Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in a tiny expensive package (2012)
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The charger is the only product I will buy from Apple. It's complete and utter overkill, you'll never have problems for a very minor premium (absolutely speaking, not relatively).
Except the fix was exactly that, according to the commenter.
Knowing what the actual problem is rather than what product fixes it will save you time and money.
It's $20. The jitterbug (ground loop/galvanic isolation) is $60.
I'd rather know what causes my problems than turn to Apple for every problem.
(And it's not all superstition, and it's not all for tube amps -- it's all in the SNRR of your power stages for every piece of equipment in your sound chain.)
Are these the same audiophiles that swear by gold plated contacts for every connector?
Most of the action in chargers right now is in 30 watt USB-C. Everyone wants the fasted charge possible.
New iPhones can apparently consume 22 watts plus (via usb-c to lightning and macs and iPads (I believe) can pull the full 30 over an appropriate usb-c.
As a result, when shopping for USB-C chargers, or power strips containing USB-C, I study the supply carefully to make sure they provide this or if not I’ll be happy enough consuming a standard wall plug with a 30W adapter.
These adapters seem to have shrunk in the past two years due to GaN, or Galium Nitride instead of silicon. (I have not read what this means exactly but it is in the marketing copy)
One of the bigger electronics accessory names was the first, but now you see no-name brands offering GaN as well.
To my knowledge, Apple has not introduced GaN-based power adapters but I could be wrong.
Regardless, it would be very interesting to read a study of yours of 30W chargers in this class.
For example, this no name brand is selling two for $20, a very low price point: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098J6LN4Q/
Versus Anker and the other big names which have similar, higher priced versions.
I’m presuming the cheap one linked above is likely to set my home on fire. But maybe not? You would be the one to speculate.
I’d be happy to fund a portion of the purchases needed for such an article. My email is in my profile.
By choosing GaN, the MOSFET can be switched quicker without wasting too much energy as heat. That in turn means all other components (capacitors, inductors) can be made smaller in the same ratio.
The end result is modern GaN technologies allow someone to make a 30 watt power supply in the same physical space that a 5 watt power supply from 2005 took.
> By choosing GaN, the MOSFET can be switched quicker without wasting too much energy as heat. That in turn means all other components (capacitors, inductors) can be made smaller in the same ratio.
Faster switching frequency of the whole circuit is not necessarily an attribute of the material. There are silicon ICs with high switching frequencies for things like powering CPUs, and GPUs. They are of course physically bigger, and a bit less efficient.
What GaN switches put on the table is having a single transistor being able to do this, and thus allowing much simpler circuits, basically a drop in replacement for existing silicon devices.
Simple: an early third-party dock for the Switch, made by Nyko, implemented USB-C incorrectly and could deliver up to 9V on the CC1/CC2 (configuration channel) pins. These pins are only supposed to have 5V on them, and a USB-C interface IC in the Switch was frequently damaged by that voltage.
The Switch was fine. The fault was entirely in the dock.
... and now those of us who design things with USB-C ports have a very clear market study in "should we shell out the $ to protect the CC pins against a short to VBUS?"
That said, the Switch dock issue is due to poor implementation... not an accidental short.
https://www.power.com/sites/default/files/documents/InnoSwit...
There's a slow transition underway from Si to SiC power-semiconductors in industries such as automotive.
You can relive my emotions from when I learned about the astounding properties of nitride transistors (in 02017, I think) in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/jellybeans.html#addtoc_1. Unfortunately there weren't any carborundum parts in my list.
SiC has significantly higher thermal conduction than both Si or GaN, though, which makes it more suitable for cases where you need a ton of thermal capacity (inverters for EVs, for instance).
Both technologies are in their infancy, though. You can get better performance out of either by improving the process technology aspect, so it's hard to say one will ultimately be better than the other. Given the electron mobility though, it seems GaN will ultimately win for devices that aren't thermally limited.
But similar logic applies even for the ones that aren't using GaN. More efficient parts and/or designs allowing for more and more shrinkage. One of the other big drivers has been manufacturers starting to market monolithic chips that manage all the aspects of power regulation and USB-PD in a single/small number of parts.
Maybe an idea for a test at some point? Simulate typical environments they might be in, blow them up, and see how much mayhem they create?
Given that USB-C PD's EPR upgrade will allow 48V @ 5A for a total of 240W of power, the potential for a fire due to shoddy (too thin/fraudulent or damaged) cables, dirt or loose solder connections on the sockets (causing high resistance and thus heat build-up at the spot) is not negligible.
