Audiophiles swear by Apple chargers as a power source. It's a needlessly clean power source. I was having extreme issues with noise from my DAC, to the degree of clearly audible at normal listening levels. Apple sorted that right out.
The charger is the only product I will buy from Apple. It's complete and utter overkill, you'll never have problems for a very minor premium (absolutely speaking, not relatively).
What you are experiencing is not "power supply noise", but most likely ground loop noise. The fix is not to shill Apple power supplies, which as switching power supplies are still extremely noisy, but to use proper connectors and signalling.
That's like saying "I had back pain, so I bought a 10,000 dollar mattress and it's fine now!" Meanwhile, the actual solution was that the person needed a firmer mattress.
Knowing what the actual problem is rather than what product fixes it will save you time and money.
Heh. If I plug an iPad charger in the "wrong way" (symmetric EU socket), I observe massive interference/hum via the 3.5mm audio jack. The hum disappears if I rotate the plug, or touch the metal backplate of the iPad.
I have the exact same issue with a MacBook (2015). As soon as I plug in the audio jack, I will hear background noise, except if I touch the aluminium body.
I solved the problem by replacing the default short connector to the socket with a desktop-like long power cable, that unlike the short one has a ground connection.
Professional (and generally speaking) audio equipment can produce undesired sound effects if there’s any voltage irregularities going on. I know that certain outlets in my house that cause static noise out of a guitar amplifier because they aren’t.. perfectly wired? Also, I know audio engineers will typically plug their equipment into an outlet that is separate from their computer to avoid this as well. I haven’t studied electrical or sound engineering too deeply but I have noticed the same. Knowing that this is a general issue, I did a quick search and found this: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0712/
Oh yeah I have a electronic music studio for years and a clean power source is the beginning of everything. Brought in stuff for repairs only to have the technician tell me that there was nothing wrong. At home same problem again. "Try plugging it in directly to a wall socket" problem solved. And with lots of outboard gear you get lots of cables and lots of adapters.
Google "balanced power for tube amplifiers" and see how far that rabbit hole goes ...
(And it's not all superstition, and it's not all for tube amps -- it's all in the SNRR of your power stages for every piece of equipment in your sound chain.)
As an audiophile who is picky about chargers, no. Also, Apple isn’t the only company making decent chargers, but many of the comparable chargers I’ve gotten from other companies—e.g., some of the older Pixel chargers—have died over time, while their Apple counterparts are still kicking. I keep meaning to open one of the dead chargers to determine the cause of failure, but I have a tinkering backlog at the moment.
Thanks for the previous work. I was most interested in your prose about the old, recalled Apple charger, where design suggested to you someone at Apple was told ~“be sure these never can come out again.”
Most of the action in chargers right now is in 30 watt USB-C. Everyone wants the fasted charge possible.
New iPhones can apparently consume 22 watts plus (via usb-c to lightning and macs and iPads (I believe) can pull the full 30 over an appropriate usb-c.
As a result, when shopping for USB-C chargers, or power strips containing USB-C, I study the supply carefully to make sure they provide this or if not I’ll be happy enough consuming a standard wall plug with a 30W adapter.
These adapters seem to have shrunk in the past two years due to GaN, or Galium Nitride instead of silicon. (I have not read what this means exactly but it is in the marketing copy)
One of the bigger electronics accessory names was the first, but now you see no-name brands offering GaN as well.
To my knowledge, Apple has not introduced GaN-based power adapters but I could be wrong.
Regardless, it would be very interesting to read a study of yours of 30W chargers in this class.
GaN is a type of MOSFET, which is the high power transistor at the core of all modern power supplies.
By choosing GaN, the MOSFET can be switched quicker without wasting too much energy as heat. That in turn means all other components (capacitors, inductors) can be made smaller in the same ratio.
The end result is modern GaN technologies allow someone to make a 30 watt power supply in the same physical space that a 5 watt power supply from 2005 took.
GaN-FET is not necessarily a MOS-FET strictly speaking.
> By choosing GaN, the MOSFET can be switched quicker without wasting too much energy as heat. That in turn means all other components (capacitors, inductors) can be made smaller in the same ratio.
Faster switching frequency of the whole circuit is not necessarily an attribute of the material. There are silicon ICs with high switching frequencies for things like powering CPUs, and GPUs. They are of course physically bigger, and a bit less efficient.
What GaN switches put on the table is having a single transistor being able to do this, and thus allowing much simpler circuits, basically a drop in replacement for existing silicon devices.
It would be interesting to get a real expert's explanation of how the ways the Nintendo Switch violates the USB specifications leads to third party docks sometimes frying consoles, or maybe an explanation of how phone manufacturers can charge batteries at absurd C rates without killing them.
> third party [Switch] docks sometimes frying consoles
Simple: an early third-party dock for the Switch, made by Nyko, implemented USB-C incorrectly and could deliver up to 9V on the CC1/CC2 (configuration channel) pins. These pins are only supposed to have 5V on them, and a USB-C interface IC in the Switch was frequently damaged by that voltage.
The Switch was fine. The fault was entirely in the dock.
From what I'm reading, most of the violations Nathan is complaining about are on the part of Nintendo's dock, not the Switch itself. Moreover, these violations are all relatively minor (especially compared to Nyko's 9V CC howler!) and are unlikely to cause any serious issues under normal use.
The point was not whether the implementation in the Switch was perfect, it was about frying the console. Minor spec violations won’t do that, but a wildly out-of-spec charger might.
> The Switch was fine. The fault was entirely in the dock.
... and now those of us who design things with USB-C ports have a very clear market study in "should we shell out the $ to protect the CC pins against a short to VBUS?"
There were a few specialized IC solutions floating around for this when the max VBUS was at 20V, but now that the 2.1 spec brings it up to almost 50V, it's not clear what the best answer will be.
TI's solution that they offer in the TPD6S300A is to monitor voltage on the CC pins and cut its connection using a fet if an overvoltage condition is detected.
10C isn't an absurdly fast charge rate if your battery has very low internal resistance. Drone / RC people have been doing that (and more) for years, as their batteries are often made for 50C+ discharge rates.
That's a pretty cool GaN (gallium nitride) charger. I'm guessing that it uses the InnoSwitch4-CZ control chip. That chip is interesting because instead of having separate chips on the primary (high-voltage) and secondary (low-voltage) sides of the transformer, they use a single chip that contains circuits for both sides. Internally, the two sides are isolated and communicate via an inductive coupling link. The chip looks very weird because it has a super-wide drive pin.
My guess is that it has an analog-to-digital converter to measure the line voltage at high frequency and a microcontroller to analyze the data to look for transients that indicate arcing. I found a datasheet for an arc-fault detector chip for solar panels which would be similar concepts: https://supp.iczoom.com/images/public/20181016/1539670869717...
Do you know what the big difference for companies to cram enough hardware into the same space to support 20W power like Anker [1] Is this just incremental improvements or is there a technological breakthrough that's enabled this?
