the same league of performance as the old one. If you’d like to see how it stacks up to much older hardware, check out our review of the unibody MacBook Pro from last fall.
Apple did a number on its pricing. The cheapest 15-inch MacBook Pro dropped from $1999 down to $1699, and Apple only sacrificed two things: 1) the ExpressCard slot and 2) the GeForce 9600M.
The missing ExpressCard slot was mostly to make room for the SD card slot, but the 9600M was most definitely a cost saving omission. All of Apple’s unibody MacBook Pros use NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M chipset; the chipset also has a GeForce 9400M graphics core in it. This was a significant upgrade over the Intel integrated graphics that had previously been used across Apple’s line.
The original unibody MacBook Pro had two GPUs, the 9400M integrated in the chipset and a GeForce 9600M. The latter was a separate GPU linked off of the PCIe bus and designed to be used if/when you needed the horsepower. The 9600M had its own frame buffer (either 256MB or 512MB of memory dedicated to the GPU) and was easily 2x the speed of the integrated 9400M. You could switch between GPUs in software under OS X.
For the most part, the 9600M was useless on the MacBook Pro unless you were gaming under Vista or did any heavy 3D accelerated work under OS X. I’m guessing the majority of MacBook Pro users didn’t do either and thus Apple canned the 9600M in the $1699 MBP. The 9600M is still present in the more expensive 15” models and is standard on the 17” MBP.
| Summer 2009 MacBook Pro 15" | Fall 2008 MacBook Pro 15" | Spring 2008 Penryn MacBook Pro 15" | 2007 Merom MacBook Pro 15" | |
| Dimensions | H: 0.95" W: 14.35" D: 9.82" | H: 0.95" W: 14.35" D: 9.82" | H: 1.0" W: 14.1" D: 9.6" | H: 1.0" W: 14.1" D: 9.6" |
| Weight | 5.5 lbs | 5.5 lbs | 5.4 lbs | 5.4 lbs |
| Screen Size/Resolution | 15.4" / 1440 x 900 (LED backlit) | 15.4" / 1440 x 900 (LED backlit) | 15.4" / 1440 x 900 (LED backlit) | 15.4" / 1440 x 900 (LED backlit) |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz (3MB L2) 2.66GHz (3MB L2) 2.80GHz (6MB L2) 3.06GHz (6MB L2) 45nm Penryn, 1066MHz FSB | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 2.53GHz or 2.80GHz (45nm Penryn, 1066MHz FSB) | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz - 2.6GHz (45nm Penryn, 800MHz FSB) | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz - 2.6GHz (65nm Merom, 800MHz FSB) |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (mGPU) + optional GeForce 9600M GT dGPU (256MB or 512MB GDDR3) | NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (mGPU) + GeForce 9600M GT dGPU (256MB or 512MB GDDR3) | NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT (256MB - 512MB) | NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT (128MB - 256MB) |
| Memory | 4GB DDR3 1066 (up to 8GB supported) | 2GB - 4GB DDR3 1066 | 2GB - 4GB DDR2-667 | 2GB - 4GB DDR2-667 |
| HDD | 250GB - 500GB 2.5" 5400RPM SATA 320/500GB 7200RPM SATA 128/256GB SSD | 250GB - 320GB 2.5" 5400RPM SATA | 200 - 250GB 2.5" 5400RPM SATA 200GB 7200RPM SATA | 120 - 250GB 2.5" 5400RPM SATA 200GB 7200RPM SATA |
| Optical Drive | Integrated SuperDrive | Integrated SuperDrive | Integrated SuperDrive | Integrated SuperDrive |
| Networking | 802.11a/b/g/n 10/100/1000 Ethernet | 802.11a/b/g/n 10/100/1000 Ethernet | 802.11a/b/g/n 10/100/1000 Ethernet | 802.11a/b/g/n 10/100/1000 Ethernet |
| Built in iSight | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Inputs | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x FireWire 800 1 x SD Card 1 x Audio in 1 x Integrated mic | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x FireWire 800 1 x ExpressCard/34 1 x Audio in 1 x Integrated mic | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x FireWire 400 1 x FireWire 800 1 x ExpressCard/34 1 x Audio in 1 x Integrated mic | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x FireWire 400 1 x FireWire 800 1 x ExpressCard/34 1 x Audio in 1 x Integrated mic |
| Outputs | 1 x Audio 1 x Mini DisplayPort | 1 x Audio 1 x Mini DisplayPort | 1 x Audio 1 x dual-link DVI | 1 x Audio 1 x dual-link DVI |
| Battery | 73WHr | 50WHr | 60WHr | 60WHr |
| Price | $1699 | $1999 | $1999 | $1999 |
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RikkiTikkiTavi - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Interesting. As I said my expertise on the mater is limited. It would be interesting to know what reasons there are for cylindrical cells.As I see it, they are more inefficient in both space usage and manufacturing. I'll see if I can find something on this.
