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Dangerous Apple Power Adapters?
An anonymous reader writes "Even with all these exploding Dell notebooks and other notebook safety problems, Apple has seemed relatively immune. Every once in a while, some odd thing came along, but it seemed like relatively calm waters. Not anymore — Apple's notebook power adapters appear to be the source of some serious safety concerns. Every iBook and PowerBook user should read this and keep a close eye on their adapter — the adapters suffer from very poor design including wires that seem prone to short out and burn and zero short circuit protection."
Its low quality electricity causing the problems
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"Is this the end for Apple?"
Apple had a power adapter safety recall by the Consumer Product Safety Commission back in the G3 era, and a battery recall last year. Is this a new problem?
OK, so he cites that he himself had a problem with his adapter, and someone else. If this has not even happened to more than 5 people, I can't see how its dangerous by design. These seem like one-off individual problems, nothing wide-scale that would require a recall. I've had a PowerBook G4 since 2003, and the same adapter for 3 years, 0 problems.
I'm always curious to know exactly how many people are reporting issues when someone claims there's a major widespread problem. If a few dozen people complain of a problem it may sound like a lot. But if it's only a small percent of all customers it could be specific to only one lot of adapters or one specific subcontractor. He claims there's a design flaw but many thousands of people have been using these adapters for years with relatively few complaints.
Developers: We can use your help.
In other words, the words you wanted to say...
Dell and other PC notebooks suck and blow, but mostly Dell, cause that Dell guy said something bad about Apple, which makes them the worst. So we all know that Dells exploding and killing puppies and children is just another Tuesday.
Of course Apple has always been perfect. Many people even actually sit around wondering just how it is they stay so perfect. I know because I'm in a club. That's why it just boggles they mind that somehow something isn't perfect with the power adapter. Probably because they got it from Dell. So just know it's less than absolutely perfect and keep an eye on it.
Anyone that has owned powerbooks or ibooks knows about the crappy power adapters. I have personally lost three, of which only one was covered under warranty. The two biggest weak points:
1. the connector that plugs into the laptop did not have enough ribbing material, so it frayed easily.
2. the thin cable that runs from the laptop into the brick had zero ribbing, it just simply ran into a hole. Frayed easily, I even had one catch fire.
After three Apple laptops I even started noticing how Apple tried to attack these problems. If you look at the last power supply shipped before the magnetic connectors came out, you will see that the "thin" cable is almost twice as thick as the one that shipped with iBook G3s and Titanium Powerbooks. You will also notice much thicker ribbing at both ends of that cable.
The worst of this is that the apple branded adapters were $79 apiece, while a perfectly working replacement, with much sturdier cables, could be had for $35.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
So a guy writes an article on his personal website, and its data? Geesh, what's next, people using the # of Slashdot posts about a topic to judge its validity?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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No. She smells of inflatable plastic.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The details you will need to know are: The gentleman, who complains about the problem, is a bubbeling idiot.
The power rating of these power bricks is 45W (for my iBook). Fourtyfive watts. If you concentrate that amount of electricity in a small volume, it is quite sufficient to set most synthetic materials alight. The possible exception being Teflon.
His comments (yes, I did RTFA) about the brick not having any kind of short circuit protection is groundless. He has experienced one type of SS protection, the type found in many large PC PSUs, which needs a power off to reset. Another type is the foldback, or current limiting SS protection circuit, which increases available power immediately after the short is removed. So it is no wonder that he could sense the power (by repeatedly shorting out the brick?! Asking for trouble, is he?) as soon as no short was present.
He would have a solid argument if he was able to draw an excessive current through the short, larger than, say, the 1.875A (45W @ 24V) the brick is specified for.
I just tried testing for this problem using the brick for my iBook, but failed miserably, since I don't have the proper connector to mate with the low voltage end: The thing won't even power on unless it is plugged into the iBook. This may be a design change since my brick is apparently of a more recent design as compared to the one shown in TFA.
So in summary the actual news items here are:
*) Frayed wire can short out.
*) A short may not be sufficient low ohmic to trip the power limiter in the PSU, yet the power you can draw through it may be sufficient to cause fires. (This is no different than for any other electrical appliance. AKA: Badly maintained electrical installations can kill you.)
*) Apple didn't employ sufficient strain relief at the point, where the power wire leaves the power brick.
Move along, nothing to see here.
I don't think he's qualified to say that his adapter has zero short-circuit protection.
Here's what he says: Meaning, I can short the adapter on the DC side, generate a spark, and repeat again and again without causing the adapter to power off or any circuit breaker/fuse/GFCI outlet to cut the power.
He's expecting the wrong results. Sure, shorting any supply with output capacitors will generate a spark -- that's typical good design. The spark doesn't last long and it isn't indicative of the total energy released.
Now, if his circuit breaker or fuse triggered, I'd be concerned. That means the adapter is shorting out the mains voltage -- very bad, very dangerous. But, it apparently is not. It's good that this doesn't happen, but the guy seems to think it should. And a GFCI wouldn't trigger due to a hot-neutral short -- he would have to throw the adapter in a bathtub to have a chance of it tripping.
