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Comment by UVB-76 | Hacker News Reader

Bear in mind the selection bias in effect.

People are generally more likely to review a product, especially one as mundane as a replacement power adapter, if they have had a negative experience with it.

One of, if not the most common, reasons for purchasing a replacement power adapter will be due to a failure of an original adapter, leading to negative experiences.

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To that effect, it's worth consider the same product has 188 reviews on Amazon.com with a 4 star rating:

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Magsafe-Portable-Adapter-MacBook...

This is particularly interesting, because people seem to view this an appropriate forum to let Apple know there's a problem with an individual product, as opposed to calling Customer Care (which is the appropriate action). The same thing happens in the Dev Forums, where angry folks complain about the beta they installed acting badly instead of filing a Radar, or even in individual app reviews despite a support link on every app's page.

Many of the big companies don't care at all about customer care calls. Public shaming via a discussion board may work better.

Mine burnt through last year (after three years) and i didn't review it. A friend of mine has got her third in two years and didn't review either. This is exactly what happens:

"I've had two adapters break on me, the wire somehow shorts out and melts near the "square". Really poor design, love the computers but the adapters are terrible." (one of the reviews)

The wire is super thin, i'm not saying it's planned obsolescence, but it's close.

edit: english

You can buy a replacement cord for less than 10 bucks.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D...

Having said that, I wouldn't feel comfortable opening the power adapter and rewiring a new cord... I'm sure it's easy and safe, but still...

Yeah I'm not that much of an electronics guy.. ;-)

I hope you meant planned obsolescence.

Yup - sorry, i'm not a native english speaker :)

So how many returns versus number sold. Only Apple know and I can understand a reluctance to publish hard numbers. Perhaps if all manufacturers did publish numbers these minor 1st world problems would be put into perspective?

to chalk stuff like this up to selection bias is ridiculous... wouldn't every product on the site have equally bad reviews then?

hashtag apple-fanboy-armchair-social-science

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