Originally Posted By: wfaulk
I think you're wrong. Compare this. There's an aluminum separator visible basically the whole way between the battery and the main board. And, yes, it doesn't quite reach the bottom panel, but it would not take up any more room if it were to.

The issue is that you also need room on that separator to deal with clasps or whatever is used to hold the bottom panel or battery in. The older MacBook had a thicker separator for that exact reason.

Originally Posted By: wfaulk
Personally, I feel like moving from 5.5 hours to 6.5 hours, while numerically significant, is pointless in the real world. I can't think of any useful threshold at the 6 hour mark.

For the 13 inch system, the battery went from 45 watt-hours to 58. So 1/3rd more capacity, and that seems significant to me. The 17 inch system is harder to compare apples to apples, since there was never a Unibody model with a removable battery. The link you provided also fails to say how they tested. I'd expect better comparisons to be coming out soon with the 13 and 15 inch models, since one of the few changes to them was the battery.