Slashdot Mirror

Nice article on Ken Shirriff's blog on the Beaglebone Black: http://www.righto.com/2016/08/pru-tips-understanding-beaglebones.html

These remind me a bit of the SPUs on the Playstation 2. Lots of real-time bang for the buck, although not necessarily helpful for n00bs who are just starting to get into the SoC scene.

- It was certainly more expensive (when the special charger is included) than just using an external battery

Not true. I was a bit late to the party, so maybe the off brand charger+battery I got was cheap because it wasn't just released yesterday, but it was cheaper than getting an external USB battery thing at that time.

Rebooting is the only valid issue I see. I wonder if one could plug the phone in during battery hot-swap? Regardless, this is a little annoying.

External batteries are significantly less efficient. Some of the most efficient USB chargers approach 80% efficiency**, but the average is around 70%. That's just the efficiency of the AC plug. I looked up several efficiency reports for external USB batteries, and they have similar efficiency's (mostly due to their internal batteries putting out between 3 - 4.3v, but needing to produce exactly 5v out of their USB plugs). They are also less efficient the more amps they're pulling (ie. the faster you charge, the worse it is). The charging circuit in the phone also incurs losses that are roughly the same.

Even if you ignore most of that, you still have to carry around a bigger battery to get the same amount of power to your phone that a removable battery would provide, and an extra cable too.

Neither of those methods are my favorite though. My favorite is (when possible) using a phone that can take an alternate back plate and a much larger battery. This lets the user pick between a thin phone with normal battery life, or a slightly thicker phone with days worth of battery life. There's no extra cord needed, no external battery charger needed, no need to lug around a battery or usb battery. If that's not enough, you can still get a extra battery or use a usb battery. I don't believe there is ANY downside to offering that (the minimal space savings really don't matter at this point, and I'd even argue they are too thin; there were already water resistant phones with removable batteries, so that argument would be useless too).

People defending the lack of user replaceable batteries suck. Allowing that feature won't take away anything from you, but will provide a feature lots and lots of other people want. As such, any time you do that, you're just being a dick for dicks sake.

** http://www.righto.com/2012/10/...

• Countefeit:
• The ground pin isn't connected to anything. It's not grounded at all so it's a major safety hazard.
• Lack of complex circuitry. There might be one IC controller chip if there are any chips at all.
• Hand soldered. Often the solder joints is also subpar and might be in such close proximity that a short can occur.
• Power quality is terrible with spikes

Have you looked at an Apple charger vs a counterfeit? A lot more engineering goes into an Apple made one; it's not about more capacitors.

Based on teardowns of counterfeit chargers, I would say it is highly unlikely. The whole point of countefeits is to pass off as authenticate just enough to fool the buyer. If the chargers came from the same line they would be near full price as 100% of the money would go to the people who manufactured them off the books. They wouldn't be that much cheaper as they are technically authentic chargers.

Based on teardowns of counterfeit chargers, I would say it is highly unlikely. The whole point of countefeits is to pass off as authenticate just enough to fool the buyer. If the chargers came from the same line they would be near full price as 100% of the money would go to the people who manufactured them off the books. They wouldn't be that much cheaper as they are technically authentic chargers.

Based on teardowns of counterfeit chargers, I would say it is highly unlikely. The whole point of countefeits is to pass off as authenticate just enough to fool the buyer. If the chargers came from the same line they would be near full price as 100% of the money would go to the people who manufactured them off the books. They wouldn't be that much cheaper as they are technically authentic chargers.

Obviously not for a Mac, but the same applies:
http://www.righto.com/2012/05/...

In the case of cheap chargers, that's a possibility.

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/...

http://www.righto.com/2014/05/...

In the case of cheap chargers, that's a possibility.

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/...

http://www.righto.com/2014/05/...

In fact, the cheapest of the lot often give a very bad representation of DC, nevermind 5V. In fact, some are so bad, you can get 110VAC/240VAC on the USB because of poor clearances. Indeed, someone was electrocuted because of this.

