Call me elitist, but I'm a pretty big fan of Apple. Long story short, I got fed up with poor quality PC products from Compaq, eMachines, Toshiba, and HP. Aside from my old Pentium II IBM Aptiva computer from 1995, my other computers have only lasted me so long. My last PC was an HP pavilion laptop that only managed to last me about a little less than two years; quite disappointing to say the least. I was pretty much done with PCs for the rest of my life and several recommendations later, I decided to get myself a Macbook. Two and a half years later, it's still going on strong and loving every moment of it.
This doesn't mean I devoted my life to loving Apple products. I don't have an iPhone, or AppleTV, or multiple iPods (just one--my refurb 30GB iPod video). I like the build quality of most Apple products, however for some reasons you can't help but notice some serious design flaws with some of their other products, especially the magsafe power adapter.
What do you mean? It's an awesome little box that's portable and has little hooks in which I can wind up the power cord. It also has that mini-magnet connector that ensures that it will disconnect if you put any type of strain on the cord. The connector also has a neat trick using an LED light to indicate when your Macbook is charging/fully-charged--it's so clever.
Okay fair enough. I can say those features are pretty nice. Despite all the praise it gets, there are some catastrophic flaws with the design. I'm not sure if this is still a recurring problem with current magsafe chargers, but for a period of time they had a tendency of overheating, creating potential fire hazards. If you take a look on the Apple store website or other online vendors, you can see numerous notes about people encountering problems with the wires fraying, shorting, overheating, and melting. A class action lawsuit resulted because of the defects; since then Apple has offered replacement power adapters for those damaged ones, provided they show no signs of accidental damage. Although this didn't happen to my old power adapter, I've met people who have indeed encountered this problem. Long story short, it wasn't a pretty sight to see.Another problem with the power adapter is its unbelievably short and thin connector wire. Riiight, wire durability tends to be a problem for a lot of products these days. In this day and age when nearly everything needs to be charged by a power adapter (either for your laptop, cell phone, bluetooth headpiece, digital cameras, etc), it would be nice to have a sturdy durable wire connection in case there's any strain or tension put on it; it simply needs to meet standards of daily wear under normal use. I for one have taken extremely good care of my adapter, never wrapping it around those damned hooks on the adapter nor have I tangled the cord in any fashion. The end of the cord with the magsafe connector must be one of the thinnest charger cords I have ever seen. It's basically a piece of spaghetti, and I bet if I took a bite into it, it might just tear into two. As a result of two and a half years of normal wear, the wire seemed to fray near the box and I was left with no means of charging my Macbook. It makes me wonder sometimes since the AC cord with the ground connector has a significantly better cord and would prefer that same thick cord for the connector. Sheesh, what was Apple thinking?
Regardless, I had to go find a new power adapter. What $80 Apple? I know a lot of PC users like to say that people are paying the Apple tax when people buy their products; and in this case, they're right on point. There's absolutely no reason that small box is worth $80. It's obviously produced in China (most likely by child labor) for $2, perhaps even less, and sold with a 4000% markup. Being a cheap ass, I went into the wide world of eBay looking for a reliable cheap knockoff (hmm that's an oxymoron if I ever heard one) power adapter. Alas, I found one for roughly $16 + free shipping, a huge difference from $80.
In some of the comparison pictures, it's fairly generic looking. No Apple logo engraved into the adapter, but that's not what I'm buying it for. It did not come with the AC cord, but I tested it with my original AC cord and it worked perfectly. I've been using it for a good four months now with no hiccups at all. I definitely was unsure about buying an unauthentic/generic $16 power adapter to charge my thousand dollar macbook with my life in it, but in the end I was glad I made that purchase.If you'd like to receive information about the particular eBay seller I bought it from, please leave a comment below.
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