The most troublesome potential is the combination of PD controller bugs on the charger side leading to 48V/5A on the cable, and a lack of protection circuitry on the side of a device that has been designed for 5V-only.
> The most troublesome potential is the combination of PD controller bugs on the charger side leading to 48V/5A on the cable, and a lack of protection circuitry on the side of a device that has been designed for 5V-only.
Double yikes. I always thought that if you're going to put radically different voltages through ports, they should have different-enough connectors that you can't plug one into the other. I guess I'm old-fashioned.
I get the desire to end the connector conspiracy and just have One Connector to Rule Them All, but in the end we've just created another connector conspiracy, especially when you throw Thunderbolt into the mix.
Details here: https://www.cypress.com/file/117656/download
I've always been leery about plugging my iPhone into cheap 3rd-party chargers, but I never knew if the logic behind my fear was sound.
The circuits in the phone may be damaged by excessive spikes. Especially if the spikes happen to be of a frequency that the internal filters / regulators in the phone aren't good at rejecting -- some regulators may only reject 20 dB of noise in certain bands, and > 80 dB in others.
Thank you for such an excellent and digestible article. Such a pleasure to read.
The charge circuitry here isn't anything too special.
Chargers are actually very complex and demanding design tasks with a lot of interesting* fault modes.
(* assuming you like small fires and exploding devices)
Just because you can make it work doesn't mean it is safe. Good charging circuit will be designed to behave correctly if any of the components fail.
Even a simple battery charger can easily cause fire.
The usual advice to amateurs is to stay away from charging circuits and switching power supplies. And reuse existing circuits in their designs. There is a lot of complete charging circuits and power supplies made to be included in designs.
There's some things to consider when laying out a switcher (keep loop areas small, keep sensitive lines from noise ones, etc), but it's not that complicated, and once you've done a few of them, it becomes routine. And of course to pass safety standards there are clearance and creepage rules and EMI/EMC to keep in mind.
Any junior level EE/hobbyist with a few years of tinkering should be able to put this together.
I agree you won't be able to make an apple quality device, it'd just be enough info to understand how one is working (Without taking into account things like line noise impact on wiring).
You end up with upwards of 60V sine wave on your MacBook case, compared to the relatively grounded you (capacitively to your surroundings). This voltage creates some electrostatic force to attract your finger to the surface enough that you can feel a change in friction. The Disney Research Lab made a neat touch display surface that used the same effect (and higher voltage) to modify the friction and "texture" feeling for a haptic touchscreen [2].
1. https://la.disneyresearch.com/publication/teslatouch-electro...
2. https://la.disneyresearch.com/publication/teslatouch-electro...
https://www.seacomp.com/resources/medical-vs-commercial-powe...
I sort of stuck with it for the price/performance/safety.
Here is a teardown (might be dated): https://lygte-info.dk/review/USBpower%20Ikea%20Koppla%20UK.h...
He also confirms that the control chip is a 1699-02.
I've relied on Benson's reviews in the past for USBC cables, but I'd love to have somewhere a list of expertly curated products.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFLICGQRF6BR...
My understanding, borne out by experience, is that this is far, far kinder to the battery and will significantly increase the lifespan of the battery (in combination with good battery charging and discharging practice).
I have one or two high output chargers for when I need my devices charged in a hurry, but that’s extremely uncommon.
My main phone, an iPhone X bought at launch (Nov 2017), is still at 89% battery health and working well.
By now, device, USB characteristics and battery care services determine how much is used.
For example, my Xperia uses extra slow charging every once in a while for battery longevity - using the otherwise fastcharging adapter.
Switching supplies should work from DC, but I don't want to give any guarantees. In particular, for a higher-power supply with power factor correction, I'm not sure what it does if the input isn't AC.
Which is why I immediately destroy any charger at my home that is suspect to not come from a brand name producer.
Is it really worth to risk your life for couple of dollars?
Electronics is my hobby and I also happen to design some switch mode power supplies for AC. I can't overstate how difficult it is to design a good safe SMPS. Comparing to my other projects it seems it is at least 20-50 times harder to design a dedicated SMPS than the rest of the circuit, even with a lot of specialized literature on the matter to help me out (meaning I don't create my own topologies, I just learn the ones that are well described in the book). And that for applications under 100W.
