Re:Counterfeit Macbook charger teardown: convincing outside ...
by PhasmaFelis on Monday March 21, 2016 @01:32PM
(#11329903)
> This is a bit of a PR issue as well. I think most people don't know that when they pay more for a genuine charger, they are getting value for their money. I think most people feel like Apple is ripping them off on replacement chargers.
Apple is ripping us off. There's no way that a quality charger actually costs any significant fraction of $65. (Putting aside the lack of proper strain relief and generally shitty, failure-prone cable; MacBook chargers are practically guaranteed to need replacement at least once in the device's lifetime, in my experience.)
Unfortunately, Apple's dodgy chargers are still better than anything else by leaps and bounds, so they remain the most economical choice despite being wildly overpriced.
I feel like there's potentially a big market for decent quality third-party MacBook chargers at a decent price. It's a shame that nobody makes anything like that.
> That's why many people will still buy chargers with an obvious flaw like a plastic ground pin.
Somewhat unrelated, but what confuses me is: the US MacBook charger comes with a long three-prong cable and a short two-prong cable. Either the ground pin isn't necessary, and I'm being needlessly inconvenienced by not being able to use the long cable with two-prong outlets, or it is necessary and I'm being endangered by the two-prong. Either way I'm not sure why they'd do that.
Apple is ripping us off. There's no way that a quality charger actually costs any significant fraction of $65. (Putting aside the lack of proper strain relief and generally shitty, failure-prone cable; MacBook chargers are practically guaranteed to need replacement at least once in the device's lifetime, in my experience.)
Unfortunately, Apple's dodgy chargers are still better than anything else by leaps and bounds, so they remain the most economical choice despite being wildly overpriced.
I feel like there's potentially a big market for decent quality third-party MacBook chargers at a decent price. It's a shame that nobody makes anything like that.
> That's why many people will still buy chargers with an obvious flaw like a plastic ground pin.
Somewhat unrelated, but what confuses me is: the US MacBook charger comes with a long three-prong cable and a short two-prong cable. Either the ground pin isn't necessary, and I'm being needlessly inconvenienced by not being able to use the long cable with two-prong outlets, or it is necessary and I'm being endangered by the two-prong. Either way I'm not sure why they'd do that.