There are five developers here at The Frontier Group and four of us have partners. That’s nine people, between them there are eight Apple laptops of various vintages. Five of them are our own Macbook Pros. If you were to say that we are impressed with Apple products and enjoy using them daily then I’d say you are dead right!

Apple have recently released their new 17″ Macbook Pro and have given it an embedded, non-removable battery pack. On initial impression this seems to be quite a limitation. In reality given that they are touting 8 hours of battery life and 1000 recharges the battery could quite legitimately last 2-3 years of even the most heavy use.

Their video detailing why they went with an embedded battery and how the battery pack is manufactured is pretty interesting. It explains how the batteries are manufactured and where they saved space and weight as well as the improvements they made to increase the lifespan of the battery pack.

My assumption is that the battery is replaceable, it’s just that you’ll need to take it to a service centre to have it done. They don’t seem to mention this on the website though so I may be wrong.

If the battery is truly and completely irreplaceable then I think their claims of environmental friendliness and so on would be debunked. I guess we’ll hear about it in a couple of years time.

All in all though I’m pretty excited about the new Macbook Pro and after having seen one in the flesh at work I’m keen to see one in my own hands some time this year or next.

UPDATE : According to Gizmodo the battery is replaceable after all for US$179. To me that seems like an entirely reasonable price if the battery life lives up to the claims.