This has been my thought ever since the news came out about AmazonBasics products like chargers and cables catching fire and melting. I've since started springing for the more expensive Apple-branded chargers and cables instead. Saving $15 but burning my house down... not worth it!
5V/1A is great for overnight charging. I've noticed my phone battery lasts so much longer the next day.
The lightning cables tend to hold up a little better but the jacketing still seems extra thin and flimsy. I've actually only owned 2 iPhones (6s and SE2) and one iPad because I'm not someone who cares about having (or spending the money) on a crazy fancy phone but I do prefer iOS. I've bought a few nice third-party MFI-certified cables after the one that came with my 6s disintegrated and haven't bought a new one since. They were a bit expensive, but they're in as good of shape as when I bought them and well worth the upfront cost.
As for Apple's recent cables, the rubber has become discoloured on my very-well-used 2017 MacBook Pro USB-C charging cable, but it's still completely intact with no signs of fraying or failing. My ~2.5 year old USB-C to lightning cable seems to be holding up well so far too.
I’ve been using them for a few years and they’re virtually indestructible. They have a thin wire braided into the plastic overmold so they’re extremely tough, and the strain relief on the cable ends is about as good as it gets.
Never seen a detailed teardown of one though. What does everyone think about them?
A neat design wouldn't use a bridge rectifier on the input side - it would use synchronous rectification (more efficient, substantially smaller because no big passives are required for input smoothing, and nicer on the electrical grid because it's actually possible to design it to deliberately absorb harmonics generated by other devices in your home).
Next step would be to use a much higher switching rate (eg. 3Mhz). Use some high performance MOSFETs to reduce switching losses. Suddenly that transformer becomes the size of a grain of rice and the capacitors can all be surface mount. The whole thing can now be lighter, smaller, cheaper, and less environmentally impactful while maintaining the same performance.
Apples design here was electrically boring and very much not pushing the envelope of what is possible.
In all cases it was because they were brought cheap on Aliexpres. I haven't seen any chargers sold elsewhere have any issues. The closest thing I got was when I charged my laptop on my bed and had put the blanket over the charger - it didn't fail but it got really, really, really hot.
So based on anecdata: don't buy things things to stick in walls on aliexpress. Also fuses are really nice.
Development cost is neglible for this kind of stuff.
Apple iPhone charger teardown (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23057091 - May 2020 (71 comments)
Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in an tiny expensive package - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3996171 - May 2012 (167 comments)
I've brought my frayed MagSafe charger, which has degraded to the point that it's been staining everything blue, to an Apple Store Genius Bar multiple times, and the Geniuses (in multiple countries) keep saying that it's my fault that the insulation degrades over time, and that such "wear and tear" is not covered under warranty.
The killers are people who sit there with the cable rammed into their stomach bending it at 90 degree angle when using their phone. On the MacBook chargers it’s usually bashing it constantly or tugging it.
I come from a world of RF cables which cost more than a MacBook and have very limited bend limits. What we have is insanely robust these days. Just be nice to it.
Edit: my daughter had my 2010 MBP until recently which the original charger blew up on. After dissecting it the cable was fine but the main IC had cracked in half. No shorts on the cable grommet. It lasted 11 years! What are you people doing to these things?
That's clearly false, and feeling the need to include "if you're careful" in your statement exposes its falseness. No other major manufacturer makes power cables that chronically disintegrate like this so much that it has become a meme specifically about Apple's cables: https://imgur.com/AVP6riy
Not unsleeved. Disintegrated. It's because the material they use is soft and extremely undurable, unlike literally every other major cable manufacturer.
Apple's cables, and _nobody_ else's, do this when even the slightest amount of angle is applied: https://i.imgur.com/seu0xh8.jpg
Look closely at the circled part. That bulge is caused by extremely soft sleeve material that isn't bonded to the internal wires combined with inappropriately abrupt strain relief. That bulge is why Apple cables disintegrate so often, and even just the downward force of gravity from a laptop being on the edge of a table with the power cord dangling off the side onto the floor is enough to cause it over time.
That’s quite a strong and definitive conclusion from your part. Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there, of course there are a lot of people with issues. But just like that, also based on anecdotes, I have lightning cables from the first time they released the port and they are perfectly usable. I never had an issue with an Apple cable in more than 10 years. In the same time, a friend of mine goes over one cable a year, so yes, I would say it’s also people, it’s scale, it’s manufacturing, it’s everything. But to call this an Apple issue is quite a stretch.