Chargers with that problem tend to be recalled. I've never heard of such a case happening outside of China.

It is also pretty telling that the problem with third party chargers is an excuse Apple uses but that nobody else experiences.
My guess is that the third party charger excuse comes from an early speculation in-house to what the problem could be that then the marketing went with because it was convenient and shifted the blame.

As for the clearance issue you can see for yourself how the Apple charger is designed.
It looks pretty OK when disassembled, but once you fold it into the cube form the primary side capacitors (C1 + C11) is like 1-2 mm from the USB connector.
It's a typical paper product. Looks fine on the schematic but in practice it is a deathtrap.
Blame third party chargers all you want, but the Apple charger isn't safe.

Apple already does; their response is that third-party USB chargers are to blame.
Which of course is false, since USB chargers' job is to provide 5VDC (aside from QC which can provide higher voltages at request of the device), that's all; the USB charger will keep supplying 5VDC as long as it is connected. It is the device's job to monitor the battery's voltage and cut off current to the battery pack when the target voltage is reached... and if there is an incoming overvoltage, it's also the device's job to stop accepting power.

This has been an ongoing problem since the iPhone 4, but since Apple is Apple, they get a free pass on it.

You do realize that not all chargers are manufactured alike, right? And they don't always give you 5VDC. In fact, the cheapest of the lot often give a very bad representation of DC, nevermind 5V. In fact, some are so bad, you can get 110VAC/240VAC on the USB because of poor clearances. Indeed, someone was electrocuted because of this.

And no, if it happened to Apple, it would be massive - "batterygate" would join antennagate, and the latter was something only discovered if you really tried at it (and I think even so, it affected more people than the number of exploding iPhones in grand total). Apple's incidences are more random and spread out - while Samsung's really just happened. You'd think if Apple messed up just as bad, that some Android fanboi would be pointing out that the iPhone 7 also has 70-80 causes of it spontaneously combusting by now.

Ironically, Samsung has some of the bset USB chargers around. Problem is, most people are buying the crap $20 chargers that really are safety hazards.

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/...

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/...

Except some of them do produce a waveform where a line should be, and it's good to know which ones - you don't want to run that into a cell phone you like.

Clone cables used to work perfectly

Tell that to the Chinese folks who were electrocuted as a result of using faulty clone cables and chargers with their iDevices. Apple really tightened up its MFi program after those incidents and even provided a trade-in program where knock-off products could be exchanged for the legit ones for $10, rather than the full retail price.

Having seen some dissections for the legitimate items and the clone ones, I can understand why they would do so, since the differences between the construction and parts in the two were night and day. It's no wonder people were dying with the clone ones.

If the 6502 and Z80 waveforms for various instructions are examined, it quickly becomes apparent that the Z80 effectively divided its clock by 2 before using it. This is why, for the technology available in any particular year, they had comparable performance but the Z80 used twice as many clock cycles.

Actually, the problem was the ALU of the Z-80 was only 4 bits wide. So processing an 8 bit operand required two trips through the ALU, thus incurring twice the number of clocks or half the effective clock rate..

The 6502 and others had an 8-bit ALU which meant they could do an 8-bit operand in half the clocks.

I had always wondered why the refresh register only counted 7 bits wide, which made that feature mostly useless when 64K DRAMs came out. (a few 64K DRAMs were made with 7-bit refresh, probably because of the Z80) Turns out that the increment/decrement circuit used in the Z80 had carry lookahead for groups of bits: 7 5 3 and 1. The I and R registers were implemented as a single 16-bit register, and to keep the I register from incrementing all the time, only the first group of the increment circuit was used, resulting in only 7 bits counting.

Not surprisingly, this comes from an earlier post on the same guy's web site: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/the-z-80s-16-bit-incrementdecrement.html

Or I can pay $50 and get an OEM charger from Samsung or Apple etc and its just as good as the $10 generic online one but with a brand name logo and smarter packaging.

