Apple has a reputation in the tech world as being overpriced, and nowhere is that perception more common than in the Hackaday comments. The standard argument, of course, is that for a device with equivalent specs, Apple charges a lot more than its competitors. That argument is not without its flaws, especially when you consider factors other than simple specs like RAM and processor speed, and take into account materials used and build quality. But, as this teardown by [Ken Shirriff] shows, Apple’s attention to detail extends beyond simply machining Macbook bodies out of aluminum.
In his teardown, [Ken Shirriff] thoroughly investigates and describes all of the components and circuitry that go into the ubiquitous Macbook charger. Why does it cost $79? Other than the MagSafe connector, what makes it any better than the charger that came with your Toshiba Satellite in the ’90s? Isn’t it just a transformer to convert AC power to DC?
[Ken Shirriff] answers all of this and more, and you may be surprised by what he found. As it turns out, the Macbook charger isn’t just a transformer in a plastic case with a fancy magnetic connector. There is a lot of high-quality circuitry involved to make the power output as clean and stable as possible, and to avoid potential damage to your Macbook that could be caused by dirty power or voltage spikes. Does it justify the costs, even with so many reported failures? That’s for you to decide, but there is no questioning that Apple put more thought into their chargers than simply converting AC to DC.
Very good and detailed teardown
Hmm, ‘US adapter in Uk emits annoying 50hz hum because user won’t use the grounded cable’ == ‘so many reported failures’? Kind of a stretch. OTOH, Apple and power supply problems DO go back a long long way.
I remember having to replace the PS on my Apple II when it failed (a not-uncommon occurrence), and the early Mac supplies were notoriously underpowered.(I also had to replace a failed ps on my Mac Plus, still have that 11″ Torx screwdriver and case cracker around here somewhere)
The failure points on modern Mac laptop power supplies isn’t the guts, it’s the stress points: just behind the magsafe adapter (which they’ve deludedly abandoned for the new MacBook :-( and right where it exits the case. This is exacerbated when someone uses the convenient brackets to wind the cord too tightly; breaks it at the case every time, eventually.
Fortunately a packet of sugru takes care of that, IF you catch it before the minuscule wires break :-)
And if you don’t, you could do what I did before my mac died: break open the case, solder some wires, and continue using your computer.
Would like to see the differences between the original and an alternative
I still like to tell people the story, which I think I found here, about the cheap Chinese laptop charger some guy bought. One day it just stopped working. The owner opened it up… Turned out it contained a dummy mains lead, and a bunch of C-size primary batteries connected to the output! Charged the laptop fine, til the batteries ran out! But good enough to pass a quick test, and be suitably heavy. Mind-boggling idea, and for pure unadulterated cheek, whoever made it deserves 10 out of 10.
I’m not entirely sure I should be laughing right now, but I definitely am.
I have a broken “Fake” charger, can take it apart
Please how is this charger hi-tech? Sure good decoupling with fast caps and an efficient transformer, but nothing cutting edge. This article sounds too much like it’s written by a Mac maroon.
Regarding the one wire serial comms in the connector; the safety argument is dubious why not just make the connecter in the macbook be male and the magsafe connector female? There is no need (to my knowledge) for a computer to talk to a fixed voltage power supply. Just let the device up the current draw while charging until the voltage starts dropping, then back off a little and you found the wattage of the power supply.
This article is just the usual sacrilege mumbo jumbo surrounding Apple. What they should do is make some cooling holes in their chargers. I’ve taken 2 apart and they had both failed because of insufficient cooling.
Another thing. Around 2013 Macbooks no longer have a separate power board behind the power connector so the power electronics is on the mainboard! It’s still just the SMD fuse, cap or FET that fails but if you can’t fix it yourself, you have to pay for a new motherboard (or control board) as Apple calls it.
“Mac moron” “usual sacrilege mumbo jumbo”?
OK, we get it, you don’t like Apple. Just quit trying to make up faults to support your prejudice.
Since the point of MagSafe is to disconnect with very force on the cable, from any direction, the plug needs to be shallow, and the female contacts could not be buried very deep. It is reasonable to cut voltage to the pins when disconnected, since it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a dangerous situation (say a child touching the plug to their tongue).
