This is a pretty interesting article! I raised more than my fair share of eyebrows by telling people I'm not really surprised with this kind of complexity (note: I'm an EE by formation, I took a frickin' two-semester course on power supplies) but that it doesn't fully justify the price difference.
Also, Jobs was a blatant liar :-). The SMPS in any modern computer is based on a standard topology that Rod Holt -- though a brilliant engineer in his own right -- didn't invent. I don't remember the specific details, but it's based on a flyback design that was certainly well-known at the time.
It's interesting that most of the author's claims about quality (and reasoning to not buy a non-Apple brand power supply) boils down to "look at all the extra stuff on the circuit board in the apple power supply". Surely not everything Apple put in the charger was absolutely required, and that also doesn't mean someone else couldn't deliver the same quality with less components.
The main take away message though is the proper isolation you get in the Apple one.
And that's the actual conclusion of the author. Don't buy the other one, not because the extra stuff in the Apple one is worth it but because the others generally cut a corner too far. ( or worded differently, if you don't have the skills to assess the safety of the design from the cheap one, buy the Apple one )
I think this isn't so much Jobs lying as it is him doing his normal embellishment.
Rod Holts design wasn't electrically unique, but it was extremely light and small. The Apple II wasn't the first computer to use a switching supply but it was shockingly light of a power supply which really helped the Apple II's reputation.
Which... as far as Jobs was likely concerned was all that mattered, but it wasn't the rip-off he claimed, it was just the start of the trend and Holt was at the right time to be one of the first on that wave.
Yeah. When Apple claims to have invented something, they don't mean that they invented the very first instance of it, they mean that they invented a practical and transformative consumer implementation, which depending on who you are can be viewed as just as important (because what use is a technology if it can't be used on a practical level?)
"popularized" and "invented" are two words which would be useful in this situation. Hopefully, we can all agree on the distinct meaning of those words.
>because what use is a technology if it can't be used on a practical level?
I know you meant it in a general sense, but the act of demonstrating something can also be useful. It could be that its not very profitable to manufacture or that it could serve as an inspiration for others to improve upon the idea itself.
My takeaway from this is that the $80 Apple charger is definitely safer and has higher-quality components than the $12 cheapo Chinese charger, but not nearly so much better that it solely explains the price difference, and that Apple is making a healthy margin on these things. So my question is, is anyone selling a quality charger without the Apple tax? Is there anyone making, say, $40 chargers that have the components of the real thing?
I doubt it, since the magnetic connector itself is patented, and they apparently don't license it— which is why the BatteryBox connector is such an awkward hack: https://www.getbatterybox.com/shop
Wow.I never gave much thought to Apple's magnetic connector till.The battery box does look like an ugly hack.But what I dont get is.Its magnets attracting.What and exactly what have they patented?
Magnetic self-locating connectors have been around forever. I have a waffle iron from the 60's that's got one. The patented part is the specific size and shape (and pinout I guess) of that particular connector that prevents 3rd parties from making compatible adapters. Apple is far from alone in trying to profit from that shenanigan. It is, of course, profoundly wasteful for manufactures to pursue "nickle-and-dime" profits in this manner at the expense of the public and the environment. Something the cellphone charging standard in Europe tried to address.
Just goes to show that there are plenty of places where Apple doesn't do much thinking different after all.
I think they've patented innovations in their thing like you can put it in either way up and it's got a chip with little lights in the end. They waffle on for pages in http://www.google.com/patents/US7311526
I'm not sure they should be able to patent fairly simple upgrades like that but I guess that's the US patent system.
I'm sure they've considered it, but my first thought would be to buy a magsafe to magsafe 2 converter for each batterybox and use that as the connector.
Seems like that would be better looking, but maybe it's still impractical.
Actually that was the intention if you looked at the original crowdfunding video. But a call from Apple prevented that from happening due to licensing issues of using their converters.
Not quite on point, but I hope someone soon creates a small adapter with a USB 3.0/3.1 Power Delivery-compatible plug on one end, and my laptop's charger plug on the other end. Then I'll be able to invest in a very high-quality 100-watt USB power supply that will work with any legacy laptops I have lying around. I expect all my future laptops/mobile devices will be Type C/USB 3.1, so I'll keep using that power supply for many years.
The problem is the market at the moment is terrible.
When buy genuine Apple or Samsung you know the quality is good. But when you pay something closer to what it should cost, who knows what you're getting? Could be a decent charger, could be heavily marked up Chinese junk.
I recently bought a VESA monitor conversion kit for an apple display (why Apple can get away with charging $1000 for a 27 inch display is beyond me) that turned out to be a knock off. It looked IDENTICAL to the official apple version on the outside but the screws didn't line up perfectly and it was clearly an inferior product. I'm not planning on skimping again, even for essentially just a hunk of machined metal.
I wouldn't buy one (I've got two Dell UltraSharps and I'm happy as a clam), but an Apple 27" monitor is also a Thunderbolt dock, most of which retail around $200. It's more expensive than its competitors, but I think that it's merely overpriced instead of exorbitant.
It indicates that both the governments and the industry have dropped the ball on enforcing the law against small companies. When you look at what this guy is doing with the Apple-compatible power supplies and cables, or the Google reviews of USB-C cables on Amazon, it shows the sorry state we're in.
One of the major advantages of EU/US markets is that laws are enforced. This allows you to compete on fair terms. In theory, the products should be recalled, the companies that import them fined, and their principals either fined, barred from directing a company, or criminally prosecuted. But does that ever happen? When laws are not enforced, law-breakers will be able to undercut you, and drive you from the market. Which is exactly what has happened here.
I've been buying some ThinkPad chargers on eBay and never encountered outright fraud. When they say genuine, they really are. Otherwise they use different words.
They usually work, but I've never seen a legitimate name brand coming from Hong Kong via eBay. My experience was mostly in sporting equipment, and the stuff that I ordered looked and smelled like it was "Adidas" or "Nike," and even said "Nike," but it obviously wasn't made by Adidas or Nike.
Lots of actual stuff is made (or shipped) from Hong Kong. I don't know enough about the specifics of Lenovo, I'm just saying I've bought and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of items on eBay, and I've never yet seen a "genuine" name brand on eBay that shipped from Hong Kong that was actually legitimate.
If I had to bet money on it, I would guess that these are the same type of things that you find in Chinese "fake markets" - name brand items that would pass as name brand to anyone who is not very, very familiar with the brand. If it works it doesn't matter in the end, but I've seen some real duds from those types of markets, as well. Maybe they "fell off the truck," but my money is on that they're fakes that are designed to resemble the real thing as closely as they can.
I wouldn't be so trusting. In the best case they are real, or ghost shift production. In the worst case they are fakes that have all the safety features cut out. There's no way to know unless you open them up.
I've bought two replica chargers for $20-30 off ebay.. i'm on my second. The first one lasted a year, which is about how long my original charger lasted due to the cord fraying
Yes, some people have good experiences, but it's still incredibly reckless. Chargers without proper safety features and which don't conform to electrical isolation standards could render your $1000+ machine worthless in a puff of smoke, or, worse, kill you.
The 'Original Apple' item shown at the bottom of the post doesn't look as if it fared much better though. The magic smoke definitely came out on that one and whoever owned it was lucky it ended there and didn't end with an actual fire.
Upthread there is someone saying that their Apple charger set fire to their carpet, and the only reason why it wasn't worse was because they were in the room at the time to stop it.
I doubt that short circuits have never killed anyone. That's not the only way a charger could kill you: DanBC points out the risk of fire, which is also a possibility.
It depends on your luck... and I am unlucky. My knock-off charger completely destroyed the power supply in my MacBook Pro after a few months of using it.
You know what's not surprisingly complex? My feeling about how screwed I felt when I got the Macbook and its charger consisted only of straight-to-plug wall wart, power cord to Mac, as opposed to cord-to-wall-wart, wall wart, power cord to Mac. They halved the length of the cord while forcing you to stick your wall wart right into the socket, crowding out other cords if it's on a small power strip. That and the fact that it's not MagSafe anymore.
Yes. It's the MacBook Air-like fanless one [1] with only 2 ports: headphone and USB-C. And half a power cable. And no MagSafe. Did I mention I'm a little bitter?
Well you got half a laptop, so you got half a charger!
But in all seriousness, if you consider the charging experience is very similar to an iPad (complete with the sound it makes when you plug it in), you start to see how they justified it.
