Counterfeit Macbook charger teardown: convincing outside but dangerous inside | Hacker News Reader

Counterfeit Macbook charger teardown: convincing outside but dangerous inside

righto.com

250 pointsdcschelt136 comments

Ken Shirriff's teardowns are the best.

In particular, this comparison between different USB AC adapters was quite illuminating:

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-ap...

The legit ones have quite a bit of complexity inside their inconspicuous package. The fake one carry some not-so-innocuous surprises inside.

One other thing I've learned about counterfeiters is that there is almost no product too cheap to counterfeit. If there is a suitable demand for the product, there will be counterfeits. You can see this in the cheap USB AC adapters above, but also in items like the Casio F-91W[1], a cheap retro watch that has made a comeback in recent years.

Search on eBay and you'll find tons of them, mostly for really cheap prices, i.e. < $10 or even < $5. It's virtually impossible to identify a fake on the auction site, and even when you first have it it's difficult to tell. (Here[2] is one test, and a teardown comparison between fake vs. real) So, just assume anything super-cheap is fake, and you won't be let down.

However, there are some real differences. You'll notice that the band might look/feel slightly cheaper, and most importantly, the thing doesn't keep time. I have a legit F-91W, and for the most part, the watch doesn't gain/lose more than maybe 1-3 minutes per year. The fake ones, however, are fast/slow by 10-20 minutes per month. This is likely where they are saving money, i.e. the quartz oscillator thingy is either cheap or doesn't have calibration or whatever. The battery life is also likely far worse than most Casios, (though I have not confirmed this) which are generally excellent in this respect.

This is a watch that is regularly available on Amazon for a legit price of < $15. (Right now, it's ~$10) And there are tons of fakes out there.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk_-_Phiklc

Cool. Thanks for the links. I used to have a genuine Casio years ago and loved it. Ran for about five years on the same battery. Wanted to buy one again and almost bought one online.

So you are saying I should sell my fakes for the same price as the real ones?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W

According to secret documents issued to interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, obtained and released by The Guardian, "the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be 'the sign of al-Qaeda' and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at Guantánamo Bay. Briefing documents used to train staff in assessing the threat level of new detainees advise that possession of the F91W – available online for as little as £4 – suggests the wearer has been trained in bomb making by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan." United States Military intelligence officials have identified the F91W as a watch that terrorists use when constructing time bombs.

One learns something new every day. Good that I went with the W59 instead :)

The irony is that a huge number of people in the UK military wear the F91W as it does everything you need a watch to do, is dirt cheap and hard to break. Don't know if the same applies in the US, but I wouldn't put it past the prospect that at least one guard at Guantanamo wears the same watch...

This does sound like a classic example of someone in the intelligence service being bad at conditional probability. "All the people we captured wear F91Ws" does not imply "everyone wearing an F91W is a terrorist"!

Actually, they say they found time bomb detonators based on this watch.

United States Military intelligence officials have identified the F91W as a watch that terrorists use when constructing time bombs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Al_Qaida_watch_timer_on_p...

You're missing the point about conditional probability.

P(has a F-91W | is a terrorist) != P(is a terrorist | F-91W)

Via Bayes theorem you can fix this with a ratio P(is a terrorist)/P(has a F-91W)

So if the global population of people with F-91W is large relative to the population of terrorists, you are going to have a lot of false positives.

e.g. say that 100% of terrorists have a F-91W, that there are 10,000 terrorists, and that 100M people have F-91W then you still only have a .01% chance that a given F-91W wearer is a terrorist.

Obviously there is more information to go on than just a watch, but that's the point you were replying to.

And you are missing the point about other reasons to suspect F91W users, which have nothing to do with counting watches worn by known terrorists.

Also, you probably don't know whether this watch actually was common in Afganistan in early 2000s.

No, I am not.

That was the purpose of: "Obviously there is more information to go on than just a watch, but that's the point you were replying to."

Your reply did not, in any way, address the conditional probability issue. Which is important, although clearly oversimplified in my example.

This has nothing particular to do with terrorist detection, but to do with detection of any sort where the true positive rate is low (e.g. cancer screening, drug detection,etc.). This is often a very real problem in practical application, and saying "but they actually really found X" does not address it at all. It is exactly that sort of muddy thinking that causes problems with detection in application.

Obviously this is manageable by including enough different information that the marginals get much tighter - if you can find the right ones - but that wasn't the point being made. A cogent reply would have pointed out how exactly additional information was used to reduce this risk.

There is a possibility that you reading too much into the comment which started this thread. It appears to have quite literally meant "the CIA caught terrorists with X so they figured everyone with X is a terrorist". Without convincing evidence that:

a) this was the reasoning used

b) this reasoning was invalid

> Your reply did not, in any way, address the conditional probability issue.

I think I did it here:

Also, you probably don't know whether this watch actually was common in Afganistan in early 2000s.

I was responding to this:

  "Actually, they say they found time bomb detonators based on this watch."

Which, as a response to raising the false positive rate issue, is entirely missing the point.

