Rumors habit that Apple may be bending back.
My favorite Max was connection.
The technology that has saved countless laptops from crashing to the ground.
It’s the magsafe power plug.
I need to ensure an editor at large at CNET and I am praying Apple brings this back very soon.
Some other people at CNET, however [COUGH] Do not want that.>> I’m Dan Ackerman, senior managing editor at CNET and I love magsafe as much as anybody else, but that’s not the world we’re living in right now.
And it’s bringing back magsafe, means losing all the advantages we have having USBC and then universal compatibility.
Pretty much every other plug on the planet, then next day it should stay dead.
So this is nerdfighter 2021.
And I personally obviously think Dan is completely crazy.
Part of what has really made magsafe important for me is that I’m a klutz and I tripped over these ports all the time before magsafe came out in 2006.
I literally cost 1000s of dollars.
Having to replace and repair my laptops because I tripped over the cords.
And to me, the idea of universal compatibility, It’s nice, but there are more than one plugs in the computer, and we could just have one of them that saves my ****.
So that’s kind of how I always felt, and as a result, I refuse to buy new laptops from Apple until they put it in there I completely agree Mac safe is always great.
I still have, I treasured all Mac Book right here and I’ve got my Mac safe plug and frankly it’s a marvel or engineering the way it just got to pumps in there magnetically and just pulls out has just the exact right amount of magnetic connection so that it feel sturdy but it will want you walk pass it on the couch or on the table It pops right out and saves you so I completely agree with that.
But Apple started phasing this out back in 2015 with that 12 inch MacBook and eventually phased it out of everything and frankly we live in a better world now.
The fact that I can take the plug from my Mac Book, the USB C plug it use it to charge up a bunch of other devices is great.
And the fact that I can take this, HP plug and use it on my Mac and this Dell plug And use it on my MacBook, or use it on this Samsung tablet, or this HP laptop, or my Nintendo Switch, my Nintendo Switch and my MacBook use the same plug, and that has been a life saver, more times than I could count.
And I guess partof it for me is that, I don’t care about having a couple extra ounces in my bag For me, the convenience of not having to worry about this plug has been really important.
And maybe it’s because I have young kids at home, maybe it’s because I feel like the technology was so game changing when it came out.
And also because Apple has a history of putting, especially with the MacBook Pros and the MacBooks, more than one plug in them.
I feel like it just doesn’t matter, right?
Like, it’s okay if there’s one proprietary plug.
But at the same time I understand the value of USBC.
I just feel like Why does it have to be standardised on everything.
You’re talking to the company that insists on having the lightning connection in their phones when every other phone manufacturer has.
Move to less proprietary more universal connections.
You know and the fact that you know, you’d have to carry a charger in your bed.
No one’s going anywhere with a bag right now we’re all stuck at home.
My problem is sometimes I’m in the living room, sometimes Sometimes I’m in the bedroom.
If I’m at my house in Vermont I’m downstairs in my office, or I can go upstairs, I don’t want to carry it up.
Whatever plug I, I just have one set up in every room, and wherever I go I can plug whatever laptop I have in.
I don’t You don’t have to unthreaded and take it out from under the table and carry it upstairs with me.
It’s so universally useful.
And my biggest thing is if you lose one of them, you ever lose a Mac book plug back in the old days, you had to go.
And then 70, 80, $90, or you’d have to get some unreliable knockoff who knows, you know, you can set your whole house on fire.
Now I can just grab it.
You can borrow one from somebody else.
You could get one from another device.
You can use your Nintendo switch, charger that universal nature of it.
Is so useful.
That said, you’re definitely going to trip over your laptop more often, you’re going to break more devices, because they don’t pop out as easily.
The only other company that I can think of that’s really tried to do something similar, is Microsoft.
They have a magsafe style plug for their Surface devices.
Although frankly it shows you how good the Magsafe engineering was, in that the surface version really sucks.
You know, it’s funny.
I’ve thought about buying a surface laptop just because I’m so just hardcore about this issue, but I have also been stuck with Apple software.
I’ve spent so much money on proprietary software for Apples Computers that’s switching over with cost me way too much money.
So I’m stuck in this weird world where I’m using laptops from 2012 and 2013.
Because I refuse to buy a new laptop without this feature.
And unfortunately, also despite rumours that they’ve worked on magnetic, USB, C and all this other stuff, there’s even some of them you can buy on Amazon It just hasn’t caught on which really bugs me, I feel like the whole industry would benefit if we all just moved to something a little better.
Yeah, people have tried to make little magnetic attachments you could you can put on your USBC cable and put it to the USBC plug.
It’s not the same cuz you still have some sorta dongle you have to carry around.
You can’t use any other plug with it.
You have to have that one.
So that’s not a real solution for me.
Listen, if Apple can find a way to combine USB C and some sort of magnetic connection, I’m all for it.
They should totally do that.
If they can’t, I would say going back to a proprietary plug, is a step backwards, not a step forward.
But I have one coda to the story, as soon as I wrote the original story.
About not wanting Mac’s a fact if I had to give up the USB-C connection.
After I wrote the story, but before it actually published, I literally tripped over a USB-C MacBook cable that was on my coffee table and almost killed myself.
Well, there you go.
I win the debate.
It’s over.
It’s done.
Apple, if you’re listening, please save Dan Ackerman’s life.
And bring back magsafe.
Thank you Dan for debating this with me, even though I really won, and we’ll see who’s right in the future at some point.
I guess we will.
Thanks, Ian.
