Tell HN: Apple products come with ungrounded plug in India | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Apple products come with ungrounded plug in India

54 pointscatnip0967 comments

The standard 3 pin plug is required for grounding in India but Apple do not sell chargers with 3 pin by default or include it in any of their products. If you buy a macbook and use the default charger, you will feel a slight buzz on the top of the laptop. Your ports might also shock you.

This is quite unexpected given $200-400 laptops come with a decent grounded charger here.

Kids can get shocked while touching your laptop in charging state.

Picture with current testing device: https://ibb.co/YbqtgVX

View on HN

Do you have a citation for your "unsafe" claim? Ungrounded doesn't automatically mean unsafe (or, in the UK, illegal).

In the UK we have 3-pin plugs, but different appliances have different rules about grounding; class II double-insulated devices don't need to be grounded (afaik) and this link[1] talking about macbooks says:

> "The macbook is a class III appliance, meaning that it is powered by a safety extra-low voltage supply. The low voltage guarantees that coming to contact with energized parts poses no risk in normal circumstances. The actual appliance from a safety perspective isn't the macbook, but the power brick."

[1] https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/355824

I got shocked.

Picture of testing device showing the current flow from a cable: https://ibb.co/YbqtgVX

Anything attached to the macbook port is causing shock on the exposed parts while it is plugged into that charger.

I wouldn't call it safe. If you read some of the bottom answers, they also elaborate on the same topic. Furthermore, I don't live in UK and there can be different electrical standards in terms of wiring.

I don't face this issue while using the grounded charger hence it is limited to apple charger which I double checked for missing ground support.

You can also get shocked by rubbing your feet on carpet and touching a doorknob. Are those also unsafe? Should we be panicking about our house? You’ve jumped to a wild and accusatory conclusion.

It’s nano amps at a moderately low voltage you’re able to feel, it isn’t unsafe, you just happen to be aware of it. The Apple chargers people often discuss this effect with are some of the most crazily over engineered available in terms of electrical safety and are used in every country on the planet. They have the X class capacitor which causes this effect to meet RF emissions regulations.

This is the correct response. Unfortunately it's my concern that rather than work to fix the underlying issue or learn to live with it, we'll continue to get FUD spread by people like OP. Ultimately this will lead to people going out and buying knockoff chargers with a 3rd pin and none of these EM filtering or other safety components.

I've seen this for at least 10 years come up again and again, Apple should just sell an India edition Macbook with either a plastic case or a sleeve to avoid people complaining since there's no interest in addressing the cause.

I'll have to agree with Apple defense force posters who downvoted you on this one, getting tazed is the thrill of using ungrounded appliances. By ignoring safety concerns, they can save on components, which saves on CO2 emissions.

> "By ignoring safety concerns"

OSHA have an interest in electrical safety[1] - "Electricity has long been recognized as a serious workplace hazard. OSHA's electrical standards are designed to protect employees exposed to dangers such as electric shock," and they call out ground faults: "The following hazards are the most frequent causes of electrical injuries: contact with power lines, lack of ground-fault protection, path to ground missing or discontinuous".

You could be a hero by reporting every macbook using company to OHSA. Let me know when you do, I'd like to read what they decide.

[1] https://www.osha.gov/electrical

I have owned a ~2012 metal macbook pro in the past and felt the buzzing as it was charging, and would not call that effect a shock (there was no spark, it never hurt, I never got burned or needed a doctor's visit), so if you are being shocked then your situation sounds worse - and different to the buzz most people are talking about with respect to metal macbooks.

(As a kid there were some field telephones[1] in the house, they are ex-military phones you wire directly to each other and they have hand-wound generators which power the other side to ring; we used to play a game of "how long can you touch the contacts while winding it" - that was uncomfortable but had no safety effects that I know of (no burns, bruises, doctor's visits, etc). Even being shocked is not automatically unsafe, although it may be unpleasant and undesirable from any consumer product, let alone premium ones).

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=field+telephone&iax=images&...

Did you read the part about "feel a buzz"

Yes, and?

People put their hands on Van de Graaf generators[1], people buy electric shock buzzers from joke shops[2], people stand on body-fat measuring scales which send electric current through your body to measure its conductivity and estimate fat content, people touch vehicles on humid days and get static electric shocks, people use electric shock to the brain as a therapy[3].

The safety risks I'm aware of are alternating current across your heart strong enough to override the heartbeat signals and make it quiver instead of beat normally (e.g. touching mains power with both hands, current flow through the chest), and enough current flow to cause flesh burns (extreme examples: lightning strike, touching electricity substations). I'm not aware that "feeling a buzz" is inherently a safety risk without any more context or explanation.

[1] https://assets.fishersci.com/TFS-Assets/CCG/product-images/F...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/IDS-Electric-Shock-Buzzer-Classic/dp/...