Also, if I’m not mistaken, some Apple chargers output different voltages. The one wire communication allows one plug to be used without risking damage to any device plugged into it.
The high failure rate is disappointing; rip on Apple for that, but don’t make up faults where there are none.
Politics aside, the linked article was a great thorough look at modern power supply design.
Mac moron or not, this is not the question
It looks like a solid ac/dc. But nothing magical where they put in Apple surplus stuff. Everything there is needed AND standard in better than cheap Chinese stuff class.
Dell has the same quality, and even checks with the BIOS prior powering how much it can pull power. Perfect for business environments, where you carry your notebook around and plug it in the next Dell converter. But your college is just a paper tiger, and doesn’t use a high power workstation notebook. So your battery won’t be charged that fast, but doing this BEFORE the adapter runs in thermal limits!
The main reason for data communication with a power block is locking out aftermarket vendors. Which is of course a very good reason for apple, as it is part of their business model to keep everything as proprietary as possible.
And yes – it’s true, that I don’t like apple for that and don’t use their products.
Even if a child licks on the low-voltage connector it is not dangerous. Perhaps a little short pain – enhancing memory – but not dangerous. A danger I see in this short circuit and possible fire hazard – not good. But to circumvent this a simple logic enable line would have been enough.
That is something that Apple does tend to do, but I’m not convinced that is their only motive. As I said before, the data pin can send the charging voltage(s) of the charger to the laptop, so any charger and any laptop can be used.
It is interesting that another poster brought up Dell chargers communicating with the BIOS as a feature without issue. I know for a fact (since my own Dell does this) that the BIOS will detect non-genuine chargers and prevent all charging.
Finally! Thank you!
Without grounding all my macbook adapters pass some of the 120/220 V to the chassis of the macbook. Not much but enough to notice if you are bare footed. VERY annoying.
My daughter noticed this with her iPod when we were visiting Paraguay. She walks around barefoot, and the floors are often cement/tile. She’d get a tingle whenever handling her iPod while it was charging….
happens with almost all switching power supply because the the y capacitors in the input filter puts 1/2 the mains on ground (low current but enough to notice) it also tends to kill audio inputs etc. when you plug into something that is grounded like a TV on cable
I had a college come up for a chat and she noticed my Surface Pro 3 lying on the table charging. Struck up a conversation about it and she touched the back of the case then exclaimed “Wow it’s gently vibrating”. My reply, was “Nope, you’re just receiving a mild electric shock”, and then I showed her the floating voltage of the chassis on the multimeter when she didn’t believe me.
This is not uncommon. Actually I think pretty much every metal chassis which is connected to the floating ground on the output of an unearthed switch-mode will do the same thing.
I thought that was the coolest thing when I finally figured out what it was. Still do.
Might want to get your home’s wiring checked out. If you’re getting shocked from a two-wire device, something in the system is not working properly, and I’d suspect poor connections somewhere between the meter and the outlet.
At least in the US, the “typical” house wiring is 200A single phase 240/220V, and the neutral is tied to ground at the meter panel, which gives the 120/110V nominal standard at the outlets. The third terminal at the outlet, “ground”, should be tied to a ground point near the fuse panel. Ideally, you’ll have less than 5 Ohm resistance between the neutral and ground terminals, but up to 10 Ohm is acceptable.
If you are being shocked by a new 2 mains wire device that is SUPPOSED TO BE galvanically separated = design fail, not house wiring fail.
That only applies to class II (double insulated) equipment.
Some power supplies are effectively class I (protective earthed) equipment, where one terminal (usually negative) of the low voltage output is connected directly to the mains ground. If you plug such a psu to ungrounded sockets, the EMI filtering capacitors form a capacitive voltage divider that brings your device (and everything connected to it) to half of mains voltage.
While not usually dangerous (since the current is limited to a hundred microamperes or less), the ungrounded laptop can cause uncomfortable tingling sensations, induce mains hum in analog audio or even damage some equipment plugged to it. Even worse, if a filtering cap fails in the PSU the entire laptop can become live.
On that topic-old technicians trick:
Even the best power supplies will leak a (tiny) amount of AC to the output (think micro-amps) due to parasitic capacitive coupling in the chassis. Many heating devices (coffee, anyone?) do this too. if you run a finger lightly over any metal component, if you feel a light vibration-unplug the supply and do it again. If it goes away-THAT’S LEAKAGE!
