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> The new charging block that comes with the MBP looks exactly the same as any traditional MBP charger

Actually not, the convenient little 'arms' for the cord are missing. And the cord itself is rather stiff and not very flexible … and there's no green / red charging status light either. It's OK as a USB-C charger but it looks and feels different from a traditional MBP charger.



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> there's no green / red charging status light either.

That really sucks.


The "arms" on MagSafe adapters are actually bad for the cable - wrapping it around them puts undue stress on the cable, which causes them to fray faster. And a stiff/inflexible cable should also prevent it from fraying.

Seems like Apple took an proprietary, easily-damaged charging cable and replaced it with a standard, less easy to damage one.

The charging indicator light is a definite loss, though.


As someone who took good care of my MacBook charging adaptors and cables, I found them to be perfectly durable. Those arms are only problematic when one wraps the cable 'immediately', instead of giving an extra loop and then beginning the winding.

Mbp chargers fall apart quickly. 'Taking good care' in this context sounds like 'you're holding it wrong'

I'm not sure what you mean

He's referencing Steve Jobs' email response to the iPhone 4's antenna issues.

>Those arms are only problematic when one wraps the cable 'immediately', instead of giving an extra loop and then beginning the winding.

True, but I've literally never seen anyone do that in public. I do (the 2 times I've done so), one coworker does, everyone else grabs and wraps as quickly and tightly as possible.

They can be used "safely", but the affordance isn't there. It practically begs to be misused. Bad design in a nutshell.


> And the cord itself is rather stiff and not very flexible

Did Apple finally fix the incredibly shitty and prone to fraying soft rubber on the cables?


Probably too early to tell. Given that they've apparently changed the material, we can hope that one of the reasons is to toughen the sheath.

I'm away from my laptop at the moment so I can't see which brand/model I have exactly, but there are a number of accessories for chargers that I find more convenient than the built-in arms, especially because I use the "long" power cable. It's something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Organizer-Macbook-Power-Adapter...

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