I'm not saying there are no problems with the adapter, but his assertion is unsupported by his evidence. I suspect that the adapter has an internal short-circuit protection that kicks in milliseconds after the spark is seen. He would need to use a current meter to detect if the circuit exists.
(why, yes, I'm an electrical engineer)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
From his website:
"I'm currently starting up an exciting new company, Zink Foods. We are poised to revolutionize your perception of "healthy food" by combining taste and nutrition in a completely unprecedented way. Finally, real food, real taste, real nutrition!"
This sounds like a real expert that we should listen to? I guess it's not that hard to use slashdot to drive up your pageviews afterall.
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Apple Authorized Service Provider. hey, that's me :) Certified to work on everything apple sells, warranty repair.
I have yet to see a single pack catch fire. And I've replaced quite a few of them. Damaged, yes. They definitely need to improve their strain reliefs, and magsafe is brilliant. But defective by design? Not from a safety perspective. They DO need to improve the strain reliefs though.
If one tire in 20,000 started to bulge on the sidewall after 30,000 miles, and the owner didn't notice it until 2 months later the tire blew, you can't blame that entirely on Goodyear. All products break, and the consumer does have a reasonable responsibility to identify a product that has failed and may create a safety hazard.
Now take the ibook g3 logic board recall. Now those I have seen maybe 4 dozen of. THOSE are defective. But THIS, this is just a blip.
Actually now that we have magsafe, I don't expect this to even happen once in a blue moon. The power cords are 2x as thick, and if you are a total yutz trying to use your macbook 5.95 feet from the wall using a 6.00 foot power cord, POP and out releases the magsafe before you can jack up your cord. Something tells me OP will just glue it in, break another cord, and cry for us some more.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I work in a lab where we have dozens of these bricks. We lend them out to students all the time, who do god knows what with them. Over the course of several years, we've not had one problem. No shorting out, no signs of wear, nothing. I personally have one as well, going on three years now. I take it with me every day, usually just throwing it in my bag. It looks the same as the day I got it and shows no signs of wear upon serious inspection. Mac users are a VERY VOCAL bunch. It is impossible to gauge the severity of a problem by listening to the Mac community.
It turns that Kensington makes a pretty slick one.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
I think companies, including Apple but especially Dell, have issues with squeezing their suppliers just a bit too hard. They negotiate one price for a given volume and simply short-change the supplier. Then the supplier has to decide between (a) taking legal action to recover their money and thus kill their relationship, or (b) eat the margin. That's how companies like Dell figure it.
Unfortunately, there is an option (c) that basically says they will cut just a few too many corners so that they can only just meet the bare minimum requirements and stick it back to their abusive customer. This is, at least in part, what you're seeing today.
TANSTAAFL...
Fortunately, this is America, so it is very easy to figure out if this is a widespread problem: If there is no gimme-a-million-bucks-I-deserve-it class-action lawsuit ongoing, forget it. It is that easy.
This article makes some sense. But when he tries to explain that it should trigger an GFCI (or even AFCI), he gets way off track.
It would never trigger an AFCI, because there's too much smoothing circuitry between the output and the wall plug. No matter, as an AFCI is designed to protect against arcs in the walls and frayed AC power cords. So the AFCI comment didn't make sense.
Also, the GFCI comment doesn't make sense either. A GFCI is supposed to notice power being drawn and not returned on the neutral. The Apple power supplies are designed to be 2-prong devices, so they could never dump significant power on the ground pin and trigger a GFCI. The only way it could trigger a GFCI is if you shorted the live end of the cable to a separate return, like earth ground or a hot tub or whatever. Then the power would not come back on the neutral and would trigger the GFCI.
Anyway, a GFCI is supposed to prevent against things like dropping a live appliance into a puddle of water or whatever, not shorts internal to low voltage cables.
His spark test maybe means something, I see what he is talking about there. But I'm not sure about his testing methodology. Maybe he's testing a case expecting it to shut down and instead Apple just current limits, which is an acceptable alternative. I just can't tell with only the data on that page.
The article summary is definitely full of unwarranted hyperbole. The article isn't even close to triggering a level of "source of some serious safety concerns".
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This sort of behaviour is fairly common with small switchmode supplies - in fact, it's more likely if the power supply is well-designed and over-rated.
;-)
It's to do with the current waveform. Any switchmode supply tends to have a very spiky current load, as it switches on an off to keep the output voltage stable. A cheap switcher, if it's lightly loaded, will draw huge spikes of current only in the early part of each half-cycle - so it's current load looks just like one or two noise spikes, which get absorbed by any output filtering &/or ignored the protection circuitry in the source UPS/inverter.
A better switcher, on the other hand, will spread that current draw over the each half-cycle - so it's current load looks like a continuous noise hash to the supply. Enough hash to get back past any output filtering on the UPS / inverter and trigger the protection circuitry.
Hence the reason any decent UPS or inverter has specific warnings and / or deratings when used with switchmode loads.
(Yup, that's a simplified explanation - but it's also basically correct...)
In your case, it would probably work better with a smaller inverter, or a cheaper & nastier one without such good protection circuitry
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?