Macs can now inform Apple if any liquids have been detected in the USB-C ports | Hacker News Reader

Macs can now inform Apple if any liquids have been detected in the USB-C ports

9to5mac.com

220 pointsmmastrac340 comments

This is a feature of newer usb-c pd chipsets.

See, e.g., https://www.ti.com/product/TPS25751 in the features section.

Apple has historically used TI chipsets for their USB power controllers. The feature likely comes from this.

How it works (on page 52):

"The TPS25751 supports liquid detection by measuring the voltage level across the SBU pins of the Type-C connector. When a short occurs across the SBU pins to another Type-C pin(s), the TPS25751 takes action to protect the the Type-C port by disabling the power paths and notifies the embedded controller when applicable. Once liquid has been detected, the TPS25751 continuously monitors the SBU voltage. During the SBU voltage monitoring, if the liquid/short is no longer present the TPS25751 takes action to return to normal operation."

In other words, it's not actually detecting "liquids" but more of any conductive short. Non-conductive liquids, like oils and many other petroleum products, won't be detected.

Dumb question: wouldn't non-conductive liquids be harmless? i.e., the USB port can in theory work even if it is immersed in some non-conductive liquid, no?

Non-conductive liquids still might be corrosive, or might provide enough thermal insulation to cause heat build-up, or might leave some kind of residue that would be problematic, or...

Or dissolve plastics and rubber, maybe delaminate circuit boards, destroy any tape and glue...

Sure, this is the same principle of, eg, the mineral oil cooled PC: https://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc/

Also some companies like 3M actually make a collection of liquids specifically for immersion cooling in data centres, so it's mature enough that people are happy to use it even in a data centre setting.

Very mature, going back to at least 1985 in the Cray-2.

I wonder if any of those coolant varieties survived the recent jihad against fluorochemicals. AFAIK 3M is out of the business entirely at this point.

> Dumb question: wouldn't non-conductive liquids be harmless?

Mostly yes, except for things like concentrated sulfuric acid which is highly corrosive but a bad conductor.

Agree: bad conductor - https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/153107/why-doe...

I'll keep that in mind.

Somewhere, a YouTube content creator scribbles Macbook Pro in concentrated sulphuric acid.

(And I'd probably watch it).

As long as we get a Steve Mould cross-section made from 3D printed parts, I’m on board!

NileRed for HN, paging NileRed for a video about non conductive liquids in USBC PD

NileRed: I turned this MacBook Pro into Cotton Candy!

At least bigstackD can recover the aluminum afterward.

Is Codys Lab ok?

I guess I won't be liquid cooling my setup with concentrated sulfuric acid then

Wise.

This is definitely the next "Cooling Adventures with Alex" video on Linus Tech Tips.

Well, the device can't make heat if the device no longer exists I guess...

But you would need to make sure that the pins still contact though.

Would depend on the nature of the liquids. A harmless liquid can still damage the plastic or be toxic for the owner.

Does the USB-C specification allow that? Can such devices get USB-C certification?

OTOH, I haven't seen any USB certifications on Apple USB cables or devices, so most likely Apple doesn't care.

Although Apple is a board member of USB-IF, at least their cables are indeed not USB-IF certified.

Why would that not be allowed? In isolation, not running power through a short seems like a great safety feature for the hardware.

This is a standard feature of all Smartphones with IPxx certification. It prevents corrosion on the connector contacts.

Yes: because Apple actually got this added to the spec: https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb-type-cr-cable-and-c... which is the real story IMO (I am impressed no one bothered looking at the Type-C spec update after the Type-C iPhone finally came out)

This actually replaced the analog audio mode (good riddance- whoever thought adding analog audio into a port that also does digital audio was a good idea?)

Me with an analog headphone?

The problem is that it's a rather confusing Alt Mode.

Basically, it's only supposed to be used for USB-C-to-3.5mm adapters, and it was only implemented by some smartphones. It's not a reliable way to get audio out of a USB-C port, and because it's using the internal DAC the audio quality isn't going to be good anyways.

The proper solution is to use a USB DAC. This provides the same user experience but it actually works with all USB-C devices. Considering the official Apple USB DAC is available for $9, the Audio Alt Mode really doesn't have a reason to exist.

For an iPhone...

Unless I'm misunderstanding the mode, there could be uses to get audio out of a USB port that don't involve phones...

Why is it confusing or bad? Sure, it sacrifices a data line pair, but the same can be said of DisplayPort Alt Mode - if you want 4K@60Hz on DP 1.2 you need to sacrifice USB3.0.

The ability to make this tradeoff should be up to the user.

Thanks. I didn’t know that that connector actually contained a DAC.

So it's a software visible GFCI circuit. Not super interesting, though sure, if the chip does it the OS should probably listen. The spin in the article about how this is all because of warranty denial revenue is pretty weird though.

Really nitpicky, but not really a GFCI.

The USB connector is detecting a short circuit--a direct connection between the two pins--and cutting power while the condition is present. If you wanted to put this in terms of household electrical, this would be closest to a self-resetting breaker. (And actually, most devices you have already _have_ this. There's usually a self-resetting fuse/PTC thermistor protecting your USB ports from over-current conditions. The only novel thing here seems to be that it's done in software.)

A GFCI, meanwhile, works by detecting in imbalance between the hot and neutral lines. The amount of current flowing through one should match the amount flowing through the other. If power is being drawn through the hot pin but not returning through the neutral, it has to be going _somewhere_ and it's not where we intended it to go. It cuts the power off rather than let it continue to flow out and find a path to ground through your kitchen sink/etc.

Even more nitpicky: that's totally a GFCI. You "detect a short circuit", by definition, by detecting current flowing between pins that shouldn't carry current. GFCI is the same thing, just for the special case of three-wire power delivery where all it needs to do is test one ground line.

Gelman amnesia and all that…

Even more nitpicky: it’s not a GFCI because GFCI does not detect current leakage between pins that shouldn’t carry current. It measures current imbalance between pins that should be carrying current.

The distinction is that a real GFCI (which this USB port is not) does not care whether the imbalance is returning through a third conductor on the power cord or some other path.

If this were a real GFCI, it would be able to detect when current flows out through the case, to your hand, though your body and then back though the puddle of watch you’re standing in.

That’s not what this is doing. It is measuring unexpected current between the pins within the port for the purpose of avoiding galvanic corrosion (the hint is in the daemon name reported by macrumors).

Thanks for posting this. I was curious how they were able to detect liquid in the USB port

The binary is at "/System/Library/CoreServices/liquiddetectiond". I took a quick look at disassembly, it has some functions for getting voltage, an amusingly named selector called "setIsWet". There's an "AnalyticsSendEvent" in there (and some corresponding obj-c methods). Maybe marcan will do a deeper disassembly one day. There's some reference to TI stuff in the selector names so you're probably right about that.

Kinda surprising they need an entire process for this...

Smells of bad engineering - do they also have a batteryislowd? or a someonepressedtheMkeyonthekeyboardd?

They do indeed have a lot (dozens) of small, single purpose daemon processes in modern macOS. Many of them access the network, too.

Over the years those processes have also frequently–at least for me–been the answer to “where did all my battery life go and why is my laptop so hot?”, as they’d rarely but inexplicably go haywire and peg the cpu at 100% until being killed manually.

Depends on what you're optimizing for. Good for security and stability, bad for performance.

> someonepressedtheMkeyonthekeyboardd

"Pages would like to access the 'M' key"

"Open System Preferences" "Deny"

FWIW, liquid (pin-shortage) detection on the USB-port is a standard feature of all Smartphones with IPxx water-ingress certification.

It prevents the device from applying/draining power from any pin in such a state, mainly to reduce corrosion of the contacts and increase longevity.

(Without such a mechanism, an IPxx device may be unable to charge within a few weeks as the contacts of the connector can deteriorate quite fast)

As to why Apple ported the daemon from iOS to macOS....well, for sure a good indicator to reduce warranty repair-costs...

On iOS you can thankfully override it (the alert dialog lets you do it) in case of an emergency - which is pretty handy if you’ve had the phone in the pool/shower and really need to charge it and don’t have a blow dryer to hand.

