Comment by ghostly_s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghostly_s | Hacker News Reader

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>Still, I miss MagSafe. It was metallic and elegant and had the perfect little charging light. This plug is white and plastic and cheap-looking and no light... it's a shame.

I think part of this transition is Apple subtly suggesting that people don't need to have their laptops plugged in as a default any longer. The Magsafe is so easy to attach, most people I know have one in their usual work spot and just snap it on every time they sit down there, even if it's just for 10 minutes to check email. The comparative inconvenience of the USB connector means they will likely be a little more intentional about plugging it in...but the incredible battery life of these devices now means you really don't need to. There's no need to snake a power cable to your table at the coffee shop when your laptop gets 10+ hours of battery life. You don't even need to plug it in on your desk at home, or working in your bed, on the couch...if you're just plugging it in on a side table when you close it up for the night now, the whole tripping hazard becomes a pretty moot point.

Edit: ah, I see jakobegger has beat me to this comment below ;)

So removing MagSafe is a feature? Laptops have diferent power profiles when they are plugged in than on battery.

Again, this: "You don't need to plug in your laptop all the time" works for the regular MacBook, but we are talking about the 'Pro' line here, MagSafe should be standard.

I don't read him as arguing that removing MagSafe is a feature. Just that the tradeoff is more understandable now given battery life than it would have been earlier. It's definitely fair to disagree with the tradeoff. I'm pretty ambivalent about it, myself. I'd like to see something like the Griffin BreakSafe supplied by Apple.

> when your laptop gets 10+ hours of battery life

I have a 2014 13" MacBook Air which had the same claims, and yes I could get 12 hours if I didn't do anything on it.

My battery is now about 80% of its original health, and if I'm lucky will last 4-5 hours while coding (terminal + browser + music). I expect it would be a lot shorter if I'm doing photo / video / music editing. Watching videos it can just about last 3 hours.

Ok it's better than 1-2 hours when MagSafe was introduced, but it's still a long way from all-day battery life when you only need to charge overnight.

An alternate interpretation: you can easily find cheap USB power supplies to put everywhere. While the long life per charge is great, the battery will be in a lot better shape three years down the line if it is almost always plugged into some 12W power supply regardless of where you're using your computer. Buying multiple MagSafe-equipped 65W or 85W chargers to put in every room where you use your laptop gets expensive quickly.

There's a trivial test to check whether your theory is correct or not: plug a new Macbook Pro, with a closed lid, into an external monitor but don't plug it into power. Current models require power to display on an external monitor with the lid closed; if the new model doesn't, it would all but confirm your theory.

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