For what it's worth: Also, you probably don't know whether this watch actually was common in Afganistan in early 2000s.

Also doesn't actually address the issue with false positive rates and conditional probability, but it is a fair point that the (clearly stated) oversimplification is, in fact, oversimplified.

You're missing the fact that they talked about ALREADY suspect "detainees" in the parent comment -- not the general public.

But it does mean that scrutinising people with f91w watches should increase detection rates.

Sure, and I'm not saying you are wrong.

The point was that sensitivity and specificity are always a trade off. Failing to understand this correctly has been a huge problem in practice.

Examining everyone who breathes, after all, has very high sensitivity.

But that may only be because the terrorists wearing those watches are worse at not being found out than the ones not wearing them.

Why, did you hear anyone state that?

Only that "wearing F91Ws" increases the chances of them being a terrorist, which is already pretty high, given that we're talking about "detainees", not random people.

Well, I guess the answer is that in some countries $15 is quite a lot of money, so people want to have a "casio" watch but for 1/3 of the price. That's the market these watches are made for, not the rich economies of the west.

I'm surprised the HP touchpad charger got such high regards. I admit, it seemed to do well with non Apple devices, though it would make an annoying high pitch noise when idling.

Chinese fake capacitors

http://i.imgur.com/k5i5EXW.jpg

The scam was so successful it even ended up in a college EE textbook

http://i.imgur.com/MUjlvAc.jpg (the author thought it was a normal type of capacitor.)

See moar outstanding Chinese counterfeit products here

https://www.zhihu.com/question/37915231

The site (zhihu.com) itself is a copycat of Quora.

The early 2000s were a horrorshow as far as capacitors were concerned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

So that's why the ELO monitor power supplies kept dying...

Wow, my friend's TV just failed. We cracked it open this past weekend and we found a busted cap that looks just like those. Manufacture date would be mid-2000s, probably 2006-ish. I wonder if they were from one of those bad batches. Crazy coincidence to learn about this now.

Edit: Hm, maybe not: """With a typically shortened life span of about 1.5 to 3 years for the failing capacitors, from mid-2003 up to mid-2006, the last of the bad capacitors should have failed by 2007. Commentators on the Internet often predicted the year 2007 would be the end point for "bad capacitors"."""

Haha, the thing that blows my mind is if those are real Rubycons, that's kind of like selling a "7 series" BMW encased in a real C-series Mercedes enclosure.

Would be funny if that one was a fake too. A nesting doll of fakes all the way down

A 0.1 uF 0603 ceramic, in a 10 uF tantalum case, in a yellow epoxy 22 uF ceramic through-hole....

Zhihu is a vast improvement on Quora both on the quality of content and site design though.

I'm puzzled as to why counterfeit chargers never manage to have sufficient clearance distances. They use simple, low-complexity circuits so the circuit board layout should be straightforward. Except in the smallest cube phone chargers, they aren't fighting for every millimeter of space. It shouldn't take much additional effort to make the boards safer.

I think this is an interesting question to ask. If there truly is no cost difference, why not make a better and safer product? I'd guess that "ignorance" (or at least a different assessment of risk) is the most likely answer. The person laying out the circuit has learned by trial and error, doesn't really understand the safety issues, isn't incentivized to spend time learning about them, and lacks oversight from anyone more knowledgeable.

Is there a better theory?

Probably the same reason they often have typos and stuff in the fake labeling - they just don't have the know-how to do it better.

It's difficult to know why anyone laid out a circuit one specific way, especially without a complete schematic, layout, and a few hours to think about it. It may be that this design was the only way to fit the circuit into an already designed enclosure, or it could be that this was done for some sort of manufacturability reason, they may have also had some issue with noise and done this to shield some part of the circuit. In addition, though the design may not meet the UL standards, it might be good enough. UL standards are neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee safety and reliability.

I find many of the OP's criticisms to be rather facile, and would prefer to see this 'counterfeit' tested to failure, with the results compared to a genuine Apple product. Armed with this comparison, we could judge whether the cost savings were achieved wisely or through foolish design.

Any reader of hardware teardowns should remember that the majority of people writing these pieces have never designed a challenging, original circuit; almost all of them are just implementing designs given to them by IC manufacturers in 'application notes'.

I would guess the company does not have design safety reviews or processes. The mechanical design could push the layout into an unsafe zone, but no safety review to push it back.

The spacing rules are certainly real requirements, look for clearance and creepage:

https://www.ieee.li/pdf/essay/safety_considerations_in_power...

I know of and understand the spacing rules, but even one millimeter of (air) clearance can isolate up to 1500V if the board is clean (and more if you take solder mask into account). You can have as many design reviews as you want, and processes are very well and good, but they really don't answer the question of whether the design is sufficiently safe and reliable. Testing to failure is the only way to know what the product is capable of, as many designs have failure modes which are very difficult to imagine.

I agree the design doesn't comply with UL or IEEE standards, and that means it cannot be sold at retail in North America, but that doesn't mean the product is unreliable or unsafe.