santala - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Indeed, the older Macbook batteries contain flat rectangular cells, which was plain to see once opened. Therefore the comparison used by Apple currently, which leads you to believe that they used to be cylinderical, is wrong. They have been rectangular on Macbooks before, the material and size simply has changed, not the shape of the cells themselves.PlasmaBomb - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
My apologies, you are indeed correct... browsing my pics folder came up with the answer-http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/PowerBook....">http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/PowerBook....
Old powerbook = cylinders (NiMH I think).
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/Mackbook.j...">http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/Mackbook.j...
Macbook = flat cells
(feel free to take a copy of the pics)
So they haven't used cylindrical cells for a long time, bad apple for deliberately misleading people :|
Sorry as I said I don't have a macbook to play with :(
The lithium ion battery from my laptop looked pretty much like this -
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/lithium-ion-ba...">http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/lithium-ion-ba...
when I dismantled it (it was dead).
evilspoons - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I have a Mid-2007 15" MacBook Pro (Santa Rosa 2.2 GHz) with 3 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive (both upgraded by me from 2 GB - the extra 1 GB was free, otherwise I'd have 4 GB, and the 120 GB hard drive it came with was awful).Most of the time the battery life is just fine - but damn, this new 15" will DOUBLE what mine gets? Wow!
I think the new 15" MBP - in matte - with 4 or 8 GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD (or a 128 GB plus a hard drive, if there somehow was room: I need my iTunes library!), and maybe with the upcoming quad-core laptop CPUs would make just about the perfect computer.
Hopefully this is what the next generation MacBook Pro will look like and it'll be out about the time I start wishing my 2.2 GHz was faster.
jeffbui - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Anand, I'm sure you've put in that X25-M. Let us know how much more battery life the notebook gets. Thanks!JarredWalton - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
My understanding is that the X25 is a high performance part that doesn't dramatically improve battery life. However, it should be better http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=34...">by about 6%, give or take.PlasmaBomb - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Still 6% of 8 hours is a decent amount...about an extra half hour.
cserwin - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
As a modeler of RC airplanes, I know that LiPO's require extreme caution, especially when charging. Search youtube for "LiPO Fire".Basically, if you charge the batteries too fast, they burn. Could the smaller brick have to do with battery charging rates?
mmntech - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I'm an RC pilot as well and IMO, the safety risks with LiPo packs have been greatly exaggerated in recent years. Most laptops and other portable consumer electronics devices these days already use Li-Ion or LiPo as is. All packs do have a serious risk of explosion and fire, but they usually don't spontaneously combust unless they're cheaply made and have internal faults. Remember that RC packs are rated for much higher performance than laptop packs. They're also subject to more stress in the form of vibration and hard impacts. In 99.9% of cases, they're safe in consumer electronics provided they aren't abused.The batteries used for laptops have built in charge circuitry and balancers.
PlasmaBomb - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
That is what the chip in the battery and charging controller are for.