A safer MagSafe power adapter

My wife and I, recently made a trip to our neighborhood Apple store for a one-on-one session at The Genius Bar. I must say, unlike the knuckle-heads at AppleCare “Support”, the Genius actually deduced the real problem and got us on our way with the solution to our Wi-fi woes.

As we sat there waiting, I overheard two different people come in one after the other with the identical problem. The cord on their MacBook Pro power adapters had failed. Fortunately, both were promptly given a brand new power adapter and they went happily on their way.

This kind of situation is not uncommon with power supplies on all kinds of electronics. It first happened to me with my Atari 2600 back in the day, and it will probably happen to my MagSafe adapter one day.

While I was glad that the situation had a happy ending for these two customers, I could not help but feel a bit bad for Apple. It seems a shame to waste a perfectly good $80 power supply because of a worn-out cable. Just then, this popped into my head:

Why not make the power cable removable?

Double-ended MagSafe Power Adapter

That way, when it wears out or if it breaks internally, you can just replace $5 worth of cable and not the whole unit. Simple, no?

Granted, a double-ended MagSafe connector might be overkill, but I’d rather have the adapter and not my MacBook Pro feel the yank when somebody trips over the cord. The basic idea is to separate the cable from the power unit. Any standard power connector on the non-MagSafe side would do.

I love all my Apple toys, but there’s always room for improvement. Can’t wait for Steve Jobs to announce this new feature at the next keynote!


2 Responses to “A safer MagSafe power adapter”

  1. A Norwegian user Says:
    November 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    I have the same problem several times ( 3 time in one year!!! )with the power cable for my Macbook pro. It seems that the cable is very easy to be worn out at the end. Why the Apply does not provide the cable for cheaper replacement instead of replacing the whole unit??? Or could they design a better cable which can not have this kind of problem.

  2. Frank Maulit Says:
    January 13th, 2009 at 12:26 am

    Dude, this is the thing I read off of you… For some reason I thought it was a recent twitter post.

    Update your blog. Thanks.