Apple Announces a Trade-in Program For Third-Party Chargers 117
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.'"
Smart move (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)
Re: Smart move (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus it gets you in their store...
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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...
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I have a couple of broken chargers... (Score:3)
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?
Re:I have a couple of broken chargers... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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A woman was electrocuted to death by her crappy knock-off wall plug. It wouldn't have mattered what was on the other end of the USB cable.
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please note you said ORIGINAL plug the current Plug was created when Jobs got pissed that the prongs could fall off. He basically told the engineers to MAKE PROBLEMS NOT HAPPEN EVER.
http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html [righto.com]
Re:I have a couple of broken chargers... (Score:4, Funny)
electrocuted to death
Classic tautology. There is no other way to be electrocuted. Anything short of dying and it is not electrocution.
OR (Score:1)
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.
Re:OR (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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ah yes, but the astroturf is DEEP on this one.
Who really made the charger? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Who really made the charger? (Score:5, Informative)
According to all of the reports I've been able to find, it was handed over to the police following the death, and word soon came out via Chinese state media that the charger was "likely" a knock-off one, rather than the genuine article though they never actually confirmed that was the case. That may be the most we'll get out of them, however, given that the state media has already been caught using celebrities to astroturf [wsj.com] in an attempt to try and paint Apple in a bad light.
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I'd also like to know that. I have an old iPhone 3GS that I use sometimes for Skype and my wife picked it up while it was charging through the USB port of a laptop and she received a generous shock! She has vowed to not go near any iphone ever again! So I was wondering if it was the cable (can't be sure if it is original or 3rd party, I have both and they look kind of similar) or something else. I mean, even if it is the cable, shouldn't the connector and iphone in general be designed in a way that it canno
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And no device protects you from unexpected 220 Volt. Imagine someone attacking you with a cattleprod. Do you expect your iPhone to protect you from that?
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What are you talking about? It was an iPhone charging on a USB port of a laptop. No charger involved, just the 5V USB, which is why I consider my case weirder.
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Was your laptop plugged into the mains?
I get occassional slight buzzy shocks from certain Dell Laptops when on the mains, particularly if I touch low surface area aprts such as the speaker grills.
Probably nothing to do with the iPhone.
Jason
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It was plugged into the mains, however I haven't ever noticed such a problem with that (10 year old Dell) laptop. And, well we do touch it all the time that it is plugged in (i.e. when typing). Anyway, still can't explain that shock. I would have actually just forgotten about it (unless my wife would remind me with "keep that iphone away" etc), but it was only 2 days later that the lady getting killed was on the news, and I started wondering what would have happened if it wasn't on the 5V USB...
But still, s
Re:Who really made the charger? (Score:4, Insightful)
Several options here:
Static discharge - did he/she have stockings on (or other plastic clothing) and walking on a carpet?
Grounding issue - less likely but do you have proper grounding in your house? If your house doesn't have proper wiring, you could get a nasty (and possibly lethal) shock eg. if your hot is wired to where the ground should be.
Re:Who really made the charger? (Score:4)
Well, considering said charger is probably in police evidence, and Apple probably doesn't have full access to it to verify its authenticity, we'll never find out until their investigation is done. Also being investigated is the possibility the house wiring is bad. Some knockoffs are so good it's hard to tell - the ones we see in the western world usually have tells like misspellings or oddball spacings in the text "Use only with info mat ion technology equipment". The knockoffs even go so far as to remove the "Designed by Apple" and the manufacturer (JET, Delta) trademarks to get around IP violation bans. It's why Apple shows the entire text of the charger - because you won't miss a logo that's not there.
If the knockoff guys spent the same effort in designing the charger that they did in evading and making the stuff look real, they'd do better than Apple or Samsung (the latter gets top marks for quality chargers).
Check your laptop's grounding - it appears to be floating. Your laptop charger is probably not completely isolated so it's letting some line voltage through the floating ground pin. I've seen it happen when 3 pin equipment is not connected to ground so it floats, putting a good 30VAC on the ground shielding. Touch that and you get a nice buzz.
You'll probably see the same if you touch the metal of your laptop when it's not ground referenced (e.g., you probably won't notice if you plug it into a monitor which grounds the laptop, but if you touch the VGA, DVI or HDMI shield, zap!). Of course, most laptops aren't metal and the metal Is hidden away so you'll probably inadvertently ground-reference it plugging in external stuff.
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Are you from human resources?
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Until they fry your device.
Dave over at the EEVblog did a tear down of a few they are they are the absolute cheapest shit possible, and will hopefully die while not in use, otherwise they might end up frying w/e is attached to them.
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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?
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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 [amazon.co.uk] 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 Gigab
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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.
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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.