Not to mention (this is going offtopic): no usb-c to mini display port for Target Display Mode with an iMac, although it is technically feasible and a matter of having a passive cable. They just wont create the usb-c versions of most of the peripherals during an unspecified amount of time. Because Apple.
Not OP, but I bought one because of the HighDPI screen. Looking at the Air's low-res screen makes me feel like there's something wrong with my eyes. With that said, it's far from a perfect laptop.
In my option it's quite close to perfect. I do dev work using Go, JS, and markup so speed is not a problem at all--if you're doing heavy compiler work YMMV. The fanless thing is incredibly important to me. I find the new keyboard harder to use than that of the Macbook Air, but I'm sure I'll adapt.
I'm not creating music on it so the lack of a USB 2 connector doesn't matter to me. I have to admit just the USB C and the headphone cord are plenty.
Its slimness and lightness are also important to me. My inviolate rule is that the more portable a laptop is, the more I'm likely to carry it with me to do extra work.
Wall wart & magsafe issues are not deal killers for me.
I'd recommend it if it fits your requirements exactly, as it did mine. Otherwise, I'd go with a high spec MacBook Air, because they're faster and, with the extra USB port, more practical for many uses.
I really hate how weak they made the strain relief. I found mine frayed within a year of use (in and out of bags and often hastily "wrapped up" in exactly the way the device suggests one should by form... but which everyone advises against). So I did what any enterprising hacker would and tore it open to strip and re-solder the connection... only I found super-thick solder points and don't have a strong enough gun to de-solder them.
Ended up just blowing cash on a new brick.
I was rather impressed by how many components they stash away in these things. I just wish the cables themselves were a little more reliable. They're otherwise fine devices.
Their wrapping instructions are terrible. You'll kill either the cable or one of the prongs pretty quickly. To protect the end when it starts coming apart silicone tape is ugly but effective (also works for the USB cables).
A bit of Sugru works as an alternative to silicone tape IME. I’ve got a bunch of frayed cables which are still going strong thanks to a chunk of Sugru round the frayed part.
Hidden gem in this article is a comically bald-faced lie from Steve Jobs:
> "That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple II logic board was. Rod doesn't get a lot of credit for this in the history books but he should. Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and they all rip off Rod Holt's design."
Other hobby computers of the day used inefficient power supplies. The Apple ][ was the first computer ever to use a plastic case. The heat buildup using even my own power supply design (inefficient type) would have been too great. Steve tapped an Atari engineer, Rod Holt, to design a switching power supply that was much more efficient and generated less heat. Rod also keyed us into the fact that the plastic case wouldn't conduct heat well. At this point in time we took pride in being the first computer to use a switching power supply. Steve was proud of the fact that we didn't need a fan and seems to hold to that ideal to this day.
So:
* Holt designed a switching power supply which employed a patented addition to an otherwise well-known topology (it's a flyback power supply).
* Computers nowadays "rip off" the same design that Holt ripped off, they all use flyback PSUs.
* I doubt that the Apple II was really the first computer to use a switching-mode power supply, but linear supplies were pretty common among hobby computers back then. The Commodore 64 had one, for instance.
The downvoted comment about Jobs being an ignorant liar is probably spot-on.
I doubt that the Apple II was really the first computer to use a switching-mode power supply, but linear supplies were pretty common among hobby computers back then. The Commodore 64 had one, for instance.
None that I've heard of. And when Acorn wanted to put a switched PSU into the BBC Micro four years after the Apple II debuted, apparently switched PSUs were still novel enough that the BBC engineers didn't trust them (they thought that there might be health and safety issues!) and insisted on linear supplies on early models.
interesting. i was thinking about that quote before reading the article, and did not realize it was incorrect.
how inportant was/is a switching supply, and was incorporating it really as simple as copying a well-known design?
also, i think that in this case Job's has to characterized as ignorant or a liar.
he almost had no idea how power supplies work and this "invention" gave him the ability to credit someone other than woz for the Apple II success. which is how i read this qoute, as jobs usually didn't publicly praise people without a motive.
or.
he did realize how this work and lied to rewrite the books on what company made this contribution. i think it was a bit of both, but the ignorance allows one to attribute some of the mischarachterizations to lack of info rather than simple disingenuousness.
Fairly important. Linear power supplies are pretty large and put out a lot of heat. It was commonplace back then for most appliances, including computers, to have a linear power supply. A switching-mode PSU was an improvement over the status quo in general.
> and was incorporating it really as simple as copying a well-known design?
> On Bullshit (2005), by Harry G. Frankfurt, is a philosophical essay that presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the contexts of communication. As such, bullshit can be neither true nor false; hence, the bullshitter is someone whose principal aim — when uttering or publishing bullshit — is to impress the listener and the reader with words that communicate an impression that something is being or has been done, words that are neither true nor false, and so obscure the facts of the matter being discussed.[1] In contrast, the liar must know the truth of the matter under discussion, in order to better conceal it from the listener or the reader being deceived with a lie; while the bullshitter’s sole concern is personal advancement and advantage to their own agenda.
When you make statements that you don't know are true, but smart enough know that you profit in some way from people believing them, and you make no effort to find out the truth, you are a bullshitter. Jobs made a career of this sort of behavior.
On the scale of respectability:
1. True statements.
2. Keeping your mouth shut.
3. Speculating.
...
N-1. Making self-serving wishful statements as though they are facts.
This whole tangent is because 'comically bald faced lie' is a comically bald faced worse way of describing the situation with words than how the article itself described it -- 'entirely false' -- despite Adam comment's description of the 'bald faced lie' as being somehow 'hidden' instead of being called out explicitly and discussed in detail.
One thing which bugs me about this article is he conflates "complex" with "good". As an electronic designer I spend a huge amount of effort trying to make things as simple as possible. Complexity may be required to meet certain requirements but in general keeping it simple makes things more reliable and more cost effective.
Yes I wondered whether this complexity is a factor of enterprise design: Each engineer is responsible for a subsystem, ending up with x^n pieces, whereas the counterfeit one took 1 or 2 engineers.
There are two sources of complexity in the charger:
PFC and efficient resonant converter, which is to be expected of high-quality charger.
The whole magsafe handshaking mechanism, which looks like an afterthought to solve reliability problems caused by arcing on the pins, that also got used to block counterfeiters.
This is what I got-- took an eternity to get to me, but it works well enough. I wrap my cables. I had my Macbook Pro for two years, abused it, charger was fine. I sold it with the Macbook when I moved back Stateside after living abroad.
My next charger broke, because my kitten decided it made a great teething chew. Cha-ching. $80. I noticed a bit of wear, so I got the dinky plastic protectors. They seem to be working well. I use it on my lightning cable, too.
It is fairly rigid, but there's some flex. It just seems to make it so there's not such a sharp "curve", if you will, if you wrap the cable, at the end, where it seems to fray the most, and where I noticed the most wear.
My solution is to pop the spring out of a pen, and wrap the spring around the end of the cable. It achieves the same thing: adds support while still being flexible.
The embedded TI MSP430 microcontroller can easily be had for $.15 in quantity 1 compares to the original Mac's 68K, but using 1% of the power of the 68K. From the article:
The 68000 microprocessor from the original Apple Macintosh and the 430 microcontroller in the charger aren't directly comparable as they have very different designs and instruction sets. But for a rough comparison, the 68000 is a 16/32 bit processor running at 7.8MHz, while the MSP430 is a 16 bit processor running at 16MHz. The Dhrystone benchmark measures 1.4 MIPS (million instructions per second) for the 68000 and much higher performance of 4.6 MIPS for the MSP430. The MSP430 is designed for low power consumption, using about 1% of the power of the 68000.
All Apple needs to do to stop their cables from fraying at very high rates is to use a continuous flex cable like these: http://www.igus.com/wpck/15029/productoverview_CF?C=US&L=en I used to work on amusement rides, and we had a problem with cables on bumper cars breaking very often due to movement. After replacing them with these they never failed again.
Mine fail on me every 9 months. I think there is just no way you can avoid that if you just roll/unroll the cable several times per day. Their AppleCare program takes care of for "free", but the downtime is really annoying, that's why I keep one of those fake adapters around to bridge those gaps.
I roll/unroll the cable several times per day and my charger is completely fine. I got it with my Air mid '13 two years ago and use every day. It has probably a lot more to do with the way you roll it (and/or the one Apple thinks you should) rather than an inherent cable weakness.
I'm so sad to see MagSafe was replaced with USB-C in the new MacBook. Hopefully they don't deprecate MagSafe for larger laptops. I won't mind USB-C + MagSafe charging capability though! ;)
I'd gladly exchange Magsafe for generic interchangeable chargers. One charger for a laptop, tablet, smartphone and e-reader, and provided as a matter of course in cafes, libraries, trains, workplaces etc would be superb.