It's essentially a technological breakthrough. That charger uses GaN (Gallium Nitride) instead of silicon for the switching transistors. Gallium Nitride has various advantageous properties over silicon (higher bandgap voltage, higher breakdown field, faster electron mobility) that make it more efficient in chargers.
No. Carborundum can operate at higher temperatures and voltages than silicon, but it isn't more efficient; it just lets you run the transistors hotter and at higher voltages, so they can switch more power. The nitride is actually more efficient, but it's more delicate to overvoltage. (I think it also withstands higher temperatures, but in a wallwart the problem isn't that the transistor loses its ability to switch; it's that the plastic case melts.)
You can relive my emotions from when I learned about the astounding properties of nitride transistors (in 02017, I think) in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/jellybeans.html#addtoc_1. Unfortunately there weren't any carborundum parts in my list.
SiC has a lower electron mobility than GaN (and, in fact, even Silicon), so in identical scenarios it can't switch as quickly as GaN chips.
SiC has significantly higher thermal conduction than both Si or GaN, though, which makes it more suitable for cases where you need a ton of thermal capacity (inverters for EVs, for instance).
Both technologies are in their infancy, though. You can get better performance out of either by improving the process technology aspect, so it's hard to say one will ultimately be better than the other. Given the electron mobility though, it seems GaN will ultimately win for devices that aren't thermally limited.
Some of the new ultra-compact chargers are using switching regulators based on GaN transistors, which are a fairly new technology. These are more efficient and hence can be smaller for the same power envelope. Some of the Anker products use these, not sure about the one you linked.
But similar logic applies even for the ones that aren't using GaN. More efficient parts and/or designs allowing for more and more shrinkage. One of the other big drivers has been manufacturers starting to market monolithic chips that manage all the aspects of power regulation and USB-PD in a single/small number of parts.
Any interest in looking into ebike chargers? Particularly on the diy side, there are a bunch of folks out there banging up battery packs in their basements and getting shocks, starting fires.
Have you torn down any more recent chargers? Curious if quality standards for Apple or other consumer electronics companies have held steady, improved, or gotten worse in the 9 intervening years.
I kind of got bored with chargers and found other projects like the Apollo Guidance Computer. My impression is that the quality of super-cheap chargers has increased a bit since people are paying more attention to safety, but I don't have any quantitative data.
On the practical side, I imagine many chargers even if they catch on fire will struggle to cause a large scale fire unless they are behind something flammable or the like.
Maybe an idea for a test at some point? Simulate typical environments they might be in, blow them up, and see how much mayhem they create?
> I imagine many chargers even if they catch on fire will struggle to cause a large scale fire unless they are behind something flammable or the like.
Given that USB-C PD's EPR upgrade will allow 48V @ 5A for a total of 240W of power, the potential for a fire due to shoddy (too thin/fraudulent or damaged) cables, dirt or loose solder connections on the sockets (causing high resistance and thus heat build-up at the spot) is not negligible.
The most troublesome potential is the combination of PD controller bugs on the charger side leading to 48V/5A on the cable, and a lack of protection circuitry on the side of a device that has been designed for 5V-only.
> The most troublesome potential is the combination of PD controller bugs on the charger side leading to 48V/5A on the cable, and a lack of protection circuitry on the side of a device that has been designed for 5V-only.
Double yikes. I always thought that if you're going to put radically different voltages through ports, they should have different-enough connectors that you can't plug one into the other. I guess I'm old-fashioned.
I get the desire to end the connector conspiracy and just have One Connector to Rule Them All, but in the end we've just created another connector conspiracy, especially when you throw Thunderbolt into the mix.
You mentioned the interference with touch screens.
Long time ago I accidentally purchased one Apple power supply from Amazon and I assume it was a counterfeit. I remember not being able to control the iphone because touches were misaligned and generally off.
Can you please help me understand what (likely) happened?
Cheap chargers can interfere with capacitive touchscreens because cheap chargers have a lot of electrical noise in their output. This noise gets coupled to the touchscreen and causes problems. Specifically, the touchscreen controller needs to measure pico-Coulombs of charge which is difficult when there are multi-volt spikes coming out of the charger. The chip can perform various filtering to deal with this noise, but that slows it down. Some touchscreen chips even do frequency hopping to avoid the noise (kind of like a military radio trying to avoid jamming).
The battery is probably the least sensitive part to noise. In fact, the battery may be able to filter/absorb a lot of noise, as long as it's charging, because it's a strong current sink and it has low impedance. (You may still have ground loop problems and other resistive voltage dividers that let the interference get to other places.)
The circuits in the phone may be damaged by excessive spikes. Especially if the spikes happen to be of a frequency that the internal filters / regulators in the phone aren't good at rejecting -- some regulators may only reject 20 dB of noise in certain bands, and > 80 dB in others.
How does one learn to build such things? Most would say school, but I imagine there are particularly good reads out there that are more helpful to those driven enough to be autodidacts.
Thank you for such an excellent and digestible article. Such a pleasure to read.
I don't know how to build them, just take them apart :-) But seriously, there are a lot of books on switching power supply design. E.g. Fundamentals of Power Supply Design by Mammano, who is "the father of the PWM controller IC industry".
Huh, that's a new one. I worked in the space and Erickson and Maksimovic - Fundamentals Of Power Electronics (along with the courses taught at UC Boulder) was one many centered around. In many cases most of the power engineers I worked with just sorta had a feel for things and relied on simulation tools (LTSpice / SwitcherCAD).
For something as basic as a charger, an intro to electronics course/book is probably good enough. There's more than enough youtube videos out there about bridge rectifiers and the like.
The charge circuitry here isn't anything too special.
Chargers are actually very complex and demanding design tasks with a lot of interesting* fault modes.
(* assuming you like small fires and exploding devices)
Just because you can make it work doesn't mean it is safe. Good charging circuit will be designed to behave correctly if any of the components fail.
Even a simple battery charger can easily cause fire.
The usual advice to amateurs is to stay away from charging circuits and switching power supplies. And reuse existing circuits in their designs. There is a lot of complete charging circuits and power supplies made to be included in designs.
This isn't an actual charger though, just a basic off the shelf switching power supply, low power AC -> 5V DC.
The actual battery charger chip is on the phone (which again, will use a ready made BMS IC, so not really complicated either, all the smarts are already done).
There's some things to consider when laying out a switcher (keep loop areas small, keep sensitive lines from noise ones, etc), but it's not that complicated, and once you've done a few of them, it becomes routine.
And of course to pass safety standards there are clearance and creepage rules and EMI/EMC to keep in mind.
Any junior level EE/hobbyist with a few years of tinkering should be able to put this together.
It's easy to make a linear power supply, but a switching power supply like a charger has a lot of complications. Among other things, the layout of the board matters a lot due to the high frequencies involved. I'll point out the the application note on this controller chip is 34 pages long. https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/an1326-l6565...
Certainly. My point was more that the basics are pretty readily covered in intro electronics courses. Heck, throw in a low pass filter or two and you end up with a lot of the same required knowledge to make a switching power supply.