I'm not sure how one can honestly argue that Apple has sold more laptops than every other laptop manufacturer. I they've sold more cables (I doubt it, but let's pretend), well...that would be because people keep having to replace them.
This problem is common enough with Apple's laptop power cables that it has been a meme for more than a decade now. That's not the case for _any_ other vendor, and those other vendors have sold more laptops than Apple has by several orders of magnitude.
Do the same for Dell, and one picture out of the first page features a broken cable.
The idea that apple charging cables break is something lots of people discuss, there are dozens of news stories about it too.
I addressed this misunderstanding of the word "meme" in a parallel comment.
I'm not just imagining people making image macros, but more likely to talk about or gossip about it, more likely to ask other people for help or opinions, more likely to pick up on the trend and write about it in some blog or article or go on YouTube about it?
I just imagine a Dell laptop to be majority provided/owned by a company and so such complaints end up going to IT support who ends up swapping it out or something. Whereas a Mac is more likely to be owned by creative professionals, or journalists, or people more generally inclined towards sharing memes in a contagious way or otherwise striking a chord in the cultural zeitgeist?
So, no, I don't think that's it. Plenty of other laptops have problems, but only Apple has this particular problem.
I vouched your dead comment so I could reply. (Am I allowed to do this? I don't know!)
Maybe you don't know that the word meme predates image macros and even the internet, but it does. The phrases "it became a meme" and "people make memes" are not talking about the same manifestation. Memes are ideas that take root, not funny pictures with words on them.
My assumption is that anyone who reads "became a meme" as "people made memes about" must be very young, but that's my own bias showing. A person who has no memories of a world before philosoraptors and shy penguins or whatever image macros kids are making these days might not realize the difference, but there it is.
Also...
> phone chargers
I actually did say laptops, and the reason I said laptops is because people have been complaining about Apple's power cables tearing/fraying for longer than Apple has been making phones. The problem applies equally well to their phone charging cables, of course, but standard micro USB cables are also usually complete shit whereas standard laptop power cables are not except for Apple's.
Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop.
I'm sitting here with my M1 MBA on charge at the moment. Is it strained? Hell no:
And if you suspend it in zero gravity and never touch it then it will last forever. Being able to baby something into lasting doesn't make the product durable. The fact remains that Apple's cables are demonstrably and notably more prone to fraying than every other manufacturer's cables even when the same people use them in the same way.
I mean, sure, ok, but there's another mantra that goes "nobody likes someone who blames users for product quality that is significantly worse than from every other manufacturer so that when users use the product normally without aggression toward the product this product fails while the others do not."
I mean it really seems like you've come down on the side that it's totally ok that even simple gravity on just the cable itself puts too much unrelieved strain on a cable that for decades cost $100 or more to replace because it was integrated into the charging brick. And you argue that that's a problem with the user instead of grossly inadequate strain relief.
We've staked out our sides. Let's agree to disagree.
The only reason I use wireless charging now is because it's cheaper and easier than using broken cables. Sadly the one in my car looks like the terminator's arm when he cuts off his arm skin.
I have a new MBP and a ThinkPad. You'd be hard pressed to say the MBP charger cable has half the strain relief of the ThinkPad.
I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress.
I suspect deterioration was either due to heat transmitted from the chassis over the MagSafe connector, or from finger oils, as people touch the cable most near the connector.
I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well.
To contrast I have 30+ year old NEMA connector cables (kind for server/desktop PSU's) with zero signs of wear, maybe they got a little stiffer over the years but no cracking. I have also used extension cords this old and again, none of this chemical degradation. I think lead stabilizers were used in outdoor cables and this is why they hold up better, and also carry lead warnings sometimes on the cables?
I looked this up a few weeks ago!
It's because the rubber-like coating (TPE, or thermoplastic elastomer) interacts with body oils, causing it to eventually degrade:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6fznfp/cant_compa...
I've always thought that it was because of heat and humidity.
I didn’t change my habits at all.
Which makes me suspect they changed the formula.
The original cables for both survived just fine for their entire life time, and the 2012 machine travelled all across the globe, and the 2019 even more so in a shorter amount of time, again, with very active and heavy use.
I don't think this is a widespread issue, and sounds isolated.
Anecdotally, the MagSafe charger that came with my 2008 MacBook is still going strong, but the one that I got with a 2013 MacBook Air is a hot blue mess that I occasionally bring to Apple Stores to try and get replaced.