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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 aro
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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.
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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 [stackexchange.com] - now go to bed without dessert.
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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,
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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/ [arstechnica.com]
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't use proprietary chargers. (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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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).
Quite true. The recently publicized case in China involved a third party charger that killed the user, but apparently left the iPhone still (somewhat) operational.
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It sounds like if anything this boils down to a lack of regulation in China. These kinds of electrical devices are heavily regulated. So the idea that you need to buy an Apple branded product in order to be safe is just assinine. Every civilized country has a regulatory agency to make sure that electrical products aren't dangerous.
Although even the Chinese situation may simply be a matter of the numbers catching up to you. Sooner or later someone somewhere is likely to be the victim of that 1 in a billion m
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Defective charger could indeed damage the phone... (Score:2)
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.
Not many around period... (Score:2)
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
Re:They don't use proprietary chargers. (Score:4, Informative)
Generally they can't. But they can be badly grounded and damage you (which actually happened recently).
The issue is not grounding, as all these chargers are double insulated, but rather creepage and dielectric isolation.
Creepage in electrical engineering terms is the safe distance between electrical conductors of a different potential.
There are tables we use depending on pollution level, voltage, and whether it is surface or air creepage.
Dielectric isolation is the method(s) used to prevent a direct connection between the high voltage input, and low voltage output.
Normally a transformer and opto couplers provide the isolation. Cheaping out, or poor design in this area, is the likely cause of the electrocution.
Checkout this link for a teardown on a cheap chinese fake apple charger.
http://www.eevblog.com/2012/11/20/eevblog-388-apple-clone-usb-charger-teardown/ [eevblog.com]
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> They don't use proprietary chargers.
Eh? Have you ever tried charging a iPhone with a "normal" USB charger?
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/08/03/1743240/Hardware-Hackers-Reveal-Apples-Charger-Secrets [slashdot.org]
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The USB sockets on Apple chargers are propriatary. The chargers are capable of supplying 2.1A, but will only supply 500mA to devices compliant with the USB battery charging specification (which allows for up to 1.5A for charging).
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If by "electronics" you mean "a couple resistors" ... you're basically correct. Apple creates a voltage divider on the data lines to tell the device what the charger is capable of. Credit where credit is due to MintyBoost [adafruit.com].
The original USB spec allowed for 100 mA power with a negotiated increase to 500 mA over the data connection. Nobody bothered to implement this, and most everything will just supply 500 mA regardless.
Apple decided 500 mA wasn't enough, and created their own proprietary (albeit simplisti
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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.
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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 [youtube.com]
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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.
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:5, Informative)
Ken Shirriff did teardowns of an Apple charger and a generic charger.
http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html [righto.com]
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html [righto.com]
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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...
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Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Five volts RMS or DC? What's the allowed ripple? Current draw? Etc... etc...
It's a lot more complicated than "just providing 5 volts".
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [righto.com]. 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 [righto.com]. Note the general crappiness.
A dozen adapters tested [righto.com]. 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 [eevblog.com]. 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
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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
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Re: Generosity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 [righto.com].
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.
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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
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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?
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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?
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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
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Strange how it is Apple you are criticizing and not the companies that sell intentionally poorly designed chargers that kill.
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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 [apple.com] 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
Smart move (Score:2)
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.
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A couple of people have died as a result of cheap knock-off chargers so what you think Apple may be implying -- "third-party hardware is real junk compared to ours" -- is probably on the money.
As for me, I tried to save a few dollars on a mini display port to VGA cable. Result: the VGA plug's shield is just a little too big for the VGA port it's meant to go into. It fits into some others a little better, but there's no getting around the fact that it's not-quite-right. Yep, a VGA plug - the type that's been
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Now you know; next time, you should pay $80 for the Monster Cables version.
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Or $30 from Apple. At least it'll fit the bloody socket. I could understand if the mini DP end was iffy, but the VGA..?
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Or you could use a charger from a reputable company instead of a counterfeit one for $10 on monoprice. Also any decent USB charger works. Getting one that sells for $2 and says "Made by Aple in Califonia" might not be the best idea.
There is always the problem that you may not know that your charger doesn't come from a reputable company. There have been reports of iPhone packages being opened and cables, chargers, headphones replaced with fakes, to sell the original ones at a profit.
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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.
Perhaps Apple should give the cheap bastards who bought the cheap chargers new ones for free? Then give them the new iPhone and complimentary iPad, credit their bank account with a 1000.00 dig up Steve Jobs and feed him to a wood chipper, and go out of business? Would that be enough?
Lost in all this is that the people with the bogus chargers apparently thought that they could buy a genuine Apple charger from China on ebay for 2 bucks with free shipping.
and yet.. (Score:1)