my biggest gripe with wireless so far, and this might be specific to galaxy buds+ is that their batteries suck after a years use. otherwise, all the things you describe are why they're great.
I can't count the number of times I have done this very thing.
luckily, apple has you covered. you just need $19.99. /s
that would be a weird idea though. 1/4 TRS female -> magsafe-male magsafe-female -> 1/4 TRS male. i'm guessing it would look like a sort of inline coupler or similar in final design. essentially, it should be totally doable. i look forward to your pitch on Shark Tank, er, to YC, yeah, that's what I meant.
I wonder if, in the future, we could have household wall sockets and extension cords with "sense pins" ala USB PD; where the mains-voltage live "rail" isn't energized unless a device hops on the logic-level control rail and negotiates for it. Then we could truly live in a MagSafe-everything world. (Then again, to block that kind of current, they'd probably need to use relays and other non-solid-state parts, so they might not be the most durable things...)
Did the end of the cable not have recessed "pins" specifically to avoid accidental shorting? Seems like it would never be U/L certified without some safety.
Yes and no. MagSafe is safe because of the sense current and the handshake; but it's able to do that because it's just not driving very much wattage through the cable; it's low enough that it can direct the power with a simple transistor.
To make mains-voltage AC cords do that, you need a lot more than a transistor. A 1500W current (from e.g. a microwave, or a kettle) can arc a gap much wider than most transistors are printed at. Which is why, in even the most modern smart-home remote light-switch doodads, mains-voltage gets toggled using relays, rather than anything solid-state.
It's lovely to say "just do what MagSafe does", but with electricity, "quantity has a quality all its own" — i.e. very different engineering challenges to overcome.
> Did the end of the cable not have recessed "pins" specifically to avoid accidental shorting?
It has recessed pins (pads, actually), but only barely (by about 5mm); basically to the point that a round metal table leg could make contact with the live pad within the recess.
And, as far as I can tell, there's no sense logic in the cable, either. No click of a relay coming from the cable when it gets connected; and no place for a transformer to live (not that it needs one—it's a hotplate, i.e. a big thick piece of iron you run mains-voltage AC current through.)
There is a relay inside the hotplate itself, which roughly acts as a thermostat (rather than a rheostat) to toggle the coil on and off to keep the cheese at temperature. You can hear it ticking on and off, and an indicator light goes on and off along with it.
But for that logic to work, the cable has to be drawing power to power it. So, AFIACT, the cable itself is always live.
There's an auxiliary benefit as well in that a backpack seems to be way better for my back than a shoulder bag.
For one, if you're carrying enough crap isn't a backpack more ergonomic (assuming you wear both straps and aren't one-strapping it like the cool guy you are)
"Vestis virum facit", or clothes make the man is extraordinarily powerful in business and social dealings. Clothes signal a lot of information quickly. So this isn't about you caring what other people think, it's about how what other people care about affect your options. I could prescribe a few experiments to witness the differences directly but I'll tell you from personal experience that the A-B differences are stark.
There was a time when I was younger that I raged against this rule, but it's a youthful variation of "old man yells at cloud". You can try and create a new reality in your head and believe it fervently, and cut your nose to spite your face, but image matters greatly to other people, at a deep level.
If I need a job done, I couldn't care less if the person who is able to do it wears a backpack or not.
FWIW I think messenger bags are shitty design and think people who use them just don't know any better.