How is this not being featured in the top page as news? Come on, MacRumors staff, do better!
[Fixed, kudos and thanks! See Edit #3] This is not some obscure piece of hardware trivia, it will affect
ANYONE who buys one of these chargers (and especially those who may also own other Apple devices…) and travels a lot across territories using different IEC plug standards, or just wants to reuse one of their old extensions!
Edit:
9to5mac.com is already on it. Time to step it up!
Once the European Commission catches wind of this, they'll tear Apple a new one. And no, the fact that chargers are no longer included in the box in the EU shouldn't allow them to get a free pass, as a majority of users will, in the process of buying a new MacBook, just buy an Apple-branded charger. A charger, or family thereof, that should be outright BANNED in the EU for not being IEC60320-compliant, and, therefore, also not being compatible with a gigantic backlog of Apple-branded extension cords and travel adapters, as well as third-party, bog-standard C8 cords. SHAME ON APPLE for their constant, stupid greenwashing.
And what's more: Apple's own modified C8 extension cables are listed as being compatible with the “140W USB-C Power Adapter”; guess what, now there's two of those, so… which one is it? Will these newer ones eventually be branded with a conspicuous coloured dot to make them visually distinguishable from the pre-2026 model? This is not only an environmentally irresponsible move, it's also a consumer-hostile one. Complete and utter stupidity from a company that, for the longest time and if you ask me, produced the most elegant and standardised chargers (at least when it came to the, you know, mains-facing end, as older iBook and PowerBook barrel plug cables and especially MagSafe 1/2 cables were total crap because they were fixed in place and always frayed or otherwise broke at both ends).
You know what, OP? You should definitely go to the nearest Apple Store and demand an exchange for a
standard power brick (and, obviously, make absolutely sure it's a Model A2452, not more of that A3607 abomination), even if you have to resort to buying a World Travel Adapter Kit or a
new extension cable – which you could later return, of course – to have a bit more of a leg to stand on. If you check the specifications of either product on Apple's online store, you'll see that they just list them, point-blank, as being compatible with 140W USB-C power adapters. Well, they're not, or not with
all of them. That's misleading and false advertising by any definition of the word. And Apple obviously must pay by being forced to give out replacements for free to anyone affected by this stupid move.
Edit #2: in other, possibly related news,
Apple silently discontinued their World Travel Adapter Kit around six months ago. Maybe they were already preparing this utterly crappy move back then?
Edit #3: thank you
@Joe Rossignol for
bringing this to the front page, as requested. Let’s see if it now gets the attention it deserves. Four pages in and the debate seems lively, but getting the likes of John Gruber et al. to give their takes, especially in such a busy and festive week like this one, would be the icing on the cake.