I agree you won't be able to make an apple quality device, it'd just be enough info to understand how one is working (Without taking into account things like line noise impact on wiring).
I imagine then that some of the more claimed sophisticated elements come from multidisciplinary backgrounds like having experience with electronics in noise-sensitive circuitry.
Can you talk a bit about the tingling sensation from touching the aluminium case of a macbook pro, when using a non-earthed cable with the power supply? With the latest macbook pro M1s, apple no longer include an earthed cable in the box (with the exception of the three pronged adapter in the uk).
Here are some good answers about it [1], but it's current leakage from the mains voltage making its way onto your chassis.
You end up with upwards of 60V sine wave on your MacBook case, compared to the relatively grounded you (capacitively to your surroundings). This voltage creates some electrostatic force to attract your finger to the surface enough that you can feel a change in friction. The Disney Research Lab made a neat touch display surface that used the same effect (and higher voltage) to modify the friction and "texture" feeling for a haptic touchscreen [2].
Definitely. I am addicted using the large iPad chargers for iPhones. Is this wrong? I am under the imagination that they are far superior, i.e. charge faster!
Fast charging is typically extremely hard on the battery, so I’m the opposite to you - I actively try to use the lowest wattage charger whenever I can (5W).
My understanding, borne out by experience, is that this is far, far kinder to the battery and will significantly increase the lifespan of the battery (in combination with good battery charging and discharging practice).
I have one or two high output chargers for when I need my devices charged in a hurry, but that’s extremely uncommon.
My main phone, an iPhone X bought at launch (Nov 2017), is still at 89% battery health and working well.
I don't think anyone has made an AC-coupled phone charger in decades since it's way more bulky and expensive. There might be some consumer electronics that uses a transformer to get a low-voltage AC output, but I can't think of any offhand.
Switching supplies should work from DC, but I don't want to give any guarantees. In particular, for a higher-power supply with power factor correction, I'm not sure what it does if the input isn't AC.
> (...) roughly 4mm of distance is required between the two circuits. (As I discuss in Tiny, cheap, dangerous: Inside a (fake) iPhone charger, cheap chargers totally ignore these safety rules.
Which is why I immediately destroy any charger at my home that is suspect to not come from a brand name producer.
Is it really worth to risk your life for couple of dollars?
Electronics is my hobby and I also happen to design some switch mode power supplies for AC. I can't overstate how difficult it is to design a good safe SMPS. Comparing to my other projects it seems it is at least 20-50 times harder to design a dedicated SMPS than the rest of the circuit, even with a lot of specialized literature on the matter to help me out (meaning I don't create my own topologies, I just learn the ones that are well described in the book). And that for applications under 100W.
> Is it really worth to risk your life for couple of dollars?
This has been my thought ever since the news came out about AmazonBasics products like chargers and cables catching fire and melting. I've since started springing for the more expensive Apple-branded chargers and cables instead. Saving $15 but burning my house down... not worth it!
It's a shame so few companies still make high quality 5V/1A chargers anymore. Apple seems to be the only one left that does so, and with consistent and predictable manufacturing.
5V/1A is great for overnight charging. I've noticed my phone battery lasts so much longer the next day.
I don't know if it's unique to them, but Sony slow-charges up to 80-90% until about an hour before you set your alarm, then brings you up to 100% before you wake up. Seems to work well and the battery degradation I've seen, after 4 years, has been very minimal.
It is a crying shame how the official Apple cables seem to be almost intentionally designed to be as fragile as possible. Everyone I have ever known with a MacBook MagSafe chargers has a cable that is in tatters and when I see them it genuinely scares me. And when I ask them about it the response is usually akin to “well it still works and they’re expensive to replace”. True enough if you want to replace it with an official one. Admittedly I haven’t seen any of the newer usb-c ones.
The lightning cables tend to hold up a little better but the jacketing still seems extra thin and flimsy. I've actually only owned 2 iPhones (6s and SE2) and one iPad because I'm not someone who cares about having (or spending the money) on a crazy fancy phone but I do prefer iOS. I've bought a few nice third-party MFI-certified cables after the one that came with my 6s disintegrated and haven't bought a new one since. They were a bit expensive, but they're in as good of shape as when I bought them and well worth the upfront cost.
At least the modern lightning and USB-C cables can be replaced easily and cheaply. In the bad old day of MagSafe, a cable failure meant replacing the entire charger.
As for Apple's recent cables, the rubber has become discoloured on my very-well-used 2017 MacBook Pro USB-C charging cable, but it's still completely intact with no signs of fraying or failing. My ~2.5 year old USB-C to lightning cable seems to be holding up well so far too.
I’ve been using them for a few years and they’re virtually indestructible. They have a thin wire braided into the plastic overmold so they’re extremely tough, and the strain relief on the cable ends is about as good as it gets.
IMHO the issue is getting a genuine one. There are a lot of fake chargers around and even reputable retailers get duped by suppliers. So unless you can buy from Samsung directly, I think Apple is the safer bet. You can walk into any of the Apple Stores or order directly and be 100% sure you're getting the genuine product.
Is there any truth to this? I have noticed battery life vary from 100% depending on if I use a different charger. But it only really happens when I travel, so I chalked it up to different usage patterns or climates.
I’ve always charged my phone with 1A chargers in an attempt to preserve the battery. My current phone is an iPhone X I bought at release in Nov 2017, and the battery health is still at 89% according to the battery information page. Subjectively I still feel like I have good battery life too.
I also purchased an iPhone X on release day and never cared how I charged it (iPad charger, iPhone charger, laptop). My battery health is also 89% — though I do not feel like I am getting great battery life anymore
Anecdotally, I have an iPhone 8 Plus that for the last 18 months or so I've nearly exclusively charged with my Macbook Pro charger, and the battery health is at 82%.
I actually think that while this charger is acceptable, it is pretty disappointing from Apple.
A neat design wouldn't use a bridge rectifier on the input side - it would use synchronous rectification (more efficient, substantially smaller because no big passives are required for input smoothing, and nicer on the electrical grid because it's actually possible to design it to deliberately absorb harmonics generated by other devices in your home).
Next step would be to use a much higher switching rate (eg. 3Mhz). Use some high performance MOSFETs to reduce switching losses. Suddenly that transformer becomes the size of a grain of rice and the capacitors can all be surface mount. The whole thing can now be lighter, smaller, cheaper, and less environmentally impactful while maintaining the same performance.
Apples design here was electrically boring and very much not pushing the envelope of what is possible.
I've seen many house fires over the last few years that were from chargers. I'd hope risk of bursting into flames is one of the most important things when choosing - it freaks me out. I'd hope the big brands have 0% chance of this - is that correct?
This is what sketches me out so much about electronics like chargers by random brands on Amazon (the trend lately seems to be random characters in all caps) that surely have no oversight or conformance to standards.
I have seen the result of two mobile chargers blow up in the office - the fire was only prevented by fuses and even so there were black scorch marks on the power outlets. My dads battery charger blew up similarly.
