So far I've used about 7 cheapo MacBook chargers off eBay - I have two right now, and have, over the years, given the other 5 away.

While a couple of them have died, so have my original three MacBook chargers. None of them has killed or damaged mine, or anyone else's MacBooks.

Yes, some people have good experiences, but it's still incredibly reckless. Chargers without proper safety features and which don't conform to electrical isolation standards could render your $1000+ machine worthless in a puff of smoke, or, worse, kill you.

The 'Original Apple' item shown at the bottom of the post doesn't look as if it fared much better though. The magic smoke definitely came out on that one and whoever owned it was lucky it ended there and didn't end with an actual fire.

It could also be the Apple charger's design that makes it able to handle shorting of components without posing a hazard to anything other than itself.

Apple's own charger follows safety standards. It might blow up, but it won't take your laptop with it.

Upthread there is someone saying that their Apple charger set fire to their carpet, and the only reason why it wasn't worse was because they were in the room at the time to stop it.

Nobody in the history of personal computers has been killed by a charger.

There are multiple reports of phone chargers killing people: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-07/14/c_1325400... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2950641/Woman-electr... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2671493/Woman-dies-e... http://shanghaiist.com/2015/03/15/girl_from_hebei_dies_after...

If you look inside cheap chargers (as I have), it's not surprising that they occasionally kill people.

You can't know that. You can't know that there haven't been house fires caused by a charger, for example.

Here's a recent house fire that killed five people, started by a phone charger.

http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/10/phone-charger-started-fire-tha...

I doubt that short circuits have never killed anyone. That's not the only way a charger could kill you: DanBC points out the risk of fire, which is also a possibility.

It depends on your luck... and I am unlucky. My knock-off charger completely destroyed the power supply in my MacBook Pro after a few months of using it.