That is the Apple Way. Apple is never at fault, they have prefect engineering.. They have Genius "Technicians".. and so it is impossible for them to make a mistake..
Remember it was not Apple Engineering that was a problem years ago, it was because people simply did not know how to hold their phone correctly, Stupid users thinking they could just hold their device however they felt like, no when you buy an Apple Product you do it the Apple Way...
Maybe the macbook charger is stronger than your expensive RF cables, but it is far weaker than anything else the competition puts out and that's a huge annoyance, as a mac user myself who gets maybe 3 years out of a given apple cable, be it magsafe charger, lightning cable, or even the wired headphones. It's a distinctly Apple issue, cables in my hands from other manufacturers, even no name junk looking cables, don't have these issues.
These fail. And good luck getting an OEM replacement if it's more than a couple of years old and from a low-end laptop.
The cable itself may last, but the connectors sure as hell don’t. Barrel jacks are well known for getting loose and making poor connections over time.
I've only ever had one non-Apple laptop charger break in a similar way, and that was after five years of heavy daily use. I've never had the insulation break on a micro-USB or USB-C cable (I used Windows Phones until I got an iPhone 11). If it were entirely due to user behaviour, I wouldn't expect to see such a disparity between Apple and non-Apple cables.
Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault.
This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?
I brought Anker PowerLine II and III ( Not the + version ) for my family and friends and so far apart from one connector failure ( Not the cable ), all of them have survived the years of usage with no signs of cable damage. It is such a relieve knowing your cable should last years if not decades.
We used to joke apart Apple made the cable so bad because they expect us to buy a new iPhone every two years anyway, which is when all of our lightning cables somehow failed.
I am also wondering, if it is really that environmental friendly to make your cable free of certain material but they break 10 times easier and end up so much more in landfill. Compare to make one that last literally forever. Lightning Cables are sold in hundreds of millions unit a year. And Apple earns money and commission from lightning chips, connector and MFi.
But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.
The only unarguable thing is the disparity between what we're doing.
People love to dunk on that Jobs quote, but he was right. If you took the iPhone 4, wrapped your whole hand around it, and squeezed hard, you could make the bars drop. If you held like a regular cell phone, it worked fine.
As proof I offer the fact that the iPhone 4 sold very well for years, even after Apple ended their free bumper program. I had one (sans bumper) and the reception was fine.
My current cable has black electrical tape at both the charger block and connector ends. No matter how carefully one loops these things before putting them in a bag, the rubbery material eventually abrades and cracks.
In contrast, I used Powerbooks for 15+ years and never had a single cable go bad.
I've had countless other mp3 players, laptops and other electronics and have never had a cable fray.
So sure, it might be user related, but that does not change the fact that other manufacturer's cables don't have that issue.
Nearly 5 years later, that same flimsy adapter is still going strong in my car. It’s been plugged and unplugged thousands of times (my fiancée’s phone needs a USB-C adapter—what a fun world we live in), stood on, left on the floor, left in both sub-freezing and summer heat wave temperatures. Still haven’t needed that second one. I’m kind of amazed (but would still prefer a headphone jack).
I'm just careful not to twist them or sharply bend them. If I pack them I usually just very-loosely wad them up and put them in a not-too-full part of a bag. That's the extent of my "care".
[EDIT] However! This does not mean Apple shouldn't make their cables better so they survive whatever people are doing to them to wreck them, since it's evidently very common.
I had a Belkin lightning nylon charge cable I used for years and it worked great, then my gf borrowed it for 2 days and "gorilla'd" the end. Since she had a habit of chewing through the regular cables in only a few months, I was curious to watch and see what she does different.
It was two things:
1. She uses the phone while charging frequently and has the cable kept taut, this strains the connector.
But more importantly
2. She yanks the phone off the charger by grabbing the cord and pulling the phone at an angle, this can destroy a worn cable in a matter of days.
This is the difficult part when the whole cable is a single solid color and the plug fits either direction. I have a Lightning cable in my car that only gets used hanging straight down from my dash-mounted iPhone, and I've noticed the device-end strain relief finally giving out from this after a few years.
In my experience, litz wire is exceptionally flexible and suitable for getting shoved in a pocket frequently. Each wire can be quite thick due to the flexibility.
The lightning cables though... those things seem to break super easily. USB-C vs. USB seems to make no difference-- the strain relief is pretty terrible. Doesn't help that some of these cables get a lot of use (eg; for Apple CarPlay). I've found that it's usually the lightning end that goes not the other end. I wonder if switching the iPhone to USB-C might not help. But at this point it sounds like they're aiming for full wireless.