In all cases it was because they were brought cheap on Aliexpres. I haven't seen any chargers sold elsewhere have any issues. The closest thing I got was when I charged my laptop on my bed and had put the blanket over the charger - it didn't fail but it got really, really, really hot.
So based on anecdata: don't buy things things to stick in walls on aliexpress. Also fuses are really nice.
A lot of the chargers and cables you find in gas stations and the like are identical to the AliExpress junk, so it’s a good idea to be wary of those too.
Its been a while but my first macbook charger came close to setting a fire I think. I smelled something as I passed my bedroom, and found that the computer charger was smoking. I unplugged it from the computer/wall and put it in my sink and things were fine, but it definitely freaked me out. I haven't had similar issues since, but every single one of my dozen or more since have frayed _very_ quickly relative to other cords/chargers I use.
Apple Macbook charger was the only one charger in my life which released magic smoke. I must admit that it was after I soldered new cable and assembled it with duct tape (because it was glued and I broke the plastic casing trying to pry it off), but that does not inspire much confidence in me anyway. I don't know why everyone prays Apple hardware which was so terrible in my life in so many occasions and the only reason I tolerate it is their good software.
I think it is pretty much the datasheet reference circuit so the people that designed the chip were already paid for that and that cost is in the bill o
They make at least 200 million of those a year and they can use the same design easily for 5 years. 1 billion devices. 1 cent per device would allow them to spend 10 million on the development.
Development cost is neglible for this kind of stuff.
Yes, exactly! Also, a lot of the design work is done by the manufacturer (Flextronics) and the semiconductor company. Apple has different charger designs (that look identical outside) so they can play off different companies against each other.
Apple may make great USB chargers, but they have certainly cut corners and shirked responsibility when it comes to the rubber insulation of their Lightning and (MacBook) MagSafe cables.
I've brought my frayed MagSafe charger, which has degraded to the point that it's been staining everything blue, to an Apple Store Genius Bar multiple times, and the Geniuses (in multiple countries) keep saying that it's my fault that the insulation degrades over time, and that such "wear and tear" is not covered under warranty.
Not joking but this is entirely user related. In the 15 years I’ve been using the things I haven’t killed a single cable. Not one. The strain relief is not great but if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there.
The killers are people who sit there with the cable rammed into their stomach bending it at 90 degree angle when using their phone. On the MacBook chargers it’s usually bashing it constantly or tugging it.
I come from a world of RF cables which cost more than a MacBook and have very limited bend limits. What we have is insanely robust these days. Just be nice to it.
Edit: my daughter had my 2010 MBP until recently which the original charger blew up on. After dissecting it the cable was fine but the main IC had cracked in half. No shorts on the cable grommet. It lasted 11 years! What are you people doing to these things?
> if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there
That's clearly false, and feeling the need to include "if you're careful" in your statement exposes its falseness. No other major manufacturer makes power cables that chronically disintegrate like this so much that it has become a meme specifically about Apple's cables: https://imgur.com/AVP6riy
Not unsleeved. Disintegrated. It's because the material they use is soft and extremely undurable, unlike literally every other major cable manufacturer.
Apple's cables, and _nobody_ else's, do this when even the slightest amount of angle is applied: https://i.imgur.com/seu0xh8.jpg
Look closely at the circled part. That bulge is caused by extremely soft sleeve material that isn't bonded to the internal wires combined with inappropriately abrupt strain relief. That bulge is why Apple cables disintegrate so often, and even just the downward force of gravity from a laptop being on the edge of a table with the power cord dangling off the side onto the floor is enough to cause it over time.
> That's clearly false, and feeling the need to include "if you're careful" in your statement exposes its falseness. No other major manufacturer makes power cables that chronically disintegrate like this so much that it has become a meme specifically about Apple's cables
That’s quite a strong and definitive conclusion from your part. Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there, of course there are a lot of people with issues. But just like that, also based on anecdotes, I have lightning cables from the first time they released the port and they are perfectly usable. I never had an issue with an Apple cable in more than 10 years. In the same time, a friend of mine goes over one cable a year, so yes, I would say it’s also people, it’s scale, it’s manufacturing, it’s everything. But to call this an Apple issue is quite a stretch.
> Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there
I'm not sure how one can honestly argue that Apple has sold more laptops than every other laptop manufacturer. I they've sold more cables (I doubt it, but let's pretend), well...that would be because people keep having to replace them.
This problem is common enough with Apple's laptop power cables that it has been a meme for more than a decade now. That's not the case for _any_ other vendor, and those other vendors have sold more laptops than Apple has by several orders of magnitude.
I wonder if there's some weird cultural selection bias; like the kind of person who purchases an Apple product is more likely to make a meme about it vs someone who purchases a Dell?
Could be a lack of clarity on my part. Make it into a meme might be more accurate?
I'm not just imagining people making image macros, but more likely to talk about or gossip about it, more likely to ask other people for help or opinions, more likely to pick up on the trend and write about it in some blog or article or go on YouTube about it?
I just imagine a Dell laptop to be majority provided/owned by a company and so such complaints end up going to IT support who ends up swapping it out or something. Whereas a Mac is more likely to be owned by creative professionals, or journalists, or people more generally inclined towards sharing memes in a contagious way or otherwise striking a chord in the cultural zeitgeist?
Most of the reports that stick in my mind (and including my own personal experience) are from people who haven't only ever used just one or the other but have experience with both and are able to do in-kind comparisons between the two experiences. My Toshiba Tecra, Dell XPS 15 and Thinkpad T41, T43, X201, and X1 Carbon power cables could be used to haul trailers (figuratively) without fraying. Apple is the only laptop vendor I know of that uses an extremely fragile soft rubber sheath on their cables and no real strain relief.
So, no, I don't think that's it. Plenty of other laptops have problems, but only Apple has this particular problem.
I vouched your dead comment so I could reply. (Am I allowed to do this? I don't know!)
Maybe you don't know that the word meme predates image macros and even the internet, but it does. The phrases "it became a meme" and "people make memes" are not talking about the same manifestation. Memes are ideas that take root, not funny pictures with words on them.
My assumption is that anyone who reads "became a meme" as "people made memes about" must be very young, but that's my own bias showing. A person who has no memories of a world before philosoraptors and shy penguins or whatever image macros kids are making these days might not realize the difference, but there it is.
Also...
> phone chargers
I actually did say laptops, and the reason I said laptops is because people have been complaining about Apple's power cables tearing/fraying for longer than Apple has been making phones. The problem applies equally well to their phone charging cables, of course, but standard micro USB cables are also usually complete shit whereas standard laptop power cables are not except for Apple's.
The bulge is where the cable has been repeatedly knocked or compressed into an extreme angle. Of course that will happen at the strain relief. It happens on Amazon Basics lightning cables, Lenovo laptop power supplies, anything if you exceed the min bend radius of the cable.
Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop.
I'm sitting here with my M1 MBA on charge at the moment. Is it strained? Hell no:
> Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop.