You may get away with using the cheap charger, or you may get electrocuted. Here's a teardown comparison of a cheap charger and an OEM one.

Sleight of hand. He was the only public face of Apple. Many feel he took credit for everything by never allowing anyone but himself to be seen.

Flip side, having them sign the case makes it seem you are part of a team and its a small token for the workers which doesn't actually do much.

Here's a good one about Jobs claiming credit for "revolutionizing the PC power supply" http://www.righto.com/2012/02/...

Due to ROM and cost limitations the original Sinclair Scientific calulator only produced approximate answers, maybe to 3 or four digits.
This was far more accurate than the answers given by a slide rule....

For more info have a look at this page Reversing Sinclair's amazing 1974 calculator hack - half the ROM of the HP-35

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

That guy tore a part a bunch of USB chargers and rated them based on the materials inside. The 'cheap' ones are indeed VERY cheap and dangerous.

This counterfeit charger has so much noise in the output that I had to double the scale on the left to get it to fit. Note the very large spikes in the output (yellow). ... This counterfeit charger shows extremely poor regulation, as shown by the very wide yellow line. It's hard to fit a voltage-current curve to this picture. The amount of power supplied by this charger seems almost random.

There have been plenty of articles on charger performance - they're not just dumb devices these days. Most well designed modern chargers monitor the battery and charge it at a rate that minimizes wear on the battery.

Modern cell phone chargers just provide clean and reliable voltage. The have no information about the battery at all. Battery conditioning is entirely handled by the device. You can read about it here.

please note you said ORIGINAL plug the current Plug was created when Jobs got pissed that the prongs could fall off. He basically told the engineers to MAKE PROBLEMS NOT HAPPEN EVER.

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

Apple are taking advantage of a couple of incidents with a 3rd party charger to scare people into giving them more profit.

NOT 3rd party. Counterfeit. And as it turns out, unsafe. Please read.

If apple were not profiting off this behavior then you can defend them, as it is they are just using it as a money grubbing exercise for customers that they obviously were never going to get anything extra from previously.

Apple could do absolutely nothing as it wasn't their charger. But I'd suspect you'd complain about that too.

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors so much in the first place?

It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device. But then I have to ask, why are iDevices so fragile in the first place? It seems most other smartphones have a standard USB port and can work with any old 5V power supply.

Because at the time, there was no standard for USB charging (this was way back in 2003). And since you wanted dumb chargers, you needed a way to signal how much current the charger was willing to give (USB devices are only allowed to draw 100mA prior to enumeration, and 500mA only if the host allows). Since that was relatively unacceptable, Apple came up with a way to do it.

First, the resistors pull D+ and D- to various states which signals 4 different charge currents - 100mA, 500mA, 1A, 2A. (the first and last were reserved until later on). This was because you didn't want to pull too much power out of an inadequate charger.

Second, the 30 pin connector was just standardized (back in 2003), because there were no standards for connecting up A/V equipment to a portable device, so Apple used the 30 pin to allow accessory makers to build accessories cheaply - a serial port for control, analog audio outputs so you didn't need a DAC, etc.

Sometime later, the USB guys made a USB charger spec which shorted D+ and D- together to signal a charger. Unfortunately, the USB charger spec is deficient in that it does not signal charge current - the official spec says youc an draw 800mA or so (and it relaxes the 100mA pre-enumeration requirements so you could boost charge your battery until you can boot far enough to detect chargers and such). Of course, without current signalling, things are confusing because your tablet might try to draw 2A out of a 500mA adapter (I've seen cheap adapters blow up because they overheat).

