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Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

0n the return on MagSafe: they should have let Jony "Form over Function" Ive go much sooner. Maybe we'd still have audio jacks on iPhones.

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I can't believe I'm saying this but now that all my devices charge via usb-c I don't actually want magsafe that much now I can bring one cable and change all my portables and mac + razer laptops. Not worth it for me to lug around another cable just for magsafe.

My MagSafe cord for the 2021 MBP stays at home and it's USB-C while on the go. Still, the return of MagSafe is welcome just so folks have the option.

The best of both worlds would probably be a magnetically detachable USB-C cable. There are such cables out there but they have very very bad quality, at least those few I've tried.

The best of both worlds is what we have today - you can use either magsafe or the usb-c ports, so you have the extra safety if you bring the extra cable, or the extra convenience if you can't be bothered. There's some third-party offerings out there for magsafe-style USB cables.

That's what the new magsafe cable basically is. A magnetic USB-C cable that (probably) isn't garbage quality.

The improved battery life with M1 is so good that I pretty much only plug in when I'm at my desk. Most of the situations in which MagSafe saved me before (and there were plenty) I'm just not using a charger at all, now. And at my desk, I'm plugging into my monitor, not directly into a wall outlet. In fact, I almost never plug my Air into its charging brick at all.

I got a 3rd party GAN charger with 2 USB-C ports and a USB-A port. I can use it for charging everything, and super easy to pack when traveling.

You actually have the option to just use any USB-C charger in the 3 USB-C ports though, at least on my work 14-inch M1 Pro MBP. I just keep the MagSafe charger in my backpack, because those are the situations where I'd want it (rather than at home... though with my dog, maybe I should get more MagSafe cables).

Would you be OK with a USB-C to MagSafe adapter?

I totally get your point and can't disagree with it. But I really love the magsafe connector for power. It's just so nice. usb-c feels slow clunky in comparison. Just for a straight power supply use case, I think magsafe is superior to usb-c.

So I wonder if anyone is contemplating an adapter? There's probably going to be too much of a mismatch of power requirements or something to make it viable.

I am 100% with you. To add to this, in my two work environments (office and home), my laptop is charged via my monitor with a single cable. WTF would I want an additional cable? My magsafe adaptor went into the drawer as soon as I got it. Magsafe made the charger included in my m1 macbook pro _less useful_. My previous charger was great for vacations as it could charge my ipad, nintendo switch, headphones, or laptop.

That said I'm sure it's nice for _someone_.

Edit: I just realized that the magsafe connector can be disconnected from the brick, and a standard usb type-c cable can be used thusly making the charger as useful as the old one, provided you buy an admittedly cheap in the big picture cable.

A permanent setup where you charge via your monitor (or some other desk-based equivalent) is incredibly convenient, but that's not the only context in which these things get used. If you're on the couch, in a café, school, or whatever else, the magsafe bit is amazing. It's also the sort of feature that you don't give a damn about until it saves you - my parents' dogs tossed my iBook 12" on the floor many times by tripping on the power cord, and that stopped being a problem with the first magsafe mac I got.

I'd have been just as happy if they'd given us another USB-C port. It was unacceptable that to get more than 2 free USB ports, you had to spend $2k on the 2021 MBP.

Airpods are pretty awesome. Have some trouble with switching between devices but still pretty great.

I actually run with Garmin (Spotify & downloaded music) + Airpods.

Back in the day when laptops still came with a CD/DVD drive by default I had a customer with a broken MacBook that didn't power on at all, and some expensive disc was stuck in the drive.

Pretty much all disc drives that have been produced in the history of disc drives come with a little pinhole where you can stick in a paperclip to manually push the opening mechanism exactly for this kind of scenario, so you can recover your disc if your computer or drive fails.

Except Apple computers, of course, because such a useful piece of functionality would be ugly and an abomination unto Saint Jobs, or something. So I had to spend a few hours opening up that MacBook that very clearly wasn't designed with "opening up" in mind. I was lucky this machine wasn't in warranty and dead, so putting it back together wasn't really a concern.

Pretty sure those had a release, it just required sticking the pin in the right place in the disc drive opening.

I have used to take CDs or 3 of drives with that hole and paperclip a great many times. Once I faced this issue with 2009 MacBook (white plastic one), I managed to pull the disk out of its drive with a very thin pliers.

It's not like those Macbooks were all that difficult to take apart. I know I took mine apart to remove the DVD drive to replace it with an SSD.

It was something like this: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-u...

It's stupid if you need to do it in the first place, and/or that you need to hire an IT person to do it for you. What if it was still in warranty? What if you wanted it repaired? If you needed that disc you were screwed until the Apple Certified™ repair centre could do their thing.

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