And if you suspend it in zero gravity and never touch it then it will last forever. Being able to baby something into lasting doesn't make the product durable. The fact remains that Apple's cables are demonstrably and notably more prone to fraying than every other manufacturer's cables even when the same people use them in the same way.
> The old mantra holds: treat it nice or pay twice.
I mean, sure, ok, but there's another mantra that goes "nobody likes someone who blames users for product quality that is significantly worse than from every other manufacturer so that when users use the product normally without aggression toward the product this product fails while the others do not."
I mean it really seems like you've come down on the side that it's totally ok that even simple gravity on just the cable itself puts too much unrelieved strain on a cable that for decades cost $100 or more to replace because it was integrated into the charging brick. And you argue that that's a problem with the user instead of grossly inadequate strain relief.
We've staked out our sides. Let's agree to disagree.
I'm going to leave it at that I used to treat my stuff like shit and blamed the manufacturer, mostly IBM and Lenovo back then, when it broke. Then I grew up. Life got easier and cheaper.
No it doesn't, you can buy any random cheap cable in ebay any they are mostly indestructible and last years while apple cables require extreme care to last and even then they seem to turn in to a gummy substance that basically falls apart.
I don't know how you can defend these crappy products. I don't want to baby a cable, and yet I have to act like a crazy person when ever someone touches my "precious" cable. Any other usb cable on my desk I can twist and bend at my heart's content, and I know they'll outlast the spec they were designed for.
The only reason I use wireless charging now is because it's cheaper and easier than using broken cables. Sadly the one in my car looks like the terminator's arm when he cuts off his arm skin.
It's wrong to blame users. To please Greenpeace, Apple removed PVC from their cables (maybe only in some markets?). Such cables deteriorated on their own. First they swelled up and turned gray near the MagSafe connector, then turned yellow, and finally became brittle and fell apart in sticky dark green bits.
I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress.
I suspect deterioration was either due to heat transmitted from the chassis over the MagSafe connector, or from finger oils, as people touch the cable most near the connector.
>I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress.
I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well.
To contrast I have 30+ year old NEMA connector cables (kind for server/desktop PSU's) with zero signs of wear, maybe they got a little stiffer over the years but no cracking. I have also used extension cords this old and again, none of this chemical degradation. I think lead stabilizers were used in outdoor cables and this is why they hold up better, and also carry lead warnings sometimes on the cables?
> I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well.
I looked this up a few weeks ago!
It's because the rubber-like coating (TPE, or thermoplastic elastomer) interacts with body oils, causing it to eventually degrade:
I wouldn't be surprised if that oils and bacteria, and if that's dependent on particular user's hand microbiota. Apple should and could test it on users who report fraying, IMHO.
Mine mbpro USB-C charger cable is just turned to yellow after a year of use. I'm going to add some shrinkwrap before it turns to goo, hopefully it'll work this time.
I'm not sure this is accurate; on both classic magsafe adapters (mid 2012) and 2019 adapters, I've not had an adapter fray, and both my 2012 and 2019 MacBook Airs are getting daily all-day use (and because I and my friend are clumsy, weekly coffee baths). A quick search for Apple magsafe pvc removal suggests (from Greenpeace's own site) that the change you are commenting on was done in 2009.
The original cables for both survived just fine for their entire life time, and the 2012 machine travelled all across the globe, and the 2019 even more so in a shorter amount of time, again, with very active and heavy use.
I don't think this is a widespread issue, and sounds isolated.
> A quick search for Apple magsafe pvc removal suggests (from Greenpeace's own site) that the change you are commenting on was done in 2009.
Anecdotally, the MagSafe charger that came with my 2008 MacBook is still going strong, but the one that I got with a 2013 MacBook Air is a hot blue mess that I occasionally bring to Apple Stores to try and get replaced.
That is the Apple Way. Apple is never at fault, they have prefect engineering.. They have Genius "Technicians".. and so it is impossible for them to make a mistake..
Remember it was not Apple Engineering that was a problem years ago, it was because people simply did not know how to hold their phone correctly, Stupid users thinking they could just hold their device however they felt like, no when you buy an Apple Product you do it the Apple Way...
You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine. Those things are indestructible. You could repel off a cliff with one. Have you ever seen one frayed or damaged at all? I haven't. Meanwhile, go to any college lecture hall and you will find about half the macbook chargers are covered in tape or frayed. This is "You are holding it wrong" all over again.
Maybe the macbook charger is stronger than your expensive RF cables, but it is far weaker than anything else the competition puts out and that's a huge annoyance, as a mac user myself who gets maybe 3 years out of a given apple cable, be it magsafe charger, lightning cable, or even the wired headphones. It's a distinctly Apple issue, cables in my hands from other manufacturers, even no name junk looking cables, don't have these issues.
I'm unconvinced. I used a MacBook for about three years around 2010, and had to have the charger replaced twice as the cable started cracking near the MagSafe connector. The third charger started falling apart (insulation yellowing and cracking along much of its length) while sat unused in a drawer. I've also had two or three Lightning cables fail in a similar manner until I switched to Anker cables.
I've only ever had one non-Apple laptop charger break in a similar way, and that was after five years of heavy daily use. I've never had the insulation break on a micro-USB or USB-C cable (I used Windows Phones until I got an iPhone 11). If it were entirely due to user behaviour, I wouldn't expect to see such a disparity between Apple and non-Apple cables.
I have the complete opposite experience aligning with the OP.
Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault.
This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?
The iPhone Cables are the only ones that does it without some sort of strain relieves, which means they have a far higher rate of failure.
I brought Anker PowerLine II and III ( Not the + version ) for my family and friends and so far apart from one connector failure ( Not the cable ), all of them have survived the years of usage with no signs of cable damage. It is such a relieve knowing your cable should last years if not decades.
We used to joke apart Apple made the cable so bad because they expect us to buy a new iPhone every two years anyway, which is when all of our lightning cables somehow failed.
I am also wondering, if it is really that environmental friendly to make your cable free of certain material but they break 10 times easier and end up so much more in landfill. Compare to make one that last literally forever. Lightning Cables are sold in hundreds of millions unit a year. And Apple earns money and commission from lightning chips, connector and MFi.
In fairness, any cable of this style I've bought has failed the same way. I have a bunch of generic lightning cables that are white, with the little nub of rubber strain relief like the genuine cables, and they fail the same way too. They look nice, and even on the ones where the insulation is torn, I've only had to throw one away for not working at all (Apple or generic) of the probably dozen I own.
But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.
So what you are saying is, they are holding it wrong?
Sure, if you treat almost anything with kids gloves it will last forever. But that isn't how people use the product. The reality is, the cords from apple are the only ones I've seen break like that.
> So what you are saying is, they are holding it wrong?
People love to dunk on that Jobs quote, but he was right. If you took the iPhone 4, wrapped your whole hand around it, and squeezed hard, you could make the bars drop. If you held like a regular cell phone, it worked fine.
As proof I offer the fact that the iPhone 4 sold very well for years, even after Apple ended their free bumper program. I had one (sans bumper) and the reception was fine.