As for what happens here to cause Apple to do this - cheap adapters are cheap. There is often ZERO regard to safety, including things like basic creepage and clearance (how far must high voltage rails be separated), the use of substandard safety parts (snubber capacitors), etc. In some designs, the USB port is barely 1mm away from mains voltage - a particularly humid day can easily bridge the distance and put a rather significant amount of voltage on the USB port. Or a critical part can fail and due to bad isolation, you get line voltage on the USB port.

Here's what a real Apple adapter looks like inside. The green dot recall was because the pins could fall out, and you can see Apple molded them into the plastic so the only way to rip them out is to destroy the plastic cover.

A fake charger torn down. Note the general crappiness.

A dozen adapters tested. Apple is not the best - Samsung chargers are better! But the crappy chargers are clearly crap. In fact, you'll know them because your phone's touch screen stops working when you charge it. This happens on all phones - Apple, or Android. The noisiness of the power rails interferes with the analog touchscreen electronics.

Dave Jones (EEVBlog) tears down two fake chargers he got. He's not impressed and he's really shocked at the lousy nature of it. Taking them apart was the best thing you could do safety wise than using them.

There's nothing special to an Apple charger or any other charger. In fact, modern USB charger controller ICs now have autoswitch modes where they try all known charger methods to be the one universal charger. Youc an convert a standard USB charging charger to an Apple one with a few resistors, and an Apple one to a standard just as e

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors so much in the first place?

It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device. But then I have to ask, why are iDevices so fragile in the first place? It seems most other smartphones have a standard USB port and can work with any old 5V power supply.

Because at the time, there was no standard for USB charging (this was way back in 2003). And since you wanted dumb chargers, you needed a way to signal how much current the charger was willing to give (USB devices are only allowed to draw 100mA prior to enumeration, and 500mA only if the host allows). Since that was relatively unacceptable, Apple came up with a way to do it.

First, the resistors pull D+ and D- to various states which signals 4 different charge currents - 100mA, 500mA, 1A, 2A. (the first and last were reserved until later on). This was because you didn't want to pull too much power out of an inadequate charger.

Second, the 30 pin connector was just standardized (back in 2003), because there were no standards for connecting up A/V equipment to a portable device, so Apple used the 30 pin to allow accessory makers to build accessories cheaply - a serial port for control, analog audio outputs so you didn't need a DAC, etc.

Sometime later, the USB guys made a USB charger spec which shorted D+ and D- together to signal a charger. Unfortunately, the USB charger spec is deficient in that it does not signal charge current - the official spec says youc an draw 800mA or so (and it relaxes the 100mA pre-enumeration requirements so you could boost charge your battery until you can boot far enough to detect chargers and such). Of course, without current signalling, things are confusing because your tablet might try to draw 2A out of a 500mA adapter (I've seen cheap adapters blow up because they overheat).

As for what happens here to cause Apple to do this - cheap adapters are cheap. There is often ZERO regard to safety, including things like basic creepage and clearance (how far must high voltage rails be separated), the use of substandard safety parts (snubber capacitors), etc. In some designs, the USB port is barely 1mm away from mains voltage - a particularly humid day can easily bridge the distance and put a rather significant amount of voltage on the USB port. Or a critical part can fail and due to bad isolation, you get line voltage on the USB port.

Here's what a real Apple adapter looks like inside. The green dot recall was because the pins could fall out, and you can see Apple molded them into the plastic so the only way to rip them out is to destroy the plastic cover.

A fake charger torn down. Note the general crappiness.

A dozen adapters tested. Apple is not the best - Samsung chargers are better! But the crappy chargers are clearly crap. In fact, you'll know them because your phone's touch screen stops working when you charge it. This happens on all phones - Apple, or Android. The noisiness of the power rails interferes with the analog touchscreen electronics.

Dave Jones (EEVBlog) tears down two fake chargers he got. He's not impressed and he's really shocked at the lousy nature of it. Taking them apart was the best thing you could do safety wise than using them.