I under no circumstances want my probably-not-very-secure peripheral bus accessed by things provided by a matter of course in cafes, libraries, etc. Magsafe is stupid and that is fine by me.
This is also why I carry my own USB adapters rather than relying on others', and have a USB condom (they call them SyncStop now, I think, but that one is big and weird) in my wallet just in case.
Magsafe actually isn't stupid - there's bidirectional communication with the laptop over the data pin in the middle of the connector, using the 1-Wire protocol. The protocol is probably simple enough to have no security issues, but now I wonder if a malicious connector could carry out an attack (buffer overflow, bad data, etc). Some security engineer might want to investigate this...
Stupid has degrees. I'm a lot more confident in the ability to secure Magsafe than something that has to support such functionally open things as Alternate Mode.
MagSafe connectors saved my MacBook Pros over the years more times than I can count. They are a must-have for anyone around young children or plugs into mains power in public or seat power on planes. The USB-C connector is a large step backwards if it means losing that functionality, IMHO.
Fascinating. The magsafe connector is awesome in preventing something snagging the cable from dragging your laptop along with it.
But, as the article says, reliability is a problem. The thing is definitely not toddler-proof. I have a 2012 Macbook Air, and I'm on, I think, my fourth charger.
Had a 2011 Macbook Pro. Was always very nice to the charger, never abusing or dropping it. But Apple's decision with all their cabling to not incorporate strain relief was frustrating. I went through four chargers in four years.
Why does Apple continue to ignore strain relief on their cabling?
Odd. I have a 2011 MBP as well and over four years of constant use in school (plugging in the charger at the dorm, unplugging and throwing it into my bag, plugging it in in class, removing, etc. in various places) it's held up. I use it now with my newer Macbook (just needed to get the magsafe 2 adapter dongle).
It wouldn't have been so bad if you weren't paying for the high-quality engineering inside the charger itself. You get really nice, clean power out of them, but when you go through a charger every year, $80 is a little painful.
Reliability: it's not only about connectors or components, the second picture in the article clearly shows a cat (probably) had a bite on the cable. ;)
I have a bunch of (non-Apple) chargers and cables that lost it to our feline overlords.
While it's clear that Apple attempts to limit the production of junk peripherals by patenting its connectors, it would be great if licenses were made readily available to companies wishing to make high quality stuff.
Even just putting a magsafe connector on the brick itself would allow the cable to be easily replaced if it frayed.
Does anyone know if Apple laptops contain enough protective circuitry to be used safely with inferior power adapters? It appears that some of that sophistication is actually just moving parts out of the laptop and into the adapter.
An interesting feature of switched-mode power supplies like this is that they'll run on DC input, if that's all you have! DC passes right through the bridge rectifier into the chopper---not sure how happy the PFC circuit would be about that---and the rest of the circuitry works as usual. If the DC supply voltage is high enough, it'll work.
Please forgive the ignorant questions of a software guy that probably have blindingly obvious answers to a EE. Does this mean that theoretically, I could attach a 18V/18.5V [0] DC power source (like a solar panel array running into a DC-DC converter) to the prongs and as long as I can supply about 100W/8.5A my MacBook Pro will boot?
Chargers require a minimum voltage to work. They typically say 85V and might work with lower, but I expect 18V is way too low. I'd also be very nervous about feeding DC into a PFC circuit (which is designed to track the AC waveform) - does anyone know for sure what PFC does if you feed it the wrong frequency? (Someone else asked about 400Hz aircraft power too.)
It probably won't blow anything up, but the active PFC might not be very happy as it tries to track the AC waveform to control the current draw. It might just not work.
You'd be better off getting one of the cheaper clone adapters with passive or no PFC if you want to make a dedicated DC power supply.
Not an ignorant question at all! This is actually a subtle problem in switching regulator design: high duty-cycle operation and efficiency. Basically, if you input a voltage very close to the output voltage, the switch part of a switching regulator must be always or near always closed. And, any inefficiencies such as voltage drops in the power path are visible in the output.
Being Apple, I'm sure it has 100% duty cycle operation. However, it's likely not optimized for hat (uncommon case).
[edit] as the other comment points out, my comments forgot about the PFC circuit. But on switchers without this, near output voltage input is possible.
Fraying on the charger (dc-carrying) cable is definitely an issue, but my biggest gripe about these chargers is the form factor of the AC-carrying part of the power cord. I can't speak to non-US chargers, but the three-prong cord that plugs into the wall has no coiling shape. If the plug itself had a self-clip (like at the end of the charging cable), at least I could keep my cord from unrolling in my bag and expanding to fill the entire free space. I'm usually torn when I'm leaving the house with my macbook: do I bring the long cable and deal with bag disorganization, or do I hope I'm close enough to a plug and the plug orientation doesn't make me regret my lack of regular power cord?
You'd think with all this industrial design effort spent (pretty successfully IMO for the most part), there'd be an improvement in that particular cable.
Looks like the DC part of the adapter is very tightly wound. It's not even visible coming out of the adapter itself. This looks like a good way to fray the cable.
You can tell they're non trivial if you do any kind of HF radio stuff. When you plug one in the higher end of the spectrum fills with one kind of wideband digital looking noise for about a second, and then another noise there after.
That's interesting. What frequency range are you looking at, and how do you examine it? The charger waits one second after being plugged into the laptop before enabling the output voltage, so that would explain some of the behavior you see.
It's normal. Actually the part mentioned that wraps around the power supply is not only a heatsink but also a shield for reducing radiated noise. PSU like this are very noisy and without (a.o.) this shield it may not be possible to get it approbated. The shield has transparent plastic foil beneath it to act as an insulator (barely visible on the first photo, but on the picture with the shield removed it's clearly visible). The usage of yellow tape is perfectly normal.
> The charger uses an advanced design called a resonant controller, which lets the system operate at a very high frequency, up to 500 kilohertz.
Wonder what would happen if the 500 kHz signal would be fed to an antenna? Would that emit a signal, would it not work at all or become dangerous and probably highly illegal?
Here is an example what an antenna for 500 kHz looks like:
Switch mode power supplies are notorious emitters of radio frequency interference. There are regulations they have to pass and passing them is often one of the hardest parts of power supply design.
That's one of the reasons the charger has a bunch of inductors and capacitors on the AC line, to keep interference from exiting the charger through the AC line. The metal shielding around the charger also helps.
Indeed. I throw my rMBP in a bag all the time. It's odd that Beats headphone cables are actually thicker and presumably more durable than the connecting cable on my $3300 laptop's power supply.
Has anyone else ever had the cord of their magsafe charger start sparking or catch on fire (as it burns through the insulation and rubber) right behind the adapter? I've had it happen with I believe three chargers across two different computers.
The ironic thing about the Apple Macbook charger is that despite its complexity and attention to detail, it's not a reliable charger. When I told people I was doing a charger teardown, I rapidly collected a pile of broken chargers from people who had failed chargers. The charger cable is rather flimsy, leading to a class action lawsuit stating that the power adapter dangerously frays, sparks and prematurely fails to work. Apple provides detailed instructions on how to avoid damaging the wire, but a stronger cable would be a better solution. The result is reviews on the Apple website give the charger a dismal 1.5 out of 5 stars.
Yup had one catch one fire, was just thankful that I was around to see it happen and stop it from burning the house down. The charger was around 4 years old but I never wrap the cable so it seems like a major design flaw.
I haven't had wear and tear issues, but I rarely use it (have Thunderbolt monitors home and office, with built-in power) and I keep it in a Quirky PowerCurl when I do use it (usually only when traveling)
>It enables the output when the charger is connected to a Macbook, disables the output when the charger is disconnected
I don't think this is actually true...
I found out by doing something really stupid. The pins on my charger get really dirty, which makes the charger connector get REALLY hot (like burn your finger hot). One day, I was cleaning the pins off with a wire brush, but I [stupidly] forgot to actually UNPLUG THE CHARGER. I knew this because when I applied the brush, (the end of it looks a lot like steel wool), it started sparking against the brush.
I wish Apple used magsafe connectors for both ends on their charger cables. Sucks to throw away a perfectly good charger, just because a tiny length of cable (usually near the brick) is frayed.