Less frequent of an issue for laptops I would hope :D

Now that override is something I would log as a vendor, because THAT's when the corrosion happens on the connector...

Yes, it is, and most of them get it from the same chipsets :) They are not making their own, it's a function of the controller of the USB-C PD port they use.

IMO it's dirty pool for Apple to advertise their products as waterproof (IP68) and then even if a drop of water gets on the external case, they will refuse to honor the warranty, even if the water has nothing to do with the problem.

They don't even want to perform out of warranty, paid repairs if any of the liquid sensors are tripped. A few years back I had an MBP that the battery had worn out on, but several years before, I had spilled some water on the keyboard. The computer was none the worse for wear -- I dried it out quickly and it was fine, but when the battery wore out and I wanted it replaced, they wanted me to pay $1500 for a new motherboard before they would be willing to replace the battery.

To add another anecdote, Apple refused to honor the warranty on an AirPod Pro with sweat-related damage. Nevermind that it's supposed to be "sweat and water resistant", they seem to treat any kind of liquid damage as user error anyway. Luckily it was from Costco, so I just returned it and switched to Shockz.

>even if a drop of water gets on the external case, they will refuse to honor the warranty

This is both not true and so hyperbolic it's ridiculous. IP68 is only colloquially "waterproof" as none of the IP ratings have an indefinite exposure time.

There are liquid sensors in the ports, and if a drop of water gets on them, they will turn red and Apple will refuse to honor your warranty. Apple claims the iPhone is waterproof to 6 meters for 30 minutes, but if you put your phone in one inch of water for one second, your warranty is void.

This is not true. I fully submerged my phone in a pool and took video underwater and they replaced it under warranty.

Replaced it for what damage/failure ?

That’s not really relevant. OP said they would deny any warranty work if there was even a drop of water on the outside. I’m proving that hyperbole isn’t true.

My iPhone (SE, 2nd gen) is used with reckless abandon in the bath and shower. I’ve dropped it in a river, even. (Very lucky it didn’t sink before I could grab it.)

I have had the battery replaced under warranty without issue.

> I fully submerged my phone in a pool and took video underwater

Is that on Youtube or similar? :)

This is categorically untrue. What you’re mistaking is the difference between the exterior port powering down to prevent corrosion and the tags they use to tell when the device is no longer waterproof (e.g. because the seals have failed or there’s a crack).

I know this because we’ve used our iPhone 11s for years in the pool, bath, etc. and never had an issue on a warranty status or battery replacement. They do check that for battery repairs because of the safety issues but you won’t get it for any use which doesn’t result in water inside the case.

Wait wait wait, they advertise the iPhone as waterproof but still void the warranty and won’t fix it if their waterproofing fails? We lost the headphone jack for this?

This is Mac, not iPhone.

Read the first paragraph:

>> Apple’s limited warranty doesn’t cover damage caused by liquids, even for water-resistant products like the iPhone, Apple Watch, and some AirPods models.

That's because it's a warranty - it covers faults, not damages. If you want apple to fork out for a new one because you've dived into the sea with the phone on an armband then you need to pony up for Apple Care +

If you sell a device as waterproof and then it gets damaged by water, that’s obviously a fault: it wasn’t waterproof like it was meant to be.

Who is selling a waterproof phone. Because it’s not Apple.

My iPhone 15 was advertised as meeting IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes) and Apple even publishes a handy list of their products and how water resistant/proof they are:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108039

> Because it’s not Apple.

It is.

That's IP68 Water Resistance. That's not the same thing as Waterproof.

Water resistant not proof - no consumer product is going to be sold as water proof if the seal can be broken by undoing a few screws to change battery or repair.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108039

> These iPhone models are splash, water, and dust resistant and were tested under controlled laboratory conditions...

iPhones are sold as IP67 or 68. Terms like water resistant and waterproof are too ambiguous.

Not sure what you're referring to. The parent comment specifically mentioned iPhones, waterproofing (not a Mac feature), losing headphone jack (not true of Macs). I was clarifying this article is about Macs, not iPhones.

My android pixel 7 reported water ingress in the usb port during a hike to kinder scout in the peak district (UK). It was raining lightly, but mostly there was a very thick fog / mist / drizzle that didn't really fall from the sky or land on you, rather it enveloped and coated you such that you were soaked.

I'd only removed my phone from my waterproof jacket pocket on two occasions to verify GPS location as I was still using a laminated map and compass.

This weather descended on me in about 10 minutes, I did not choose to be soaked.

Sounds like taking an iPhone camping in parts of the UK where the weather can do this is now an absolute no.

The pixel was fine btw, didn't stop working, and as soon as the air was less like soup it told me the water had cleared. Wouldn't want that to have been a warranty voiding event on a newer device though (I'm probably already out of warranty).

I don't think it's to void the warranty, it's just that the phone will refuse to charge (and blare an alarm if you try) in order to prevent corrosion when using the USB-C port wet.

Conversely my iPhone 13 Pro was taken all round the world and been soaked through, frozen and dropped tens of times in snow and a river. The clear TPU case looked like a water puzzle on a regular basis.

Apple replaced the battery in it last week without a whimper and I expect they would do the same in the future.

If I did this to my MacBook they probably would not. Which is the point.

My Iphone 12 recently spent a full night in a gutter during a rainstorm, water rushing over it. It was completely fine, didn't even seem to bother the hotspot.

Wonder how my warranty's doing.

I keep trying to conjure stories for how this happened.

My favorite is that you were lying passed out in a gutter all night with water rushing over you. And the phone. But you only mentioned the phone. lol.

How is your warranty doing? ;-)

Ha. Not the parent but most likely it fell out of their pocket while on the roof - perhaps cleaning said gutters - and wasn’t noticed until later.

I did something similar many years ago with a Motorola razr phone. I was digging trenches for an irrigation system. I checked for my phone a day later and had no idea where it went. My best guess is that it fell out of my pocket and into the trench, which was subsequently covered up.

I joke that one day a more advanced civilization will dig up this ancient artifact, wonder what its purpose could have been, and make up some fantastical story after the fact as to why it ended up in that shallow trench.

In some places they call the the concrete curb that water flows down to a river or a stream a gutter, that sounds more like the usage in this case.

How could you possibly conclude that taking an iPhone camping is an "absolute no" from article that's just about how they have a safety feature to prevent you from charging in situations where charging might cause corrosion

A sibling comment mentioned that the wording covers iPhone, and that usb port water ingress is warranty voiding... This is how I possibly conclude that taking the phone to an environment like that would be a no, if one cared about the warranty and cover from Apple (pay of the advantage of purchasing from Apple)

Where does Apple say that USB port water ingress is warranty voiding? The only thing the article says is that the warranty doesn't cover water damage... there's nothing to suggest that water in the USB port means an automatically void warranty from what I can see?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38923190

That doesn't say "Apple considers the warranty void if water ends up in the USB port", that says "Apple's warranty doesn't cover water damage".

EDIT: to be clear, the warranty can absolutely be a factor! Depending on your situation, having a phone with a warranty (or maybe insurance) which covers water damage could be a good idea! It's just not as simple "water detected in USB port -> warranty void", and this "prevent charging when there's water in the port" thing seems to be there not to insta-void your warranty but to prevent water damage

They claim it's water damage no matter the issue as soon as the indicators are triggered, though.

Source?

Yes but the triggers are inside the phone, not inside the port. This detection is only for liquid in the port so as to prevent corrosion and damage to the port itself.

You don't necessarily need rain exposure. When I'm actively hiking, and especially during colder conditions, heavy condensation forms on the surface of the phone directly in the pocket. This is more frequent on sport jackets, which are designed to release internal humidity/sweat faster.

I've used various generations of iPhones over the years for many long damp days in the Scottish hills and I've never had any problems - mind you I do use cases and carry a small plastic bag to put my phone in when it gets really wet - which does occasionally happen in Scotland...

Water resistant is not water proof.

Not very resistant then

I simply don't understand this dense sneering snark.