1: https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/40148-77246-000-lea...
Apparently a lot, based on all the Internet comments I’ve seen over the years. But apparently I’m the weird one who has literally never had an Apple or third party lightning cable fail (except a couple in blatant cases of accidental misuse, like getting one stuck in a chair wheel). I’ve thrown several away because they get dirty and gross, and I’ve had a couple that seem to get flakey after a few years (I believe due to damage or corrosion to an exposed pin). But I’ve certainly never had one visibly fray like that!
Why would people buy them if they aren't broke. Why is every cable manufacture trying to capitalise on the market if there wasn't a profit.
And instead of ( cough ) doing the right thing and fix it. Apple continues to earn money and commission from their MFi programme.
Personally, I've never had an issue with this, with 1st or 3rd party lightning cables, or with 1st party magsafe. But, my opinion is a lightning cable is dirt cheap, and people want them in their pocket when worried about battery, whereas a new magsafe charger is expensive and should have more robustness.
There is a business strategy called "planned obsolescence" or simply "planned breakdown"
They would've not DRM chipped a freaking cable if not for them selling them for $20.
Take a look on my experience from a decade ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26134006
> I recalled that when in 2015, working for another sourcing shop working for likes of BestBuy/Futureshop/Target/London Drugs I was asked to tear down few chargers for them.
> I found that diodes in parallel are surprisingly common around the industry.
> This is such a thing which you are pretty much told on day 1 of any electronics course that it is impossible to not to know.
> My only thinkable conclusion was that people keep doing it on purpose.
In electronics not everything is what it seems to be at first glance. For an encore check out pcb fuses, coils and even capacitors.
I don't really think myself as one to "baby" my gadgets, so I'm not really sure what the heck you all are doing to your cables.
The strain relief on these cables is practically nonexistent, so I won't put the blame squarely on abusive users.
The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store until the company removed all user ratings & reviews in Nov, 2019.
I mean, you'd expect that. Nobody is buying a new one for fun. ~Everyone buying a new one has had one fail on them, so poor reviews are absolutely expected.
The frequency at which Apple Magsafe chargers fail is however quite insane and shows how they are poorly designed and built; therefore poor reviews -- and that's in spite of Apple user loyalty and a huge fanbois base who always come to the company defense's in public forums and reviews. I certainly didn't expect to see such piss-poor reviews on Apple's own website.
Very strange victim blaming going on in this thread, nobody has even attempted suggesting how to avoid it
Apple can be good at function, but their basic mindset is definitely form over function. It seems like they'll compromise anything in an instant if there's some kind of aesthetic payoff (even an extremely minor one).
Needlessly I really had to part away from Apple products -- the first two years were covered by Amex's extended warranty, but after that the yearly "upkeep cost" started going up -- as there were also other issues with faulty GPU and bluetooth/wifi -- and continued until a couple of years ago (largely as a backup laptop).
Anecdotally, I've actually seen examples of both.
It's hard to imagine of Apple, but maybe they have high variance in cable quality between batches, or multiple suppliers?
The biggest concern is the self selection bias… if you’re perfectly happy with the cables would you care enough to respond to such a survey?
Surprising - this same issue has happened to me multiple times with multiple power bricks but fortunately Apple replaced them every time.
I am very careful with the power bricks, but I think it's a design flaw of the old integrated cable design and strain relief which didn't do what it was supposed to do. As I noted, each time I brought a failed brick in they replaced it under AppleCare.
The old magsafe power brick design would tend to fray and fail at the strain relief points - either the one next to the power brick or the one near to the magsafe connector. I've seen the issue repeatedly for multiple other users as well - users who are not rough with the power brick or the computer.
Fortunately the current USB C power bricks have removable AC and USB C cables so they basically eliminated the issue from the integrated cable failing at the strain release point.
Yeah, since the cable is not replaceable(at least, anything that's not USB-C), that's a crappy thing to say. It's obviously a widespread problem. The charger is expensive but can be replaced.
I had a frayed Apple Thunderbolt Display cable. Non removable and can't be easily replaced. Had to use some insulation tape at the time because an authorized Apple shop also claimed this was wear and tear not covered under warranty.
