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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

Personally I hate Magsafe in all its incarnations, it's always been too weak. Many times I thought I had been powering my laptop for a few hours but I had accidentally unplugged it and the battery was dead. At one point I had a laptop that had some kind of battery problems and I figured I could just use it as a desktop machine and leave it plugged in all the time. But Magsafe would just randomly detach when I moved the machine and it would immediately power down. I really don't understand the giant benefit that people see, I've never had the theoretical someone-tripping-on-the-cord-crashing-the-whole-laptop-to-the-floor problem actually happen on non-Magsafe machines.

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Interesting. I've never had this problem with several types of Macbook and Magsafe, and I've never heard of anyone having that problem.

As I'm typing this, I'm trying to dislodge the L-shaped plug from my 13" Macbook, and it's truly impossible to do that by accident.

On the other side of the equation, I'm far from unfamiliar with tripping on the cord, but maybe that's just my clumsiness.

[dislodging is] truly impossible to do that by accident.

Isn't that counter to the whole purpose of the connector?

Not at all. If it is designed to release with 15 newtons of force, and you apply 14.9 newtons in all directions and it doesn't release, then I would say that is evidence that is unlikely to dislodge by accident.

However, I'll grant you "truly impossible" is something better left to logic. The real world is not exactly famous for rendering many things "truly impossible".

The whole point of the magsafe adaptor is that it releases when there's an accident.

Magsafe is the thing I hate the most in a MacBook. Maybe this is a third world problem, but this connecter is a dust magnet, and it routinely attracts so much dirt that I have to clean it up before the circuit is established. I so much prefer the PC connectors.

I think you mean first world problem.

Third world problems include poverty, epidemics, and starvation.

No, he means he lives in the third world and it is very dusty where he lives.

And sanitation.

And dust.

When I was about six, I had a powerful alnico magnet to play with, and I remember being quite intrigued that dirt would stick to it. Not all dirt, but some dirt. At one point I had a small jar full of magnetic dirt, collected by sweeping the magnet thru dirt and scraping off whatever sticked. As I recall, the magnetic dirt was darker in hue than the grayish non-magnetic dirt.

I've never really had this issue. There's a light right on the MagSafe connector that indicates if it's charging your Mac or not.

This is also one of Apple's better design decisions. With an Apple brick, you just need to glance to the side to see if your brick and laptop are connected correctly. If it is the green LED is on.

With every other brick I've seen the LED is on the brick itself and there is no LED indicator on the connector. You need double the LEDs and have to look under the desk.

When I used Windows laptops, I appreciated that Dell did something similar to what Apple does - there was an LED ring on the plug.

Of course, it was a tasteless giant bright blue LED ring. So...yeah.

Most laptops I have used just add a battery light to the laptop it's self which makes for cheaper cords, is easier to see, and is just as useful.

The people I know who love it the most have pets and/or children. I do not, but I like the ease of connecting and disconnecting it and when I visit my family who do have pets and children I also appreciate the MagSafe connector.

Exact same problem here. Battery dead (the good old swollen battery bug) and x times a day: oops black screen, Magsafe came out again. In the end I made an aluminium tetris-shaped piecs and glued it to the side of the laptop, covering the Magsafe at one end so it would never ever come out again.

I broke my $650 laptop by accidentally pulling the power cord. It happens.

> At one point I had a laptop that had some kind of battery problems and I figured I could just use it as a desktop machine and leave it plugged in all the time. But Magsafe would just randomly detach when I moved the machine and it would immediately power down.

Friend of mine had the same thing. Duct-tape to the rescue :)

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