The real world is analogue and not a binary on/off setting you click in a config file. "Make this thing indestructable"

There is an infinite sliding scale from normal air humidity to the corrosive wetness of a tropical rainforest near a saltwater ocean or the difference being splashed with a few raindrops to being submerged for 100 years at the Mariana Trench.

A cop out is not warranty. If your phone can't deal with water you probably shouldn't advertise that it can.

Except it can deal with water, and it's not a Mac, which is what the article refers to. The iPhone is nothing at all to do with this as it's not a Mac.

It's like testla's autopilot. It's self driving until you crash, then it's your own fault.

A water sensor tripping is no proof of misuse independent of the devices IP-rating.

*water

Pure not salt water or tap water, not contaminated toilet water where most phones seem to end up. And only for a certain time at a certain depth (pressure). And not pressurized just static.

Maybe they should be named USB-Sea? /s

Have you seen the same Apple ads as me? Because they show it under rain, under the faucet, covered in Coke, etc.

I agree it's resistant and it does what you say... But the way they advertise it....

Well, if water damage your iPhone then you are simply watering it wrong

None of those things would trip the internal liquid sensors, though. That's the entire point. If the phone is actually up to spec (which, I have to assume it is), then any internal liquid damage would have to come from using the phone out of the spec.

Sony phones with headphone jacks, ten years ago were capable of all waterproof things you wanted to do.

It's been a massive gaslighting campaign.

Same thing with the Samsung S5 from 2014. IP67 waterproof with headphone jack and removable battery.

I really am super pissed that we let go of removable batteries

We didn't let them go, they were taken from us by force

Same for sanely-sized screens. It really sucks for someone who doesn't watch any videos on their phone and still treats it mostly as a limited communication device rather than their primary gateway to the internet. The fact that I'm a relatively compact person doesn't help either.

The iPhone 12/13 Mini was substantially smaller, but few people bought it, so they cancelled it.

The vast majority seem to want large screens. Currently the only compromise are flip phones. I considered buying the Z Flip 5, but the screen protector needs to be replaced by Samsung to maintain warranty and there is no Samsung Store nearby. I asked and Samsung said I'd have to send it to them, losing my phone for a couple of days. No thanks.

iPhones run iOS and, honestly, I can't stand it for a variety of reasons regardless of how nice the hardware is. Main one being that apps can only be installed from the app store. I can see myself using a jailbroken iPhone, but jailbreaks are hard to come by these days.

Vast majority doesn't know what they want. They would convince themselves that whatever is currently sold must be good. But then I know at least 10 people who truly want a small phone. I'm not the only one. There's clearly a demand for phones for people for whom their computer is still their primary device.

The world would've been a better place if every single phone manufacturer didn't copy the others. It's a vicious circle.

Yeah same here, having Tim Cook decide what I'm allowed to use my phone for is not my piece of cake.

Also I just love some features of the Android ecosystem like the desktop mode (Samsung DeX and alternatives)

Unfortunately bigger phone means more space for the battery and rest of the hardware, so companies will keep making their Pro Ultra models larger and so of course the larger ones are more of a status symbol.

But the screen consumes most of the charge in a modern phone anyway. The smaller the screen, the less battery capacity you need to get a sensible battery life. The CPU also matters, of course — that's one thing I like about my Pixel 4a, it lasts long even after 3 years because it uses a weak-ass SoC that nonetheless is perfectly capable for messaging and web browsing.

The screen is off most of the time. The iPhone 13 Mini has the same CPU as the larger models and there is a significant difference in battery life, you likely won't find a review for this device which doesn't mention how fast the battery drains.

From my own experience, iPhones are really bad with idle battery life. The iPhone 11 Pro I have for occasionally testing iOS apps would drain the battery in ~3 days just laying on my desk doing nothing. Android phones, on the other hand, last more than a week when not used thanks to "doze mode" and other optimizations in recent versions. But I suppose that difference isn't as noticeable when you actually use an iPhone as your real phone and charge it daily at night.

> The iPhone 12/13 Mini was substantially smaller, but few people bought it

I knew before scrolling down that such a comment would be there.

an iphone costs easily 5x-7x more than an android phone. Most people just want a phone that can do messages, calls, and has a gps. There haven't been any non-overpriced smaller smartphones lately.

For me personally, the cost isn't a factor. I'd gladly buy a small Android phone for up to $2000 if it would satisfy all my needs. Yes, I'm this desperate.

And by the way, high-quality Android phones cost comparable to iPhones. Keep in mind that Apple is simply not interested in the budget segment.

Most people won't buy expensive stuff that is also very fragile.

A Galaxy S23 can be had currently for just over 600 Euro, which is substantially less than an iPhone Pro (almost half), despite also sporting a 120Hz OLED display, tele lens, etc.

You can get a lot of great/premium Android phones in the 500-800 bracket (Nothing Phone 2, S23, Pixel 8).

Anything over 200€ is expensive.

Could I pay 1000€ for a phone? Yes. But I don't want to deal with the feeling of dread every time it slips out of my pocket.

Take a look at the current gen flippy phones (Galaxy Flip 5, Moto Razr+). I've had the latter for a few months, purchased basically because the outer screen is actually usable. With the phone folded shut, it's pretty much a small phone. I can easily reach every corner of that outer screen with my thumb.

As someone who uses an iPhone SE, I have to disagree. I have a small phone with incredible internals at a price that can’t be be beat. You can go cheap as you want to on android for sure but you’re going to pay the price one way or the other. Having helped support people works budget android phones, it’s painful. I don’t use my phone like most people, I would never watch a video on my phone or use it extensively for general purpose computing by choice, but those budget android phones are disgustingly slow and stuffed to the gills with bloat.

The only pain point with my current phone is the camera is still effectively 10 year old hardware. I would like a nicer camera and I could probably find that on a similarly priced and sized android phone if I really wanted to I’ll admit. That said, I’m worried what the next generation of SE will end up being. I’m going to guess it’ll be physically bigger and I’ll have to say goodbye to TouchID (which I vastly prefer to FaceID). I love this phone otherwise and am in no hurry to replace it. Outside of the camera, the parts of its design that are stuck in the past are the things I love about it.

Flagship android phones from every major vendor are priced to compete with iPhones though and let’s not pretend otherwise. You can spend more on an android phone now than an iPhone if you’re so inclined.

I have quite large hands and the iPhone 13 Mini is kind of the upper limit of what I call comfortable to use with one hand. The perfect phone for me is roughly the size of the iPhone 4, or like the BB Passport where the designers fully committed to the two-handed use case and made that work well.

With Apple's Vision Pro and its controls based on eye movement and finger gestures in mind I think this might become a thing on larger sized phones as well. For example a dedicated button at the bottom of the screen that will just click wherever I look. At least I'd prefer that over having to do finger gymnastics on a 6 inch screen.

Revealed preferences.

Revealed preferences assumes that there are no confounding factors, no tyranny of small decisions, no information asymmetry and an unlimited selection of products that vary along every combination of features. It’s economic drivel, and serves only to dismiss opinions out of hand.

My point is that small phones don’t sell well.

Then that's an entirely different point. There are many reasons why small phones don't sell well. There's the changing market in which a phone is the primary computer for many people. There's incomplete information, as the tethers in a showroom prevent you from holding a phone one-handed, or noticing that it is too big to fit in your pocket. There's a potential for decreased design costs, as a larger space provides more options for how the phone's internals can be arranged.

But calling those "revealed preferences" is a sleight-of-hand. It takes all those external factors and treats them as something intrinsic about the buyer, to be "revealed" by the market. The term itself is a lie.

That is a questionable statement, as there were phones with removable batteries and phones without them on the market for quite some time and the phones with removable batteries were simply not successful enough.

If they were identical in all aspects, including cost, your comment might make sense.

I suspect there was more than one variable involved and so the entire idea that there is any correlation is flawed.

And don't forget the IR blaster, so you could control most of TVs. And IIRC it was the first Samsung phone with fingerprint reader. I miss that phone.

I disabled the fingerprint reader since they've decided it was a good idea to put it on the power button, so locking the screen also reads my fingerprint and unlocks the screen immediately.

Are you sure, that you are talking about the S5?