[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/sherwin_nuland_how_electroshock_th...

It's not the first time we hear about people getting electric shock from their Macbooks. And not just in India.

I've had this with all my Apple laptops over the last decade or so at least. Even my current 2021 M1 Air.

There's usually a tacky staticky feel to either side of the touchpad when it is plugged in.

I know from a previous Mac that had this that using the extension power cord it comes with stops it. Meanwhile if I make contact with the wife's arm with one hand she can tell when I touch and remove my other hand from the Air.

It isn't one of the things I find impressive about Apple, but I live with it.

What country are you in, and what charger are you using? US 2-prong?

I saw this once with a 2009 MacBook Pro when using the charger with the 2-prong adapter. A 3-prong grounded adapter would fix it.

My 2021 M1 Air has it now, as I type. It's a standard UK 3 prong plug going into one of the Thunderbolt ports.

My remaining older laptop, a 2012 Air with MagSafe, also has it. Unless I add in the power adaptor extension cable.

For clarity no non-Apple device does this, including several (now retired) Chromebooks and ThinkPads over recent years.

What happens if you touch exposed grounded metal on your Thinkpad (housing of a USB port, maybe)?

Only ever happened with my Apple stuff, and no longer have the ThinkPad to try your suggestion.

Same here (Luxembourg, Europe).

Apparently, this is not uncommon issue. The solution is to buy another cable from apple.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/oxvp3f/grounding_my_ma...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17575/how-to-prope...

Do not use the standard charger if you can feel buzz on top of your laptop. Find a replacement and use it.

I'm using a separate USB type c charger which does not have the issue with proper ground support (came with my $400 windows laptop).

While the buzz on top might be tame, the ports can result in more shock.

Seems like your first posted link says the opposite actually:

> TL;DR Chargers are grounded to neutral. The tingle you feel is the few mV of potential of neutral to actual ground due to slight misalignment of the three phases (R, S, T) which are combined into neutral. Your equipment is fine. This becomes life threatening only on ancient indoor electrical installations without an earth leakage relay which are illegal in most of the world and, frankly, can kill you in many more ways than a freak failure of the power distribution to your building. And no, Apple can't sell you something that's not following your local laws regarding equipment requirements.

Actual electrical (ok, electronics) engineer here. Our team, including myself, has the capability to design stuff like the MacBook power supplies, though that's not our strength and we'd not be the best choice to do it. But we can do it.

>Chargers are grounded to neutral.

JESUS FUCK NO NO NO NEVER NO DO NOT DO THIS EVER THIS IS LETHAL NO NO NO (stop emoji) (death emoji) (stop emoji)

So you can kind of get away with this in the US, where electricians generally know how to wire outlets, and get neutral versus hot correct. But they sometimes screw up. And when they screw up, if you're dumb enough to "ground to neutral", you get 120 V AC to earth on your chassis. THIS IS JUST WAITING TO KILL SOMEONE. PEOPLE CAN AND WILL DIE IF YOU DO THIS. (Accordingly, it's not permitted, and if you take this bullshit to a NRTL, they had better fail your ass.) In Europe it's even worse: electricians don't bother to distinguish hot and neutral, to the point where they insist on fusing both lines of everything that gets fused. So in Europe this is a 50% chance of getting something lethal when it's plugged in.

So, uh, in short: this had fucking well better not be what Apple did, and even if they tried it, NEVER DO IT YOURSELF because IT CAN AND WILL KILL.

(More likely they're just using isolation and allowing build up of stray charge instead of dumping it to earth like usual, because they didn't bring in the earth conductor. Which is annoying but not going to get anyone hurt.)

question. if you feel that faint buzz on your chassis with a 3 pinned connector, does it mean that your ground isnt grounded?

I'd check into that, yeah. There's a possibility that it's just capacitively coupled, which is unlikely to be a problem. Also could be weird building wiring, which happens more often than you'd think. Or it could be weak insulation somewhere, though that's less likely.

In any case I wouldn't be too worried. Maybe check it out with a few different receptacles and consider getting a receptacle tester if that turns up something interesting. I kind of hate Apple, but their chargers set the benchmark for the industry. I doubt they're your problem.

I’m not discounting what you are saying, but this has been the case for years. I’m not sure how long for but I’m betting I began to feel the buzz 8+ years ago on laptops. if people were going to die I think we would have seen this by now.

Agreed, which means the Reddit poster is thoroughly wrong.

I'm mostly trying to discourage anyone who comes across this from trying to "ground" anything to neutral, because it's bad. Very, very bad. (And taking an opportunity to mock European electricians, who have done more damage than they know.)