Somebody just threw the design together with the bare minimum care and effort. Didn't work, tweaked it, seems to work. Ship it.

1 out of 100 short/fail? That means 99 worked fine. WORKED PERFECTLY FINE.

If you read HN you probably write software, and may have seen a fair amount of code written with the same philosophy ... some people would say it's appropriate sometimes, anything more is a waste of expensive developer time ... but clearly in some situations it's not fine.

This is a bit of a PR issue as well. I think most people don't know that when they pay more for a genuine charger, they are getting value for their money.

I think most people feel like Apple is ripping them off on replacement chargers. That's why many people will still buy chargers with an obvious flaw like a plastic ground pin. They just think it's not quite as nice as the metal version but still works fine (they probably don't know the pin is for grounding at all... or what grounding something even means).

An irony is that people do trust they are getting value Apple's expensive primary product (iPhone, Laptop, iPad...)

The ground pin is not even used with the common two-prong adapter piece, though.

You can attach any plug to any MacBook power supply though, which includes a bunch of earthed ones.

What do you mean? Isn't that plug proprietary? (It has a weird shape)

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD837AM/A/apple-world-trav...

UK plug is earthed for one.

Adapters on the line side are readily available on Aliexpress around/under $1USD.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/EU-US-Plug-Converter-Power-Ad...

Nope, if you've got a cable like this it will fit without any problem:

http://image.ceneo.pl/data/products/13603422/i-hama-29167-00...

The problem is that every time my Macbook charger (I'm on my third in seven years, soon to get number 4 as this one is dying) has failed, it's not been the charger itself, it's crappy strain relief and thin cables. I'm happy to pay $65 for a new charger block, but when it's just the cable that's failed, I'm not getting value for money.

I bought a counterfeit charger once (on purpose) and gave up using it after it sparked while I was in bed. Having that protection circuitry is really useful when your whole laptop case is grounded.

I mentioned in another post, but this is why I'm excited for USB-C power delivery. Finally companies can deliver the AC mains cable, the power brick and the charging cable as separate replaceable components.

I've seen the USB-C cables for sale and heard they are great, but don't know of any devices that use them yet. Do you know any devices that are using them yet?

The MacBook is: http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs/

Alongside the 12" Macbook, there are a few ultrabooks that use it, notably the Google Chromebook Pixel and the Dell XPS 13.

Nexus 5X and 6P for starters.

It helps a lot to make a practice of wrapping the cable in a way that reduces stress. Apologies if you already do this, but maybe it will help someone else. Image here[1].

[1] http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/de/95/72/de9572cfef6e...

i've been wrapping my cables in a strain-free way (similar to the way they ship it in the box) for the entire time i have used my charger and somehow the shielding near the charger still breaks. they definitely need better cables.

>>it's crappy strain relief and thin cables.

Same experience here; the chargers are electronically long-lived, but cables fail for me within 2-3 years. Most recently, the rubber insulation disintegrated, and it wasn't due to strain. It just crumbled away.

I bought a replacement cable from Amazon for around $7 delivered and soldered it in place -- a 15 minute job. Only difficult part was cracking open the charger case.

Search (online retailer) for "magsafe 1|2 cable". Here's a link to the one I bought: http://www.amazon.com/ElementDigital-Lovely-Adapter-Connecto...

tl;dr If you can solder, replace the cable yourself. Heck, you could buy a solder station AND a replacement cable and still be ahead by a few dollars.

Is it really for grounding? In most EU countries the apple charger ships with the Europlug[1], which doesn't even have a ground and the charger works absolutely fine.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europlug

The thing is Apple IS ripping them off!

"additional parts provide better power quality and improved safety in the real charger; this is part of the reason genuine chargers are significantly more expensive"

is not really true, those additional parts add maybe $10 to the BOM. $80 for $20 worth of charger, $30 for $2 cable, you are being screwed on every single Apple branded accessory.

I was thinking they were like $40. $80 sounds a little steep.

I see some non-Apple branded chargers on Amazon Prime for around $40. I wonder if those chargers have the high quality electronics in them since they are from companies that are trying to develop a good name for producing accessories?

The Apple accessory that I feel is worth the money is their $30 ear buds. I use ear buds a lot. You can get decent ones for $15-$20, but I think the apple ones are worth $30.

> This is a bit of a PR issue as well. I think most people don't know that when they pay more for a genuine charger, they are getting value for their money. I think most people feel like Apple is ripping them off on replacement chargers.

Apple is ripping us off. There's no way that a quality charger actually costs any significant fraction of $65. (Putting aside the lack of proper strain relief and generally shitty, failure-prone cable; MacBook chargers are practically guaranteed to need replacement at least once in the device's lifetime, in my experience.)

Unfortunately, Apple's dodgy chargers are still better than anything else by leaps and bounds, so they remain the most economical choice despite being wildly overpriced.

I feel like there's potentially a big market for decent quality third-party MacBook chargers at a decent price. It's a shame that nobody makes anything like that.

> That's why many people will still buy chargers with an obvious flaw like a plastic ground pin.