The S5 had a swipe fingerprint reader integrated into the home button.

https://www.samsung.com/levant/support/mobile-devices/galaxy...

How is this "gaslighting"?

Gaslighting now just means scammed, or tricked into, or lied to, unfortunately.

And Sony Xperias still come with headphone jacks today[1] after they tried Apple'ing for a couple models and got laughed at.

[1]: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/mobile-phones-table...

Real question / No trolling: I feel like I am the last living human who still uses the headphone jack. When I walk around my city, I see almost zero other people using it. They using wireless earbuds. I avoid wireless earbuds to avoid yet-another-battery-to-be-charged.

Is this true for other HNers also?

I don't think I have zoomed with another SWE that had a headphone cable in a decade.

That's because they use whatever crap the company gives them.

Do you think i chose my keyboard? No, our IT budget is too low to buy me the 50€ keyboard I'd actually want. For some reason we can afford 200€ wireless headphones that have jittery sound however.

I've been holding on on my 6 years old Galaxy S8 for this reason. <rant> It's yet-another-battery-to-be-charged, it introduced lag in audio especially where it matters(think video playback or games), the battery degrades over time, can't be used with my laptop as seamlessly as unplug-here-plug-there, and I personally like to keep headphones ON all the time even when I'm not listening, in case something comes up. this would be impossible with the Bluetooth ones. sign such a crappy direction they all headed in.

No, here in Spain most people I see use wired headphones.

People here but cheap phones (100€-200€) due to the low wages. Most of those still feature the jack. Turns out that they still prefer wired earbuds when given an actual choice. Because wireless earbuds (eg Redmi airdots) cost 10€ here now so they're accessible to anyone.

I use it with my pro-grade microphone, because I don't want latency or degradation when it matters the most.

But that's just at the office. For casual use out and about, it's all wireless - simply because cables are annoying to store and they break way too easily.

I switched to Bluetooth earbuds way back in 2007 when they were still novel (Sony Ericsson HBH-DS980 represent - with an LCD screen for switching between paired devices!). When I use wired headphones they get caught on door handles etc and have a lifespan of like 6 months before they get torn apart.

I still use wired (with a dongle) for calls, since Bluetooth Headset profile sounds like crap and I have enough trouble understanding people/being understood as it is. MagSafe helps with charging when the port is in use.

your headphones get caught on door handles? How?

How would they not? I can't count how many times I snagged my headphones on something and my phone went flying or the headphones got yanked out of my ear before wireless headphones.

Personally I never particularly liked wired headphones because of the annoyance of dealing with the wire and it breaking any time it got snagged. My Bluetooth ones last for ages without charging so it's not a big deal to charge them. Since they're pretty cheap now I think a lot of people are the same way.

People love to complain about the dongle but really it just adds a couple of inches to the wire. If you can deal with the wire you can deal with a wire with USB-C on the end.

Nah the reason I complain about the dongle is because I don't know where to get a reasonably priced one with good audio except apple and theirs break like crisps crack.

I also don't like having to charge headphones, so I have a Moto G5 stylus phone with a headphone jack. I also don't like most earbuds for comfort.

Besides the charging issue wired headphones are:

- better value, $35 will get you a decent sound - compatible with music production equipment - low-latency - save your phone if you drop it - impossible to lose one side.

I also prefer wired ones.

At work they gave me some wireless ones… they cost about 200€. They occasionally lose connection despite the receiver being ~1m away and the sound jumps.

Nobody really cares about audio quality any more.

I used to, but I realised that my mid-40s ears are now the limiting factor, so I might as well have the convenience of wireless.

The real problem isn't 'another device to charge' though, it's battery degradation and the wasteful, disposable nature of Airpods.

there are wireless in ears with replaceable batteries (notably, the sony WF1000XM_ series), they just have a considerably worse form factor and a comparatively dogshit software experience while competing at the same price point as airpods pro

The sony are better: ANC + LDAC

Can people really hear the difference between wired and unwired headphones? I find it hard to believe. The bandwidth that Bluetooth can provide should be sufficient for very high quality audio. I'm confused by this reply.

>Can people really hear the difference between wired and unwired headphones?

Personally: Yes. Absolutely.

Even if I'm listening to just MP3s instead of FLACs, I can immediately notice that the wired headphone connection is better than wireless in both quality and latency. It's easy to compare since the headphones I use when travelling can do both, and I've used both as practicality demands.

The best wireless has to offer still can't hold a candle to good old wired.

Wired enables a wider choice of higher-end headphones/IEMs, as well as avoiding bluetooth lossiness.

I don't believe codec makes meaningful difference. Most biggest difference should be by integrated small efficient amp vs bigger amp.

- airpods are considerably more convenient than wrapping and unwrapping a cable every time i want to listen to music - a cable also conducts sounds into my ears when the cable is jostled by clothing or while running - nobody makes ANC wired in ears - i just throw my airpods case on my apple watch charger when im at my desk, i basically don't worry about charging

I dislike wired headphones for daily use and I've wanted small wireless in-ear headphones since long before the wireless earbud explosion kicked off. However, I still really, really want the headphone jack back. Mainly for connecting to non-wireless sound equipment, for easily attaching a microphone and for phone calls where sound quality is important.

I avoid wireless earbuds because I don't want bluetooth enabled (tracking via bluetooth is pervasive) and there are way to many drawbacks (poor audio quality, high latency, pairing issues, battery). You get far more options (and higher quality options) with wired headphones.

Been charging my iPhone 12 mini since it was 5 months old because of my toddler for this reason. Charging port died, went in and couldn’t get through a round of apple care people and gave up

Nothing in the article says Apple will void warranty on an iPhone if water has been detected in the charging port (water damage is a different thing entirely). This concerns Mac computers, which are not sold as waterproof.

I don't know, the first sentence says:

> Apple’s limited warranty doesn’t cover damage caused by liquids, even for water-resistant products like the iPhone, Apple Watch, and some AirPods models.

But the article is kind of all over the place. It then says Macs can now detect water in USB-C ports while having pictures in the article of iPhones showing messages that they detected liquids. They like to make the point that Macs will report this back home to the mothershop while iPhones do not? idk

Let's assume on Macs this is used to void warranty because like you said, they are not sold as waterproof. On iPhones it's to alert the user, so he can remove the water from the port - not concerning warranty?

The iPhone is full of water detector stickers inside and they do reject warranty claims if water got in. They say you must have done something you shouldn't have if that happens, like diving deep or something.

They will even refuse to install a new battery if you pay them.

> The iPhone is full of water detector stickers inside and they do reject warranty claims if water got in.

I once went in for an out of warranty replacement where I said it was water damage and my phone was in the washing machine. The guy still went back to check the stickers and said "It must really been wet because it triggered all of the stickers" I pointed out it literally had water pouring out of it when I got it out of the washing machine. Fun fact, it was still powered on and operating when it came out of the washing machine for a few minutes then it went dead.

Apple recently quoted me 2,300$ to fix just one broken keyboard key (it was M, if you were wondering), because according to them the water sensors were tripped and it's policy to replace the mtherboard if that happens. Which apparently costs more than buying another two working identical MacBook Pros.

The laptop has never gotten wet, and everything apart from the M key was working perfectly.

Your O key might be broken as well

What did you do in the end? Take it to a 3rd party repair shop?

Do you live in a hot, humid climate? I think a lot of those water alarm stickers show false positives if people move from a cold, air conditioned place to the humid outdoors. Condensation is unavoidable unless you wrap the laptop in fairly airtight bag every time you go out.

I am certain that many people have been denied warranty claims because they live in cold climates and visit indoor swimming pools regularly (coaches/lifeguards/spectators etc). The condensation in that situation is impressive.

I came here to point this out - sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.

Whenever there is a 'detection' method it's almost never foolproof and usually pretty junk.

For me at least, add it to the list of reasons why "never Apple", dirty broken process by another corrupt tech company.

It's okay, we did the same thing for warranty claims when I worked CS and Tech Support for one of the major phone carriers a decade ago. If the LDI was tripped we wouldn't replace it under warranty, and I'm sure there was more than one warranty replacement I rejected that was a false trip instead of actual liquid damage (a better indicator for this is corrosion on solder joints than those stupid stickers).