Once, had an old ‘Frige that was pretty bad. Touched it and the gas stove at the same time-WOWSA! Solution: Ground ‘Frige. Went away, but this was before GFCI outlets were commonplace in the kitchen.
My coffee maker turns off my tv briefly when it kicks on but only as a pc monitor :( Pretty sure we have some bad grounding somewhere as there have been other issues like burned out tvs that led me to get a conditioner as a band aid. The coffee maker is the only problem other than the wife’s method of flipping the light switch. That will trigger it too. Makes me cringe for the tv every time.
Well it looks like a standard switch mode supply to me that you would find in any laptop …
Yup, exactly. The only real difference is the price – and whether you are foolish enough to pay it.
More like: “Thorough Hackaday Article Readout Reveals Author Inexperience About Laptops Power Supplies”…
Every laptop power adapter uses a power supply like this. No power supply just uses a rectifier + 9:1 transformer; the size of the transformer you would need would be huge. Consider the humble ATX power supply: those things can crank out 12V, 5v, 3.3v, and more, all from a single unit that is $100 or way less. For DIY projects, they are *great*, since you can quite easily get 10-20A @ 5v.
Essentially all laptop power adapters cost $50-80, too.
It is way more interesting to look at why this kind of adapter has to exist. Transformers won’t work because of the saturation limit of iron puts a hard cap on how much current you can run through the windings before it becomes totally ineffective. The same thing is true in motor; a 60hz motor will have a nameplate capacity of 1 or 2 HP, and be a huge 200lb iron beast. Tesla can crank 400kW through their motors by running them at 400hz (or higher?). The same saturation effect is in play, so instead you do all the work via the frequency of the signals. Pretty neat.
don’t most AC induction motors use frequency for speed control ?
They do. Or rather, they run higher frequencies to go to higher speeds and thus achieve higher physical power output. That is just like an electrical-to-mechanical transformer, rather than an electrical-to-electrical transformer. All the AC motors that you’ll ever find off the shelf are wound for 1800 or 3600 rpm operation. The Tesla motor runs up to 12,000 rpm, I believe.
I believe higher in AC synchronous motors the supply frequency is a factor that determines motor speed, not the power output. A 3 phase 10 HP electric motor barely way 200 pounds back in the day I could easily lift one of those off the ground to a pick up tail gate. tossing around 1-2 HP motors was n one handed operation if there was any easy grip. The Navy Electricity Electronic Training(NEETS) series has modules on electric module that should be good reference.
Share some links to any motors that you know of, it would be a great boon to the DIY EV community to find a way to get good power without crazy weight.
Power is basically rpm times torque. Torque is limited by size/weight and rpm is limited by supply frequency (and somewhere higher by the capability of the bearings and centrifugal forces). So for a given motor size speed (supply frequency) determines power.
In reality, torque in electric motors is limited by their cooling. Torque is a matter of how much current you push through the motor, which depends on how much voltage you give it. A regular AC motor can be temporarily overdriven almost 100%
The supply frequency doesn’t determine power, because beyond their design speed, the impedance of the rotor/stator coils starts to limit the current throughput and you lose power by trying to make it run faster. In very high speed motors, you also get skin effect in the windings and core loss in the laminations.
The liquid cooling also helps keep the Tesla motor size down quite a lot, as does the transient power loading.
We had some tiny but powerful induction motors at a refinery I used to work at. They were completely encased in the process fluid (liquid butane). When you look at them, motors scale up incredibly with power and a 350kW off the shelf industrial motor isn’t that big compared to Tesla’s. It’s certainly not 400 times larger than a little 1-2hp unit. A large part of their size comes from the fact that they operate with only the most basic of cooling systems, and that they are designed to deliver full load power 100% of the time continuously for many years at a time. I have my doubts if Tesla’s motor could achieve that.
Side note: we pulled apart a 2.2MW motor in the workshop the other day. It was a huge beast of a thing from the outside, but once the cooling system, lubrication system, nitrogen purge gear, and all the other ancillaries were removed the rotor was about 3 handspans in diameter (rough guess, around 600mm) and the stator barely 150mm thick on top of that.