I guess there is a similar problem with the lightning connector for iPhones. I had to change my iPhone cable multiple times in the past 4 years. Be it the 30 pin connector or the new lightning connector, its so fragile. Always been an ardent fan of Apple and its products, but disappointed with this strategy of making money through intentionally designed fragile cables that won't last more than a year leading to accessory sales.
I have. I bought a replacement magsafe from one of those little outfits that buys "old macbooks in any condition! ca$$h today!" and refurbishes them. I paid almost full price for it thinking it was OEM, but when I got home and matched it up to my extension cable, it was obviously a cheap knockoff. Worked well enough even though it was unsightly and difficult to use (the extension cable was really hard to slide on and off), but at $85 compared to OEM at $90, why bother?
The Thunderbolt display is handy to avoid carrying chargers around - except if you own a Macbook Air (and even more so on the 13" model).
You see, a Macbook Air charges on one side, but the Thunderbolt port is on the other side. It creates a lot of strain. No such issue with Macbook Pros.
The detail of engineering inside of Apple's products is impressive. A lot of attention paid to things that one almost never sees. Like others though the cable ends on computer and iPhoje chargers do always get frayed. I wish they could make that bit better.
So you mean we do not worry decayed battery or cell memory effect when plug-in charger during the day working although battery still 100%. Is it right ? Why is it possible ?
At the end of the article, I price out most of the charger components . I also estimate reasonable R&D costs. Based on these numbers, it's the profit margin that makes the charger expensive. See also this detailed analysis of Apple's profit margin: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/iphone-cost-what-apple-i...
Despite the visual appeal of their products, Apple normally does a very good job with prioritizing function over form except in this case with the charger wire being so fragile and thin. I know I'm not the most careful and delicate person in the world, but the failure rate here is ridiculous compared to other similar products I own. The end of the cable gets frayed every single time.
Otherwise, Apple makes ridiculously durable products that I use for years on end. It's just weird that their charger's wire almost seems purposefully designed to break in this manner.
This isn't just a minor annoyance and monetary concern where I'm just annoyed at having to buy a new charger every year or so - there's a real safety issue here with this wire being so fragile - it could be both a shock and fire hazard.
Shame on Apple for ignoring this very real problem with their product.
I support around 300 Macs for work. In my extensive experience, the deal here is that people are FAR too rough and careless in winding up those charger cables over and over. Apple HAS implemented strain relief here and done their best to make the points of failure less vulnerable. Here's a tip:
Instead of yanking the cable at a 90-degree angle and winding as tightly as possible, let the cable come out of the charger naturally, perpendicular to the charger, make a small loop, and then wind the rest of the cable gently around the two plastic hooks that are provided. If you do this, the charger will last a LOT longer.
The simple fact is that there is no way to make a wire that gets twisted and yanked and bent at a 90-degree angle, and which will nevertheless last forever. That's just not a thing we can do.
Another tip is: own 2 of these chargers, one for home and one for walking around, so that you don't have to wrap up your only charger over and over, every day.
Way back in my computer repair days, I used to commonly see macbooks with horrendously frayed and/or just generally poor condition chargers. While, other laptops didn't seem to have that issue nearly as often (although breaking the DC jack was a common problem for those folks, but that's a different issue).
You shouldn't have to be tender and gentle with the power cable for your device... it should be durable and stand up to abuse. After all, it's for a laptop which may experience hard yanks as people walk away with it plugged in, the cable being stepped on or crushed by a chair, being thrown into a bag not coiled (or sometimes coiled too tightly), dropped from waist-height (or higher), thrown to a friend, etc.
It's not unreasonable to expect these things to be very durable. Functionality and durability should take precedence over design aesthetics here.
(as an aside, the white color always ended up looking filthy in short while, and was nearly impossible to restore to bright white)
Any cable you have to wrap it the way it wants to go, any forcing of flexible wire will always cause damage. That is the nature of wire until we create an improved technology. This is not just computer cords, it is ALL cable, from power supply for concerts to the home depot cords (even the most expensive). You can manufacture to allow prolonged life, but expect a heavy/hard user who wants to not take care of the cable, and expects it just to just last will be the first to fail. If you believe otherwise, the cable business needs your help in creating the technology.
Great, so you explain how Apple's design is faulty, and how it could be improved. I think you'll find this is easier blustered about than done.
PC chargers, for instance, are universally worse. A lot worse.
This design already does the best job in the industry at handling hard yanks——that's what MagSafe is for. And it does fine with ordinary, expected use and abuse of the cable. And it does great with being thrown into a bag or dropped.
What it doesn't do, because that's impossible, is to magically become able to be yanked on 500 times and coiled as tightly as possible around itself, without ever wearing out. But I've offered a solution to that.
Your implied accusation that "design aesthetics" have taken precedence over functionality and durability is unfounded. The fact is that Apple's charger works a lot better and is a lot more durable than the competition.
> PC chargers, for instance, are universally worse. A lot worse.
This is an unsubstantiated claim not backed by any evidence. In fact, your original post speaks against your very claim - you advocate people be ginger with their chargers or risk breaking them.
> This design already does the best job in the industry at handling hard yanks——that's what MagSafe is for
You mean to say "that's what MagSafe was for". Magsafe is gone now... (although I would generally agree that type of connector is good).
> it does fine with ordinary, expected use and abuse of the cable
Clearly not the case, as evidenced by this thread here.
> And it does great with being thrown into a bag or dropped.
I can't speak to either way except with anecdotal evidence of having to replace far more macbook chargers than any other type.
> What it doesn't do, because that's impossible, is to magically become able to be yanked on 500 times and coiled as tightly as possible around itself, without ever wearing out
Somehow my Thinkpad's charger hasn't worn out, and I'm guilty of every laptop charger sin there is. The same holds true for my previous Dell laptop. These types of chargers are usually made from hard plastic, with a plastic cable. They don't fray the same way macbook rubber-y chargers do. In fact, Dell's chargers are designed specifically to be tightly wound around the charger and come with a nice rubber strap to hold it tight.
> Your implied accusation that "design aesthetics" have taken precedence over functionality and durability is unfounded
Perhaps, but it does seem so given all the anecdotal evidence in this thread. It looks pretty, but wore out far quicker than most should.
> The fact is that Apple's charger works a lot better and is a lot more durable than the competition.
This is another unsubstantiated claim, and/or is supported only by your proposition people treat their chargers with tenderness (which isn't going to happen).
Plain and simple - these things need to be designed to take a lot of abuse. If Apple can do that, great... but it seems they took a giant leap backwards with the new USB-C charger which will cause the infamous "broken DC jack" problem all over again.
> You mean to say "that's what MagSafe was for". Magsafe is gone now... (although I would generally agree that type of connector is good).
It's not gone, it's present in all most selling Mac laptops, my latest rMBP has it, I think they only removed it from new MacBook because it's too lightweight and the magnet need to be super weak in order to get itself ejected once it's pulled without pulling the laptop itself, and usb type c was probably used to eliminate excessive separate chargin port to make this particular laptop lighter and smaller which is its main purpose.
Alupis: I should have clarified that I was speaking from my own personal experience with supporting hundreds of laptops. You're right. I admit that my evidence is anecdotal, but there is a lot of it.
As others have already pointed out, no, MagSafe is not gone.
Dell's chargers, as do many other PC chargers over the last 10 years, routinely break the charging port on the computer if they get yanked on too much, which is of course far more expensive to replace than a new charger.
You're bitching a lot about my evidence being anecdotal because it's only based on hundreds of chargers, and you're right, but your evidence appears to be based on, um, a single Dell charger that you think is awesome. That seems pretty weak.
Lastly, I do agree with you about the new USB-C charger for the MacBook. I think it's stupid and a step backwards and I wish they had retained MagSafe on that model.
> from my own personal experience with supporting hundreds of laptops
I'm curious to how much hardware support goes into this, since most Apple machines are designed to not be support friendly (eg. non-replaceable and/or difficult to replace normal wear-n-tear components).
> routinely break the charging port on the computer if they get yanked on too much
Yes, most laptops have this issue, although it's not nearly as common with modern laptops as it used to be. However, I contest that's a design fault in the laptop, not the charger.
> which is of course far more expensive to replace than a new charger
Not always true.[1][2] DC jacks can often be bought for less than $5 online, and then it's just labor to solder it into place. A search online turns out quite a few services for $75 inclusive of the DC jack cost (your local repair shop probably does it even cheaper now, since no shipping involved, etc). Apple's cheapest adapter with magsafe cable on it is $79. A Thinkpad charger will only run you $59.99.[3]
> You're bitching a lot about my evidence being anecdotal because it's only based on hundreds of chargers, and you're right, but your evidence appears to be based on, um, a single Dell charger that you think is awesome. That seems pretty weak.
