By Michael Kanellos
Well, here’s a surprise.
A lot of people, including me, thought Apple (AAPL) would adopt the zinc silver batteries from ZPower in its 17-inch notebook. ZPower, after all, is slated to soon announce a notebook win with a major manufacturer.
It turns out that Apple has rigged its notebook with a lithium-polymer battery that it designed itself (with probably a good deal of help from battery makers.) Lithium-polymer batteries don’t come shaped in cells, like standard batteries. Instead, they are sacks of electronic goo. Lithium-polymer batteries typically don’t share the same energy density that lithium-ion cell batteries have, but the amorphous shape allows notebook makers or others to fit battery material into various nooks and crannies.
Apple is not the first manufacturer to use lithium-polymer batteries, by the way, so if you are a Mac fan don’t get too sweaty yet. Back in 1998, Mitsubishi came out with the Pedion, a super-slim notebook in a metal case and a lithium-polymer battery. Sounds a lot like the new Mac, yes? Apple hopes not. The Pedion was a disasterm — consumers complained about the outrageously high price and poor functionality. That name also creeped a lot of people out. Hewlett-Packard sold a a model, but under its own brand name.
A few other Japanese manufacturers have released lithium-polymer notebooks since. Compaq also had a lithium polymer notebook in its (We are not men. We are D)Evo line of notebooks. They announced it at PC Expo, which is interesting because it’s an extinct notebook at a dead conference from a notebook maker that got gobbled up soon a few weeks after the notebook was announced.
On the upside, lithium-polymer batteries have improved quite a bit over the past few years. Apple, in fact, claims that its polymer battery can endure 1,000 charge cycles before dropping to 80 percent capacity, a lot better than the 200 to 300 on conventional batteries.
Sony (SNE) has also been one of the big proponents of lithium polymer. Stan Glasgow, who runs Sony Electronics, told me back in late 2006 that notebook makers would likely start adopting polymer batteries.
And that ZPower announcement should come soon. CEO Ross Dueber speaks this week at CES.
