Having Problems with Your Power Adapter?

Apple's products may be innovative and even ahead of their time in some cases, but that doesn't mean they are immune to failure. Leaving the G4 MacBook display and melting problems, today I will move on to the power adapters they manufacture.

In one case, a consumer attorney from California started an action against Apple for selling what was called to be "dangerous adapters". The devices in trouble are the Apple 65W Power Adapters for the iBook or PowerBook laptops, and the law firms that filed the lawsuit said that "Apple defectively manufactured and designed and negligently put on the market adapters that are not fit for their intended use because they fray, spark and prematurely fail to work". That doesn't sound good at all, but it seems that the latest news sound much better... but let's dig into those previous problems first.

What made Apple's power adapters "dangerous" was the fact that they did not integrate enough protection against short circuits on the DC side, so when the wires touched or got really close, they generated a spark, but not only once. This persisted as long the adapter was plugged in, or until a major fire broke out, but fortunately that didn't happen yet, as far as I was able to find out...

Getting to the present day, it seems that the adapter cables are much better, and come with a large rubber anti-stress sheath, but the best part about this is that Apple started to replace its adapters for free! According to various user posts on discussion boards and forums, Apple is now replacing their adapters for free, and even the shipping comes as a gift.

Unfortunately, I don't know if this is still true with the old adapters that had problems like the one described above, but getting a free replacement for a MagSafe power adapter for your MacBook, a 79$ value, is not something to just walk by. What else should I say? From now on, less worries for the MacBook users, another white ball in the pot for Apple!