There's nothing special to an Apple charger or any other charger. In fact, modern USB charger controller ICs now have autoswitch modes where they try all known charger methods to be the one universal charger. Youc an convert a standard USB charging charger to an Apple one with a few resistors, and an Apple one to a standard just as e

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors so much in the first place?

It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device. But then I have to ask, why are iDevices so fragile in the first place? It seems most other smartphones have a standard USB port and can work with any old 5V power supply.

Because at the time, there was no standard for USB charging (this was way back in 2003). And since you wanted dumb chargers, you needed a way to signal how much current the charger was willing to give (USB devices are only allowed to draw 100mA prior to enumeration, and 500mA only if the host allows). Since that was relatively unacceptable, Apple came up with a way to do it.

First, the resistors pull D+ and D- to various states which signals 4 different charge currents - 100mA, 500mA, 1A, 2A. (the first and last were reserved until later on). This was because you didn't want to pull too much power out of an inadequate charger.

Second, the 30 pin connector was just standardized (back in 2003), because there were no standards for connecting up A/V equipment to a portable device, so Apple used the 30 pin to allow accessory makers to build accessories cheaply - a serial port for control, analog audio outputs so you didn't need a DAC, etc.

Sometime later, the USB guys made a USB charger spec which shorted D+ and D- together to signal a charger. Unfortunately, the USB charger spec is deficient in that it does not signal charge current - the official spec says youc an draw 800mA or so (and it relaxes the 100mA pre-enumeration requirements so you could boost charge your battery until you can boot far enough to detect chargers and such). Of course, without current signalling, things are confusing because your tablet might try to draw 2A out of a 500mA adapter (I've seen cheap adapters blow up because they overheat).

As for what happens here to cause Apple to do this - cheap adapters are cheap. There is often ZERO regard to safety, including things like basic creepage and clearance (how far must high voltage rails be separated), the use of substandard safety parts (snubber capacitors), etc. In some designs, the USB port is barely 1mm away from mains voltage - a particularly humid day can easily bridge the distance and put a rather significant amount of voltage on the USB port. Or a critical part can fail and due to bad isolation, you get line voltage on the USB port.

Here's what a real Apple adapter looks like inside. The green dot recall was because the pins could fall out, and you can see Apple molded them into the plastic so the only way to rip them out is to destroy the plastic cover.

A fake charger torn down. Note the general crappiness.

A dozen adapters tested. Apple is not the best - Samsung chargers are better! But the crappy chargers are clearly crap. In fact, you'll know them because your phone's touch screen stops working when you charge it. This happens on all phones - Apple, or Android. The noisiness of the power rails interferes with the analog touchscreen electronics.

Dave Jones (EEVBlog) tears down two fake chargers he got. He's not impressed and he's really shocked at the lousy nature of it. Taking them apart was the best thing you could do safety wise than using them.

There's nothing special to an Apple charger or any other charger. In fact, modern USB charger controller ICs now have autoswitch modes where they try all known charger methods to be the one universal charger. Youc an convert a standard USB charging charger to an Apple one with a few resistors, and an Apple one to a standard just as e

Ken Shirriff did teardowns of an Apple charger and a generic charger.

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

Ken Shirriff did teardowns of an Apple charger and a generic charger.

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

Why can't Iphone / ipad have usb port for charging and not high priced apple changes

The Apple chargers just supply a USB port power. The iOS devices can all plug into any USB port to charge...

-1, wrong.

From Ken Shirrif's blog:

"The USB output also has specific resistances connected to the data pins to indicate to the iPhone how much current the charger can supply, through a proprietary Apple protocol.[10] An iPhone displays the message "Charging is not supported with this accessory" if the charger has the wrong resistances here. "

[10] Apple indicates the charger type through a proprietary technique of resistances on the USB D+ and D- pins. For details on USB charging protocols, see my earlier references.