I can't speak for Indian electrical standards, but here in Ireland, we use the UK plug design and most phone chargers (and many laptop chargers) have a plastic/non conductive ground pin. Ground pins are not used because the chargers are Class II devices[1] with double insulation, and thus do not require a grounding pin. The third pin is still included on our plugs because there are shutters on the sockets which require the ground pin to be inserted first to open the shutters on the live and neutral holes on the socket.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appliance_classes#Class_II

I have felt a sting many times over the years just below my palm on my right wrist. At first I thought Apple had just designed quite the sharp edge on the MacBook but over time I realized it was a slight electric shock.

In most countries 90-120 V DC (!) is still considered safe to touch, so you could even electrify the whole body with the 20 V from the charger. And you can't really "feel" 20 V DC even when touching it. is I'd wager what causes the shocking is not the voltage from the charger but static electricity buildup, due to the missing groundplane connection in the chassis. The voltages for such a buildup can be much higher (many kV) but the amount of charge is tiny. You nerves can feel it but it won't harm you due to the small amount of charge transferred [1]. How this charge gets there is another matter, there are many high-frequency components in a laptop that can induce charges in the chassis though.

So definitely not a safety hazard, more an annoyance.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_discharge

Every MacBook with metal enclosure from the last 15 years had the "buzzing". Quite a few people reported it to Apple, but nothing ever came of that, so Apple doesn't seem to think it's a problem.

It happens with both USB-C charging and MagSafe, but the intensity varies.

I would consider it slightly unpleasant, but have never heard about anyone getting an electric shock.

How come mine doesn’t do this? (2020 mbp, standard 2prong charger, often plugged into very old receptacles or extension cords)

And it doesn't happen all the time. I have 2 MBPs (one is 7 years old, the other is brand new) and with both I have felt the "buzz"... But not every time. I cannot tell under what circumstances it happens. I have never used chargers/cables other than the Apple ones.

I had this experience years ago with an older Mac but not recently... until my M2 Air arrived. It buzzes when you touch it while it is charging - hate that sensation.

Apple chargers are weird. The mains connector is an IEC C7 / C8 connector, but there is an extra metal tab alongside that can provide ground but does not always.

My M1 MacBook Pro came with a UK plug, in which the slot in the top of the plug for the tab is entirely plastic. So, as it came out of the box it is not grounded.

I am using a mains extension lead that connects to the charger where the plug goes; its slot has metal connectors on either side that you can see if you look into the slot from the direction that the tab goes in. So, with the extension lead, the charger is grounded.

I noticed the mains buzz feeling in the case of my old MacBook when I used an ungrounded charger. I have only used my M1 with the grounded mains extension lead, and there is no tingle.

Are you sure you've got an actual mac charger? Mine has always been 2 pronged, and used it in Scandinavia where we - for a lack of a better word - have very good electricity.

Then one day I bought a cheap knock-off charger and instantly felt a tingling when touching the chassis.

Right from the new macbook box. This issue is likely regional because apple sell chargers with different socket depending on the region. Some of them probably have proper grounding support despite being 2 pin.

I experienced this recently, and switched to using the grounded charger.

The tip of the charger that connects to the laptop the whole metal part, not just the leads) was quite noticeably electrified, while the laptop case only barely.

I'm not sure what the cause was in this particular case, as I had never noticed it doing that before.

If you buy them in France, I believe they do come with 3 pin chargers. They used to anyway.

But yeah, their aluminium body used to sock me every so often with their 2 pin chargers in the us. Was always kinda surprised they never sold 3 pin chargers like in any other developped county !

Had the same buzz on all my MacBooks in Germany for over a decade.

Doesn’t happen to mine in USA at all and my houses wiring is very old.

Do you have any idea how little this means, despite repeating it in at least 2 comments I've seen so far? Am I going to see a 3rd and 4th copy of this same comment further down?

It means nothing at all.

It also has nothing to do with the age of your house wiring.

Congradulations on either winning the binning lottery, or simply being insensitive to the sensation.

The number of people reporting the phenomenon are not all hallucinating, nor all doing something wrong that you're doing right.

You simply got a slightly better unit.

Or actually possibly a worse one, since the cause is actually good insulation, and a slight leak (contamination like leftover flux or an old spilled drink or literally anything like dust or a bug on the pcb surface bridging traces) could be what's keeping your case drained to neutral rather that building up a charge.

Manufacturing variance is the most uninteresting non-mystery in the world.

Different people's different levels of sensitivity or perceptiveness is also a non-mystery.

"Why don't I feel it?" For a hundred possible reasons, none of which are "because the problem doesn't exist"

The question is, does the problem exist in a normally functioning unit? Am in the majority or the minority here? If I’m in the majority, and most people don’t have this problem, then I think it seems like an unfair generalization to say with certainty that all macs have this problem which is what some commenters seem to imply. I was trying to debunk the idea going around here that all Macbooks do this because they dont.

People in this post (multiple threads) seem to think a little shock that doesn’t kill you is not necessarily unsafe. This is mind boggling to me. If one is getting shocked at all, this goes to show some sort of fault in a given device or in the household in which it’s being used period. It’s not safe because it doesn’t kill you lol.

