AppleInsider Staff
Apple is actively recruiting new employees who can help to improve battery life on the company's Mac OS X platform in the years to come.
Anthony Chivetta, a member of Apple's OS X team, posted links to a pair of new job openings on his team via his Twitter account on Monday. There he revealed that Apple is looking for employees who can "help improve the performance and battery life of OS X.
One of the positions listed is for a Software Power Infrastructure Engineer. In that role, the employee will "design the latest tools to automate the collection power information."
The second opening is for the role of Software Power Engineer, as Apple seeks candidates who will work on the power efficiency of both OS X and its bundled applications.
Both jobs are to be located at Apple's corporate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
Power efficiency has been a key focus for Apple's Mac lineup in 2013, thanks in part to Intel's latest Haswell processors. The company's MacBook Air models were updated in June with the new low-power processor offering all-day battery life. New Haswell-equipped MacBook Pros are also expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Power consumption and battery life are also key areas of focus for Apple's forthcoming OS X Mavericks operating system update. Apple has boasted that Mavericks is both the most powerful OS X ever, while also being the most power-efficient version of the platform.
Key features in Mavericks include Timer Coalescing, which groups low-level operations together to reduce CPU usage, and App Nap, which places applications that are hidden from view in an idle state. The Golden Master of Mavericks was provided to developers last week
While these new hires sought by Apple won't play a role in the launch of Mavericks or this year's Mac hardware, the available positions suggest that improving battery life is a key area of focus for the company in developing its next generation hardware and future versions of OS X.
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Andrew O'Hara
Sponsored Content
Charles Martin
28 Comments
This is nice but considering Apple's HW and SW has always been above the rest on this and now Intel has finally done some good things in this space I have to wonder if there is something else involved for this hiring to come now. Would they say they are hiring for OS X but then push someone to (say) the iWatch project?
I'm getting great battery life out of my Haswell Air, but I have found the remaining-battery-time readings to be way off. Sometimes at 70% is says 4 hours remaining. I fixed the issue a month ago, but it's gone bad again. Apple should include in OS X an automatated way for the system to keep an eye on that reading and have the system perform self-maintenance to retifty large descrpencies like this.
This is what I like about Apple. They continue to push ahead in all aspects of hardware and software design. From better physical batteries to better battery performance in their sw.
Just brilliant.
Is there an eta for mavericks and is it anticipated they will release new laptops at same time?
[quote name="nicwalmsley" url="/t/159980/apple-hiring-to-improve-battery-life-in-future-versions-of-os-x#post_2412642"]Is there an eta for mavericks and is it anticipated they will release new laptops at same time?[/quote] I am expecting an announcement for an event this week with it happening on the 15th. I don't necessarily expect new Pro HW to ship right away but having the new OS ready to launch within 10 days of that seems pretty likely.