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'Plugspreading' is an Abomination (cnet.com)
Mark Serrels, writing for CNET: A man [on a train], a human man as he lives and breathes, has put his bag, his stupid goddamn bag on the seat. He thinks his bag is more important than your buttcheeks. Than your tired legs. He is undermining your right to rest those legs, to plank those weary buttcheeks on a seat. This train is busy. He is a bad person. He doesn't care. This is a metaphor. In this metaphor the terrible man-person is a tech company. The bag is their terrible plug. A plug that is not content with taking up one slot on your powerboard, but needs two. Not for power, oh no. It just wants the space to... christ, I don't know. Mess with your day? Piss you off? Make your life worse? Stop you from plugging an extra device into your powerboard for no goddamn reason. Jesus wept. I call this phenomenon "plugspreading" and it's an abomination. [...] This is bad behaviour. This is a problem. That second socket was innocent man, it was collateral damage. He did nothing to deserve this. You ruined its life, starved that socket of its purpose, its reason for existing. Plugspreading is everywhere. It's a disease.
The purpose is to avoid you cramming in too many things without a chance of airflow for cooling. Hot electronics fail. It's also why many electronic devices have cases with curves or "unnecessary" protrusions: So you don't put things on top or right next to them.
I'd always wondered why the size of the plug was proportional to the power it draws.
Oh wait, I haven't. Because it isn't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In Australia, where this article was written, almost every home power outlet is side by side, so he didn't go to ANY trouble to find a power outlet which was side by side.
Also your standard "buy it at the shops" power board has that same spacing since it's a standard. You have to buy a special hugely spaced power board. Notice this one has only one specially spaced one: https://www.target.com.au/p/us...
This one has none: https://www.officeworks.com.au...
This one has actual spacing markers to show you where they will fithttps://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hpm-5-outlet-power-surge-protector-hpd1055
The reason companies use wall warts is because of certification. If you are going to sell a device that takes AC from the mains directly into itself, whether it converts it to DC internally or not, it has to pass a far higher bar than one that takes in DC directly.
So instead of trying to pass those regulations, it's much cheaper to simply buy an AC/DC power supply which has already been certified and ship it with the product you design. The alternative is what a lot of laptops have, the power brick style, which is AC to a little box (certified) and then DC to the laptop. The manufacturer designs one supply to certify and sells it with multiple laptop models.
For example, any device which takes in AC from the mains will have to pass a HiPot test, which is where you apply 2x(device rating) + 1000V DC* between the input terminals and the ground for one minute, during which the device cannot pass any current to ground (i.e., short). So a laptop which would be powered by 120V directly would have to withstand 1240V for one minute.
*These are Canadian Standards Association numbers, but I know that CE and NEC requirements are similar.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Here's the solution: Outlet Extender/Outlet Saver/Power Extension Cable - 10 Pack
Plug one of these into an outlet or power strip, and then plug the wall wart into the other end.
I keep one in my backpack, a few in my desk at work, and several spares at home.