Apple Looking at Solar Power Converters
Getting "green" is going to be one of the tech trends that defines the next generation of hardware. As more customers are getting power conscious, the race is on to maximize performance and cut down on power consumption – especially for portable devices where the ability to run all day on a charge can make or break an entire product line.
That in mind, the U.S. Patent office has published a patent application from Apple Inc. titled "Power management systems for accepting adapter and solar power in electronic devices." In short, it details a mechanism that would allow solar power to be put into a device directly, without the need for a secondary converter. This basically would act as a power supply in a desktop does and directly scales the electrical input to the proper voltage and amperage to help ensure compatibility.
From the patent: "The power management system includes a system microcontroller (SMC) and a charger. During operation, the power management system accepts power from at least one of a power adapter and a solar panel. Next, the power management system supplies the power to components in the electronic device without using a converter circuit between the solar panel and the power management system."
If the patent is awarded, hopefully Apple will spread the love around, because having a cheaper, streamlined system for charging my stuff would be awesome.

"Getting "green" is going to be one of the tech trends that defines the next generation of hardware."
Talk about being out of touch with reality.
To the poster above, make no mistake. Scientist have found dozens of ways to make the WHOLE WORLD energy efficient. The problem is not that it doesn't work but it's how these greedy lobbyist can sell it $$$$$$ it's all about the money. And gas is big money right now.
If you want the most power out of a given solar panel, you need power-point-tracking technology which means some form of DC-DC conversion between the panel's output and the load(s), be it stand-alone or integrated in the power management IC.
I'm guessing Apple's patent is simply about skipping the intermediate solar-to-battery voltage conversion.
These environmental laws have nothing to do with promoting efficiency and energy independence, and here is a great example. In the US, vehicle emission standards are intentionally framed in pollutants per gallon, not pollutants per mile. A two year old could figure out that using pollutants per gallon does nothing to improve fuel efficiency. In fact we find much of the emissions equipment actually decreases fuel efficiency.
As for this global warming consensus, that is a bunch of nonsense. There are plenty of climatologist and scientists who do not ascribe to man made global warming. However, even if there was a consensus it wouldn't matter. Science is about facts not consensus. It used to be the consensus in the scientific community that the earth was flat. Here is a fact. The past decade has been marked by global cooling!
And anyone who thinks a global warming movie proves anything should just get it all over with and get lobotomized. You will be much happier and docile, and your cognitive abilities won't change that much. You won't even notice your constant drooling any more.
The cost to mitigate the effects of global warming would be significantly less than the cost to attempt to prevent it.
How do you mitigate the cost of each millimeter of ocean water level rise from melting polar caps? Many areas are within millimeters from flipping from habitable to floodable land. Whatever happens, it will continue costing billions each year.
As you said though, there are so many other factors that it is unclear if there really is something that can be done on a man-made scale that will actually make a measurable difference... like right now, some scientists think the cold snaps across Canada might have been caused by the unexpected solar lull. There isn't much that can be done to counter something on that scale.
How many more people die of the cold than the heat each year? Around 400 people die from heat related incidents each year, mostly heat stroke. Over 24,000 people died last year from the cold. It is actually a shame man made global warming isn't real. Think of all the lives we could save.
Even if every last cubic foot of polar ice melted, which would never happen, sea levels would only increase by less than 200 feet. The average elevation of NJ is over 250 feet. The world would definitely be a better place to live if it were warmer.
Of course we have only measured half a degree Celsius increase over the last 30 years, which is nothing in terms of what our planet has done naturally. It is hard to even define this as global warming. If we look at the Mesozoic era, temperatures were warmer by around 6 degrees Celsius. Coincidentally, these higher temperatures supported the greatest amount of life and vegetation to ever exist on this planet. The dinosaurs and the rain forests loved global warming.
The oceans rising by... 7 mm a year has not cost billions of dollars you nitwit. In fact, we have seen drastically low hurricane and flooding damage over the last decade.