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Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

chargerlab.com

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Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#81

Post by sugarpimpdorsey »

geerlingguy wrote: post #76

Apple has a history of some quality and extremely compact power supplies. I have to wonder if they have a team with an EE paired with an origami artist, with how creative some of the layouts get.

Does Apple even design their own chargers? I know previous chargers have been built by Samsung, Flextronics, and other power electronics companies.

Apple sells Anker chargers from within their online store and possibly retail too so I figured they threw in the towel long ago. Honestly it seems quite overpriced when you can get a similar Anker GaN charger for much less.

And no, this isn't 2004 anymore, non-OEM chargers are outstanding as long as they're not $2 crap off AliExpress.

When Apple stopped including the charger in the box with iPhone as a sleazy money grab, it was a tacit admission that non-OEM chargers reigned supreme. Still didn't stop the pious and devout from shelling out an extra $25 though.

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#82

Post by Moto7451 »

Filligree wrote: post #29
Moto7451 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On newer MacBooks you can turn on a similar battery protection mechanism to the phones. I believe vs the phones the smaller chargers won’t stress these cells since they’re a lot larger. 20-40W into a 15Wh battery is more stress than the same through a 52Wh (MBA) battery. A 1C charging rate is healthy.

I've always wondered if lower rates are a problem. Off-topic, but the best my solar panels can do is 0.1C into the battery bank.

I know there’s certainly an efficiency tradeoff when AC to DC conversion is involved. For my car the sweet spot for comfort is between 3kW and 6kW as below 3 a substantial percentage (a few hundred watts) is wasted by the inverter and above 6kW the cooling system has to run (a few hundred more watts). For laptops and phones maybe this still holds true at .1C. Some quick napkin math puts that at 5W and at least with PC power supplies they need a bit of load to hit their 80%+ efficiency rating. I imagine it’s a bit different with small bricks?

More to your question the DIY solar community is torn between the benefits of float voltage which is a pretty low charging rate. I bought some cells (not for my house) and on the data sheet they were fine with .1C. They were more concerned with temperature and very high C rates hurting the lifespan. Since I was going to AC couple I was more worried about total system efficiency so similarly staying under a rate that heats the battery up and above the idle power of the inverter was my goal.

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#83

Post by Moto7451 »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #81
geerlingguy wrote: post #76

Apple has a history of some quality and extremely compact power supplies. I have to wonder if they have a team with an EE paired with an origami artist, with how creative some of the layouts get.

Does Apple even design their own chargers? I know previous chargers have been built by Samsung, Flextronics, and other power electronics companies. Apple sells Anker chargers from within their online store and possibly retail too so I figured they threw in the towel long ago. Honestly it seems quite overpriced when you can get a similar Anker GaN charger for much less. And no, this isn't 2004 anymore, non-OEM charger…

For a while Samsung made a lot of everything Apple made. I think that’s maybe more coincidence than ODM.

That said, if it were the case it wouldn’t be the first time. The LG 5K display was very much an Apple/LG project the former wasn’t happy to put their name on (in its defense, I have a revision 2 model and think it’s great). Logitech made Apple keyboards and Mice for a long time (no idea if that’s still the case) and would happily let you know in System Profiler or a manufacturing sticker somewhere in the product. In the 90s, many printing products were straight up HP and Cannon printers with a rainbow Apple logo. I’m guessing we wouldn’t really hear as much about the ODM rebrands of minor devices that work out that don’t make it obvious what they are.

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#84

Post by happyopossum »

jorvi wrote: post #59
CharlesW wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AVS was created by the USB PD specification team (the USB Promoter Group/USB-IF), not Apple. AVS was introduced as part of PD 3.1 in 2021, albeit for >100W only. I believe Google was technically first out of the gate with a charger that supports the PDS 3.2 flavor of AVS.

You're completely ignoring that Apple is purposely choosing not to also add support PPS and instead use AVS so they can push people from generic Anker / Belkin / Baseus PPS chargers to their own Apple chargers. For a while anyway. It would make more sense if they used it for their MacBook chargers, but AFAIK the sole charger they having going beyond 100W is the 16" Pro charger at 140W. Every other Macbook charger is…

This is coming across as more than a bit delusional. Adding a new standard to a charger is not “forcing” anyone to avoid other chargers in any sense. AVS adds functionality to this charger, it doesn’t take it away from other ones.

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#85

Post by joecool1029 »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #31
rr808 wrote: post #16

Is there a way to slow down these high power chargers? Sometimes I want a fast charge but mostly I want slow to getting hot. I realize overnight charging phones are smart enough to do this but otherwise seems to be impossible without having two different chargers.

I still keep a few 5 watt chargers around and use them for overnight charging whenever possible. I reserve the use of high power chargers for the odd occasion when I need the speed.

Probably wearing your batteries out more. Bunch of studies done have found fast charging causes no additional degradation. Unless you hold the charge below 90% or something letting them dwell at 100% for hours is worse.

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#87

Post by joecool1029 »

thenthenthen wrote: post #63
LorenDB wrote: post #42

I wonder what temperature this thing hits. I have an even smaller 65 W GAN charger[0] that gets pretty toasty under load. I can't really see Apple wanting to ship a toasty charger, though. [0]: https://rollingsquare.com/products/supertiny-the-smallest-65...

I remember the old macbook pro chargers, they and the cable would get so hot it melted the insulation of the cable (over time). Not to mention the self-desoldering GPU’s inside the actual laptops.

I don't think it was heat melting the insulation, blame the TPE used reacting. Anyways thread from the last time Apple charger stuff was discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054090

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#88

Post by showmexyz »

GuB-42 wrote: post #80
qnleigh wrote: post #67

Why do so many websites disable pinch-to-zoom for mobile users? This page is full of interesting close-up photos, but at least on my Android phone, I can't zoom in to see any of the details. Who benefits from disabling this feature?

That's something you can override in the accessibility options, both in Chrome and in Firefox. IMHO, it should be the default, I have never been in a situation where it caused a problem, but I have been in plenty of situations where it helped.

Thank you. This is one of those things that annoyed me so much sometimes I would just leave the site.

Re: Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max

#89

Post by jofzar »

LorenDB wrote: post #42

I wonder what temperature this thing hits. I have an even smaller 65 W GAN charger[0] that gets pretty toasty under load. I can't really see Apple wanting to ship a toasty charger, though. [0]: https://rollingsquare.com/products/supertiny-the-smallest-65...

https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1nfhctl/hands...

Hot but not too hot

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