It's difficult to comment on this without resorting to some sort of "fanboy" argument.
> I think it's stupid and a step backwards and I wish they had retained MagSafe on that model.
I think we both agree on this. Worse off, if that single port breaks, you now cannot charge your laptop, nor use any peripherals (and a peripheral is more likely to break that USB port than the charger in my experience - such as a USB thumb drive hanging out and someone smacks it on accident). Even worse off, that port isn't easily repairable, so it's back to apple (who will replace the entire motherboard as their "fix", or if it's out of warranty, it's time to buy a new laptop).
That USB-C port looks very sturdy. See, the connector case is milled into the macbook body. And the connector itself is a separate module that can be replaced with just a right screwdriver.
The issue isn't the entire port breaking, it's the relatively fragile plastic center part inside the port that breaks most often. Breaking that renders the port unusable.
quite a few services for $75 inclusive of the DC jack
...
Apple's cheapest adapter with magsafe cable on it is $79.
That's an oranges-to-apples comparison. :)
It's not fair to compare 3rd party repair services to a new Apple product. There are also 3rd party repair services for Apple chargers. For example, I know these guys will repair them: http://madmacsoforegon.com/Mad_Macs_of_Oregon/Welcome.html
>>This design already does the best job in the industry at handling hard yanks——that's what MagSafe is for.
Absolutely not.
I use a MacBook Pro, with the MagSafe feature hard, right along with a Lenovo higher end laptop. They both travel, they both get the same treatment.
I have gone through several Apple chargers. I have had exactly ONE Lenovo charger. The same was true for my older T60P and it's charger. In fact, that one is still like new, despite 10 years of use.
I like the MagSafe, and it has prevented a few strong yanks, or trips over the cord from damaging the Mac, but it's also prone to failure in the wire near the MagSafe connector, just as it's prone to failure in the wire near the charger assembly.
Interestingly, the Lenovo chargers ship with a nice Velcro wire retainer that is intended to be used right after WRAPPING THE WIRE FIRMLY around the charger. And the Lenovo devices have both easily gone a couple thousand use cycles, the older one maybe a couple more.
There really isn't a single metric, other than size, that favors the Apple charger in my use case.
I'm typing this on an Thinkpad X60 which is plugged into a power supply of similar vintage to the machine judging by the IBM branding &c. The laptop was manufactured in December 2006 and is ex-corporate (i.e. not treated with kid gloves) and judging by the nicks in the cable, the PSU has had a similar life.
So might Apple PSUs for all I know, my ancient white iBook G4 psu is still serviceable although the iBook is in its box because the hard drive sounds like a food mixer and I can't be bothered to go through the procedure needed to remove or replace the drive...
> I can't be bothered to go through the procedure needed to remove or replace the drive...
It's rather unfortunate that most Apple computers (with non-soldered hdd's) still require this level of complexity to change out a routine maintenance component that's expected to fail. (or with some models, the hard drive cannot be replaced at all).
That's not the same as implementing good strain relief. I used to work for a company that made medical devices. One of our products started with a cable with strain relief, and it kept breaking (a wearable monitor). We 'implemented better strain relief', and it kept breaking. It was revision D where we got it right and the cables stopped breaking. And if cables can't survive a 90-degree bend, then stop them from being able to be bent that far in the first place (we had to).
And to be fair, other companies don't have this problem, because they engineer their chargers for how people will use them - basically what you're describing is another form of "you're holding it wrong".
> That's ludicrous. Other companies don't have this problem?
Anecdotally, neither the 7-or-8-year-old charger for my Toughbook nor the four-ish-year-old charger for the treats-all-her-cabling-like-it's-meant-to-be-load-bearing roommate's Toshiba Satellite have failed.
Apple definitely seems to be an outlier in this arena and is well known for their not-infrequent decision to sacrifice function, user comfort, and/or safety for aesthetic appeal.
I've owned Macbooks consistently for about 6 years now, I always use that little loop technique when winding the cord. I've never had a charger fray or fail on me.
As a counter anecdote, I am _very_ careful with my charger (and cords in general). The only chargers I've ever had fail are from Apple. I finally got tired of it and bought a counterfeit charger that wasn't as "clever" (i.e. didn't have a thin gauge coaxial cord with a weak rubber insulation), which has lasted far longer.
This seems to be very much a "your mileage may vary" thing. I always used that same technique and went through 4 chargers before I finally got sick of the darn things. Then there are a lot of people like you who think that people like me must have hammers or wire dikes for hands.
I think a charger should be much more robust than this. Other laptop manufacturers have already figured out how to avoid such a simple thing. I can only speak from my own experience, and after one MB Pro and two iPhone chargers with frayed wires, I'll take my ugly Sony Vaio charger over a 'brilliantly' designed Apple one any day of the week.
If using a product in the most obvious and intuitive way causes it to fail, it's the product's fault, not the user's. It should be redesigned so the obvious use is the correct one. Plenty of laptop power supplies have cables designed to wrap around the brick for storage and don't have failure rates like this.
Apple has not implemented proper strain relief, with a perforated sleeve (presumably for aesthetic reasons), and they still use a thin, over-flexible wire. Their own website shows the cable wrapped tightly--on a page about avoiding cable damage, no less. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201600)
Blaming the user for, essentially, not being an engineer is common in the tech industry, and it really doesn't help anything, especially from a company that claims to be (and generally is!) as user-friendly as Apple.
And that is why they have an internal kbase article talking about that cable fraying, and have safety kbases on that as well, or did 5 years ago when I worked there.
Apple favors form over function and tries to make their cables in interfaces as small as possible. The result is that there's no room left in their designs for adequate strain relief. They end up using the smallest cables they can get away with and have a bushing around the cable as it enters it's housing to protect against lateral force and that's about it. There's rarely any internal strain relief mechanism.
The odd thing is that the cable going to the laptop is probably too thin/not stress-relived enough (I've "only" had one fail but it seems a marginal design). However, at the same time, the alternate plug with the extension length of cord attached practically looks and weighs like something I'd attach to a mainframe. I don't travel with it for that reason. It's always seemed to me as if the two different components were designed by engineers who didn't even talk to each other--and it's been that way for years.
There may be a UL thing going on at the 120/240V side of the charger but it still seems ridiculously overengineered.
I can't agree with that. Someone at Apple fetishizes thin cables to a dangerous degree.
These power supplies aren't as obviously defective by design as an iPhone cable, but after looking at the amount of design detail and engineering directed at the power supply and MagSafe, the sacrifices made seem pretty insane.
I couldn't disagree more. Chargers should be durable enough to handle typical usage.
People aren't "FAR too rough and careless." People behave as people behave.
A high end manufacturer like Apple should be design and manufacture their devices to stand up to the rigors that people typically put them through.
Why doesn't Apple? Because their user base (or at least the majority of their user base who winds chargers too tightly, which I apparently fall into) would rather buy a new charger every year or so than switch computers.
The problem is that apple expects typical consumers to treat the cable with such care.
Why should I have to buy 2 chargers (at $99 a pop, no less) when one charger for pretty much every other laptop company out there will work for years with "rough and careless" users, and only cost $20 to replace?
It works wonders. I'm not sure this would work for Mac chargers because you couldn't get the sleeve over the ends, but it also works iPhone charger cables.
I've used both shrink tubing and Sugru on iPhone cables. On the MacBook charger, just Sugru. Both will fail eventually. I find that typical shrink wrap is too stiff and creates stress riser. After a couple of years, my cables are more patch than original.
I'm planning on doing this with shrink wrap. My plan will be to not completely shrink the cable-side of the shrink wrap to leave some play so I don't create a stiff point.
I have tried using Sugru to fix my Mac charger. It only worked as a temporary fix for me. I think the problem is that Sugru is not elastic enough and tends to crack when it bends.
You can also ignore the foldable hooks on the charger entirely, and wind both the low voltage cable and the power cord (if you have it attached) together in a comfortably-sized coil. This way the low voltage side doesn't have to take any sharp turns (and the other end with the power cord seems to have a stronger strain relief, which should be able to handle a light bend).
Yep. And Apple did. That's why there is more robust strain relief than it used to have, and that's why there is MagSafe, which is vastly superior to the PC side when dealing with yanks and ordinary abuse.
> The simple fact is that there is no way to make a wire that gets twisted and yanked and bent at a 90-degree angle, and which will nevertheless last forever.