[14] Ladyada reverse-engineered Apple chargers to determine how the voltages on the USB D+ and D- pins controls the charging current. Minty Boost: The mysteries of Apple device charging. Also of note is the picture of the internals of a official Apple iPhone 3Gs charger, which is somewhat more complex than the charger I disassembled, using two circuit boards.

Why can't Iphone / ipad have usb port for charging and not high priced apple changes

The Apple chargers just supply a USB port power. The iOS devices can all plug into any USB port to charge...

-1, wrong.

From Ken Shirrif's blog:

"The USB output also has specific resistances connected to the data pins to indicate to the iPhone how much current the charger can supply, through a proprietary Apple protocol.[10] An iPhone displays the message "Charging is not supported with this accessory" if the charger has the wrong resistances here. "

[10] Apple indicates the charger type through a proprietary technique of resistances on the USB D+ and D- pins. For details on USB charging protocols, see my earlier references.

[14] Ladyada reverse-engineered Apple chargers to determine how the voltages on the USB D+ and D- pins controls the charging current. Minty Boost: The mysteries of Apple device charging. Also of note is the picture of the internals of a official Apple iPhone 3Gs charger, which is somewhat more complex than the charger I disassembled, using two circuit boards.

FWIW, the shoddy quality of knock-off chargers is well-documented. Bottom line: stay away from them.

http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

This is what the teardown of a genuine Apple charger looks like. http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html Say what you will about Apple - They made a really really nice product here. It ain't easy engineering 110VAC to 5VDC in 2 cubic inches...

Pardon me for interrupting the usual /. dialogue with something relevant to the original topic, but Ken Shirriff did a couple of teardowns a year ago that point out exactly why the counterfeit chargers are Not Safe. The safety issues revolve around poor isolation practices between the line and USB sides of some USB chargers.

Major items include
1) lack of "double insulated" construction in the internal transformer.
2) parts placement of line and USB side components on a single circuit board such that paths may be readily formed between line and USB sides from moisture, construction errors, or component failure.
3) inadequate margins between line side and USB side in overall layout of the charger internal components.

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html

Pardon me for interrupting the usual /. dialogue with something relevant to the original topic, but Ken Shirriff did a couple of teardowns a year ago that point out exactly why the counterfeit chargers are Not Safe. The safety issues revolve around poor isolation practices between the line and USB sides of some USB chargers.

Major items include
1) lack of "double insulated" construction in the internal transformer.
2) parts placement of line and USB side components on a single circuit board such that paths may be readily formed between line and USB sides from moisture, construction errors, or component failure.
3) inadequate margins between line side and USB side in overall layout of the charger internal components.

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html

There are lots of "third-party" Android chargers out there -- ordinary MicroUSB things. If "counterfeit" (i.e. non-Samsung, or whatever) chargers were a problem, wouldn't this happen all the time with Androids?

It does on the ultra cheap chargers - the usual symptom is you can't use the touchscreen while it's plugged in.

In fact, the quality of fake Apple chargers is shockingly bad (pun intended) - the outsides look damn real as well.

This guy tears apart a few $10 chargers he was given, very Apple-like adapters.

Ken Shirriff has taken apart and analyzed many power supplies. Here's a writeup on a fake charger and a writeup on the real thing. The real one stuffs a lot of protection, uses higher quality parts, and keeps to clearance and creepage distances.

And he goes through a dozen other chargers to show that the good stuff is quite good (Apple's not the best - the Samsung cube charger is better), but the fake stuff is downright shoddy.

And think of it this way - a few of those fake chargers have the USB port a couple of millimeters away from the AC - it doesn't take much for the AC line voltage to jump the gap, especially on a more humid day.

General consensus seems to be to stick to name brand real stuff.

There are lots of "third-party" Android chargers out there -- ordinary MicroUSB things. If "counterfeit" (i.e. non-Samsung, or whatever) chargers were a problem, wouldn't this happen all the time with Androids?

It does on the ultra cheap chargers - the usual symptom is you can't use the touchscreen while it's plugged in.