One of the reasons for the size disparity is that small AC motors (<1/2 HP) are terribly inefficient. Often just 15-20%
The bigger the motor, the more efficient it is, which compensates for the size.
Speaking of chargers, anyone know the MTBF of a phone charger vs the equivalent regular power supply?
A charger with typical 1.5h charge time, every day for 5 years is not even 3000 hours. However, a 5V smps from some good manufacturer(not USB) has more than 50K hours MTBF.
I would think many corners are cut even with good quality phone chargers, so a phone charger might not be a good solution for that new raspberry pi to run for years and years.
I’ve noticed the same, and thought maybe there should be a coordinated attempt to build the open-source One 5V Supply to Rule Them All: deliciously overengineered to power all the things.
I think that building a smps is kind of complicated, in terms of parts at least. It’s always the magnetics from this supplier, the controller from the other side etc.
Whenever I need supplies for things, if I can, I buy meanwell. They seem to be well engineered, but of course i make sure to not push them that much to the limit.
Maybe this article should be called “Hackaday Writer Doesn’t Understand Electronics, Makes it Obvious”
$79 for a Mac Charger? I have a Laptop charger with roughly the same circuitry as shown above and it cost me $20. There is no point moaning about Apple pricing, Everyone knows they will charge you as much as they can for their products. Apple folk don’t mind paying these prices and that is fine with me. What really annoys me though is when people tell me how much better quality their new “apple ______” is. I can buy quality PC/Laptop/phone’s for 50% cost of most apple products and I can almost guarantee the quality to be as good as or sometimes better than Apple’s offerings.
Like it or not Apple is not just a manufacturer, They are a fashion brand and a lot of the money you pay for their products is charged because the item your buying has the apple logo. I always have a look at the specs of new iphones when they come out, They specs are normally no where near as high as their Android counterparts. That’s not too say their phones are no good, They have their OS that works almost flawlessly.
If you look at the BOM, you will see that you can’t get that for 20$. 40$ perhaps.
Your probably right it may be a little more than $20, but not by much.
*You’re
LOL I was just going out when I wrote that I need to read back before posting.
You can’t just compare stuff by BOM cost – unless you’re just a chinese outfit riding on other people’s R&D, and not doing testing.
Not saying whether it’s worth it or not, but please stop thinking BOM is the only cost.
For a small ancillary device like a charger produced by a company that makes 50 other chargers for 50 other products, yes. BOM effectively IS the only cost.
For a once off product. You’d be absolutely right. But I guarantee you that very little R&D went into this and that Apple’s profits would be recovered even if they sold it at cost price based on the profits from the device it powers.
Yeah, testing…
Project I was involved with was a remote telemetry gig using a custom-designed power supply/float 12V Lead acid battery charger that was SUPPOSED to be short proof.
The spec sheet came, and was (of course) in Chinese. Que “Bilingual Office Assistant” to translate-the duration of the short circuit test was-500 milliseconds.
So I shorted the output leads, took it outside and plugged it in. Within 10 minutes it was a blob of plastic, so I unplugged it, let it congeal then mailed it to our “partners” whom specked the unit and were responsible for it’s performance. I sent a simple note: a single page with a huge “?” on it and promptly found a new job.
The project is now the focus of a $25M dollar lawsuit…
i dont think many people here have any idea what the actual BOM, it wont be what any typical citizen would pay for it, probably a magnitude or so less, at least, that is the discounts usually expected when doing bulk electronics.
There is a limit of 75W above which you need PFC – which increases cost and DECREASES efficiency, if only a little bit. The additional circuitry has additional losses. But leaving that out you are right and I have the same opinion about Apple.
Apple a fashion brand? So they also sell a fancy watch. Whats the slander going to be when they enter the auto market? When you’re at the top, people like to throw punches. Anti-apple posts with no substance show the real sheep because its become the cool thing to do. For instance you can’t buy a 5k monitor cheaper than a 5k iMac. Thats a bargain the PC world can’t touch right now.