Somewhat unrelated, but what confuses me is: the US MacBook charger comes with a long three-prong cable and a short two-prong cable. Either the ground pin isn't necessary, and I'm being needlessly inconvenienced by not being able to use the long cable with two-prong outlets, or it is necessary and I'm being endangered by the two-prong. Either way I'm not sure why they'd do that.

This is a pretty awesome teardown, the fake ones really are crap and they don't do the magsafe protocol (also on Ken's blog: http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-ma...)

I stopped buying brand name macbook chargers when the plastic on the cable frayed on my fourth charger. The difference from the other three times was that this time, it started smoking where it frayed. Had I not been paying attention, who knows what would have happened. I took it to the apple store and told them what happened and that I had bought it from them within the year, asking for a replacement. They said it was excluded from the warranty because it was "normal wear and tear" or something like that.

Say what you will for the counterfeits, but they use heavy plastic and actually seem less likely to burn down your apartment. And cost a fraction of the brand ones.

I've never had a single cord fray on me before it was time to replace whatever it plugged in to, except for every single Apple cord I've ever had. What are some good alternatives? I'm tired of replacing the electrical tape on my MBPr charger brick.

Wow, I can't believe Apple still has a fray problem. I remember my OS 9 G3 Powerbook went through 3 or 4 chargers. Don't risk buying from a 3rd party vendor (read my post below). The best you're going to be able to do is to get thick gauge, heat-shrink wrap tubing and use your wife's hair dryer if you don't have a hot air gun. I've used this brand[1] before with success.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Anytime-Tools-Shrink-Sleeve-Assorted/d...

After the third official adapter cord destroyed itself, I've taken to repairing them with heat-shrink tubing as well. The tricky part is that unless you want to cut and resolder the cord, you need to get heat-shrink tubing that's large enough to fit over the end connector.

I've found that 3/8" heat shrink fits over the connector, but 1/4" does not. But the 3/8" (at least for the brand I got) does not constrict down enough to fit tightly on the think cable. So I bulk up the cable with 1/4" silicone aquarium air pump tubing.

Instructions: Cut one ~4" piece of silicone tubing, slit lengthwise, and put just below the connector. Cut another ~4" piece of silicone tubing, slit lengthwise, put over the first piece of tubing with the slit on the opposite side. Put this second piece slightly higher, so "top" of tubing covers the base of the connector, and the "bottom" of tubing is ~1/4" shy of the inner layer.

Then cut a piece of 3/8" heat shrink to ~4.5" long. Slide the heat shrink over the connector on to the two layers of silicone tubing, so the "top" is tight to the L of the connector, and the "bottom" extends just past the farther (inner) tubing. Then shrink the tubing with some appropriate heat source (or carefully shrink with an inappropriate source like a match or lighter).

I just emailed this to off to the couple of friends of mine who still use MBP's. This is a real, real clever solution. Read this post, it's very clever not just as an instructive on heat-shrink repair, but the composition (if I'm visualizing this correctly) also functions as strain relief, which is ultimately the cause of fray[1]. My way around the 'over the connector' was just to oversize via teflon tape (naive solution, I know), but your idea is simple yet genius (silicone is soft, so it won't score the existing exterior of the wire, and silicone is rigid enough to act as auxiliary support).

If you're rough on your gear (I've thrown my laptop into a TSA container in a 5:30AM grog more times that I can count), I'd do this as a precautionary measure even if you don't see any damage yet. It might not look pretty, but functionality over form any day.

[1] combined with using thin wire shielding in order to maintain a 'sleek' aesthetic

Thanks. Yes, the goal of the step-down on the cable end is to improve the strain relief. I tried earlier rigid solutions, but found that they soon frayed below the fix. My attempts with tape started out well, but eventually the tape would slip and the heat shrink would slide down. The silicone tubing has more "grab".

I think you are visualizing it correctly. Let's see if I can replicate it with ASCII art (not to scale):

  ------------------------------ 
      ==========================******************
    =========================*********************  
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++*********O********
    =========================*********************
      ==========================******************
  ------------------------------  ****************
                                  ****************

  - layer of heat shrink -------   Rigid Connector
     = outer layer of silicone =******************
   = inner layer of silicone =********************
  + Thin frayed Apple cable ++++***color O led ***
   = inner layer of silicone =********************
     = outer layer of silicone =******************
  - layer of heat shrink -------  ****************
                                  ****************

It comes out looking quite nice. The rigidity of the tubing plus shrink wrap isn't a problem if you plug in so that the rigid part is along the side of the laptop. It actually provides a fairly nice handle for unplugging, since you can get good leverage anywhere along the shrink wrapped portion.

Another alternative is to use a blob of Sugru to add better strain relief to the cable entry point. Sugru has just the right amount of flexible stiffness when set. Use the white stuff if you want to hide it, or a nice bright colour to call attention to the fact that you’ve had to fix Apple’s design decisions.

i keep a bottle of "liquid electrical tape", and use that to reinforce the insulation when it starts to weaken.

I would NOT trust a counterfeit charger over an Apple one.

