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."

Comments

Not poor design

[Timesprout]

Its low quality electricity causing the problems

Missing last line...

[talkingpaperclip]

"Is this the end for Apple?"

Re:Missing last line...

[Dlugar]

And the corresponding story tags:

yes, no, fud, notfud

Dlugar

What's Dell got to do, got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not exactly new

[pvera]

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.

Re:why oh why

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"does my girlfriends pussy smell of fishes?"

No. She smells of inflatable plastic.

Here are some technical details:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Here are some technical details:

[v1]

Just a technical addendum. The white bricks are no longer produced in the 45w range. All new white bricks are 65w. This is most likely because the latter g3/4 laptops were all requiring more power than the early G3s. The 65's work fine on all the older equipment, (watts are drawn on demand, a 65 won't hurt a machine that took a 45 originally) so we just carry the 65's. I have replaced maybe five white packs that had the wire broken at the strain relief where this fellow had the problem, and as many more where the wire went at the DC jack end. Apple does need to improve the strain relief at both ends. I find OP's claim that there was "no visible damage before the fire" to be laughable. When I look at the picture I note immediately, the wire always comes straight out of the pack when it's new, and there is a good inch of cord needed to bend it 90 degrees without excessive force. But when you look at the picture, the wire is almost emerging at 90 degrees right out of the strain relief. Good money says he tends to plug the pack into the wall a long way from his ibook, and the cord is always being strained and pulled hard to the side, and was a direct cause of the cord damage and the fire.

Also of note, the "ufo" power adapters that shipped originally on the ibook G3s are much much worse. They are known for failure where the DC cord meets the computer plug and where the AC cord meets the connector that plugs into the pack. We have replaced many of them for failure at one of these two points. Though for all the macs I've worked on, I have yet to encounter a single apple pack that caught fire. This sounds like an isolated incident and someone trying to make a whole lot of noise, stomping about and shouting "defect, recall, save me!"

Given 50,000 production units of electronics, a couple of them are going to be bad. There is no escaping that. And yes, one of them might burn down your house. But a meteor might hit it first, and has roughly the same odds, OP needs to get over it.

Though I don't deny he needs to post about it, because this is how you find out about real issues. Now if we saw a dozen "me too" followups immediately we might want to look into this more, but right now we just have a blowhard.

his GFCI comments are off base...

[YesIAmAScript]

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".