MacBook Pro's best new feature: Battery life

Apple has devoted a fair amount of screen real estate on its website bragging about the new battery technology in its new MacBook Pros. It turns out it's not just marketing speak to hide the fact the battery is no longer user replaceable.

According to AnandTech, the advertised 7 hour battery life (or 8 hours for the 17" model) is real. The 15" MacBook Pro is advertised to get 7 hours of battery life, yet with light usage Anand was able to get over "Eight, freakin, hours" out of the thing, and 6.5 hours with moderate usage. Even with relatively heavy usage he was able to get nearly 5 hours.

The MacBook Pro has just raised the bar enormously for battery life on full-fledged laptops.

It will be interesting to see if this battery life increase is limited to Mac OS X, or if it will be seen under Windows as well.

13" MacBook gets Firewire (again)

Firewire, welcome back!

Many of us old timers complained about the loss of Firewire on the aluminum 13" MacBooks, expecting that it was gone forever. Well, good news, it's back. However, that 13" machine is no longer called the MacBook. The new 13" update has pushed it into the MacBook Pro category, and it gets a new Secure Digital slot as well. Also, even the low end model now gets the illuminated keyboard. Interestingly, it also has a non-removable battery now, like the MacBook Air.

Further good news is the pricing has actually decreased. That's a nice shift in Apple's marketing. Maybe it's time for me to jump into the market for a new laptop again.