Did you miss the bit of the article where they describe design shortcomings that could burn your house down? Magsafe connectors are not inherently protected against short circuits, making them a particularly dangerous charger to buy a counterfeit of.

Not to excuse Apple of their own design shortcomings (cable fraying issues are pretty much par for the course, which is unacceptable, barring an interchangeable cable, IMO), but counterfeit chargers are not a safe alternative.

I didn't miss it, but neither did I miss when the Apple brand one almost did exactly that to me.

I have a MBP charger from 2007 that still is in good shape and is in use with a MagSafe 2 adapter currently. Perhaps you're constantly having the cable under strain?

Apple chargers are indeed shit, but the counterfeits are actually worse.

So what are other trustworthy places to buy electronics? Seems like if you don't buy at Apple or Amazon (without 3rd party sellers), there's no way of knowing if an item is counterfeit. Which harms the market as they can charge higher prices...

The scary thing is that even Amazon has had their procurement team fall prey to either grey market and sometimes just straight up counterfeit chips. If you're buying accessories that are going in hot (e.g. HDMI components that can blow an entire chip out, even on well designed name brand Panasonics[1], buy it from the original vendor. Otherwise it's a coin flip, because some of them don't even respect the simplest ESD shipping policies[2].) My Dell power supply was supposed to be a "Dell" that I got from Amazon (via a 3rd party vendor) and I'm 95% percent sure it was constructed by that same Apple imitating vendor. (The board layout was identical, the lack of solder mask, the brands of the caps were the same, etc.)

One day it got really hot and stopped driving power to my laptop. I borrowed my buddies charger (first party) and that wouldn't work either. I cracked the thing open and saw the output filter caps had vented, and on the board there was a space for an additional cap which was unpopulated. They wanted to save 30 cents, and I ended up spending about a dozen hours and about a hundred dollars on diagnostics, part replacement, ensuring that nothing else was compromised, etc. Now I'll happily give Dell or any laptop vendor my money - let them keep their monopoly. I won't buy their overpriced RAM upgrades or SSDs (there's lots of aftermarket competition where I can get better products for the same price in that arena) but when it comes to clean power, nope. Going first party every time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIKTbYYS6is [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZlc6tiL1gk

The industry is insane for creating potentially dangerous all in one interfaces given the carnival circus of the supply chain.

That said, name brand at good retailers. I don't consider Amazon in that category for many commodities.

amazon isn't trustworthy

They simply don't give a shit that it's virtually impossible to buy non-counterfeit laptop chargers, phone chargers, batteries, or most electronics on their site.

They also are alleged to, when you buy item X directly from amazon, ship you item X from the closest warehouse both in their stock and in fulfilled by amazon stock. So who knows that the hell the provenance of the item you receive is.

All of the above is fine for a book or a shirt, but not fine for power electronics or food.

Though Apple sucks as well for gouging you on their ludicrously overpriced chargers with their fragile yet non-replaceable output cables. If their chargers weren't nearly $100 w/ tax and shipping this wouldn't be as big of a problem.

Ironically, it's the same issues even with shirts: http://hypebeast.com/2015/7/fake-fashion-costs-the-industry-...

Stopping counterfeit LV bags is hard because there's no authentication mechanism short of putting RFID tags in each bag.

But a computer accessory is different. The magsafe charger communicates with the laptop using the 1-wire protocol[0][1]. Why not incorporate an authentication mechanism here?

[0] http://hackaday.com/2013/06/07/apple-magsafe-protocol-hackin...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Wire

My counterfeit Dell charger (with 1Wire) just died after working great for 2 years (although yes, it was probably dangerous). Because of DRM I couldn't attach the plug to a different power supply (as shown to me by an EE I trust). Now I'm in the crappy situation of either rewarding Dell by buying a safe adapter, or taking my business elsewhere with another counterfeit, which might burn my house down.

Are there any MagSafe Chargers that are save and sold at a reasonable price (or have a better durability then apple's)?

I was going through 1-2 chargers per year between 2013 and 2015. In December I said enough was enough and decided to take a stab at designing a more durable one. If there's any interest I can write up a post on it. I have a Frankenstein version that I use daily, and I even looked into DIY kits for making the chargers more durable but it was cost prohibitive.

You should. I've been jury-rigging the same three chargers (down from 6) since 2007 and not looking to upgrade, so no USB-C for me. The chargers themselves are great but the connectors are a chore– no matter how gentle I've been, eventually the heat softens them, then a tiny torque and it's torn.

Yes please, I'd like to know more. If you don't have time for a full write up even a photo dump (e.g. to Imgur) would be interesting.

Apple's MagSafe chargers are absolutely fantastic from an electrical engineering standpoint, where they tend to fall flat is on the cables/connectors.

One of the things that has extended the life of my chargers is to be careful when wrapping the wire around the two ears, leave a good bit of slack so that you don't over tighten the charger wire.

This alone has solved most of my issues with my Apple MagSafe Chargers, and I have one that I've had since 2007 that is still in full working condition.