If you can, count how many strands are inside that wire. If it's fewer than 90 strands you know why this wire fails.
I bet it's probably only 19 which is the minimum for a moving wire not to break.
> That's just not a thing we can do.
Yes it is. Assembly robots that move all day can have even 5,000 strands in the wires in a careful helical winding pattern that prevents the strands from being under tension - those will not break even after constant movement and folding.
I've had two chargers fail, now I treat them very gently and wind them like you suggest. I wish the charger design was more robust. Most chargers for other laptops are uglier but much more robust.
Dell makes chargers that are very small (or at least thin) but are very though.
The Apple charger is small but quite bulky (especially with a UK plug) I got both an MBP 15 and a Dell XPS 15 and the Dell charger fits better in every bag i have.
It's has the overall footprint of a ~5-5.5" phone/phablet and is about half as thick as the Apple charger.
http://www.amazon.com/Original-Dell-Replacement-Precision-Co...
I actually find the Apple charger a bit annoying, it doesn't fit flat in any of the smaller / side pockets of my briefcases or messenger bags, and overall the Dell charger isn't "ugly" if you would gave it the apple "storm trooper white" finish and an apple logo it would not look out of place in Apple's catalog.
The other thing I kinda hate about Apple is the fact that it won't take a standard mickey mouse cable, if you forget the cable / socket plug you are pretty much screwed if you are at a non-startup company :<
If only one brand seems to suffer from the problem, it's likely a product issue, not a user one. This is a cable, not a UI - care procedures and durability should be roughly equivalent.
Look, engineer the thing to stand up to normal use. Way more reasonable than trying to get everyone the world over to baby their chargers.
I go through about one of these chargers a year. I leave one at my desk at home, so I don't have to move it, and I take the other one with me on the road. The one I travel with gets plugged and unplugged probably 5 times a day... and it never lasts more than 6-8 months. Shitty design.
Nope. This has happened to just about every Apple cable I've ever owned. MacBook Pro power adapters. MacBook Retina power adapters. iPod cables. Lightning cables. The insulation gets frayed. Sometimes there have been sparks. This has never happened to any USB cable I've owned.
It's almost as if they make a profit off of selling licensed cables with their proprietary technology or something.
How about producing a charger with more robust wiring? The power brick for my Thinkpad X200 is now more than 6 years old. It has been treated very roughly, but has thicker wires, robust strain relief, and has never failed. In the same amount of time, I've gone through three Apple chargers. It's a little silly.
Men should not serve machines. Machines should serve men.
If the machine cannot take the abuse that people typically subject it to, then the design of the machine needs to be revised. Trying to modify human behaviour to suit the unnecessary mechanical limitations of machines is insane.
> Instead of yanking the cable at a 90-degree angle and winding as tightly as possible, let the cable come out of the charger naturally, perpendicular to the charger ..
> own 2 of these chargers
Good tips ! I do exactly this and have a charger that has lasted 5 years. Cable looks good still (touch wood !)
You know what I think? It’s not our carelessness but the plastic they use for the cables: I own 2 chargers for my MacBook. I do the loop for the charger I carry around. The one I leave home on the floor never got wound up. It looks like this after about two years: https://twitter.com/Udo/status/667295383299579905
Sorry, but I am really bad at following written instruction like origami... without visual instructions.. Is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWRcszmX_p0 what you tried to demonstrate?
An alternative datapoint - I have a charger that's not yet frayed, but it is starting to get intermittent - sometimes I need to wriggle the wires where they go into the mag safe connector.
That's the original charger for my 2006 black MacBook. It was in daily use by me for work until I got my mid 2010 MacBook Pro, and was then used as a "home machine" by someone else up until early this year.
The charger from the 2010 Macbook Pro is still working fine (but I'll point out I left that charger at work almost all the time, and "borrowed" the 2006 one when I needed to top up at home).
I suspect a difference is that I never "wrap the cable round the hooks", I just loop the cable up loosely and drop it all in my bag. I do the same with my iPod/iPhone cabes, and I've only ever had one of those fray (and I suspect that was one that got borrowed a lot). I wonder if this is a "you're holding it wrong" design oversight, where they've had lots of people using and testing them, but all in very similar ways which are not the only way they're used outside Apple?
Yep, I think this is it. I also have 5 years old MBP with the original charger, and it's still fine. I'm not a very careful person, and in general never wrap cables in loops, just cram them in the bag. Sometimes my cables get impressively tangled, but I think I'm still actually saving time by skipping the meticulous wrapping every time I take off (at least twice per day).
So maybe if you stop taking "good care" of your charger, and stop wrapping it in a tight loop, it will actually last longer.
That said, a lot of people seem think you're supposed to wrap the cables. After all, the MBP charger has built-in hooks for exactly that purpose. The charger is badly designed if wrapping the cable around the provided hooks causes it fray very quickly.
If they did usability testing, then the first thing they probably did was train the sample users. It's possible that fixed the test so that they never see the use case we're describing.
Probably not even "fixed the test", it might be something as innocuous as "Steve always walked around with the cables just looped up, not wrapped around the hooks", so that's what everybody else in the "sample users" group did too.
I'm on the third charger for my 2011 Macbook Pro. One of the broken ones has a slightly frayed cord which I repaired with tape, and I don't think it's the wire that broke it (though I admit I can't be sure). The other one has a completely undamaged wire, and yet also stopped working.
I really think it's the internals that are too fragile.
I wonder why they didn't go for a design, where doing the natural winding would not cause a 90 degree bend. (Eg they could let the cable come out of the charger at a different angle.)
My tip for trouble-free cable management: Never wind the cable. Always fold it. Always. Whether its a rope, a cable, whatever: every time you wind it, you twist the fibers.
Instead, grab both ends, hold them together, untangle and pull the two sides together .. find the new ends, combine them, fold, over and over .. until you get a nice tidy package.
This treats the cable much nicer - its built for expanding in the combined loops, but when you wind .. and wind .. and wind .. you twist the fibers. Fold, don't twist!
This wouldn't be an issue if Apple's chargers weren't so proprietary to the point where third-party developers can't even manufacture their own devices.
I wonder if they'll allow non-Apple USB-C chargers. I think they'd have to.
I've always used the loop method with chargers and adapters, because of my decades as a musician dealing with various kinds of cables. When cables fail, it's invariably at one of the two ends where the cable gets bent and twisted. In fact, a bad cable can almost always be repaired by cutting off a couple inches from each end and re-attaching the plugs. Strain reliefs of various types help prolong the life of a cable, but not really by very much.
That's not my experience. I don't yank my power cable and after replacing 2 of them I now wrap up the cable leaving a 4 inch loop of cable coming out of the adapter. So there's no 90 degree twist where the wire comes out of the adapter.
Unfortunately there's still often a 90 degree turn where it connects to my MBP. I've found no reliable way to prevent that.
It's not just an issue with Macbook chargers; my wife's iPhone and iPhad chargers are in far worse condition. They keep falling apart in new and creative ways that my micro-USB chargers don't.
I had an Apple charger fray and light my office on fire. Not much damage beyond burned carpet, but that was only because I was in the room and caught the fire immediately. After calling the company and escalating the issue up to a vice-president, they did nothing but replace the charger. It seriously disturbed me how unconcerned they were of a potentially deadly safety problem. It turned me off of Apple as a company and potential employer. Never wanted to work there after that.
You're smart not to work there. Lousy place for someone who wants a decent wage and a 40-hour week.
As for their ignoring your problem... I'm afraid I might do it too. This comes from a formerly idealistic person. If they admit to a problem, they open themselves up to lawsuits. I have been sued before and I learned that telling the truth was not in my favor. Feel a little bad to admit this, but there you are.
I had a similar problem and couldn't even get them to replace the damned thing. They said it was 'normal wear and tear' or something. It was absolutely infuriating that they called a clear fire hazard normal. So then I got an off-brand charger and never looked back.
>Otherwise, Apple makes ridiculously durable products
No they dont. Keyboards are another example of design for fail, not to mention they are unfixable (40? rivets, glued together?).
The way they design laptop pcbs encourages common failures, like fragile thin critical connections (charging/one wire circuit) near the open edge of the case resulting in very common water damage destroying ONE trace/via and killing whole laptop. apple will charge you $750 for new logic board at this point.
Apple thermal design was abysmal until very recently, situation got better only thanks to Intel delivering cooler parts, not by Apple improving own products. Core2 macbook with Nvidia? 99% cooked to death. Vent holes are sacrilege, just like first Mac 128K had no fan.