In fact, the quality of fake Apple chargers is shockingly bad (pun intended) - the outsides look damn real as well.

This guy tears apart a few $10 chargers he was given, very Apple-like adapters.

Ken Shirriff has taken apart and analyzed many power supplies. Here's a writeup on a fake charger and a writeup on the real thing. The real one stuffs a lot of protection, uses higher quality parts, and keeps to clearance and creepage distances.

And he goes through a dozen other chargers to show that the good stuff is quite good (Apple's not the best - the Samsung cube charger is better), but the fake stuff is downright shoddy.

And think of it this way - a few of those fake chargers have the USB port a couple of millimeters away from the AC - it doesn't take much for the AC line voltage to jump the gap, especially on a more humid day.

General consensus seems to be to stick to name brand real stuff.

There are lots of "third-party" Android chargers out there -- ordinary MicroUSB things. If "counterfeit" (i.e. non-Samsung, or whatever) chargers were a problem, wouldn't this happen all the time with Androids?

It does on the ultra cheap chargers - the usual symptom is you can't use the touchscreen while it's plugged in.

In fact, the quality of fake Apple chargers is shockingly bad (pun intended) - the outsides look damn real as well.

This guy tears apart a few $10 chargers he was given, very Apple-like adapters.

Ken Shirriff has taken apart and analyzed many power supplies. Here's a writeup on a fake charger and a writeup on the real thing. The real one stuffs a lot of protection, uses higher quality parts, and keeps to clearance and creepage distances.

And he goes through a dozen other chargers to show that the good stuff is quite good (Apple's not the best - the Samsung cube charger is better), but the fake stuff is downright shoddy.

And think of it this way - a few of those fake chargers have the USB port a couple of millimeters away from the AC - it doesn't take much for the AC line voltage to jump the gap, especially on a more humid day.

General consensus seems to be to stick to name brand real stuff.

What is the charger for an Android phone? Oh right, a standard USB cable. What is the charger for an Apple product?

Half a standard USB cable, and the other half a denser connector. The cable isn't important, though. What matters is the adapter it plugs into, and that's what Apple is claiming.

Long story short, Apple and other brand-name chargers produce fairly well-regulated power that's very unlikely to do things like short out or explode. Cheaper options use cheaper circuits that aren't as well-designed, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

Nope.

Both iPhones and Apples come with a little AC->USB charging brick and a cable. The difference with most Android phones is that the cable is a standard USB cable, not a 30-pin or lightning cable. But the brick is the dangerous part.

Ken Shirriff did a couple excellent tear downs last year comparing the build of the Apple charger vs a cheap knockoff.

You can have this exact same problem using a cheap knockoff with an Android phone so be careful!

Nope.

Both iPhones and Apples come with a little AC->USB charging brick and a cable. The difference with most Android phones is that the cable is a standard USB cable, not a 30-pin or lightning cable. But the brick is the dangerous part.

Ken Shirriff did a couple excellent tear downs last year comparing the build of the Apple charger vs a cheap knockoff.

You can have this exact same problem using a cheap knockoff with an Android phone so be careful!

See the commentary at the top of the page from this link:

http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html

--Paul

No one is being killed by the 5v on the USB bus. The problem is the counterfeit chargers are often poorly designed and can fail in a way that shorts the USB cable to the AC power.

There was an excellent teardown & analysis of a cheap charger last year that pointed out serious safety issues.

I don't know if this was the site you were referring to, but it was a really interesting read and has lots of graphs and measurements and such:
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

It's shocking how different everything is!

For a nice example of this being done by humans, see Ken Shirriff's decoding of the 8085 instruction decode logic.

Also, the author of The Anarchist Cookbook apparently knows nothing about the subjects covered. He (or they, if it's not really one author) apparently just copied stuff from a bunch of different sources.