I never wrap the wire around the clips they provide. I just loosely coil the wire on top of the charger and leave plenty of slack. I always make sure my bag can safely store the charger so it doesn't end up upside down. Every charger I've got since 2008 still works.

Same. Don't wrap the cable round those ears, just loop it separately and always pull the connector from the connector housing not by yanking the cable and you can expect years of service (2008 Magsafe charger and iPhone cables and still going strong).

Same applies to any product really, just that Apple seem to be big fans of tiny plugs with very little strain relief.

The rubber cable jacket on mine split open after 3 months of owning it. I always wrap it very carefully, making sure not to strain it at the ends of the cable. These things are truly defective by design.

Ironic: 'by design' is exactly right. There is no strain relief on Mac cables because their art designers thought they were ugly. The art department wins every fight at Apple. They're masters at making the sale. Just not so good on delivering the goods.

The unfortunate bit about the connector patents is that they scare off the more reputable cloners, leaving only the ones who really don't care.

Sadly Apple can prevent non-Apple peripherals from being sold most places in the world. So we are stuck with their properietary lightning cables and chargers. Which are expensive, have a limited number of designs and are often of questionable quality (i.e. the white rubber insulation starts turning brown and peeling off after about 6 months use).

Sure Chinese knockoffs bought by tourists in shady areas of Shenzhen or Hong Kong are not good either but the point is that Apple's monopoly/non-standard policies keeps a mature market from emerging.

Ok - maybe it was a little harsh - the apple chargers are clearly of better quality than the Chinese copies. But man - I am tired of broken Apple cables and I would really like to see some competition for price and quality here.

Suppose a DJ using a counterfeit charger bought from a 3rd party seller through Amazon burns down a nightclub, killing 100 people.

Who gets sued in this case? Everyone! At the very least: the DJ, the club owner, the city, Apple, Amazon, 3rd party seller, maybe even UL if they are not aggressively protecting their logo.

What if it was a real Apple charger bought from Apple. And it ended up killing 100 people?

The Apple blogger army would be out in force defending Apple in that case.

What do you think? Would Apple be liable?

Sure they are still liable. To minimize their liability, their design had better be pretty damn good (close to safest possible).

I would argue that the Apple design also has to be close to the most reliable possible design, since a high failure rate will will encourage people to buy questionable aftermarket devices.

I would also argue that Apple should not try to make a high profit on safety critical devices for the same reason.

I like how you got down modded by apple fanboys while Apple was forced to recall faulty chargers already :)

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/apple-slammed-o...

Why would the DJ get sued? It's not like they knew it was unsafe, these fakes are designed to look real and are advertised as real and readily available [from third party sellers] on Amazon. Most people expect things they buy from major retailers to be safe.

100 people die? Trust me, everyone's getting sued:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire#Civ...

The DJ should assume his equipment is going to catch fire and be prepared to deal with it. For example, why was flammable material near the power supply?

I'm being a little unfair with this example because nightclubs are particularly dangerous. Even so, how many people here take their electronics to bed? Are you sure the power supply did not get covered with clothes or a blanket?

http://www.nciaa.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=160641&...

Dave Jone's EEVBlog hosts a number of teardowns, here's a similar one from 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-b9k-0KfE

Good channel generally.

I bought a counterfeit Macbook charger a few years ago, and indeed, it did damage my computer (I think it damaged some internal power system in the Macbook. The effect was I could no longer run on battery power).

What is the legality of these chargers? I thought the magsafe adapter was patented and therefore 3rd parties can't built compatible plugs without a license.

I'm not a lawyer, but there's also trademark violation, trafficking in counterfeit goods (USC § 2320) and violation of the UL's service mark, not to mention plain old fraud.

Plus the CE mark is very illegal if any of those make it to Europe.

Citation needed

Actually it is not. The CE mark is the producers guarantee that the product lives up the the European safety standards and it is the producers job to download and print the logo.

You cannot officially be CE certified by a third party, but once you slap on that logo you are very liable if you don't live up to the standard.

Manufacturers of garbage don't care about patents. The sheer volume of this crap is next to impossible to police by people charged with doing so.

> Manufacturers of garbage don't care about patents

That doesn't mean I don't think it's interesting to know.

It's cute that you think a counterfeit manufacturer gives a damn about US law.

If they're designing potentially unsafe equipment, I promise you that trademark law wouldn't warrant a first thought, let alone a second.

I'm actually thinking about the reseller and where the customer stand.

And I'd appreciate if you leave out the condescending tone.

Why is it the customer's and reseller's responsibility to determine if a manufacturer has properly licensed some patent/trademark/etc.?

If I buy something and I find the quality poor, I should have made a better purchasing choice.

If I buy something and I find out it was illegally on the market place then I can complain to the seller and get my money back (in theory)

Given they probably operate out of China, I reckon they couldn't care less. :)

Not every country has an interest in enforcing US trademark law. Also, some interpretations of US trademark law can often be seen as excessive and/or hostile by other (western) countries.