I have seven year-old chargers which work fine. Neither you nor I are unicorns: there are plenty of others for whom it breaks constantly or never breaks. I'd love to know what it is we do differently.
Wrap it and unwrap it multiple times per day. Simply having two and keeping one at the office and one at home will 4X the lifespan of your charger, since you aren't wrapping it daily.
I'm considering making a mold so the Sugru looks nice when done and selling robustified chargers on Shopify. I already have a shipping business (MonthlyBoxer.com) so that part is easy. Thinking perhaps about offering a discount for returning the broken charger to us for refurbishing, so we can offer both new and refurb chargers.
Anecdotally the Sugru doubles the life of the charger cables (and makes your charger much more identifiable). I'd need to charge $99 to make it work, but it's fairly cheap to throw together a site and reply to the myriad forum posts saying "where can I buy a better Macbook charger" with a link to gauge interest.
I've done the same for my chargers as well (as in using Sugru). I love your idea of making a mold for better finish as well as selling the "robustified" chargers. I think there will be a market for this, but best of all, I think you can pull this off on demand too (in a way?). I also think the $99 charge is fair.
A quick back of the envelope calculation is as follows:
$80 for 85 watt charger on amazon [0] + $3 * 2 for Sugru on both ends of the cable [1] + $5.95 for USPS priority 3 day shipping [2] ~= $92
With this supply chain (if it can be called that), you can still estimate shipping the charger to the end consumer within 6 days (2 days with Prime shipping with Amazon + 3 days for USPS). I did not factor in the Prime membership and the mold in the costs though, but it can be factored in fairly easily. Also, I chose to use USPS shipping costs, naturally your mileage will vary because your company/business probably has higher costs (cool service by the way, and congrats :))
The secret to any cord's lifespan is: don't pull on the wire.
When people wrap the thin cord of the Mac brick, they either pull it nice and tight on the first wrap, or leave it loose on the first wrap. That's the difference right there.
Same thing with USB cables: to keep them healthy, grasp the hard plastic of the plug to insert/extract it.
I don't use the little wrap tabs on my Mac power brick at all anymore. I find I need the extender cord to reach a plug half the time anyway, so I just wrap both cords in a loose ~4" loop and use a little velcro strap to keep it together. My original power brick on a late 2008 Macbook Pro is still going strong.
Exactly. Right until the comments in this thread I've been wondering why so many people complained about Macbook's and iPhone/iPods chargers cables, now I understand. When I got my first Macbook, I realised rolling it nice and tight put a huge strain on the cable, and I got into the habit of leaving it lightly loose on that first one. And that was it, and since then I had forgotten until now. Also, I rarely (if ever) unroll more than 25% of the cable, I just use longer or shorter chords plugged to the charger if I need longer span.
You probably haven't tried poor imitation Apple USB cables. My brother bought a (probably especially poor) lot of 3 on Aliexpress and went through all 3 in a week! Maybe they did not use solder at all?
Every Apple USB I've had (back when I used iPods) had the casing crumble, which I haven't had happen with any other cable. I don't understand what they've done to make them so fragile.
While it does suck that all of Apple's chargers fray so easily, however I don't see it as a reason to be cynical about their products. In this case, Apple seems to be prioritizing environmental friendliness over function here. The cables are so weak because they have specifically removed PVC from their charging cables.
> The greatest environmental challenge facing the computer industry today is the presence of arsenic, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), mercury, phthalates, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in products. Apple engineers have worked hard to eliminate BFRs and PVC from MacBook Pro circuit boards, internal and external cables, connectors, insulators, adhesives, and more.
That cable has an external insulation, which is the weird rubbery stuff that frays. The internal wires are also insulated. What are they insulated with?
By mixing different types of insulation Apple have just made it harder for people to reclaim and recycle the PVC. Recycling the PVC is possible because people scavenge the copper wire.
Honestly, I've never had the frayed problem with my macbook chargers, even with 2 years of use. However, I have had to buy 2 chargers since my original one because they will stop working after a couple of years. That's quite frustrating.
I’ve never even had that. Sold a heavily used 2008 MacBook with its original charger last month with no signs of fraying or problems. I’m yet to have a charger die on me in any way.
I've seen that from some models made in ~'08-'09, the cables do not fray.
I have 2013 rmbp 13" I have handled my charger with great care avoiding as much twisting ant touching as possible, and after around 20 months, cable isolation just tore up by touching it.. It seems that cable isolation is made of such plastic, that it completely degrades after some time..
Haven't had the issue with computer cables, but had the exact issue with iphone cables. The plastic apple uses for their cables is just weird, with friction or stress (just the stress of looping it around) it seems to gain a slightly rubberised texture, bulk up and ultimately come apart over time. I do have hints on that on a magsafe cable-end, close to the magsafe where the little plastic clip usually sits there's a lot of friction and the cable has gone dark-gray, whereas on the rest of the cable the clip can just slide along.
Compared to any other cable in the market Apple's cables feel, look and handle way different. When charger cable is new it feels rather hard and inflexible. But later especially in areas where you touch cable the most, it starts changing colour and starts feeling like old rubber eraser and after some more time cable starts falling apart, just like old dry rubber eraser would do..
Apple want's matt white cables, when usually they are glossy black. I have some super sturdy audio cables (very flexible, resistant to twisting, friction and sharp angles, etc.) which are matt black, wonder how hard it is to make such cable white?
Same here. Never had a frayed end, but have had the magnetic connector get really dirty, which causes it to either get REALLY hot when charging, or just stop charging completely.
One time I just bought a replacement connector/cable, disassembled the power supply, and soldered the new cable in place. That worked for a while.
The second time I just bought a new charger. (Well: two new chargers, actually. The first, which was listed on amazon as made by apple, never worked [I believe it was counterfeit, since some very small details differ from the official charger], so I bought a new one at best buy).
This feature already exists on the USB-C MacBook charger. I'm sure it'll be years before the whole line is updated, but I don't see they wouldn't. USB-C can carry up to 100 watts -- the biggest MacBook Pro MagSafe adapter is only 85 watts.
I bought one of these about a year ago because I got sick of paying $80 for new Macbook chargers, and it has worked really well so far: http://pythoncords.com/
The idea is to reinforce the place that usually breaks. I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy customer.
Interesting idea but really, you can do this without buying anything extra. Just make sure the cord is perpendicular to the charger and then loop it down after about an inch or two before wrapping it. I've been doing this for awhile without fail.
I'm one of those annoying people that has never had MacBook charger perish or fray, until very recently I still had a 2011 MBP and its original charger was fine. But yes I've seen people with dangerously broken chargers before, I have noticed they're often people with cracked phone screens - I wonder if they're perhaps people that are either more physically active with their hardware or perhaps more careless with looking after it.
I have a cat. None of my other charging cables are vulnerable except my macbook pro one. I've already lost two! Even if they made it easier to replace just the cable that goes from the adapter to the macbook it would be a big win for me.
My cat destroyed mine just last night. :( He has, admittedly, destroyed some headphone cables already, but $15 + some soldering is nothing compared to $80 for my Macbook charger.
Just a vent and kind of warning: I've got cat for 1.5 year, and this confirms my impression that they are horrible animals to be pets. Clawing everything, chewing on expansive stuff, peeing, vomiting, defecating on bed, sofa, chairs. If you're considering having cat, please think twice.
I think you may be a bad cat _owner_ from the sound of it. All those behaviours are signs of an unhappy animal, partiularly urinating and defecating on furniture. Do you perhaps not devote enough time to interacting with your pet? Based on the age of the cat, you are probably through the 'aww, cute' kitten stage, and now have an adult cat, and discovering that, like any relationship, you need to invest in it to make it work.
I've had cats for the past forty years, and they make awesome pets, in my opinion.
I might be, or he's total a-hole. But it's more complicated than this. He's 8, spent one year in shelter since everytime someone entered room he was hiding, so no one took him. He "exercises" daily, got full vet checkup, bloodwork has better than I do (kidney problems might lead to urinating all over the place), I've bought Feliway electric dispenser, checked 6 kinds of kitty litter and testing 7th, he was nutred in shelter. What I meant, this is very variable species when it comes to behavioral "diversity", and people are simply not counting it in when thinking about having cat. Especially that whole internet is (for lack of better word) saturated with cute cat pictures. I know it's just animal, and this particular specimen, very particular, still I had to throw away 2 beds, sofa, chair, mattress, 5 pairs of shoes, some clothes and pillows.
> He's 8, spent one year in shelter since everytime someone entered room he was hiding, so no one took him.
