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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

>Their size

How do you judge the quality and safety of charger purely by size? Is bigger safer, or is smaller safer? And if so, why don't other brands of the same size meet your quality standard based on that yardstick.

>and demonstrated product quality in other areas

Like their multi-year run of defective butterfly keyboards or hinge design that would cut through the MacBooks display cable over time causing the famous "stagelight effect" AKA "flexgate" where you'd being charged $600 to fix the $6 ribbon cable[1]?

[1]https://www.extremetech.com/computing/284236-some-apple-lapt...

Edit: Ah, I see the downvotes are already here. I guess criticism of Apple with proof is not tolerated on HN.

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> How do you judge the quality and safety of charger purely by size?

I'm pretty sure spoonjim was referring to the size of Apple, not the size of the chargers they make.

Ok, but then there are other huge electronics brands like Samsung or Sony. Why don't they qualify as "safe" by this metric?

Samsung literally sold an exploding phone.

Note 7 did explode. But that wasn't due to them cutting corners and they took it quickly off the market and it never happened to another model after they learned the design lesson where you need to give the battery cell space inside the phone to expand.

And how does one battery incident from one brand prove that Apple is the best at making chargers? We're talking about different things here.

"iPhones don't explode so Apple must be the best?"

Samsung Note 7 exploded before it was taken of the market, but any other brand or model did not, so unless you want to hang on the 2016 Samsung Note 7 incident as strawman argument, you have provided no valid arguments.

An exploding phone is not a straw man argument. It’s an extremely valuable data point.

Who is more likely to commit murder, a randomly selected person or a randomly selected person from those with an existing murder conviction?

Sony, LG and many other devices didn't explode, so why aren't their chargers as safe as Apple's by the logic of your arguments so far?

How does one negative battery incident from Samsung prove that Apple makes the safest chargers of ALL the major electronics manufacturers?

Because so far you provided no proof or arguments to support this other than "murderer" metaphors and opinionated brand loyalty wrapped in whataboutism focused towards one particular incident, then move the goalpost from safety to quality instead and I showed you proof that quality does not equal safety or vice versa.

I never said that Apple makes the absolute safest chargers. What I do know is that: 1) major companies like Samsung have made huge safety blunders 2) Apple has no such history at scale (ie entire product recalls) and analysts find its chargers are well engineered 3) there is no 3. I don’t have the inclination to ascertain the safety of Sony chargers, I’ll just get Apple ones and leave it at that.

By that logic ...

Apple phones had antenna problems. You probably should not buy that brand anymore.

It’s only “by that logic” if you equate bad reception to explosions.

>It’s only “by that logic” if you equate bad reception to explosions.

If you keep moving the 'logic' goalposts to justify 'Apple is the best', then let me point out to you that bad reception IS just as bad, if not worse than batteries that could potentially explode.

If you've got an accident or an emergency in a more remote area and can't get a reception to communicate all the details to the emergency services in time, then you or others could very well die.

And, as opposed to batteries which due to chemistry reactions are more unpredictable and complex to lab-test for real world use, antenna design and reception quality can be easily tested in the lab before launching the product (RF engineer here), instead of blaming the users for "holding it wrong", so Apple gets no pardons from me on this life endangering fuckup.

Plus, the phones with battery issues that have actually exploded were not more than a handful, so the risk of you actually being affected was low but all were recalled and refunded vs iPhone 4's poor antenna design which would plague all the phones, all the time and instead of a recall you got a rubber bumper lol.

Safety != product quality like the examples you gave. Charger blocks is the one spot Apple doesn’t seem to fuck around because of the outsized brand impact it would have (see Samsung’s exploding batteries).

Anecdotal, but the only charger block I've ever had explode was from a MacBook. In its favour, it didn't fragment or catch fire. But as it shuffled off its mortal coil, the white plastic casing momentarily shone like the sun. Was pretty dramatic.

Cables, on the other hand... I honestly can't remember seeing any other cable casings disintegrate like Apple's.

Funny thing is Apple internally use Anker cables as they're much more resistent than their own.

It's well known that Apple prioritizes thinness, aesthetics and industrial design over function and reliability which is ironic given how stupid the magic mouse looks when it's charging.[1] How Jonny Ive green-lit that is beyond me.

[1]https://i.stack.imgur.com/WxNgu.jpg

> Funny thing is Apple internally use Anker cables as they're much more resistent than their own.

Source? Sound interesting!

That does sound like an interesting claim & one that doesn't line up with my experience. When I worked there ~6 years ago that certainly wasn't the case. Maybe some groups did but I didn't observe that for the coworkers that sat around me.

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