Also, the same treatment to all the other major phones of the time produced the same results. Samsung phones even had a warning in the user manual about it.
I'm extremely careful with my Macbook magsafe charging cables. But in ten years I've had three fray into uselessness.
My current cable has black electrical tape at both the charger block and connector ends. No matter how carefully one loops these things before putting them in a bag, the rubbery material eventually abrades and cracks.
In contrast, I used Powerbooks for 15+ years and never had a single cable go bad.
Strain relief for cables has been a solved problem for decades, but Apple intentionally switched to an inferior design around 2008 [1] for aesthetic reasons.
When I first got an iPhone 7 (the first one without a headphone jack) I bought a second adapter straight away, because I looked at the one that came in the box and figured it would last about five minutes.
Nearly 5 years later, that same flimsy adapter is still going strong in my car. It’s been plugged and unplugged thousands of times (my fiancée’s phone needs a USB-C adapter—what a fun world we live in), stood on, left on the floor, left in both sub-freezing and summer heat wave temperatures. Still haven’t needed that second one. I’m kind of amazed (but would still prefer a headphone jack).
It's definitely user related. My Apple cables last indefinitely—unless my wife gets ahold of them. Then? Look out.
I'm just careful not to twist them or sharply bend them. If I pack them I usually just very-loosely wad them up and put them in a not-too-full part of a bag. That's the extent of my "care".
[EDIT] However! This does not mean Apple shouldn't make their cables better so they survive whatever people are doing to them to wreck them, since it's evidently very common.
>It's definitely user related. My Apple cables last indefinitely—unless my wife gets ahold of them. Then? Look out.
I had a Belkin lightning nylon charge cable I used for years and it worked great, then my gf borrowed it for 2 days and "gorilla'd" the end. Since she had a habit of chewing through the regular cables in only a few months, I was curious to watch and see what she does different.
It was two things:
1. She uses the phone while charging frequently and has the cable kept taut, this strains the connector.
But more importantly
2. She yanks the phone off the charger by grabbing the cord and pulling the phone at an angle, this can destroy a worn cable in a matter of days.
This is the difficult part when the whole cable is a single solid color and the plug fits either direction. I have a Lightning cable in my car that only gets used hanging straight down from my dash-mounted iPhone, and I've noticed the device-end strain relief finally giving out from this after a few years.
Agreed that some kind of stripe would make this a lot easier. Save me testing directions and trying to judge which has more tension. I do the same thing with keyed plugs, though—if anything, I find it easier to accidentally introduce more twists in those, since I'm more likely to need to half-twist it one way or the other to get it oriented the right way.
As far as reliability goes, I do see a lot more frays in Apple cables (though not ones that remain exclusively in my care) than others, but part of the reason is that other cables seem to have a weirdly-high rate of mysterious failures in absence of evident physical damage. They just die after 6-24 months. Maybe they'd fray eventually too, but they crap out before it happens. I don't get it. The only Apple cables I've seen do anything similar are usb(-a/-c)-to-lightning charging cables (and I suspect I just need to rubbing-alcohol the contacts on the lightning-plug ends on those, to solve the problem)
I use litz wire for headphone cables. For a cable that's constantly on you, there's always some chance something happens unexpectedly. I've broken my share of earpods.
Litz wire doesn't increase the durability as such, merely reduces skin effect in RF applications. Sennheiser used to sell steel cables for their professional headphones. Now those are durable. I ran over mine with my chair about 50 times a day and the cable was still going after 10 years.
Steel makes sense for extreme durability - I suppose you could use extremely thin steel wire for in-ears to make it flexible, though it might require a very special alloy to be thin and low resistance?
In my experience, litz wire is exceptionally flexible and suitable for getting shoved in a pocket frequently. Each wire can be quite thick due to the flexibility.
If Apple's cables were so great fewer people would be buying replacement cables and/or complaining about them. To me, it indicates that they were not designed tough enough to accommodate the average person's use. You can reject it as anecdotal but almost all of my apple cables have frayed at-least once in their lifetime - headphone, charging, lightning/usb. The only one that didn't fray is the power cable to my mac mini.
The only cables that ever broke for me with less than 12 month use has been Apples, which I subject to same treatment as other devices, frequently Apple devices weren't even used as primary. I've since switched over to universal magnetic adapter heads and braided, magnetic charging cables with 90 degree heads.
I agree that for MagSafe cables this is really rare. Granted, I haven't had any issues with the USB-C cables ever since they switched to them when they came out with the Touch Bar MBP.
The lightning cables though... those things seem to break super easily. USB-C vs. USB seems to make no difference-- the strain relief is pretty terrible. Doesn't help that some of these cables get a lot of use (eg; for Apple CarPlay). I've found that it's usually the lightning end that goes not the other end. I wonder if switching the iPhone to USB-C might not help. But at this point it sounds like they're aiming for full wireless.
To people saying this is caused by use - this is irrelevant - people are upset because they use other comparable cables this way and don't have these problems nearly as often. I've noticed Apple usually has thinner cables - maybe it's that - frankly I'd prefer more robust ones.
Their strain relief is absolutely rubbish, too. How many of us have multiple Apple cables that end up looking like this [1]? They've been doing this for how long, and they can't solve strain relief, which every other cable manufacturer has figured out?
> How many of us have multiple Apple cables that end up looking like this [1]?
Apparently a lot, based on all the Internet comments I’ve seen over the years. But apparently I’m the weird one who has literally never had an Apple or third party lightning cable fail (except a couple in blatant cases of accidental misuse, like getting one stuck in a chair wheel). I’ve thrown several away because they get dirty and gross, and I’ve had a couple that seem to get flakey after a few years (I believe due to damage or corrosion to an exposed pin). But I’ve certainly never had one visibly fray like that!
Yes. People keep saying it hasn't happen or what ever. Or Negative Internet Comments being vocal. I mean for pete sake, just look at the total Lightning Cable certified, manufacturer and shipped annually and compared to the total Active user of iPhone + iPad.
Why would people buy them if they aren't broke. Why is every cable manufacture trying to capitalise on the market if there wasn't a profit.
And instead of ( cough ) doing the right thing and fix it. Apple continues to earn money and commission from their MFi programme.
Unfortunately, I bet if they added strain relief there would be a myriad of complaints that the cables are too hard to pack/fit in a pocket because the end is too rigid.
Personally, I've never had an issue with this, with 1st or 3rd party lightning cables, or with 1st party magsafe. But, my opinion is a lightning cable is dirt cheap, and people want them in their pocket when worried about battery, whereas a new magsafe charger is expensive and should have more robustness.
> I recalled that when in 2015, working for another sourcing shop working for likes of BestBuy/Futureshop/Target/London Drugs I was asked to tear down few chargers for them.
> I found that diodes in parallel are surprisingly common around the industry.
> This is such a thing which you are pretty much told on day 1 of any electronics course that it is impossible to not to know.
> My only thinkable conclusion was that people keep doing it on purpose.