Dell’s 27″ 5K which is cheaper than a 5K iMac:-
http://www.byfarthecheapest.com/products/Dell-UltraSharp-UP2715K-%252d-27%22-IPS-LED%252dbacklit-LCD-Monitor-w%7B47%7D-Card-reader,-USB-3.0-Hub.html
OK, so I can get a Dell 27″ 5k monitor for $2200, or an Apple iMac 5K 27″ for $1799, and it’s also a computer…
Would you mind telling me why you’d rather have an AIO? Other than saving space, I’m still wondering why people like them.
“Bargain” and “Apple” are a contradiction. Would not fit to their business model. They HAVE to be expensive, at least LIKE a fashion brand, if you don’t want to call them a fashion brand, because their customers WANT to pay more to feel exclusive. But I would also call this a fashion brand :-)
No one “Slandered” your beloved Apple, Infact my post wasn’t even Anti-apple. Apple are not special they are a company who make things. Apple are a brand infact if you look at this league table they are the top brand http://brandirectory.com/league_tables/table/global-500-2015
As others have pointed out there are 5k monitors out there cheaper than the imac. You probably coundn’t find then with your head up apples Arse.
Wow. You probably have a loud car stereo because you think it will attract chicks. Are you 16 or 17 years old there, Billy?
Yeah apple is costly because of the “complex” circuitry. Other manufacturers just use simple transformers. This author is really stupid as he is already using apple products. Apple products are costly because they are for stupid people who waste money and these products ts have ridiculuos profit margins. Greedy apple.
I’m not a member of the Apple fan club, but I do own an iPhone though. because of a tear down comparison between the genuine apple AC phone charge and the cheap on off brand one, combined with the fact I leave the plugged in 24/7 I buy the genuine Apple item. Shit they are 20 bucks at walmart. I do have an off brand car charger, but it’s something I rarely use and don’t leave plugged in, probably use it less now that I bought a”power bank” battery.
“…isn’t just a transformer in a plastic case with a fancy magnetic connector. There is a lot of high-quality circuitry involved to make the power output as clean and stable as possible…” It is a usual power supply.maybe your affiliation with appnle OR the fact that you paid 2000$ for the mac and 79$ for each of the 2-3 “high quality” power supply you had to buy so far because they are just “normal power supply which go off as anything else” makes you write all this morning philosophy.
Removing the cover and telling it teardown is also something not worth that much space.
Pretty much. I have seen much more complicated power supplies in stereos from the 80s. Apple loves to shill those rubes. This also feels like some sort of massive trolling by HaD. I am still on the fence.
On a side note: I hope the company’s attitude is its own downfall, honestly because it is pathetic and everything that is wrong with the world. Jobs was a real anus and am glad he is dead and keeping hell lit. A royal fuckstick, that one although Cook is a real daisy himself *cough dillusional entitled corporate goon that can’t code *cough. Jobs would have probably sued the citizens of the US for not buying his products if he could have had a couple of more years and then dug up Teddy Roosevelt and sued him for copying his Christmas party toast. Anyhoo, I cheerfully tell folks to use what they can afford and works for them-it really is all about browsing these days anyway. I just point them to the apple store when they have problems and remind them that is what they pay the extra for to haul it to the store and wait for a genius to help them. Oh well.
No comparison to, for example, a Lenovo or Dell AC adapter. So nice teardown, but don’t assume anything on stuff you don’t examine!
Agreed. Tore down one of the slightly older flat 90W Dell bricks, those things are nuts… All large capacitors are on the side, and there is white silicone caulk everywhere, those things are incredibly tough.
Functional, small, powerful, durable, that’s how they should be built.
Nothing fancy to see here, except the obvious design requirements in any switch mode power supply you would need to have the device pass any kind of compliance testing. Of course you can not compare such a device with some hacked up diy power supply or some ultra cheap devices where CE stands for “china export” and is not used as compliance indication.
What seems obviously bad is that the first diodes on the HV secondary side (top left corner) are very close to the electrolytic capacitors without any kind of thermal isolation. I really hope these caps are 105°C rated and with a high enough MTBF, or else, there is one first obvious point of failure…
1) You have to keep your electrolytics warm and comfortable. Otherwise you cant sell enough replacement units :-)
2) But normally the mains current is quite low so the diodes don’t get that hot.
