Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter
righto.com
righto.com
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.
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 )
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.
>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.
Just goes to show that there are plenty of places where Apple doesn't do much thinking different after all.
Among other things, it violates the intent of patents "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
I'm not sure they should be able to patent fairly simple upgrades like that but I guess that's the US patent system.
You can't just reduce something to its simplest component when discussing patents. It's the specific application that matters.
How can it bypass the charging and directly power the laptop using the same connector?
Seems like that would be better looking, but maybe it's still impractical.
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.
The USB smartphone charger market is starting to produce genuinely well made third party products.
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 ordered one yesterday (not from this dealer in question) that also said genuine. Let's see what they will send to me.
>say genuine
Having been an eBay buyer/seller for a long time, I would put way less stock in someone on eBay saying a product is "genuine" than you appear to be.
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've had good luck ordering used Apple chargers from U.S. sellers on eBay; they have always turned out to be genuine and at a reasonable price.
While a couple of them have died, so have my original three MacBook chargers. None of them has killed or damaged mine, or anyone else's MacBooks.
If you look inside cheap chargers (as I have), it's not surprising that they occasionally kill people.
Here's a recent house fire that killed five people, started by a phone charger.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/10/phone-charger-started-fire-tha...
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.
You can be disappointed, but if you're bitter, it's your own fault for not properly researching. Don't blame Apple, no bait and switch here.
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.
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.
What often helps, is add a bit of solder to it. This makes the heat transfer much more efficient, and you'll be able to desolder it.
> "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.
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.
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?
Yes, it was.
It might not be a lie, but it is bullshit.
> 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.
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.
N. Outright Lies.
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.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lightning-magsafe-saver-p...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why does Apple continue to ignore strain relief on their cabling?
Form > Function
The 43% profit margin mentioned in the article definitely won't incentivize them to improve.
I have a bunch of (non-Apple) chargers and cables that lost it to our feline overlords.
But I think TFA is about the charger internals, rather than the cables per se.
The same guy did a write up on the protocol used to communicate with the magsafe tips. It can also be used to trigger the above LEDs: http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-ma...
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.
[0] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/111250/how-to-charg...
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.
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.
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.
Maybe that's what they want...
1. Sometime during warranty period, purchase AppleCare extended warranty.
2. Don’t worry about cable strain, just treat cable as if it were well made.
3. When cable frays, return power adapter to Apple Store for a free replacement.
4. Rinse and repeat.
AppleCare also comes in handy when the $800 display fails.
Its both entertaining and informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-b9k-0KfE
This sounds a bit dodgy to me. Could someone with domain expertise comment on whether this is normal ?
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:
Deleted comment
I treated my Apple chargers carefully. They destroyed themselves after about 2 years.
Laptops get transported a lot. Their chargers should not be so delicate.
microcontroller.
Problems with Apple's chargers
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.
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.
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.
Genuine Apple adaptors come with plugs with plastic earth pins. You can feel the tingle from leakage current with such plugs.
I keep my charger in during the day then take it off when I leave.
Zzzz...
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iBook+G4+12-Inch+800+MHz-1.2+GH...
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".
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'd need some persuading that the rubbery sleeving was chosen for purely engineering reasons, and not mostly "it feels nice".
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.
- Former apple support guy
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.
There may be a UL thing going on at the 120/240V side of the charger but it still seems ridiculously overengineered.
[1] http://www.newegg.com/AC-Power-Cords-for-Laptop/SubCategory/...
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.
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.
It's quite profitable for them.
[Edit -- fixed typo]
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?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008WWC6FU
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.
But Apple's design just suggests you do exactly that :/
But if the MagSafe connector cannot be made more robust (durable), then it should be replaceable.
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 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 :<
It's always possible that I just have bad luck. That doesn't mean I dislike your advice though.
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.
It's almost as if they make a profit off of selling licensed cables with their proprietary technology or something.
I'll stop you right there, No.
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.
Good tips ! I do exactly this and have a charger that has lasted 5 years. Cable looks good still (touch wood !)
I have a charger in a cable tray under my desk. Above my desk, one of these guys: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GUS4XK
I've still had two Macbook cables fray, the sheath opening up like a paper lantern. There is near zero strain on this cable at any point.
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?
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.
I really think it's the internals that are too fragile.
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!
Take my phone for example - I tend to have a charger in every room of the house, several for my backpack and one at my desk.
I wonder if they'll allow non-Apple USB-C chargers. I think they'd have to.
Unfortunately there's still often a 90 degree turn where it connects to my MBP. I've found no reliable way to prevent that.
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.
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.
You want to know how bad apple designs laptops? visit https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup
The only thing worse are the Apple USB cables. Complete junk.
I also Sugru mine like this on both ends of the cable: http://d1u2s20mo6at4b.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/appl...
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.
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 :))
[0] 85 W charger: http://amzn.com/B004L6MLPQ [1] Sugru 8 pack: http://amzn.com/B00EU7DBNM [2] Small flat rate box from USPS: http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm#2517977
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.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/environment/
> 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.
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.
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..
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).
It'd add another connector and SKU, which may be why they attach the thin cable permanently. But so what?
I buy Shure ear buds because the cable is replaceable.
The idea is to reinforce the place that usually breaks. I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy customer.
Edit: also try wiping the table with eucaliptis oil as they often don't like the smell on their paws / mouth.
http://i.imgur.com/WCbGRZx.jpg
It looks terrible but at least it will last as long as the laptop.
1: http://www.tested.com/tech/5480-how-to-properly-coil-a-macbo...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.