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Apple Announces a Trade-in Program For Third-Party Chargers
EliSowash writes "In response to recent reports of safety concerns around third-party chargers for iDevices, Apple announced today that beginning August 16, 2013, you can trade in your third-party adapter and purchase an official Apple charger at a 'special price' — $10 USD. From their website: 'To qualify, you must turn in at least one USB power adapter and bring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to an Apple Retail Store or participating Apple Authorized Service Provider for serial number validation. The special pricing on Apple USB power adapters is limited to one adapter for each iPhone, iPad, and iPod you own and is valid until October 18, 2013.'"
It's a one-off of getting a garbage cheap charger and taking it in with ten zorkmids (they'll check off your i-doodad, so you can only do it once) and getting a first rate (well, Apple anyway) charger for a discount (from their usually high prices.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
and a couple of iPods...
So, $20 for a couple of Apple chargers, which I assume all charge everything non-Apple up to 500mA now? Is there a catch?
Or I could take that $10 and buy a thousand cheap knockoffs at wholesale prices straight from China and throw them out as they die.
How could they cell you a $20 cable to plug your phone into your computer if you could just buy a microUSB cable for 65 cents from monoprice?
why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors
They don't use proprietary chargers. The chargers have a standard USB port into which you can plug anything.
They use proprietary connectors on the phone end because they are smaller (at least now), also more usable (the current and old connectors are less prone to damage than micro-USB) are easier to attach (the current device plug can go in either way) and also can offer advanced capabilities instead of USB.
The chargers do have a special ability to deliver more power to an iOS device, but that's only because the charger is built to recognize when an iOS device is attached that can handle a larger power flow.
It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device.
Generally they can't. But they can be badly grounded and damage you (which actually happened recently).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
what is so proprietary about Apple's chargers? Its a USB female connector coming out of the charger. The issue is UL vs non-UL certified knock-offs. You dont need to use an Apple charger, just buy any UL certified charge. No one is forcing you to buy an Apple charger.
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.
-Micro USB is terrible. Charges slow, isn't reversible, etc.
-The iDevices aren't 'fragile', the knockoff chargers are just poorly made. Nothing to do with the device.
if the phone has another connection to earth ground (say, through the audio jack connected to another piece of equipment), a damaging current could then flow to ground THROUGH the phone's internal circuitry.
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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.
5 Volt chargers that deliver 5 Volt are not a problem. The charger that caused all this didn't deliver 5 Volt, it delivered 220 Volt straight to the user. The iPhone survived, the user didn't.
It's been weeks and still nobody has been able to CONFIRM whether it was a 3rd party charger or not? Seriously, it should take 30 seconds. This whole thing fucking stinks.
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
Not only is Apple is making a statement -- "third-party hardware is real junk compared to ours" -- but they will probably still make a bit of profit selling these things for $10.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
ah yes, but the astroturf is DEEP on this one.
Really? Apple didn't have to do jack shit. We're talking about 3rd party chargers and knock-off's here.
But please, make Apple the bad guy here for essentially warranting 3rd party hardware.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
I think you've missed the point. The sort of chargers you are suggesting people buy are the very ones that have been injuring people.
Apple's just turning the spin positive by deeply discounting replacement chargers. It also gets people into their store, and gives them lots of positive PR. They're still making a little bit of money off the chargers, too, it's not a giveaway.
I also found this nugget on Apple's info page especially interesting:
It would likely require physically smashing them open to identify a good counterfeit. So they'll even take back an authentic Apple charger. And it looks like in any condition, so you could for example, take in your dead adapter or drowned / clothswasher'd adapter and get a replacement on the cheap too. That's handy.
Knockoffs are cheap, but they're made cheaply. I recently got a cheap 3pk of usb to dock adapters for spares, and ended up needing one to replace an original that had been in use in my truck for the last two years, the cable at the dock finally started to fray. The first replacement... well it lasted a whole five days before the cable pulled out of the dock connector. It's confirmed, ya gets what ya pays for.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's been weeks and still nobody has been able to CONFIRM whether it was a 3rd party charger or not? Seriously, it should take 30 seconds.
Exactly! I've been looking for anything that explicitly states whether the electrocution was caused by a counterfeit charger or a genuine one, and I have yet to find it. Instead I find cleverly worded PR from Cupertino that discusses the potential hazards of knock-off chargers, but without ever specifically stating that the charger in question wasn't one of their theirs. I find this curious.
Um, yes and no.
I have yet to have my phone burst into flames, and I've charged it through a microUSB cable from my computer for... well, years. And believe me, it's not a $20 microUSB cable.
