Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple's Blue Ocean

hypercritical.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 262 posts

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#31

Post by makeitdouble »

ranqet wrote: post #13
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

I'm all for Apple reversing their long-standing decision to make device batteries non-user-replaceable - an original decision which I personally loath, and one where the EU will most likely force Apple's hand anyway by requiring batteries to be user-replaceable. But excuse me while I throw up in my mouth a little with this "Blue Ocean" nonsense. Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision for the sole purpose of i…

Siracusa's simpering, consoomer defensiveness for Apple has become intolerable. He seems unable to deal with the fact that his precious company's business practices are incompatible with his political/enviromental beliefs. Instead concocting this 'blue ocean' dream that Apple will switch back to user serviceable batteries, creating a new market where there competitors don't dare tread. What? There are still plenty of…

> they don't sell as well because what the majority of users want is [...]

I think in the current market we have no idea of what the majority of users want because there's no combination of all the available options.

The majority of users might value iOS more than any specific hardware feature. Second to that, they might value price and career rebates.

That makes fringe android phones failures irrelevant and would leave us with only random guesses on what people would want outside of what Apple and Sumsung is offering right now.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#32

Post by pjerem »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

You really don’t have to go wireless to protect your device/battery against the elements. In fact, most smartphones today are totally waterproof while still being charged by a good old cable.

It’s also pretty easy to design a connector with exposed pins that are totally inoffensive until something real is exposed. In fact, modern USB charging already works like this : a charger will not send anything over 5v x 150mA before having negotiated with the device to know what it needs.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#33

Post by EPWN3D »

threeseed wrote: post #11
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

I'm all for Apple reversing their long-standing decision to make device batteries non-user-replaceable - an original decision which I personally loath, and one where the EU will most likely force Apple's hand anyway by requiring batteries to be user-replaceable. But excuse me while I throw up in my mouth a little with this "Blue Ocean" nonsense. Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision for the sole purpose of i…

> Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision You make it sound like the decision comes with no benefits. All of the hardware to support removable battery means less space for the battery. And especially in the early days the iPhone was struggling to reach a normal working day.

R2R enthusiasts are incapable of seeing any decision from a perspective that isn't their own personal fetish for tinkering. So any and all advantages of sealing the battery into the chassis are just waved away and not acknowledged at all.

Lighter devices? That's irrelevant, no one cares about device weight.

Cheaper to manufacture? That's just a ploy to gasp make more money! How dare they?!

Waterproofing? Well I don't go SCUBA diving with my phone, so clearly no one else does. And if they do, just put it in a ziplock bag!

And so on.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#34

Post by Synaesthesia »

It could be easily done. Sadly Apple doesn’t seem to view that in its interest, despite its repeated claims to care about the environment.

They could make slick, elegant devices which are still repairable and have replaceable batteries.

I remember the original iMac G5 had a great design which let you simply remove the backplate with 3 screws and access everything. Of course in the next iteration they changed the design entirely so that opening it up became a huge ordeal.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#35

Post by judge2020 »

silisili wrote: post #29
ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

That's pretty close to how power tools work, minus the wireless charging of course. My first concern would be warmth, my phone always warms up when wireless charging. Doing something CPU intensive would probably get the device blazing. My second concern would be size - is the total package going to get a lot bigger here? If we forgo the pocket and just use magnets at each corner maybe it gets slimmer, but can it be a…

MagSafe's auto-alignment really helped the efficiency of Wireless Charging, supposedly 75% efficient with MagSafe (based on the cable pulling 20w and phone supposedly accepting 15w) versus 50% for regular Qi charging.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#36

Post by ankushnarula »

warrenm wrote: post #2

Make battery packs (call them "removable batteries, if you like") 100% completely and totally separate from the device itself - think of it like a UPS for a desktop...no (or practically "no") battery on/in the device, and instead you run the device with a Qi-compatible battery pack IOW - the device becomes 30-50% lighter (on its own), and the buyer determines how heavy his/her experience will be based on which Qi-pac…

Agree with the most of youir premise - but a magnetically aligned and secured pogo-pin interface on the bottom back edge of every MacBook might be superior to inductive charging, which wastes electricity and generates too much heat. Such battery packs could also include a second pair of pass-thru pins for stacking and connecting to a direct wall power adapter.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#37

Post by KennyBlanken »

Animats wrote: post #3

The future is batteries with more charge cycles, not replaceable batteries. The solid state battery people are claiming 10,000 charge/discharge cycles. If they can achieve that, it's 27 years of battery life. The case will wear out first.

Lithium ion batteries that can handle a thousand to several thousand charge cycles and only see 80% reduction in capacity have been available for ten years.

My 2013 Macbook Pro has just such a battery, rated for 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, and it lasted over 6 years before the battery's internal resistance rose enough that heavy load would cause a brownout and the machine to force sleep.

Yet they are not in widespread use; most devices have prioritized capacity/weight/size over longevity, Apple included. My current M1 has lost 10% of its capacity after just 120 cycles and less than a year of ownership, even using a utility that allows you to set a limited maximum charge level to preserve the battery. And the battery is less accessible, less replaceable.

Battery companies and device manufacturers don't care. There's no incentive for anyone involved and consumers have gotten used to replacing devices every few years.

Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever.

We need something like a e-waste import duty, tax, fee, or 'recycling deposit' on devices with non-replaceable lithium ion batteries.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#38

Post by ChuckMcM »

silisili wrote: post #29
ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

That's pretty close to how power tools work, minus the wireless charging of course. My first concern would be warmth, my phone always warms up when wireless charging. Doing something CPU intensive would probably get the device blazing. My second concern would be size - is the total package going to get a lot bigger here? If we forgo the pocket and just use magnets at each corner maybe it gets slimmer, but can it be a…

There is a tradeoff here which might mislead. That is that when you're wirelessly recharging a battery "good" is defined by "charges in a short time" which means a lot of current and thus a lot of heat. When operating a device "good" is defined by "runs a long time" which means minimal current and thus little heat.

So before we could dismiss the idea, we would really need to run the experiment of "running" via wireless power to see how the current requirements in that state would be reflected in device heating (or not). I agree with you though that if the answer was "always smoking hot" then it is a non starter.

As for size, the "wireless" part is really really thin (a loop antenna). Battery size is a function of how much electrolyte it can carry and LiOn batteries are about 0.5g/cc and 250Wh/kg (or .25Wh/g) iPhones are around 12Wh so about 48g of battery which is 96cc of Lithium. Call it 100cc and you're looking as a "7.8 x 15 x 1" cm "battery card" (order of magnitude approximation based on that math and rough measurements of my iPhone 13SE which is a smallish phone)

I like the idea of magnets but I don't like the idea of the battery being "jostled off" my phone in my pocket and so effectively turned off when I think it should be on. So I think that would take some design work to get right.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#39

Post by makeitdouble »

> [fewer product sales per unit time] is a problem that can be solved using one of Apple’s favorite financial tools: higher product margins.

It's weird people forget the main message Apple has been touting for years now: services revenue.

Even without removeable batteries, with right to repair device longevity will increase, and they've seen the writing on the wall for a long time.

Apple will continue increasing services revenue. They'll fight the bitter end for the 15/30% tax on everything, iCloud tiers, Apple Music, TV, etc.

If they find a blue ocean, it will be in services. Their entry into emergency satellite calls and other "wouldn't you feel bad being dead because you didn't pay us ?" push could be that.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#40

Post by albertgoeswoof »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

Wireless power is too inefficient for this to make sense. You’d be throwing 30% of the battery capacity to the wind
Post reply on HN