Yeah. As you're obviously aware, this cat will require extensive and persistent training. Older animals that are surrendered to a shelter are not-infrequently difficult to train or deal with.
People who are -for whatever reason- unable to properly train their animal will often surrender their poorly-socialized and poorly-trained creature to a shelter, where it becomes someone else's problem. It kinda sounds like you ended up with one of those kitties.
Anyway. Do you have a cat tree or similar carpeted furniture that is -explicitly- for the cat to claw, chew, and otherwise demolish? If you don't, you definitely should get one or more such items. They're kinda pricey, but:
1) Cats with claws are going to scratch things. It's what they do, it's impossible to stop, and it pleases them to scratch things.
2) Cat trees/furniture are almost always less expensive than nice human furniture. :)
For our cats, occasionally spreading catnip on new cat furniture and encouraging them when they scratched it rather than the human furniture was quite enough to make them stop scratching couches and the like. (You might go so far as to scratch the cat furniture with your hands in view of your cat while making whatever noises of approval you make when the cat does something good.)
Once a cat gets it into its head that that cat furniture is its furniture, you don't need to go to great lengths to convince the cat to scratch on the new furniture when it inevitably becomes time to replace the worn-out stuff.
Cat vomit is an unavoidable part of cat ownership. If the cat vomit doesn't nearly always contain a hairball, it's entirely possible that the cat's food doesn't agree with its digestive system. As our cats aged, food that was once perfectly acceptable started to disagree with them, and we went through a multi-month search to find foods that agreed with them.
Sadly, I have no advice for the out-of-litterbox shitting and pissing. I've never had to box train an old cat. :( If a cat is unhappy or angry, it may choose to fail to use its litterbox. So, the problem could be more than just the wrong type of litter. But -really- I have no freaking clue. :(
Best of luck with your cat. I do hope that you can figure out what he needs to be happy, comfortable, and keep all his shit contained in his shitbox. :)
Thanks for concern, appreciated. He has scratching post (well two) and furiously scratching them. But chair is chair, you know, forbidden fruit. Vomit is not that often or shitting, pissing is where I've got problem to solve. I've consult animal behaviorist which is also vet in clinic we're going, and she said that if cat gets neutered after adolescence it might become habit to mark territory either way. Plus he might got into concept that since in shelter everything is "toilet" then why not at my place. Well, we'll see, so far Mattias is winning pissing contest :)
It's an animal, you should be able to outsmart and train it.
And if the cat was treated poorly and dumped at a shelter, it's the victim.
It's extremely reasonable to conclude that the cat's owner(s) are the problem. It just happened to be caused by a previous owner in this case, which was key missing context.
Probably that parasite that cats transmit: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/01/220113-sneak...
You should check cat fancier forums posts about cats destroying household. It's like people in abusive relationships rationalazing "I was beaten, but it's my fault, I shouldn't talk so loud" or sth like this.
I get where you're coming from. I grew up with cats, so the behavior seems somewhat "normal" to me. They can definitely be difficult pets at times -- they don't love you like dogs, so it's harder to train them. They also have a very poor understanding of causality.
However, you totally can train them. It's certainly easier when they are younger, and unfortunately you can't stop them from doing something in the future if you don't catch them doing it (preferably early on in the behavior.)
It is definitely worth seriously considering the pros/cons of owning a pet before you get one. I have two cats, and I am stuck with them for the next ~15-20 years.
They are quite easy to repair. The outside "shield" is actually one of the wires, so very easy to match the ends as the wires have a completely different make up. I have repaired mine in a few places (no cable can take on a bunny). The main problem is the rubber outside appears to be falling apart, much like the biodegradable plastic bags. No real strain on the areas, it simply split and started peeling away.
Yeah, I already lost three chargers because of my cats. I ended up wrapping the cord with one of those "Cable Organizer" things (I don't know their real name), which also helps with strain relief.
If Apple were to make a charger with steel-braided armor cable to prevent animals from chewing it, there would be a 250 reply thread on HN about how obnoxiously heavy and inflexible Apple chargers are. And some guy's cat story about how it destroyed the charger anyway.
A) I haven't blamed apple of sworn off of apple products.
B) I have several dell charging cables and they're just slightly more substantial and don't feel bulky at all. In fact if anything the cord from the charger to the wall is slight overkill.
C) There is a solution well inbetween that steelseries uses for their mice:
I'm not sure exactly what it's made from, but cat has not even gotten close to damaging it yet. Not saying it needs to be on every cable, but for a $75 cable it would be nice.
Yeah. I do wind mine, but I leave a length of loose cable first to avoid applying tension where the cable enters the brick. I believe the fraying happens when people pull laterally on the strain relief. (It's still Apple's fault, of course.)
It's not just the charger wire. I have a clear example of Apple prioritizing form over function in the charger itself:
In 2011, my wife and I bought new laptops (a MacBook Pro and a ThinkPad) around the same time - based on the same Intel chipset and with similar CPUs (might have been one speed tier apart). The setup was power-hungry, so my ThinkPad came with a proverbial charging brick - big and bulky, but it kept the laptop fed no matter what. Her MacBook came with a standard Mac charger (much smaller and lighter). But if she used her laptop when plugged in, it didn't charge much (if at all). And if she did something particularly demanding, the battery could even drain (fortunately, she didn't do that too frequently).
This seemed odd and I remember coming across an explanation online (while researching something else): It was just physics. My ThinkPad charger was something like twice as powerful as her MacBook charger, but they were both feeding roughly similar internals. Given that Lenovo concluded my ThinkPad needed the more powerful charger, it's not at all surprising her weaker MacBook charger couldn't keep up with her laptop.
On any list of functional requirements for a charger, I'd say "not letting the battery drain while plugged in" has to be pretty high on the list, so...
The charger wire in my Apple charger shorted out a few months ago, in the process melting part of the plastic housing which dripped on to my bed spread. If I hadn't been sitting nearby and noticed, it could have easily started a fire.
This is the third Apple charger brick I have owned that has failed. It's always the charger wire that frays and fails. The cost does add up -- 3*$60 + new bed spread.
The strain relief would be more effective if it was tapered instead of ending abruptly. A stiffer sleeve will reduce the bending moments on the conductor, and a higher gauge for the conductor will make it last longer.
In fairness, Apple's post-sale service is exemplary IME. I've had two power supplies and a battery replaced under warranty. In all cases it was a straight swap at an Apple store, no questions asked.
I own 2 macbooks, iPhone 4S, iPad 3 and I had iPod Video (battery dead, but should work otherwise). Every iDevice had broken cable after about 1 year. One macbook have broken cable. Other macbook have broken cable, but it still work, not sure, how long. I started to apply pen springs to the cables, it seems to help a little bit.
I'm sure that it's intentional design, so Apple can sell more of their ridiculously priced accessories. Integrated chips in their accessories, making them harder to replicate, seems to approve that hypothesis.
That looks to me as smart way to earn some aftersale money. Notice that it's not MacBook that's breaking so it's not sending wrong message that they break often. Charger is still nothing compared to price of whole set. Third party chargers I'd assume are detected by ton of electronics inside MagSafe plug and motherboard and charge slower or not at all. Bonus points: for cable breaking you can always shift blame to customer "bad handling".
Third party chargers are aggressively pursued with the MagSafe patent. One company made external Mac batteries by buying up Apple MagSafe chargers and chopping off the cable and STILL got destroyed by Apple's lawyers for "violating" the patent.
My problems are not with the wires fraying. I mean, they do, but that's easily fixed with some insulating tape.
My problem is that after a while, they just stop working for no discernible reason. One of mine gave a big spark when it stopped working. The other just stopped charging.
> Shame on Apple for ignoring this very real problem with their product.
The cynic says they like it this way. By the time the charger goes bad the battery is already degraded and fixing both of them is so expensive that you might as well just buy a new device.
I've hear they fray easily because their cables are made of bio degradable plastic. However, I doubt it's impact is positive if it causes for chargers to be thrown out after only a couple of years.
> Otherwise, Apple makes ridiculously durable products
Except for the first USB cables for iPhone5, those things only last a few months. First time I have had to buy three cables for charging one device within a year.
Did you know those are covered under your iPhone warranty? As long as you have a warranty (including AppleCare, so up to 2 years), they will replace the USB cable and headphones for free.
Also, Jobs was a blatant liar :-). The SMPS in any modern computer is based on a standard topology that Rod Holt -- though a brilliant engineer in his own right -- didn't invent. I don't remember the specific details, but it's based on a flyback design that was certainly well-known at the time.