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Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

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Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#191
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use the loop technique. I've had two cords self-destroy. I'd need some persuading that the rubbery sleeving was chosen for purely engineering reasons, and not mostly "it feels nice".

The sleeving was chosen because the springy quality makes it easier to untangle.

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#192
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have a charger I only use at home and it's hopelessly frayed. The users are not the problem here.

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?

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#193
post #180
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

> 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". Magsaf…

> 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.

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#194
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.

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#195
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.

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#196
post #122

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 ridiculous…

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…

Yes, so that's why we invented plugs. That's a thing we can do.

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#197
post #122

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 ridiculous…

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…

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).

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#198
post #122

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 ridiculous…

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…

> Instead of yanking the cable at a 90-degree angle and winding as tightly as possible

But Apple's design just suggests you do exactly that :/

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#199
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>pet/child destroys electronic device >somehow manufacturer's fault 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:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviewimages/steelseries-kinzu...

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.

Re: Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

#200
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? [1] http://www.apple.com/macbook/

That sucks. May I ask why you got the MacBook? The air always liked like a better deal to me.

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.
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