My fiance had a similar experience with actual liquid damage. I've forgotten the details, but she spilled a tiny bit of a drink into her M1 MBP keyboard, taking out most of the lower half of the keyboard. Apple wanted roughly the cost of a new M1 MBP to fix it. She ended up just getting a BT keyboard..

To fix this problem never buy a Mac again.

>They will even refuse to install a new battery if you pay them.

On a phone with triggered water detector stickers? Yeah. Common sense. Why the hell would I work a device that might be damaged already? If something goes wrong after the repair due to the pre-existing damage it becomes a finger pointing game. Fuck that

It’s far more likely your repair damaged it in this situation than any pre-existing water “damage”.

They check the stickers before starting any work. Unless you think they’re opening it under a water mister, those are accurate indicators of past damage.

I know this because I had an iPhone display start acting odd shortly after a battery replacement. They opened it up and reported water damage, but the pictures they take before every repair showed that the same indicators were not triggered two days before, and I ended up getting a replacement phone because the water seal was probably effective for 5 years prior to the battery replacement.

I don't understand why people let them get away with this inductive logic.

While it COULD mean you used the device out of spec, it could just as easily mean THEY MESSED UP when manufacturing your device.

On the whole, its more likely that your phone had a pinhole defect from the factory than you ran into 3+ feet of water and threw your phone in.

If they can't prove they did waterproof compliance testing my specific device before they shipped it, then they should be assumed to be responsible.

There at least used to be (years ago) many complaints of the sensors being inaccurately tripped in areas with high humidity, that never actually got liquid spilled on them. :(

> Apple’s limited warranty doesn’t cover damage caused by liquids, even for water-resistant products

If the product meets the advertised water resistance, damage caused by liquids must be caused by usage outside of that.

So, _if_ they can prove their product meets or exceeds those specs, I think it’s fine they won’t cover that under warranty, as long as local laws don’t force them to do more (in the EU, for newish devices, they’d have to proof that the device wasn’t already broken when sold, for example)

(7) at the bottom of https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/compare/

""" iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone SE (2nd generation), iPhone SE (3rd generation), iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus are splash, water and dust resistant and were tested under controlled laboratory conditions; iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus have a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 metres up to 30 minutes); iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max have a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 4 metres up to 30 minutes); iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone 11 have a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 2 metres up to 30 minutes); and iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone XR, iPhone SE (2nd generation) and iPhone SE (3rd generation) have a rating of IP67 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 1 metre up to 30 minutes). Splash, water and dust resistance are not permanent conditions. Resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Do not attempt to charge a wet iPhone; refer to the user guide for cleaning and drying instructions.

Liquid damage not covered under warranty. """

I have a 300€ 2021 Motorola Defy. I wash it often under running water, took baths with it, no issues with the headphone jack, neither with the usb c port.

“As a user, I want to be able to take baths with my phone.”?

No you lost the headphone jack to sell more AirPods.

My Samsung S8 was waterproof and had the jack. And it was just as thin as an iPhone.

Even Apple could do it. The iPhone 6S had both, tho Apple never advertised the waterproofing.

They will disable charging if they detect liquids in the port as a way to reduce the chance of causing failures.

No they do not and you know that. They've always been advertised as water resistant

Possibly not related, but my past two Samsungs have had this feature and it drives me crazy. Usually they seem to trigger when using non standard cords and from 0% battery life. This means that I get a very loud warning sound triggering when trying to charge my phone from a battery pack or borrowing someone's cord.

Oddly, charging when on (ie not completely dead), this feature doesn't trigger the alarm.

I really dislike this feature.

Funnily enough, my Sony Xperia 5 III does this if I plug in a Thunderbolt 4 cable. Charges extra-slowly, and complains about liquid in the USB port.

It's probably a not-entirely-compliant USB implementation on the phone.

Any TB 4 cable or just a specific one?

That means there was a short in the cable

Me too. I switch to wireless charging when this happens and usually I don't get these alarms the day after.

I had my S22 upside down in my pocket and happened to splash water directly into the USB port and nowhere else. The precision was honestly kind of impressive. I only knew about it because my phone freaked out. I let it dry overnight rather than charge it, and everything has been good since then.

FWIW, you can still charge it wirelessly.

You really dislike a feature that plays a loud sound instead of shorting pins in you USB-C connector together?

Guess what is more annoying than a loud sound.

I think the issue is that it triggers when there is even a tiny piece of dirt in there. Ie. the pins aren't shorted, but there is some damp particle of dust in there causing a 10 Megaohm connection which would do no harm whatsoever.

Happens a lot for people who leave USB-C cables in the bottom of bags and they get dirt in the connector (and possibly the residue from that beer that exploded in your bag last year and the sugary water never quite evaporates)

What?? Those aren’t the only options, the other option is that the device operate correctly…

I didn't claim there were two options.

This function measures the voltage drop between two pins and plays a sound when it is too high. So it is possible:

- to just not play a sound, and have it silently switch off the connector (this would feel like a broken cable to you, but at least wouldn't annoy)

- that the threshold is not well adjusted. But this is not rocket science, but simple Ohms law stuff, so I doubt this is the problem

- you could just not have that protection and live with what happens to the IC inside when those pins are shorted. That could be any number of things, most of them more annoying than a sound

Unless you want to change basic laws of physics or the USB-C spec these are the options.

You actually did claim there were two options in the comment I replied to by saying:

> You really dislike a feature that plays a loud sound instead of shorting pins in you USB-C connector together?

The instead here splits the sentence into those two options. Either a sound is played loudly or pins are shorted. That's how the sentence you wrote is structured, anyway.

Clearly that's not how you considered the situation, but yes, you did claim there were two options.

Throw those non-standard cords (and low quality chargers) in the bin. And going to 0% charge is also bad for other reasons like battery longevity.

Hold on...

Could this by why I hear a really loud buzzing sound when I connect my laptop to a thunderbolt docking station?

The sound only happens for a fraction of a second, and doesn't happen every time; but now that you mention it, it does have the acoustic properties of a warning buzzer!

All components genuine AFAIK and supplied by the same vendor, Toshiba/Dynabook; but I wonder if a failing component somewhere causes a bad state that some component detects, triggering this warning sound...

I doubt it. My guess is that you have speakers/headphones connected to your dock and they're picking up some kind of transients when you plug it in. Capacitors charging can also have some sound, but it's usually quite high pitched. If you're docking station has an external power source, you might find that adding/removing/changing it helps. Or connecting speakers/headphones via a usb DAC.

I wonder how reliable this will be. Back in the summer, my mom plugged her iPhone in to charge, and it gave a warning saying that it couldn't charge because there was liquid in the charging port. However, the port was bone-dry, and there was no liquid anywhere near the phone. It turned out that the charger didn't like the extension cord that it was plugged into. I took the extension cord away, and the phone started charging.

Sony has this like forever. And in my opinion, it works really well. It only trigger when I use my wet hand to hold it or when I wash it(you know, sony smartphone is well known for overheat). It never trigger for other reason for the entire period I am using it.

They'll save money on warranty repairs in that case - by blaming your mom for a water spill - so it'll all work out for them.

It's not even a new trick, some scammy repair companies here in Europe loved to claim water damage to avoid warranty repairs.

There are tabs inside the device that change color on water intrusion for that.

Which also change colour due to humidity changes.

… which is water.

It’s actually impressive how resilient phones are.

True, but regular water rarely harms circuit boards for a one time exposure. Salt water, or soda, on the other hand... What Apple really needs is a USBC taste tester :)

Maybe they could use some kind of "corrosion canary"... some piece of metal that will behave like the circuit components in a standard way.

Turns out it's impossible to prove what state those water tabs were in before the device was opened by a technitian in the back room ;)

But getting water in an iPhones charging port doesn’t void the battery? It’s more of a safety feature that can malfunction occasionally

The "liquid" detection just measures conductivity between certain pins that should not have any. Sounds like the extension cable was damaged/faulty?

They don't want to service the laptop even if you don't have warranty.

