Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter

Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by tomcam on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @02:55PM (#10629229)

You know what's not surprisingly complex? My feeling about how screwed I felt when I got the Macbook and its charger consisted only of straight-to-plug wall wart, power cord to Mac, as opposed to cord-to-wall-wart, wall wart, power cord to Mac. They halved the length of the cord while forcing you to stick your wall wart right into the socket, crowding out other cords if it's on a small power strip. That and the fact that it's not MagSafe anymore.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by toyg on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @03:06PM (#10629310)

Is this the new model? I got the 2012 version (UK) and got the modular charger with cord-to-wall-wart plus wall-wart-only...

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by tomcam on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @03:20PM (#10629412)

Yes. It's the MacBook Air-like fanless one [1] with only 2 ports: headphone and USB-C. And half a power cable. And no MagSafe. Did I mention I'm a little bitter?

[1] http://www.apple.com/macbook/

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by madeofpalk on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @03:35PM (#10629503)

Well you got half a laptop, so you got half a charger!

But in all seriousness, if you consider the charging experience is very similar to an iPad (complete with the sound it makes when you plug it in), you start to see how they justified it.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by pheroden on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @04:54PM (#10629997)

All of this is literally on the tech specs page. http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs

You can be disappointed, but if you're bitter, it's your own fault for not properly researching. Don't blame Apple, no bait and switch here.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by harperlee on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @03:37PM (#10629513)

Not to mention (this is going offtopic): no usb-c to mini display port for Target Display Mode with an iMac, although it is technically feasible and a matter of having a passive cable. They just wont create the usb-c versions of most of the peripherals during an unspecified amount of time. Because Apple.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by fgandiya on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @05:08PM (#10630086)

That sucks. May I ask why you got the MacBook? The air always liked like a better deal to me.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by thenewwazoo on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @05:36PM (#10630215)

Not OP, but I bought one because of the HighDPI screen. Looking at the Air's low-res screen makes me feel like there's something wrong with my eyes. With that said, it's far from a perfect laptop.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by realeyes on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @07:38PM (#10630688)

Can I ask what makes it far from perfect? I'm really considering buying one but I'm afraid it might be too slow for my liking.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by tomcam on Tuesday December 08, 2015 @09:02PM (#10701400)

In my option it's quite close to perfect. I do dev work using Go, JS, and markup so speed is not a problem at all--if you're doing heavy compiler work YMMV. The fanless thing is incredibly important to me. I find the new keyboard harder to use than that of the Macbook Air, but I'm sure I'll adapt.

I'm not creating music on it so the lack of a USB 2 connector doesn't matter to me. I have to admit just the USB C and the headphone cord are plenty.

Its slimness and lightness are also important to me. My inviolate rule is that the more portable a laptop is, the more I'm likely to carry it with me to do extra work.

Wall wart & magsafe issues are not deal killers for me.

I'd recommend it if it fits your requirements exactly, as it did mine. Otherwise, I'd go with a high spec MacBook Air, because they're faster and, with the extra USB port, more practical for many uses.

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Re:Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Ap... by tomcam on Thursday November 26, 2015 @01:40AM (#10631627)

I have all models of the Air. Love it, but the fan goes on randomly and drives me nuts.

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