They often ship these directly from HK. They also create many different temporary companies to stay one step ahead of law enforcement, plus the Chinese government is less invested in stopping it to begin with.

If you got a fake one, report it to Customs and Border Protection, along with as much info as you have about the path by which it reached you. They seize and destroy crap like this regularly.[1] Call 1-866-999-HALT, or see "stopfakes.gov". Mention the forged UL symbol. Also report that to UL.[2] Their report form accepts pictures.

UL puts effort into power supplies. This has been a problem with desktop machines for years. Gamer sites which review power supplies note that UL-rated power supplies don't burn out or blow up. That's because UL tests them by loading them up to their specified output with a resistor bank and running them for a few days at 100% load. They also test the overload-shutdown features. There are many low-end desktop power supplies which will not deliver their nameplate output continuously, or at all.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/13/us-customs-seize-35k-in-count... [2] http://ul.com/customer-resources/market-surveillance-departm...

I got a third party charger in Europe. It doesn't have any apple logo, but is otherwise a complete copy, design wise. It doesn't have any UL logo, though.

They are illegal in most western countries which is why you can only get them from small time shady suppliers or direct from China.

I used one of these counterfeit chargers during 2 years then one day a flame came out of it. That was the end of it too.

I wonder if my knockoff MagSafe AC adapter from PrimeCables is safe. All their Lightning stuff is MFI certified.

I love his teardown's. You always learn SO much.

I just bought a pair of Nike Air Max 90 for $8 from China. Are you telling me that's likely to be fake too?

Why the down votes?

What makes this teardown so dangerous inside? And why would someone make a counterfeit teardown... mostly to get notoriety?

Quality of output is definitely a problem for counterfeit. Also from the other page "The standards are somewhat incomprehensible, but roughly 4mm of distance is required between the two circuits." However likes like even counterfeit maintains that distance.

> What makes this teardown so dangerous inside?

There's an entire section called "What's wrong with this charger".

> And why would someone make a counterfeit teardown... mostly to get notoriety?

Why not?

Magsafe connectors aren't inherently safe - all the contacts are exposed, creating a short-circuit and fire risk. Apple solves this by only supplying power when the cable is plugged into a laptop. Counterfeit adapters don't bother with the additional safety circuitry.

If you were to poke the MagSafe end of a counterfeit charger into a wad of steel wool, you'd have a lot of sparks, and a good demonstration of why they're dangerous.

As for why counterfeits exist... basic economics. Third party Magsafe adapters don't exist, due to Apple's legal stranglehold on the concept of a magnetically attached electrical cable. In a field void of competition, unscrupulous electronics manufacturers see a huge upside, and here you see the result.

Amazon sold me one of these. It's a complete piece of shit. It lost connectivity after a few months. I have been very frustrated with it. It works only 10% of the time, seemingly at random.

In fact, it was just sitting by my apartment door because I was going to throw it into the dumpster the next time I go outside. Here's some photos I just took of it: http://imgur.com/a/KaQZ3. Notice the exact same markings as in this article, and the poorly aligned components. Cheap knock-off.

The killer part of this for me is that Amazon claims the product is "by Apple"; this is the page I used to purchase it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J3ZGEE4.

Apple's apparent lack of control over their supply chain and brand, combined with their degrading software quality, is making it almost a certainty that my next computer will either be a Surface Pro or some kind of Linux ultrabook.

The product you linked to is sold by a 3rd party seller, not Amazon. This is why I never buy from 3rd party sellers.

You're right that the page says "Sold by Mayday Dealz and Fulfilled by Amazon." I definitely missed that when purchasing, because the very top says

    Apple 45W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter for MacBook Air
    *by Apple*

Amazon probably allows this to be misleading, because I bet it increases sales. Ideally they would make it a lot clearer when you're dealing with a third party seller. I realize it only takes a moment to glance at the reviews and see a red flag, but I don't remember them being so negative back when I purchased it about a year ago.

Amazon do seem pretty tolerant of people selling fakes. I imagine it's because it's easier to ignore than do something about but it probably hurts their brand.

Under "Manufacturer" it lists "Apple Computer," a lie made doubly hilarious by the fact that Apple changed its name from Apple Computer in 2007 [1].

[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/1054770/applename.html

To be fair, the Amazon page is extremely misleading with regard to this.

https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARG...

ORIGINAL OEM APPLE MACBOOK PRO 60W Magsafe 2 [...] by Apple-Computers

But it's not really by Apple, it's by cable_connexion and is a generic. Amazon does a really lousy job of policing what's put into the "From" field on their site - I'm surprised it hasn't gotten them sued yet.

That's entirely on Amazon. There's keyword spam (for model numbers), the seller is "Apple-Computer" (Apple dropped the 'Computer' from it's name several years ago), and only has good ratings (the one 3-star rating is only about the shipping and lists no detail, and the rest only mention shipping, so they're probably fake/bought).

Even products sold "by Amazon" can be counterfeit. Amazon lets 3rd party sellers ship their product to the fulfillment centers to be shipped out by Amazon, and if multiple sellers are selling the same item then it can all get bundled together in the same bin.