How. I have a 12 years old magsafe charger and it's in perfect condition. Never frayed any cables, not the old 30-pin ones, not the lightning ones, not the new USB-C ones. I just don't get what people are doing with their apple cables to make them fray like this.
It’s a shame that for all the brilliant design within the power supplies that it can get sabotaged by this very Apple-like tendency to push aesthetics (I can just imagine Jobs or Ive demanding this) above all else.
But, maybe part of that is understanding that the Apple ones suck?
I know they've picked form over function for the strain relief, so I make a subconscious effort not to strain them.
My ex-girlfriends charger didn't last very long, but mine (from 2011) is still quite well maintained, though darkened and discoloured with age.
Ugh, this sounds like I'm saying "you're holding it wrong" but, what I mean is that maybe we have a bit of survivorship bias here and because we tried to keep our cables in good shape.
I highly suspect too, that Apple is using eco-friendly plastics in the cables, which might be part of why they degrade so poorly, even when not strained at the ends.
Anker probably makes the better 3rd party cables. Other brands on Amazon are far worse. I try not to buy 3rd party cables for my laptops but will by them for phones and tablets.
[0] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJWY3AM/A/magsafe-battery...
Product-wise there was a rumor that Apple will be switching to more compact GaN chargers this year, so I wonder if that will come with the Macbook Pro redesign?
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/04/apple-gan-chargers-rumo...
Anker and others have had these for a while, but one imagines the supply chain is trickier when you need to produce tens of millions of them.
He does such a great job at making tear downs like this interesting and accessible.
He has a great companion article with a cheapo charger for comparison: http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and... and a comparison of an Apple MacBook charger and a knock-off: http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...
Really fascinating stuff.
I have also noticed that the faster you charge a phone the sooner you have to re-charge it.
I don't care how long does it take to charge. How much does the charger cost doesn't matter much either.
Are iPhone chargers the best choice for me?
As of today I just use the cheapest chargers I can find because they are 1a and less.
Nevertheless, this is interesting to know. I actually wondered how are people supposed to avoid killing their batteries as slow chargers are disappearing from shops. Which seems a serious problem today as most of the modern phones don't even let you change the battery without going to an authorized service shop.
> My actual phone is about 8 years old
Amazing. I wish I had the self control to not keep buying the latest phone every couple years.
PS: I have even setup mine to switch to slow charging only if it is past 10pm and I am at home. Any other time or place, it charges at full speed. Because that is handy sometimes.
Pretty much sums up all Apple products.
Problem is, like you say, it can wear away relatively easily, depending on conditions. And they don't look anywhere near as good once dust starts building up.
Now, you can fix this (and any other cable for that matter) with some paracord and optionally some plastic sleeving (techflex or similar) and heat shrink. That's better than throwing away cables. You can also do this for aesthetics with perfectly good cables. Bunch of youtube videos on how to do this (keep in mind, most are sponsored or made by the very companies selling these).
The thing I don't understand is - colorful paracord makes the cables look great. They come in different colors, which would make a lot of sense for Apple. Protected by good plastic, they are pretty much indestructible. At scale, they obviously have access to even better materials with they could use to make their cables look unique.
And then I see cheap Chinese capacitors. Probably other passive elements are as cheap as possible.
I've replaced all my mini cube iPhone chargers with Anker GaN IQ3 nano chargers that do 18w from the same size.
How can it have a ground when the charge is a two-pronged plug?
Here's discussion from just a year ago when this was still old:
Compare that with an iPhone 10 5 years later, which came with a beefy 5W USB-A power adapter.
The idea is to have fast charging for emergencies and slow charging for regular overnight charging.
And the thing you plug into the wall isn't actually a charger, it is a power supply. The real charger is in the phone, and that's the one that decides if it needs fast or slow charging, taking into account what the power supply can deliver.
Most people change phones every 3-4 years due to many reasons, physical attrition of hardware being one of it, battery being another, overall hardware not being good enough (speed, capacity) being another.
Almost nobody cares if they can save 5% of battery over that time by charging slowly. Heck, I know I don't. It would be a different proposition if one would lose say 50% of capacity, but even folks in this thread confirm that's not the case for same hardware.
They make good quality power supplies if you have a buck.
Unfortunately, their "buy now" button links to Amazon; I don't trust Amazon not to sell me a counterfeit that will burn my house down.
I really don't get why electronic components are all made from the cheapest-possible (sometimes cheaper) stuff. When have all engineers been indoctrinated that skirting safety envelopes is a sign of genius design?