I would like to see a picture of that circuit, not just a diagram. I've used this trick to good effect, and also used another trick: to use the circuit board as a balancing resistor. Just make the track a little bit longer for instance by routing the wires less than efficiently or by putting a little wavy line in it and you have a very low resistance resistor just perfect for balancing out the differences in diode switch speed and bias voltage.
In electronics not everything is what it seems to be at first glance. For an encore check out pcb fuses, coils and even capacitors.
My wife used to burn through cables. Now, the first thing I do when I get a new Apple device is add strain relieve. I don’t remember where I learned it, but I use the springs out of empty “click pens” (think Bic). When a pen runs dry, I take the spring out and save it in a small container in the “packet drawer.” When I get a new cable, I wind a spring around each end. It has the added bonus of making the cables easily distinguishable as belonging to us.
I haven’t had any issues with that. I think the major issues (at least with my wife) came from the fact that she usually disconnects by pulling the cable, and not the body of the connection. She still does this, but the spring covers about 2 inches of the cable and I haven’t had any frayed cables since I started doing this.
I know this is a common complaint, but not one of my iPhone or PowerBook/MacBook/MacBook Pro cables has ever failed or started to look anything like these complaints.
I don't really think myself as one to "baby" my gadgets, so I'm not really sure what the heck you all are doing to your cables.
Same here. I believe it happens, I see the frayed cables everywhere, but the MagSafe charger from my 2009 MacBook and the lightning cable that came with my iPhone 5 in 2012 are still perfectly fine and sees regular use in my car.
The strain relief on these cables is practically nonexistent, so I won't put the blame squarely on abusive users.
If you are using your Macbook like a desktop, you are unlikely to have any problem. If you are on the other hand a mobile user, ie, you move around between school, work, home, coffe shop, etc, yes, it's slightly more than an annoying issue.
The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store until the company removed all user ratings & reviews in Nov, 2019.
> The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store
I mean, you'd expect that. Nobody is buying a new one for fun. ~Everyone buying a new one has had one fail on them, so poor reviews are absolutely expected.
Not really. Sure, we expect all things in life to wear and tear at one point. I'm pretty sure most MacBook users can deal with occassional failures without venting out their anger online.
The frequency at which Apple Magsafe chargers fail is however quite insane and shows how they are poorly designed and built; therefore poor reviews -- and that's in spite of Apple user loyalty and a huge fanbois base who always come to the company defense's in public forums and reviews. I certainly didn't expect to see such piss-poor reviews on Apple's own website.
Not to mention the cable deterioration. I recently got an M1 MacBook Air and the USB-C charger is finally designed such that the cable is replaceable. No admission of wrongdoing, blaming the user, but at least an acceptable final fix.
> Apple may make great USB chargers, but they have certainly cut corners and shirked responsibility when it comes to the rubber insulation of their Lightning and (MacBook) MagSafe cables.
Apple can be good at function, but their basic mindset is definitely form over function. It seems like they'll compromise anything in an instant if there's some kind of aesthetic payoff (even an extremely minor one).
can't believe that this is still an issue. Apple Magsafe chargers are great and aestherically pleasing if you never move around and your Macbook is glued to desk all the time. But like most mobile MacBook users, I had similar problems with fraying Magsafe 2 charger cables for my rMacBook Pro from 2012 (non-USB) -- they had to be replaced almost every year, which was insane. One of them also died in flame -- which the Genius quietly replacef (for free) -- but the majority died unceremoniously due to similar fraying cable issues up until 2019. The Magsafe chargers had the lowest user ratings on Apple store website until the company decided to remove all user reviews a couple of years ago.
Needlessly I really had to part away from Apple products -- the first two years were covered by Amex's extended warranty, but after that the yearly "upkeep cost" started going up -- as there were also other issues with faulty GPU and bluetooth/wifi -- and continued until a couple of years ago (largely as a backup laptop).
Every time this is mentioned, it seems like there are vocal factions insisting that they treat the cables gently but they split and fray, and others insisting that they abuse them but they last forever.
Anecdotally, I've actually seen examples of both.
It's hard to imagine of Apple, but maybe they have high variance in cable quality between batches, or multiple suppliers?
We need a form that asks a bunch of metadata and whether you are satisfied with Apple brand cables. Share that widely (somehow?) and look for correlations.
The biggest concern is the self selection bias… if you’re perfectly happy with the cables would you care enough to respond to such a survey?
>such "wear and tear" is not covered under warranty.
Surprising - this same issue has happened to me multiple times with multiple power bricks but fortunately Apple replaced them every time.
I am very careful with the power bricks, but I think it's a design flaw of the old integrated cable design and strain relief which didn't do what it was supposed to do. As I noted, each time I brought a failed brick in they replaced it under AppleCare.
The old magsafe power brick design would tend to fray and fail at the strain relief points - either the one next to the power brick or the one near to the magsafe connector. I've seen the issue repeatedly for multiple other users as well - users who are not rough with the power brick or the computer.
Fortunately the current USB C power bricks have removable AC and USB C cables so they basically eliminated the issue from the integrated cable failing at the strain release point.
It's not just their cables. Their silicone iPhone cases suffer the same fate, sometimes after a year, sometimes after a month, just from moving in and out of your pocket. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/TMDdKNs
Ugh, yes. The MagSafe silicone case I bought last fall got nicks in the corners within a few months of use, and they've been slowly but steadily growing ever since. Supposedly the case has a one-year warranty and I can take it in to get swapped out, but I haven't tried yet.
I'm worried by reports from people saying they took theirs in to Apple Stores and were denied replacements. I wish you success and hope you don't end up one of them.
> it's my fault that the insulation degrades over time
Yeah, since the cable is not replaceable(at least, anything that's not USB-C), that's a crappy thing to say. It's obviously a widespread problem. The charger is expensive but can be replaced.
I had a frayed Apple Thunderbolt Display cable. Non removable and can't be easily replaced. Had to use some insulation tape at the time because an authorized Apple shop also claimed this was wear and tear not covered under warranty.
>>I've brought my frayed MagSafe charger, which has degraded to the point that it's been staining everything blue
How. I have a 12 years old magsafe charger and it's in perfect condition. Never frayed any cables, not the old 30-pin ones, not the lightning ones, not the new USB-C ones. I just don't get what people are doing with their apple cables to make them fray like this.
Apple cables are pretty notorious for having inadequate strain relief which leads to fraying and cable failure.
It’s a shame that for all the brilliant design within the power supplies that it can get sabotaged by this very Apple-like tendency to push aesthetics (I can just imagine Jobs or Ive demanding this) above all else.
The charger from my 2009 MBP has its cable perfectly intact; looks brand new. The charger from my 2012 model disintegrated at both ends. They lived similar lives. I have to think the material quality declined somewhere in there.
I've also never frayed an actual Apple cable, but I've had some non-apple cables that didn't last very long.
But, maybe part of that is understanding that the Apple ones suck?
I know they've picked form over function for the strain relief, so I make a subconscious effort not to strain them.
