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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
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.
The reason that Apple offers this exchange is not the risk that the charger could die.
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
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.
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
They cost us less than $3 to make (I work in ordering). Add in S&H, packaging etc, and we're making over $5 per unit. Not a huge amount, and won't bring in the money we'd like, but from a PR perspective, we're top news on all decent tech sites and blogs at zero cost, planet wide. No other company can match us for such a trivial issue.
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.
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.
electrocuted to death
Classic tautology. There is no other way to be electrocuted. Anything short of dying and it is not electrocution.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button