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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

#261
post #259

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…

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 t…

I think the charger was defective. Possibly frayed wiring in the cable which lead to excessive voltage drop.

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

#262
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…

Strain relief is not a discrete binary variable, but a continuous one.

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

#263
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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. :)

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

#264
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, 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 !)

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

#265
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…

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.

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

#266
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sta…

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 cabl…

[deleted]

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

#267
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…

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.

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