I have a Mac from 2016, probably had a minor water event, water spilled on table and slightly touched the chasis. I don't remember anything significant. The battery lasts 20 minutes in 2021, I go and ask them to replace it and they refuse because of "water damage" and warn that the machine can fry at any moment. The laptop is still running fine daily in 2024.

They can only "fix it" by charging more than a price of Macbook Air M1, they do not want to replace the battery but the whole board.

Apple is the same as any car dealership nowadays. They give techs a very limited time, if any, to diagnose an issue. The solution is always to replace parts. Most of Apple’s solutions are replacing the logic board instead of fixing anything on it.

Once the computer is old enough I’d seek out an indie if possible, same for my cars if I can’t fix the issue or don’t have time.

The lightning port detection of "liquids" in my old iphone was never once right.

I have a wall charger that triggers the liquid detection on my Samsung phone if the charger has gotten tugged partially out of the outlet. I use the same charger literally every night and it works fine.

I'm incredibly leery of this functionality being used to deny warranty claims as a result.

Samsung devices have moisture detection via USB-C for a long time. It does not work very reliable and many people have problems (https://ifixit.com/Antworten/Ansehen/511762/How+to+stop+the+...). I randomly get this error when I try to charge my S21 with my Macbook Pros charging cable.

Except when Apple decides to cancel your warranty over this, they're more likely to have defenders.

A friend worked on GPS positioning for oil rig industry ships. The laptops they used were ruggedized and it was normal to assess replacements by knocking them off the table deliberately to see how they coped.

I wonder if Apple will ever make a waterproof laptop or tablet.

It seems like they could easily make the macbook air waterproof at this point, if they were so inclined.

What do people who want use their macs out in the field do?

> What do people who want use their macs out in the field do?

"Out in the field" jobs? That's typically stuff for heavily rugged Windows laptops (e.g. Panasonic Toughbook). I wonder what you could use a Mac device for in that area, the software used for such jobs (e.g. industrial control, car programming or mapping stuff) is almost exclusively Windows-only.

What I mean by that is do people make quality waterproof cases for macs?

I wonder why Apple has never considered making a toughbook type machine for real field work.

Toughbooks are not fashionable and look like tools.

Macbooks are supposed to look like jewelry.

In a way, Toughbooks are the exact opposites of MacBooks.

Volume, I’m sure. They sell a large volume of a small number of SKUs so go for the minimum feature set that can get them out a couple of sigmas of the target market. Anything else is aftermarket (special case) or just “buy something else”.

There are a few exceptions. I wonder how many Mac pros they really sell. I assume it’s really a “halo” product that sells more Mac studios and MacBook pros.

Also the Mac in general is a low volume product for Apple. It’s 10% of units in the PC market (but what % of profit?) and about 10% of their revenue. (If they were truly run with a bean counter mentality would they even ship Macs?)

Half of developers in North America, and especially those at top tier companies, use Macs. You can't buy that kind of top tech mindshare with marketing. Also now with the M-series CPUs, Macbooks aren't PC Clones anymore, they're back in the game of being an exclusive platform, which will get even more exclusive as they add other specialized chips. Their sales share of the market and as you mention, their profit share of the market keeps increasing, so even on that alone, why would a bean counter decide to drop them?

Don't forget Apple's size... the AirPod business, stood alone, would be a Fortune 500 company. Even if an Apple business is a bit small compared to the iPhone, it's still a humongous business by any other comparator.

I'm not an Apple fanboy (e.g. I use an old Chinese Android phone) but I'm still awed by their business.

> Their sales share of the market and as you mention, their profit share of the market keeps increasing, so even on that alone, why would a bean counter decide to drop them?

Apple at the moment doesn't have any marketshare in rugged, "out in the field" laptop computers. Obviously if any company can brute force an entry into any market it's Apple, but they would need significant investments into third parties that hold potential customers hostage to Windows, and Apple Just Does Not Do That unless the third party in question is a direct supplier of theirs.

A lot of people in creative industries e.g. musicians, editors, designers etc often have to work outdoors sometimes in dusty, rugged areas.

It doesn't even have to be waterproof to prevent 99% water damage cases. It just needs to be water resistant against liquid pours from the top, like how a car can withstand rain.

Most of the liquid spills I see are from people carrying water bottles in their bags with the laptop.

Yup, just happened to me yesterday. I was in a hurry and didn’t screw lid of a coffee thermos correctly. Luckily the mac seems to have survived.

I can confirm. I work at a school with a massive fleet of Macs. The kids generally kill their devices with water by keeping their water bottle in the same bag as their MacBook. Doesn’t matter how often I tell them not to, they insist on doing this.

What do you expect them to do instead? Carry two bags? Keep the bottle in their hand at all times? I think both are highly inconvenient.

There are backpacks with bottle holders on the outside, but in my experience, those aren’t very good at holding a bottle.

Not bringing a bottle probably is the best option, but that may not be a good option in very hot climates.

What also works, is developing a habit of double checking bottles in your bag - as spilled liquids are never nice in your stuff.

And some backpacks actually have working bottle holders on the outside ...

Yes. The risk of a water bottle opening in a student’s bag and ruining a laptop, causing a very expensive repair is worse than the inconvenience of keeping the bottle outside of their bag.

How would you avoid water damage due to the scenario? Or do you consider it normal and unavoidable?

I seem to be an outlier.

Most of my cases where me toppling over some classes or bottles in a way where the liquid ended up directly on the open laptop.

On the other hand in my bag I normally have the Laptop in an additional sleeve, sometimes a double one, so any case where liquid ended up spilling in my backpack it at most lead to a slightly damp laptop due to the sleeves getting wet but nothing which causes water damage.

As a side note if used correctly a simple plastic bag (like a thing plastic shopping bag) as an additional sleeve around you laptop sleeve can be a trivial cheap way to get a surprising amount of waterproofing a laptop in a backpack. I don't do this on a daily basis but when traveling or similar I always hope to not forget to do it.

Having used ruggedised laptops in the past - usually the keyboards are pretty horrible if they're fully waterproof. Depends between model to model, but the most fully-waterproof ones we had had a full membrane over the keyboard, making it super spongey and terrible to type on.

An iPad on the other hard would be pretty easy to make fully waterproof like the phones, since it only has a couple of buttons and one port.

They could just make the keyboard an easily replaceable part and have it waterproofed off underneath the keyboard.

Touchscreens are terrible for any sort of environment requiring ruggedized gear. A little bit of rain or dirt makes the touch screen get very confused and totally useless for actual touch.

Resistive touchscreens work ok in that kind of environment, can be used with gloves… but suck quite a bit otherwise. None of the fun multitouch stuff, just a single pressure point to click with

Old Rant: way back in the day Garmin made a capacitive touch screen watch for runners. Why did they think this was a good idea seeing that your hands would be sweaty and wet if you were running

2023 rant: if I press the button on my watch and tell Siri to “start swim workout” when I’m in the water, my watch still expects me to press a button on the screen while I’m in the water.

Do that finger pinch thing

I have a somewhat rugged chromebook(Asus C201), which is not waterproof, but quite waterresistant and still with a decent keyboard. I used it while backpacking in rough areas and it got wet and sandy and got dropped in wet dirt - but never had an issue with typing. So I think it is possible to get a good balance of waterproof and ergonomic keyboard. But full waterproof would be probably indeed hard.

I wonder the same. We used to take cell phones not being waterproof as standard. Now everybody expects them to be waterproof.

The idea that is single spilled coffee can cause $1000 of damage or more to a laptop is ridiculous.

Spill proof should be possible reasonably. Think pad used to have channels for water drainage not sure they still have them. Dunking proof laptop would be possible but tradeoff not worth it.

They don't; they DON'T still have them. I pestered my department to get me a Lenovo instead of a Dell because I had bought into the reliability hype; one minor water-spill later, my laptop freaked out and since then has permanently degraded performance. See if I get another Lenovo ever again.

But anyway, if you are like me with arm mobility issues and in danger of spilling stuff on your laptop, get some custom made rugged laptop because no manufacturer cares anymore; if anything, they seem to care the other way round.