But one time saw a dedicated measure to fulfill point (1): In a very bad 12V power block for a USB-HD which was already consuming 3W in no-load standby the power transistor was soldered to some copper foil which was wrapped around the big electrolytic capacitor. One of this devices failed after the first 24h of use.
The “China Export” marking doesn’t exist. It’s an urban legend.
https://cemarking.net/chinese-export/
If you want to see a real nice 90W adapter design which is worth its money (about 30 USD) have a look on
http://www.acbel.com/eng/Product.aspx?id=59&&sd=31&&pid=231
Man, that IS a nice adapter. It may even have a proper two-lead isolated mains input. I wonder how hot it gets. Unfortunately it looks like you can’t just buy one.
Yes, I should say that we have already reverse engineered the adapter. There was nothing wrong with the design (electrical and thermal) and the price is very good. We bought this adapter, the AD9009, under another label (Lepa/Germany). Maybe you can find one in your country if you search for AD9009.
I’m using a China charger for my macbook (i haven’t actually looked into it). Or rather, I have two. One of them is not grounded all the way through, but I’m only using that when not doing anything important with my computer. It charges my computer and has only burnt once (due to a faulty cable actually, but I fixed that with some soldering and shrink tube). My other one is actually grounded, but emits terrible voltage quality. Both on the AC into the power net, and DC. When I’m doing sensitive oscilloscope measurements I disconnect my charger from both ends (and I tell everyone else at the table to do the same).
Where am I going with this? Sure, my genuine macbook charger did have much better quality of power and wasn’t as noisy, but there are very few times I actually need that smooth power. I’ve been using my china charger for several years now, and they even shut off if they get too hot. Perhaps I was lucky with the “Ebay roulette”.
How I see it, Apple is like a Ferrari. impressive, well built and designed but not the best fit in all circumstances. a PC is like a pickup truck. It may not be the best but it can be used in almost every circumstance, and if something goes wrong, you can usual fix it. Linux is like building your own car. If you know what you are doing, you can end up with a really good system, but most people don’t like the amount of skill, knowledge or time required.
Windows is more like a VW camper van. Spend half the time repairing it, and so many holes everyone’s been in and screwed it in :p
But yes, they’re different, and we need to appreciate that and stop bitching at each other.
Linux isn’t hardware – doesn’t belong in the comparison.
SMH. None of them are, Dax. They are all software. Thanks for missing the point.
“That argument is not without its flaws, especially when you consider factors other than simple specs like RAM and processor speed, and take into account materials used and build quality.”
That’s the other myth: it’s pricier but it’s better. But is it?
For example, the unibody construction of a mac laptop with lots of holes in it for the keyboard etc. uses the circuit boards themselves to make it rigid, whereas other manufacturers use an internal frame or skeleton to secure the boards, and then secure the outer casing to the same. In Apples machines, the circuit boards themselves are load bearing components because it’s faster, cheaper, and easier to design and manufacture a minimalistic “pizza box” where you just throw the components in. That’s the reason why they had to make the bottom plate of the plastic macbook out of aluminium – it was simply too bendy without, and it’s still only stiff enough to last through warranty.
That leads to all sorts of problems, like Macbook Pros rebooting when you pick them up by the corner. Why for example do you think nVidia’s warped chips started failing first on macbooks? Because in macbooks they’re subjected to more bending and twisting.
And the numbers speak for themselves:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/laptop-malfunction-rates/
Apple is fourth in terms of failure rate. Asus, Toshiba, Sony come first. The fact of the matter is that Apple puts twice as much air in their prices than any other manufacturer, and spends twice as much in simply marketing their stuff per unit sold.
They’re exactly the kind of company that takes a $20 pair of running shoes and sells it up-market for $200 because no matter what your product is, there’s a customer for every price – it’s just a matter of finding them.
@Dax, To be clear: Per your link, Asus is most reliable, then Toshiba, then Sony, then Apple, Dell, and so on. HP ranks last. 3 Year Laptop Malfunction Rates By Manufacturer. Research Date: July 25th, 2014.
From my experience, the rankings seem ok. The Asus machines I have worked with have been pretty good. MSI is another good one, but isn’t ranked.
“For example, the unibody construction of a mac laptop with lots of holes in it for the keyboard etc. uses the circuit boards themselves to make it rigid”
This is absolute nonsense. Have you ever handled a unibody Mac?
