“In 2006, Apple produced laptops with the MagSafe power adapter,” Rhett Allain writes for Wired. “The idea is that the power plug that goes into the laptop is connect with a magnet instead of the usual plug in hole type thingy (surely there is also a technical term for this). Why would you want a magnetic power cord? Well, if you trip over the cable, the MagSafe just pops off. It saves your computer from falling off a table by using a magnet – thus MagSafe.”
“The most recent MacBook does not have a MagSafe power plug,” Allain writes. “Instead, it is charged over USB-C. In fact, there is only one port on the MacBook and that it is a USB-C. It’s kind of a cool idea… [but] it comes at a cost – no more MagSafe.”
“So, how safe is MagSafe anyway?” Allain writes. “The first thing to look at is the force needed to pull a laptop off a table.”
Much more discussion (and math) regarding friction, weight, and force in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote on March 11th:
We are Mac users and Mac users embrace change.
Apple leads. The rest of the world follows, as usual.
Now, we would love to see a tiny MagSafe adapter cap (or very short corded adapter) that sticks into the USB-C port for MagSafe power cords. That way we don’t have to regress in the name of progress.