My x86 Macbook Pro ran so hot I could have used it to make coffee and foam milk!

Making the ports waterproof would be pretty easy, since they can do that on iPhones. But what about the ventilation areas? That's much trickier, I'd think. Making a waterproof iPad should be trivial since it has the same ports as an iPhone.

MacBook Airs no longer have ventilation

You're thinking of fans.

When the lid is open, I can see what appear to be vents. There is no active cooling, but I believe there are still holes where air escapes.

Watercooling or passive cooling with external heat sinks.

Has Apple ever made a water-cooled computer? I agree this could be done with heat sinks, but was just pointing out that the current MBA design isn't on the cusp of waterproof.

> Has Apple ever made a water-cooled computer?

The latter period of the G5, were water cooled, IIRC. They suffered from problems due to corrosion, though.

> Making the ports waterproof would be pretty easy, since they can do that on iPhones

iPhones are not waterproof, they're IP68 water resistant. Apple even describes the port as being a liquid egress (and thus ingress) point in their public "oops I dunked my phone in water" support documentation.

    Dry your iPhone:
    
    1. Tap your iPhone gently against your hand with the connector facing down to remove excess liquid. Leave your iPhone in a dry area with some airflow

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102643

I don’t think that means what you think it means.

Taking care to remove liquid from the port just as well makes sense simply because you do not want to have water in there when you plug the phone in and water in ports just doesn’t dry as easily as water on some surface.

In practice iPhones are (like nearly all modern phones) extremely water resistent and very unlikely to be water damaged by exposure to water or even immersion in water.

Phones are quite durable. Exposure to water is always a risk, obviously (so is any handling of an untethered phone in the presence of hard surfaces) but I would argue it‘s one you can reasonably take.

For my personal risk tolerance I sometimes rinse my phone in running water (taking care not to directly point the running faucet at any of the openings of the phone), I generally don’t worry about spills (so the phone might be on the kitchen counter where spills are likely) and I also took it out into the sea to take some photos (but did not submerge it).

Making a keyboard fully water proof is tricky and often leads to subpar experiences.

If you don't have a fan making everything else but the keyboard(and mousepad) water resistant is not hard, and with a bit more trickery about how the keyboard are connected you can get to everything but keyboard waterproof too.

Issue is then you also need a easy replaceable keyboard and hand replacement keyboard out so that people can have them ready them "just in case".

Which both doesn't seem in the interest of Apple if you look at their actions in recent years.

I think currently the best chance for a new consumer laptop which is water proof and convenient to use would be a tablet which has no fan but still provides okay performance and then some "dock on" keyboard like e.g. in the style of the Microsoft Surface or similar. Then you could have a version where the keyboard is also water proof or a version where if it drops in water you replace the nicer to use keyboard with a new one etc.

My iBook G4 I think was the last mac with a keyboard you could replace without using tools and opening the case.

I had to throw away my COMPLETELY DRY cord and get a new one because Apple reported the presence of water. New coord -- no problems.

I hate to be the one to inform you that manufacturing issues exist and cables can be damaged through regular use.

Water bridging a connection and the connector being broken are indistinguishable to the device.

So why state that water is the issue?

Probably dry, but had short. Definitely good to detect and throw out. Message could definitely be improved.

I really hate usb c ports. They all break. I am a poweruser I know, but still. My mac, my phones, my car charger. All of them are causing connection or charge issues because of dirt, broken connectors or something different. Just give me the old mac magnet charger and apply it on all my devices. My 2011 air is still working fine after all these years.

In what environment do you use them? I haven’t had a single USB-C port break on me in half a decade of using them.

A few times I thought one had worn out and wouldn’t make a solid connection anymore, but it was always just lint in the port and could be fixed by cleaning it.

But you still can’t connect two monitors.

What do you mean? I have 3 connected to mine

Do you have to use that displaylink software with terrible framerate and latency compared to native?

I tried to get 3 monitors working on a work Mac with a new triple DisplayPort dock and had a terrible time, I went back to my Linux desktop since I can easily get smooth 165hz native performance on three monitors

I have a 4K monitor connected via usb3 displaylink and it gets 60fps.

Yeah, the key here is you must use a DisplayLink adapter. Most laptops other than Apple MacBook Airs don’t need this to have more than one extra monitor.

But they cannot last 20h on a battery, win some, lose some

i find the latency is pretty bad even though it’s 60fps

I use a dual DisplayPort doc then connect one monitor directly. I'm running 2x 1440p and 1x 1440p ultrawide this way. This is a work setup, so I don't really need massive performance. It's all 60hz and no noticeable latency.

I don't believe that triple DisplayPort works well with mac. I believe two is the limit.

The M1 only supported 1 external monitor.

Air, the Pro does 2 or 3.

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP854?viewlocale=en_SA&locale=e...

Nope you can connect four:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT213503

It's 2023 and finally can connect more then one... what is their justification for not being able to do this before.

That’s possible since like forever. It just depends on the graphic chip the Mac comes with

Been like that "forever" but also "depends on the graphic chip" meaning it wasn't universally supported. I've not come across a Windows machine with USB-C that can't support multiple displays using $20 hubs from Amazon (even cheap machines). Yet I had to carry multiple dongles for my MBP for multiple monitors.

There are _still_ some "new" macbooks sold which only support 1 external monitor. Which honestly would have been ridiculous 10 years ago not even speaking about now.

Then even with a newest M3 model apples somehow assumes that external monitors with less resolution then 6k don't exist hence anything but MAX models only supports 2 external monitors even if they are all 1080p. Through to be fair 3+ external monitor setups aren't that common with larger/higher resolution monitors.

And issues with dasy chaining monitors seem somewhat common, but that's hearsay so maybe not true.

The limitation on the number of external monitors is due to the number of display controllers on the chip. Apparently they take up a considerable amount of space on the die. The base M chips only have 2. They made a technical trade off that we are all paying for. It is unlikely they will ever fix it. :(

Daisy chaining monitors via thunderbolt has always had problems since it came out. Some monitors just don’t play nice with each other.

It's not a benchmark to bludgeon PC users with so nobody cares.

My Thinkpad from 2013 supports 3 external displays.

You can on mine, but you can't daisy chain them with thunderbolt like you can on Winders.

Kind of more interested in the implied system that reports to Apple when you disable the warranty daemon

Kind of tired of things like this dropping into our software and no one really knows definitively what it is, what it's for, how it might be used, etc. My mac is mine, I paid handsomely for it, I'd like Apple to treat it like it is mine.

It's like someone walking into your house and installing a little block box in the corner of the room and walking out, and maybe later on they'll let you know what they're doing with this device but maybe not.

This will be my last mac unfortunately, which is a pity because I do love the hardware.

I have a Google Pixel 4xl thats had its battery replaced 3 times because of their terrible tiny brittle battery connector. The last two times, I've done it myself with a $19 Amazon battery. I never reseal the phone properly, just closing the back onto the old sticky residue that's left from the original assembly years ago.

Yesterday I dropped the phone into a hot bowl of soup. I took it out, rinsed it under a faucet to get the soup off it, and dried it with a towel.

Good as new.

My Samsung phone detects this too, wonder if it's phoning it home. for some reason the 20g usb-c plug on my PC triggers it if my phone is plugged in during cold boot

FWIW i just looked at the specs online and the iphone 15 pro is rated to IP68 while the ipad-pro and MacBook Air specs are silent on this.

As far as I know, none of the computers are designed to be exposed to liquid at all.

Some laptops are advertised to have a spill resistant keyboards. My laptop from 2014 is one of them. I replaced the keyboard a few times because of key wear and yes, it seems to fit tightly enough to keep water away from the motherboard. Obviously water can get under the keys but the bottom of the keyboard seems to be sealed.

My iPhone 13 mini was IP rated and died after the first dunk.

All of my Android Galaxy SXX phones have survived tons worse.. repeatedly.

I treat the new iPhone I had to buy as if it were made of porous glass.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the additional data points!

I’ve been snorkeling and swimming with my 14 Pro Max a couple dozen times, taking videos and photos, and never had an issue.