“That leads to all sorts of problems, like Macbook Pros rebooting when you pick them up by the corner.”
More nonsense.
“Why for example do you think nVidia’s warped chips started failing first on macbooks? Because in macbooks they’re subjected to more bending and twisting.”
The nVidia GPU issues happened because of bad solder:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2015/02/20/apple-admits-gpu-design-flaw/1
Do you enjoy making up random crap?
You’re entitled to your faith.
Have you ever seen the insides of a mac? It’s an empty “pizza box” with no internal load bearing structures – ridges or bulkheads – but a single internal dividing wall for the battery compartment. All the electronics are screwed on to risers in the top lid, and the bottom lid is a single piece that is screwed on by the corners and edges. The top is flat, the sides are flat, and the bottom is slightly bowed.
This is exactly what some undergraduate design engineer would produce. A flat box, rounded corners, just pack the components in side by side, and close it off with a lid. Simple, cheap, effective, breaks in 4-5 years.
It feels solid when all the components are screwed in. Remove the internals, and the actual casing becomes wobbly, which means that the internal components are bearing the external mechanical loads to keep it from flexing, and that is never good with electronics.
A properly made-to-last laptop would have an sandwich construction with an internal metal frame something like this:
http://g02.s.alicdn.com/kf/HTB14AZ7JVXXXXXZXFXXq6xXFXXXu/For-IBM-Lenovo-Thinkpad-T500-W500-laptop.jpg
So you got an internal skeleton, onto which all the components and the outer casing connect. Such a triple-layer structure is rigid already without the components in place, so it doesn’t place stresses on the circuit boards when you handle it.
The brittleness of the lead-free solder in Macbooks wouldn’t have been such a big issue if it weren’t for the stresses placed on the boards which produce the fractures in the solder joint. If you’re not bending and bowing the PCB then it doesn’t matter if the solder becomes brittle. Simple thermal expansion alone won’t do it so fast.
oi-vey
Very time I had had any problem with any power adapter , all I had to do is call apple.
just about every time they sent me a new one free of charge.
The other time recently all I had to do was to go to the local apple store and they swapped it out.
I get it there are apple haters.
I have had much less problems out of any of my apple products than any other manufacture.
just my experience.
Official branded adapters have to meet the various international standards (UL/CSA/IEC) in order to be legally imported. You will have trouble with knockoffs because they are copies that have been down engineered using cheaper parts like lower quality caps, inductors and semiconductors. I have seen circuits that have the original manufacturers application layout with parts not installed and when you look up the IC these parts are required for safety and emissions but are removed to reduce the BOM cost.
Interesting, I’m still using the adapter from my 2007 Macbook as an extra for my current one. Have five around the house and office, never did any one fail.
I think most failures are caused by people yanking the plug by the wire.
I figured all high end transforms would have such details, guess I am thinking to highly of the tech industry.
if apple wants to make the chargers safe they should give the chargers away for free and build the extra $80 into the price of the laptop.
so now instead of $1000 for a mac book you will pay $1080 for that same mac book the cost is offset to the mac book.
then if you need to replace the charger you ask apple and they send the charger for free because the original purchase of the mac book at $1080 will give them the $80 they needed for the charger.
“There is a lot of high-quality circuitry involved to make the power output as clean and stable as possible”
from an electronics standpoint this is a clear misrepresentation as it implies some extra measure of protection
“a lot of high-quality circuitry” so multiple intricate circuits or military grade components? no.they didnt reinvent any wheels
is it better than a 90’s toshiba charger sure
but thats not really a significant accomplishment hahaha (it doesnt do anything to set you apart from the competition in the present era)
and for the record im not an apple hater my regular use machine boots yosemite, win 10, and ubuntu and i use vmware fusion and parallels coherence making most tasks/apps/dmgs/exes ubiquitous. usually Only when gaming does it even matter much to me weather something is for osx or windows
Just to clear a few points up. Rod Holt and Apple did NOT invent SMPSU’s but they were early adopters. Next, Apple products are indeed often overpriced though I guess not in the example here. Lastly I would have thought that Apple fanboys would advertise the best of Apple not misinformation.