I've kind of wished lately that Amazon did a verified seller kind of thing like Twitter does with the check mark. Something obvious, not text based, completely controlled by an Amazon process. Buying from a seller with one of these marks should guarantee that you are NOT getting a fake.

A perfect example is sunglasses. I don't want to go down to the mall to go get a new pair, and frankly don't even care if they're at much of a discount. I just want to get a pair of say, polarized Ray-Ban Aviators. There's a HUGE chance that you're getting a knock off or it will lack polarization. Certain things I just will not buy from Amazon because of the overwhelming odds of fakes.

Amazon actually does have these sorts of restrictions but they either don't work or Amazon doesn't do a good job of vetting the "approved" sellers. Some products (and some categories) are "gated" which means you need to get permission from Amazon to sell certain items. I even think the "official" listing for Mag Safe charger is actually gated. The only thing is there are 10 or (seems to be duplicate) listings for Mag Safe charger that are ungated. Some sellers are allowed to create listings too, thus getting past Amazon's restrictions.

It's pretty obvious Amazon just doesn't pay enough attention to the products that are sold on their website. Or they intentionally turn a blind eye. They had a bunch of listing for prescription drugs[1] and Amazon.co.uk was selling weapons that were illegal in the UK[2] for just two other examples I could think of off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and they sold cyanide, too.[3]

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/banned-weapons-being-illegall...

[3] http://articles.philly.com/2015-09-05/news/66217129_1_cyanid...

The one in my teardown was also purchased on Amazon, but from a different seller. The buyer got a refund from Amazon, so you might want to try that. The build quality of yours looks a bit worse. If you're going to throw it out, want to break it open first and let me know what's inside?

I don't want to mess with cheap Chinese electronics, especially with a toddler around. But I'm happy to send it to you instead of the New York landfill. Email me your address if you feel like cracking open another one: me@artur.co

>Apple's apparent lack of control over their supply chain and brand

In this case it's Amazon's lack of vetting third-party sellers that's causing this. Anything that actually comes from Apple will be good. Also, it won't be > 50% off, which should be a huge red flag that this is a counterfeit.

You're right, I should have price checked against Apple.com. But Amazon shouldn't claim that it's "by Apple" while burying the fact that it's actually sold by a third party several lines down.

Totally agree. I no longer trust third party electronics sellers on Amazon, and always have a ton of trouble finding that info.

Seems like Amazon's fault, not Apple's. Note:

> Sold by Airstrip1 and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Also, check out on /r/surface. Microsoft's Q&A is a total clusterfuck. Lenovo is pretty bad these days too. I've had three T450s laptops in my possession at one time or the other, and all have had terrible backlight bleed.

The reviews are murderous on that item.

That's not Apple's fault; it's Amazon. A counterfeit maker sells though Amazon's Seller Central and opts for Prime shipping by sending it to Amazon's warehouse. When purchasing, Amazon chooses the cheapest seller (which is most likely a counterfeit). Amazon is at fault for allowing someone to sell a counterfeit as a genuine product.

When you go to a brick-and-mortar store and accidentally purchase a counterfeit cable for your phone, it's not Apple's fault; it's the store's for opting to sell you the counterfeit.

It's worse than that. Suppose you have N sellers selling the same item through Amazon using "fulfilled by Amazon". Each of the N sellers ships stock to Amazon.

Amazon just keeps track of the total number of items each of the N sellers sent, not which particular items came from which seller.

When a customer orders, and picks seller #1 as his seller, Amazon just pulls one from the pile and sends it, and records that seller #1 has one less item attributed to them.

This means that if any seller ships counterfeit items to Amazon, those could end up used to fulfill an "fulfilled by Amazon" order from any other seller of that item!

When the customer pissed off customer then comes and gives a bad review, it will go to their seller even though that seller may be 100% genuine.

Worse, Amazon has no idea which seller actually supplied to counterfeit item, so they act is if it was the seller for that particular sale. That seller gets dinged, and if this happens enough times he gets kicked out of fulfilled by Amazon. (And when that happens, Amazon screws him even more. Suppose that seller logically has K items in stock at Amazon. Amazon gives the seller a choice: pay to have K items shipped back at the seller's expense using a shipping method selected by Amazon, or abandon the items. If the seller elects to have the items shipped back, he gets K random items from the pool so that even if that seller only sent genuine items he may get back counterfeits that other sellers supplied. It often won't be worth it, because Amazon picks expensive shipping methods, so often the seller ends up simply losing their inventory).

There have been allegations that unscrupulous sellers have purposefully taken advantage of this. Suppose seller #1 is a big seller, doing a lot of business. You are a small seller, not doing much business because #1 has great ratings and better prices than you. So you do this:

1. Raise your prices high enough that no one will pick you over seller #1.

2. Ship a bunch of counterfeit items to Amazon to poison the pool.

Since seller #1 sells way more items than you, most of those counterfeits you shipped to Amazon will end up going to #1's customers. This hurts #1's reputation, and if you get lucky gets #1 kicked off of Amazon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com