My ex-girlfriends charger didn't last very long, but mine (from 2011) is still quite well maintained, though darkened and discoloured with age.
Ugh, this sounds like I'm saying "you're holding it wrong" but, what I mean is that maybe we have a bit of survivorship bias here and because we tried to keep our cables in good shape.
I highly suspect too, that Apple is using eco-friendly plastics in the cables, which might be part of why they degrade so poorly, even when not strained at the ends.
Yea my wife’s cables don’t last long. I think it’s the way people curl it up.
Anker probably makes the better 3rd party cables. Other brands on Amazon are far worse. I try not to buy 3rd party cables for my laptops but will by them for phones and tablets.
It cracks me up that they still used TO-092A xtor packages. After all that compaction they couldn't use a smaller package? I know, I know: its probably because there isn't a smaller package without going to surface-mount, and it probably has higher current & thermal capabilities. I just thought it was funny to see those to big plastic cans in there.
The ones sold in Europe are not nearly as small as these, that’s because the last time i went to the us i bought one of these little cubes, although i can not use it. But i really like their design.
It's a shame Apple hasn't really made any more strides in the world of chargers recently. I was particularly disappointed by the Magsafe Battery Pack[0] which rather disappointingly couldn't top off my phone from 10%. For $99, I'd hope for a few more mAh to be squeezed in there...
If you're looking for every last bit of juice out of a battery, inductive charging might not be the best way to get it. I'm sure Apple wants to strike a balance of convenience and enough power for most people without making it any bulkier than necessary.
Product-wise there was a rumor that Apple will be switching to more compact GaN chargers this year, so I wonder if that will come with the Macbook Pro redesign?
It would be cool if they also applied this to the Macbook Air chargers. The tiny charger on the M1 Air makes it a pleasure to travel with, and an even smaller one would be incredible.
I keep one of these in my messenger bag for use with my iPad, if I'm not mistaken it matches the Air charger wattage too: https://us.anker.com/products/a2614
It's basically the circuit from the L6565 application notes. What sets it apart from the cheap and dangerous ones is those manufacturers start from the reference design and try to throw away things they don't really understand to save 2¢.
>I was surprised to realize how enormous Apple's profit margins must be on these chargers. These chargers sell for about $30 (if not counterfeit), but that must be almost all profit.
I guess that’s where they need to be for their current market valuation? But this article also illustrates why I pay this premium over third party budget stuff.
I am obsessed with hardware longevity and want all my hardware (smartphones included) and their batteries to stay fit for as long as theoretically possible.
I have also noticed that the faster you charge a phone the sooner you have to re-charge it.
I don't care how long does it take to charge. How much does the charger cost doesn't matter much either.
Are iPhone chargers the best choice for me?
As of today I just use the cheapest chargers I can find because they are 1a and less.
Most phones will let you control the rate of charge. So you can use a fast charger but still charge at regular old USB speed. Which is 1A @ 5V I think.
Hmm. I have never seen such a feature. You mean most modern phones, do you? I wouldn't buy a phone which is not in this[1] list and most of them are old. My actual phone is about 8 years old (and each year makes me more proud :-)) and I still am totally satisfied (except with its GPS function - it's rather slow to find the satellites, but I don't need it often).
Nevertheless, this is interesting to know. I actually wondered how are people supposed to avoid killing their batteries as slow chargers are disappearing from shops. Which seems a serious problem today as most of the modern phones don't even let you change the battery without going to an authorized service shop.
I have seen the option in all recent (3-4 years) Samsung phones. I have it on mine (S10) which is in the LineageOS list. You can separately throttle the wired and wireless charging speed. I don't know if the feature would be exposed inside LineageOS.
> My actual phone is about 8 years old
Amazing. I wish I had the self control to not keep buying the latest phone every couple years.
PS: I have even setup mine to switch to slow charging only if it is past 10pm and I am at home. Any other time or place, it charges at full speed. Because that is handy sometimes.
Since it has a green PCB I doubt Apple designed it itself but rather let someone else do it for them. Looking at AirPods Pro and AirPort Extreme teardown one can see that every Apple PCB is black.
Love it when companies do the smallest things right. A bit sad that a dollar worth of additional components incure 200-300% of the final price markup (comparing Apple vs Samsung chargers)
Also the only company I have purchased a charging cable from that the outer rubber covering wears away in a few months from light use (didn't move it or coil it, just sits there plugged into the wall). Kind of ironic when compared to the high quality charging wall plug.
Definitely not the only company to suffer from this, but most charging cables from other companies are sleeved with plastic - which seems more durable but will wear out too. Usually they don't feel or look as good, compared to a new Apple cable. Which is, I assume, the reason they keep doing this, to look great at the store.
Problem is, like you say, it can wear away relatively easily, depending on conditions. And they don't look anywhere near as good once dust starts building up.
Now, you can fix this (and any other cable for that matter) with some paracord and optionally some plastic sleeving (techflex or similar) and heat shrink. That's better than throwing away cables. You can also do this for aesthetics with perfectly good cables. Bunch of youtube videos on how to do this (keep in mind, most are sponsored or made by the very companies selling these).
The thing I don't understand is - colorful paracord makes the cables look great. They come in different colors, which would make a lot of sense for Apple. Protected by good plastic, they are pretty much indestructible. At scale, they obviously have access to even better materials with they could use to make their cables look unique.
I have a handful of chargers, from anker, aukey, choetech, etc. None of them make a sound. What's incredible is with GaN my 61w macbook pro charger now fits in the palm of my hand.
You might be able to influence the output voltage somewhat by dwindling with the passives, but there is no code running anywhere that you could manipulate.
I mean, that’s the healthiest charger for the phone. I know you’re trying to say “give me a stronger charger”, but for others this is actually a selling point - I don’t want strong chargers, I want a well built weak one that preserves my battery.
You can get the best of both words with good power management. Fast charging can be disabled on my phone. I also know some laptops where you can limit the charge to ~70%, intended for case where it is always plugged in and you rarely need the battery. Some phones try to be smart, taking into account the time you set up the alarm for instance.
The idea is to have fast charging for emergencies and slow charging for regular overnight charging.
And the thing you plug into the wall isn't actually a charger, it is a power supply. The real charger is in the phone, and that's the one that decides if it needs fast or slow charging, taking into account what the power supply can deliver.
I know there are plenty here who agree with you, but for at least 98% of the population its just a crappy old technology by company who is charging too much over it. They don't understand technical details and they don't care. A phone who can charge in 30 mins vs 2 hours is a major selling point though.
Most people change phones every 3-4 years due to many reasons, physical attrition of hardware being one of it, battery being another, overall hardware not being good enough (speed, capacity) being another.
Almost nobody cares if they can save 5% of battery over that time by charging slowly. Heck, I know I don't. It would be a different proposition if one would lose say 50% of capacity, but even folks in this thread confirm that's not the case for same hardware.
I really don't get why electronic components are all made from the cheapest-possible (sometimes cheaper) stuff. When have all engineers been indoctrinated that skirting safety envelopes is a sign of genius design?
