Apple has a stranglehold on the battery life crown, and it’s not about to relinquish it.
Before Apple even began talking about its new iPad Air at the company’s much-anticipated event today (Oct. 22), the company announced that OS X Mavericks, its newest operating system, will increase battery life by “an hour” on any existing Mac laptop. Then Apple announced that the new Intel graphics processor it will use in its 15″ Macbook Pros will save battery life, too, compared with other graphic chips, like the kind made by Nvidia.
And that was just the start. Apple’s new iPad Air will carry a smaller battery than in the previous iPad, but power it for just as long. The reason, senior vice president of design Jony Ive explained, is that the new chip in the iPad Air—the A7, which is also present in the iPhone 5s—is so power-efficient.
It’s this exact obsession, Apple’s strict diet of ever-increasing efficiency, that has kept the company ahead of the curve when it comes to battery life. And it’s precisely this obsession that has allowed Apple to yield it’s newest product—the world’s thinnest, lightest, full-size tablet—without compromising at all on power or usability.
Apple’s competitors have proven much slower to improve the battery life afforded by their products and operating systems. Microsoft’s Windows processor has been especially egregious.