Actually, this is probably what I have, and that costs £1.84, or under $3. Is Apple really $17 better at making USB cables than Nokia? Or perhaps you're suggesting that my Gigabyte motherboard or Enermax PSU is just waiting to kill me through my phone?
I'm not denying that there are cheap, poor-quality counterfeits. But that's a different issue. There are lots of companies that are perfectly capable of making decent hardware. Apple using a proprietary cable reduces the choices you have of good quality replacements in order to gain, from the perspective of a non-Apple user, almost nothing aside from the opportunity to give Apple more money.
(Things are different for some of their other connectors, like the magnetic power cord.)
Apple didn't have to do jack shit.
No kidding. The same people blaming Apple for third party chargers would certainly blame Google for bad Bing search results. Right?
what is so proprietary about Apple's chargers? Its a USB female connector coming out of the charger. The issue is UL vs non-UL certified knock-offs. You dont need to use an Apple charger, just buy any UL certified charge. No one is forcing you to buy an Apple charger.
Just because it has a UL logo on it, doesn't mean its real.
The following video was meant to be a teardown of a real vs fake charger and it turns out, they were both fake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-b9k-0KfE
Micro USB is terrible. Charges slow, isn't reversible, etc.
Really? I guess my Galaxy Note II doesn't charge at 2000 mA, and fully charge in under 2 hours with the micro USB connector...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Strange how it is Apple you are criticizing and not the companies that sell intentionally poorly designed chargers that kill.
Over time Apple may support that spec. It seems somewhat new still (last updates were May 2012) and looking on Amazon there are not a lot of third party chargers that support it either.
It's also a bit unclear reading the spec that it can supply as high a voltage as the newer Apple chargers deliver, if the spec can't deliver as good performance then it may be a reason to stay away from it (and for other competitors not to use it also).
What other newer phones support this standard? That is unclear also.
The spec makes for an interesting read. I had not realize before that USB power pins are longer than the data pins. I guess that was traditionally to give a device a short time to power up before data requests started flowing? It makes it a bit tricky to properly detect if data will be present or not though, very timing dependent and I wonder if you could trick the standard just by sliding in the connection really slow...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're missing my point, which is that companies other than Apple exist and many of them make good products. Just because there are companies that make really bad products too doesn't negate that fact.
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
The same reason you can buy a $3 HDMI cable off monoprice while Best Buy will sell you one for $20 at the cheapest. As long as it meets specs, it should be fine. The problem is that they can charge this price if you really want one right now. Now the problem in this case wasn't that the charger was merely third-party. It was that it was counterfeit and didn't pass any safety checks because they didn't have to pass them. The counterfeits only have to look like and work long enough to pass off as a real one. If it blows up later, that's not their problem.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And if they did nothing, you'd accuse them of ignoring a dangerous situation and profiting off a tragedy. It's a no-win for Apple.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Seriously? Do you also fault them for, without any cost to you at all, arranging to ship your old PC or phone directly from your front door to them so that they can recycle it for you and give you credit you can use towards future purchases? Because that is some seriously evil stuff they're doing, obviously. What greedy bastards they are!
*sigh*
Criticize them for the things that deserve criticism. Offering people a discount to possibly save lives while also currying good will when they're in a position where they don't have to do anything at all is not one of those times.
Recent reports have suggested that some counterfeit and third party adapters may not be designed properly and could result in safety issues. While not all third party adapters have an issue, we are announcing a USB Power Adapter Takeback Program to enable customers to acquire properly designed adapters.
Apple does not acknowledge whether the charger in the death was counterfeit or third party or original.
The compact size of the Apple charger do cause some concerns. The distance between the USB connector and the transformer and buffer capacitor is very small. I wouldn't rule out that this wasn't caused by an original charger yet.
Er? Electricity flows through metal wires. Since metal is contacted to metal on the connector, it doesn't really matter distance does it?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
they're still making money just on the ten bucks.
the problem with the cheap chargers is that they're made by their manufacture to be sold at three-fitty
they should just sell 'em for the ten bucks...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
and even with this so called 'trade-in' Apple makes a profit on every swapped charger, so it's a win-win situation for Apple..
Alex's point is probably that microUSB chargers, or connectors are standard, and even come w/ their phones. Once you've bought a Galaxy or Lumia or Blackberry, you can use the same charger to charge any of them. In my family, my sister has a Galaxy, her husband a Blackberry & I a Lumia. All of us use the same connector. But we can't charge her iPad or my iPod touch w/ it. And all the connectors came w/ their phones - we didn't buy anything else, but the result is that we have enough connectors around to share when someone's phone needs charging.