You would be correct to assume so. Apparently the author admits it, and even wants to take the book out of print, but unfortunately he doesn't have the means or rights to do so. As an ex-adolescent I have to admit that I purchased this book when I was younger, and still have it. It was an intriguing read, but even then I wasn't crazy enough to try any of them. Some of the plans didn't even sound like they would work. All the same, it was an interesting read and good brain food. Curiousity is a good thing, you just need to be able to recognize bad ideas and misinformation, and read between the lines.

http://www.righto.com/anarchist-cookbook-faq.html

For the lazy, here's the author's comments in full:

Dear Mr. Shirriff,
I have recently been made aware of several websites that focus on The Anarchist Cookbook. As the author of the original publication some 30 plus years ago, it is appropriate for me to comment. I would appreciate it if you would post these comments as part of your website on the Anarchist Cookbook. Please do not include my e-mail address. However, should you wish to confirm the authenticity of this message, please do not hesitate to contact me at the above address.

The Anarchist Cookbook was written during 1968 and part of 1969 soon after I graduated from high school. At the time, I was 19 years old and the Vietnam War and the so-called "counter culture movement" were at their height. I was involved in the anti-war movement and attended numerous peace rallies and demonstrations. The book, in many respects, was a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in.

I conducted the research for the manuscript on my own, primarily at the New York City Public Library. Most of the contents were gleaned from Military and Special Forces Manuals. I was not member of any radical group of either a left or right wing persuasion.

I submitted the manuscript directly to a number of publishers without the help or advice of an agent. Ultimately, it was accepted by Lyle Stuart Inc. and was published verbatim - without editing - in early 1970. Contrary to what is the normal custom, the copyright for the book was taken out in the name of the publisher rather than the author. I did not appreciate the significance of this at the time and would only come to understand it some years later when I requested that the book be taken out of print.

The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change. I no longer agree with this.

Apparently in recent years, The Anarchist Cookbook has seen a number of 'copy cat' type publications, some with remarkably similar titles (Anarchist Cookbook II, III etc). I am not familiar with these publications and cannot comment upon them. I can say that the original Anarchist Cookbook has not been revised or updated in any way by me since it was first published.

During the years that followed its publication, I went to university, married, became a father and a teacher of adolescents. These developments had a profound moral and spiritual effect on me. I found that I no longer agreed with what I had written earlier and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the ideas that I had put my name to. In 1976 I became a confirmed Anglican Christian and shortly thereafter I wrote to Lyle Stuart Inc. explaining that I no longer held the views that were expressed in the book and requested that The Anarchist Cookbook be taken out of print. The response from the publisher was that the copyright was in his name and therefore such a decision was his to make - not the author's. In the early 1980's, the rights for

I'm surprised that someone with such a low userID would think that the anarchist cookbook had anything to do with anarchism.

Right - and that's the real kicker... if anything you'd think they'd make the modified equipment or the act of modifying it illegal. Instead they're going after the act of just TELLING someone about it. Hello? 1st amendment anyone?

I remember back in the BBS days when this was an big issue with repect to some extremely popular philez such as the anarchist's cookbook. I mean for the love of god, why should it be illegal to just TALK about how to make a weapon?

Now back to my nitroglycerin experiment, which is legal so long as I don't tell anyone how to do it...

What is interesting is that there are books like The Anachists Handbook, that are printed legally in the USA. There is an interesting FAQ here. This passage is relevant:

Lyle Stuart (the auther)published the book (The Anachists Handbook) for a number of reasons. At the time Librarians across the US were being intimidated by the FBI and CIA who wanted to get names of people checking out books they felt were subversive. Lyle Stuart felt that publishing this book would make those efforts meaningless since people could simply buy the book without signing for it. Anyway Lyle did publish the book.

In my opinion the event of publishing the book was important. The contents are garbage. This was a very dangerous and brave publishing act for the 1960's.

People obviously do not want this info (found at 2600) spread around for reasons of their own profits. But somehow publishing on the internet is different than putting out a book?