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Apple should just make a tiny magsafe to usb-c connector adapter plug

B

blackreplica

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 28, 2010
105
49
A big thing about the jump to the new MBPs is the loss of magsafe which is a quite a shame, not only because we lose the magsafe safety and convenience, but because all our old chargers won't work with the 2016 macbook pros anymore.

Apple already sells this little magnetic magsafe converter plug which converts magsafe 1 to magsafe 2. Its relatively cheap and small and is permanently attached to one of my old magsafe 1 chargers which I use regularly with my magsafe 2 2013 macbook pro.

I don't see why apple shouldn't make a similar adapter to convert magsafe 2 plug ends to USB C. Am sure it would make many users of the 2016 MBP lamenting the loss of magsafe on their new computers very happy at a relatively low cost. Many of us MBP owners need more than 1 charger and being able to recycle an old one (and enjoy the use of magsafe again) would be nice
 
Well, an USB-C charger requires that you support the USB-PD (Power Delivery) protocol. It's basically a digital handshake between charger and device, saying
"yo I'm a charger"
"OK nice I'm a device, so what can you give me"
"I provide 5V with max 3A, 12V at 2A and 20V at 3A"

These different voltages are part of the spec, and it's so phones, tablets but also laptops can get juice out of any charger. MagSafe is dumb, it just provides 19V and it doesn't identify itself in any way. There's no handshake going on. So you'd have two options: either Apple makes a totally non-conformant little dongle that completely ignores all USB-PD rules, and transforms that 19V to either 15 or 20V and ignores all other voltages.

Or they'd actually make a compliant dongle, which would be a versatile DC-DC converter, that accepts that 19V and outputs all USB-PD required voltages. It would be a bit of a weird device, because it would be expensive. And you'd have two points of failure, the MagSafe and the converter. And they don't know about each other, so you'd have a lot of possibly weird failure modes.

Say about MagSafe what you want (fragile!), but these things are extremely engineered towards safety.

So I think Apple listed some questions: are we going to screw over the spec which we helped write? Are we going to create a contraption for a small number of clients, which is a dead end anyway? With possible safety issues? Then they decided, 'forget about it'.

That said, I have about 5 perfectly fine MagSafe chargers lying around, and I'm not looking forward to the hassle of reselling them.
 
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Reactions: jerryk
I have the 27 in Thunderbolt Display that has a Magsafe hardwired to it as well TB2. To use the 2017 MBP, I have to spend about ~$150 for an adapter and dedicated charger... WTH?!
 
That is the plan.. I was hoping to avoid buying an additional charger set @ ~$100 (cable and charger). I usually have a charger in my backpack/work and one at home.. Thanks!
 
Griffin said it won't work/interface with MagSafe ... I have noticed a few vendors tried to have such an adapter but had to stop because they didn't have license from Apple - read somewhere on this www.
 
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