RIP SeatGuru, and a reminiscence on in-flight power

SeatGuru Laid To Rest After 24 Years. I can’t say I used it much in the past - decade? - if at all. I mostly fly private these days, after all, and even when I do occasionally fly commercial, the one thing that really made SeatGuru essential for me back in the day is no longer much of an issue: In flight power.

Back in the mid-aughts, I was wearing several hats at a tech start-up, and generally always “on.” Flying, even with my spiffy new MacBook Pro 15.4" with its claimed 5 hour battery life (that was, when brand new, more like 2-3 hours), generally meant not being able to get all that much done before the battery was out of juice. (Years earlier, I had a superslim Sony VAIO PCG-Z505R, with two “Standard Lithium-Ion Battery” packs that were good for a claimed “1.0-1.5 hours” each, and one thick “Triple-capacity Lithium-Ion Battery” with a claimed runtime of “3.5-5.0 hours,” and that could more or less get me through a domestic flight.) But then Apple released the Apple MagSafe Airline Power Adapter, which would power (but not charge) a MacBook or MacBook Pro in the air, if your seat was equipped with a power port. (This was an EmPower or, more commonly at least at that time on U.S. domestic flights, the 15V 20mm “cigar lighter” style port, often shared by two seats.) (It was kind of the lunatic fringe, at the time. Also, Apple wasn’t the only one with a solution; at least Lenovo also had one.)

Apple MagSafe Airline Power Adapter

 

That’s where SeatGuru came in. If you were flying first class, which I tried to do as often as possible, there was power in each row, but for coach seats, at least on American (and Southwest? Memory fades...), it was more like every other row. So I’d hop on SeatGuru to make sure I had power.

Of course, these days, my portables mostly sip power (30W is more than enough for a MacBook Air with Apple Silicon), have longer lasting batteries to begin with, and <= 100 kWh battery packs with USB-C power delivery in the 30W range are relatively inexpensive and ubiquitous (and discussed quite a bit here), like this Zendure, or the Storm 2 (which loudly announces it is “Airline Safe”):

Storm 2 battery pack with Airline Safe messaging

Too, newer airliners are often now equipped with USB-C PD ports rated up to 60W, so all you’d need is a cable to power even a 14" MacBook Pro:

Airline seatback USB-C 60W power port

So my need for SeatGuru has slipped into history. But it was definitely an incredibly valuable tool, for a certain time.