Also — cool it with the subtle racism

There are hundreds of other thing in any household that can cause harm if used wrong. Any scissors or knife for example. Touching any exposed ports is something you just should never do.

OP is saying he got shockers from peripherals…

(just an example of other manufacturer) Same Lenovo laptop model comes with grounded Schuko plug in Europe and ungrounded 2-pin in US (and probably Japan). I owned both verisons. Both make noise to audio output and mess up cursor while charging (not when 100%). Plug difference is probably a certification issue.

"Buzzing or tingling feeling when touching a metal case"

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/design/power#wi...

Same in France for an M1 air, never got a shock but the buzz is always there.

That doesn’t really make sense to me. Although the charger may be grounded, any device connected is fully isolated and I’ve never seen a laptop charger with a earth wire on the dc side.

In chargers with a ground the negative DC rail is connected to ground internally for suppression. In chargers without a ground the neutral AC pin is capacitively coupled to the DC output for RF suppression, which is what people are complaining about in this thread- the small amount of leakage that capacitor causes.

This is only allowed with an Y rated safety capacitor in most countries, or not allowed at all.

Fake, or genuine, but still bad Y caps are everywhere.

My mistake, thanks for the correction

If you get the longer extended power cord, this one IS grounded ;)

If you have an unpolarized socket, then reversing the plug may help. You'd then have live and neutral on a different pin.

When I plug the mickey-mouse connector into my Mac Studio, the inrush current regularly causes a brief arc to ground that trips the GFCI.

Very nice.

That isn’t what is happening, the connectors you’re talking about absolutely can not cause an arc to ground from live. They have gigantic clearances to make sure that there’s nothing tracking or arcing unless you are at the bottom of the ocean or something. If the inrush from a very small switching power supply is causing your GFCI to trip you have some other fault in your electrical setup.

I haven't sufficient electrical engineering knowledge to know why this happens, but:

- It only happens with the Mac Studio, I've never seen another device do this.

- It happens whether I use the original supplied cable or not

- A 30mA GFCI doesn't take much to trip, so I can imagine a little arc flash from the phase pins can create enough plasma sputter to then arc to ground

- It's certainly a ground fault as it only happens on GFCI protected circuits

- It's not a fault in my electrical installation, that has been checked recently now.

- It can be reproduced if plugged into any GFCI protected circuit, at home, in the office, a friends house

Some random ideas of mine:

- Perhaps Apple haven't adhered to the specs around the "gigantic clearances"

- The pins on the socket-side have this same matt-like finish the rest of the Aluminium body does, perhaps this has something to do with it.

Maybe the Mac is the straw that breaks the camels back. You might have other leakages elsewhere (water heating is always a good one) that just fall below the threshold…and the Mac tips it over the GFCI? Way to check would be to disconnect / isolate earthing downstream of GFCI and try with Mac then.. also to measure the GFCI leakage current (electricians usually have the instrumentation to do so)

The fault only happens the instant the connector mates with the back of the mac. If I connect the cable into back first then plug it into the wall socket, there's no issue.

It's very likely an AFCI not a GFCI which are known to trip super easy. Stuff as simple as the arcing on a brushed motor (in vacuum cleaners) are known to cause them to trip. Any houses built within past 10 years or so are going to have this kind of circuit breaker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc-fault_circuit_interrupter

Can confirm. Feels slight electric shock while on AC

I thought, I was the only one had shocking problem.

You can resolve the issue by getting this apple cable: https://www.amazon.in/Apple-MK122HN-Power-Adapter-Extension/...

I suggest reading the reviews since some people got the wrong ungrounded version of cable on amazon.

Apple India support is aware of the issue.

Apple is no longer a product company and now a peripheral company lol. They are literally selling shit that causes shocks and their solution is for you to purchase another cable of theirs…

They take away ports and sell dongles that require additional dongles. They sell laptops and phones — well over thousands of dollars — without adapters because it’s “environmentally safe”, just to have most people purchase it separately. Such a shit company; I say this a person that owns almost everything in Apple flagship lol

They seem to work ok for me!

The ground is there to protect humans against an electrical fault by shunting enough current to trip the breaker and shut off the power.

If you feel an electric shock from touching the MacBook while plugged in, there's a fault in your electric system. You need to have a professional electrician come out and look at it, immediately. Delaying or not doing so is waiting for a disaster to happen. You may now be liable too, because you know there's a problem and didn't fix it.

Why? No idea, but get your shit fixed before someone gets hurt.

> If you feel an electric shock from touching the MacBook while plugged in, there's a fault in your electric system.

It means isolation on the charger is faulty.

A properly working modern charger should not have any galvanic connection to the grid.

The isolation transformer is likelly to be defective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com