I also wash my phone under the tap regularly (weekly or more) because I spend lots of time in a grimy workshop for hobbies.

Only one data point but the waterproof aspect of modern phones is one of my absolute favorite developments.

That’s honestly kind of crazy. It’s only an IP68 rating. It’s meant for prevention of damage during quick submersion accidents, not snorkeling.

>the waterproof aspect of modern phones is one of my absolute favorite developments.

IP68 is water resistant, not waterproof.

I think water resistant is underselling what IP68 is a bit. The test to pass ip68 is to completely submerge the device in water up to 30 minutes. Sure that’s not water proof, but when people think water resistant they probably think “should survive water getting spilled nearby”, which is a level below “able to be completely submerged in water for up to a half hour”.

For most cases where it matters the device is waterproof for the average consumer

In 2013, Avril Lavigne inserted a blatant ad demonstrating the Sony Xperia phone's water resistance:

https://youtu.be/uuNTO31FlY8?si=A8Ye7Nw1kpKUoonj

Somehow I didn't expect it to be this blatant but yeah, that's pretty blatant. It's not even a throwaway scene, it's the actual intro to the video.

At the start of covid I broke my iPhone 11's faceid sensor washing it with soapy water. It turns out that the reduced surface tension of soapy water can allow it to get past some barriers.

My 13 Pro has drowned at least 3 or 4 times, still working. Also worth mentioning it's been case free and survived countless drops.

I don't understand why people put cases anymore.

> I don't understand why people put cases anymore.

Personally, because I hate the camera bumps. So I have a case that’s thick enough that allows my phone to lay dead flat on the table. Which is the only reason for me to use a case.

My 14 Pro's back, plus one camera, completely shattered in one drop. It's luck of the draw (or nearly indistinguishable from it). I still go caseless, though.

Just physics of how the impact goes into the phone and the angle is a lot of it. Perhaps 9 out of the 10 ways you can drop an iPhone result in no damage whatsoever. That tenth angle is the perfect angle to destroy the whole back

I’d shatter the glass every year, if not multiple times a year, without a case, is why.

I probably drop my phone on concrete or tile at least once every couple months.

I’ve broken my fair share. I’ve also had a couple that didn’t shatter but had chips and separation develop around the edges. Matter of time before water kills one like that.

Apple started using much more shatter-resistant glass from iPhone 12 onward. These phones can survive many drops onto concrete that would easily shatter older phones.

Rinsed ny iPhone XS to clean off some dirt. FaceID stopped working and I could see fog on the inside of the camera. Guess the seals/glued parts no longer held up

After 3 years, you should assume your phone lost its water resistance due to aging adhesive.

I routinely wash my iPhone 13 mini in water, putting it under a running tap and washing all over. I've been doing it for more than two years now, no issues. I've fully submerged it a few times too without issue.

Unless stated otherwise you should assume IP21 at best or IP20 for an open laptop.

BTW, several years ago, a mix of mango, strawberry, and orange shake was spilled to the keyboard of a MacBook Air M1. It was not detected ;-) but the keyboard continue to work flawlessly, just a little sticky. Seriously speaking, other similar experiences with other notebooks were not great and a keyboard replacement was needed.

More than 10 years ago I spilled miso soup on a 2010 MacBook Pro on my first day moving to Japan. I took it apart and cleaned it but the keyboard and trackpad couldn't be saved. Some keys always sent a signal and it would only boot into safe mode. But I could disassemble the laptop, turn it on, and remove the keyboard connector and then use it with an external mouse and keyboard. I did that for about a week until replacement parts arrived. I fixed it and the MacBook still works to this day.

My cousin called me yesterday asking about this very thing and said "it's showing a suspicious looking icon, is this malware?", got confused for a moment and just asked him to wait for a couple of hours and it started charging again

I.e. Apple has another bullshit way to deny your legitimate warranty claim.

If it works as well as the iPad liquid detection, this sounds incredibly annoying.

Mine thinks there is water in the port every time I forget to blow the dust out of it after weeks of non-use.

How is the difference between liquids and humidity detected?

Just wait, humidity and condensation will cause a spat of "water detected, fail warranty" issues.

And now, jailbreaking will mean being able to reset tattletaled.

Yeah, it will be interesting if they can deny a claim based on the above.

I once received an iPod I sent to Apple with grass inside when it was returned to me and have never trusted them since.

Of course they can…? It’s just a term of the warranty policy.

Very bizarre regarding your iPod! What is your working theory for that?

That would greatly depend upon the country.

Many countries (sans USA probably) have rights of warranty for consumers, that companies policies cannot override.

Water damage is one of the cases I've seen companies abuse to get out of warranty in Europe. I don't know of a way to dispute it.

A touch of bleach on the water dots will revert them to "no water detected".

"rights of warranty" can't be unconditional. If I drop my phone and it breaks or drop laptop in pool, that wouldn't be on the company?

If they decide to go down this path, someone in Australia will report them to the ACCC. If they are using it as an excuse to avoid their warranty obligations, then they will be sorry.

Your claim is that in Australia, you cannot offer a warranty that exempts water damage? I find that extremely hard to believe.

It does not.

No, what I’m saying is that if they claim water damage based on those indicators alone, and they do it as a policy, then the ACCC will likely consider it a policy to avoid warranty claims.

If there is genuine water damage, of course that’s not warranty. It’s how they assess it that could be problematic.

I still think about it more than once a year almost 20 years later and I am still yet to come up with anything that doesn’t sound wildly implausible.

You mean grass like weed? I get that in my keyboard all the time.

Years ago my cat knocked the bong over into the keyboard of my Dell laptop, and they happily replaced it (the keyboard, not the bong). The nice lady doing the extended warranty on-site repair cheerfully held her nose and winked at me, and I sheepishly shrugged back and pointed at the naughty cat, but she didn't give me any flack about it.

Good story.

Apple sent me my iPod back with blades of Poaceae stuck inside between the back and front covers.

For a long time Apple apparently didn't test in hot humid climates, as the plastic they used on the macbook power cables would disintegrate and slew off after a year or so.

I would not be surprised if hot humidity is also an issue with these sensors, which seem to be a user-hostile feature in any case.

Like the early Model 3 problem where when you open the trunk it used to dump water inside. If your designers all live in California they sometimes forget that other places have weather.

https://teslatuneup.com/tesla-model-3-trunk-rain-fix/

It's probably worse in warm climates, but macbook cables were disintegrating everywhere for the longest time.

> And now, jailbreaking will mean being able to reset tattletaled.

Jailbreaking will be able to stop future reports, but it can't take back the reports that it already uploaded to the Apple mothership.

Dirty user, we do that outside! Srsly though, why would a hw company warn you about liquid damage aka impending sales?

I wonder if you can just disable the daemon?

Recently when I plugged my iPhone for charging it correctly warned me that it detected liquid and it might damage the phone to charge at the moment. I blasted my phone with car AC for a couple of minutes and it dried out and then I was able to charge fine. It's a nice feature to have even on Macs but I doubt the scenarios in which water goes into a Mac are as simple to deal with as they are with iPhone.

Not to say I am game with it but at least the newer ones don't trip anymore when it's damp...

This saved my iPhone a couple days ago when i tried to plug it into car play, it was too humid and cold that water condensed in the port, nearly killing the phone.

> Macs can now inform Apple if any liquids have been detected in the USB-C ports

Why stop here. Next detect also the type of liquid. Bonus points for body fluids. /s

That's great, hopefully this means easier detection of those attempting to lodge bogus warranty claims for negligent damage.

unlikely

it mainly means even more rightfully warranty claims which have nothing to do with water damage being rejected as water damage

apple repair is already somewhat notorious for this wrongful rejections as the "water intrusion" sensors in their laptops are so sensitive that it's pretty common for them to trigger without there being anything anywhere close to water damage (like you had you window open in the neighbor room on a rainy day; not joking here)

worse if they trigger not only do they reject warranty they do also (often? always?) reject doing repairs at all even if you pay for (but then apple anyway mostly only replaces major parts making many "small easy" repairs unreasonable expensive).

that would be a sad day, i'm so glad apple gave me a warranty replacement for laundered airpods

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