Just b'cos something is microUSB doesn't mean that it's junk. On the contrary, my old iPod connector is frayed, and I had to get a new one - they are pretty delicate, at the Apple end of the cord, not the USB end.
The other relevant question is that an USB connector just needs 4 signals - power, ground, V+ and V-. Apple's dock connector, OTOH, uses all sorts of other signals on that 30-pin connector - audio output lines, component video outputs, S-video outputs, serial transmit-receive signals and even firewire. So Apple essentially wants to support interfaces to all sorts of hardware, not just USB. But it does make their connector more fragile.
Apple is offering to take any charger whether it works or not, whether it was counterfeit or not and replace with one that is genuine for $10. A charger they normally sell at $30 so they are taking a rather large cut of profits. You don't have to take them up on their offer.
You're so dead set on defending them from everything, even the smallest perceived slights, that you'll try to put words into people's mouths.
And you put ulterior motives behind Apple based on your bias. Maybe Apple's motives are to ensure that their customer live and not be killed by crappy chargers. Seriously if this was a story about Samsung or Nokia, would you react the same? You know Best Buy allows you to bring in old electronics to be recycled at their store. Do you accuse them of profiting off the environment to get you into their stores?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I was wondering how the peanut gallery were going to try and spin this as anti-apple bullshit, congrats.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Article isn't about USB cables, it's about chargers. Methinks YOU are missing the point.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
No, counterfeit chargers may be bad and there are no guarantees whether they are or not.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
If every single comment was exactly about the article at hand, you'd have a point, but there also wouldn't be much discussion.
But they're not, nor should they be. And this particular thread was started by someone asking "why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors so much in the first place".
And like I said, my comment applies equally to chargers as it does to cables. Apple isn't the only company capable of making decent gadgets.
How's the video out?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
IMO Apple's stance exacerbates that problem, not solves it. It makes legitimate "made for iPhone" adapters more expensive and thus makes cheapass counterfeit crap more attractive by comparison.
You consider modding your charger "easily"? I wouldn't trust a $500 piece of equipment to my handiwork, especially considering we're talking about good and bad chargers! I've soldered a few things before, and I suspect Cheapass Counterfeit Crap, LLC would have a better chance at producing a safe charger than me.
No kidding. The same people blaming Apple for third party chargers would certainly blame Google for bad Bing search results. Right?
For people who hate Apple, they can do nothing right. Just how this Ford versus chevy stupid argument goes, only these are twits standing by the water cooler, instead of rednecks at the corner gas. Exactly the same amount of intellect.
This! The Apple charger is a well designed Switcher Power supply. It not only supplies a significant amount of current in a small package, but it does so without the RFI present in so many small switchers. It is a first class product. Haters deny that at their own technical acumen peril.
These fakes often have single diode rectification, try to smooth it out with a big cap, and use bad circuit board design, shaky regulation and zilch safety design.
The idea of Apple being responsible at all for this is ludicrous, and their more than generous offer to replace those pieces of shit with their properly designed ones at a low price shows that they do have good service.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, iPhone can only use the same charger as an iPad or iPod touch, nothing else. Whereas the microUSB cable that you get with say, a Blackberry, can charge your wife's Galaxy, your mom-in-law's Lumia or most other smartphones in the market. It's perfectly possible that different members of a household could have different phones, but if one has an iPhone and others don't, forget sharing the charger.
Of course, anyone can decide whether that's good or bad.
No, iPhone can only use the same charger as an iPad or iPod touch, nothing else.
Wrong. http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/74660/can-you-charge-an-iphone-5-from-a-standard-non-apple-micro-usb-cable - now go to bed without dessert.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You are talking about the iPhone 5, in which case, this is certainly a new trend. Otherwise, upto now, it had only been the 30-pin adaptor.
Also, today, I saw a new iPad Mini, and this thing has yet another adapter again - not a microUSB, and not the standard Apple 30-pin adaptor either. Yippee - now another wire that one needs to take to charge that thing wherever necessary. Oh, and another thing about an iPad/iPad mini/iPod touch - if you connect them to a plain USB hub and then on to a power supply, those things won't charge. Unlike in the case of either a Galaxy, or a Lumia.
The DLNA wireless out video is great at the office (the TVs in the conference rooms are DLNA ready), and I've used the MHL (microUSB based) to HDMI a few times whilst traveling, with hotel room TVs. So it works really well.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You are talking about the iPhone 5, in which case, this is certainly a new trend. Otherwise, upto now, it had only been the 30-pin adaptor.
Translation: You are too dumb to use Google - http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/11/hands-on-with-the-iphone-micro-usb-plug-and-third-party-chargers/
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.