MagSafe saved my MacBook Air many times. I don't always charge on a safe desk. And yes, sometimes I make a maneuver I shouldn't do, because my head is not always in the right place, and if it weren't for MagSafe, my Air would have had a very short life. Also, less port wear, for sure.
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Why MagSafe is a bad thing
- Thread starter DarrylMusashi
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Just got a new 14-inch MBP. It cost a lot more than the other MacBooks. Key reasons I chose it are the better keyboard, HDMI, MagSafe and, of course, the better screen.
Since, understandably, some of you haven’t bought a new MacBook, here are some MagSafe facts:
1) MagSafe doesn’t lose a Type-C port, it ADDS a Type-C port, because you no longer need to plug your charger into a Type-C port.
2) All three Type-C ports still offer charging. So your docking station and USB-C chargers will still work.
3) Apple’s MagSafe charger is brilliant! The cube has a Type-C connector, and the MagSafe cable is MagSafe on one end and Type-C on the other. So you can most likely use the MagSafe cable with any Type-C charger of sufficient wattage, or if you hate MagSafe, plug a Type-C to Type-C cable into the cube and use that! Or if your MagSafe cable breaks, you can get a Type C cable almost anywhere and keep using your Mac. Genius!
I’m not the Apple fanboy I seem, but I think Apple really got it right with the Return of MagSafe.
Since, understandably, some of you haven’t bought a new MacBook, here are some MagSafe facts:
1) MagSafe doesn’t lose a Type-C port, it ADDS a Type-C port, because you no longer need to plug your charger into a Type-C port.
2) All three Type-C ports still offer charging. So your docking station and USB-C chargers will still work.
3) Apple’s MagSafe charger is brilliant! The cube has a Type-C connector, and the MagSafe cable is MagSafe on one end and Type-C on the other. So you can most likely use the MagSafe cable with any Type-C charger of sufficient wattage, or if you hate MagSafe, plug a Type-C to Type-C cable into the cube and use that! Or if your MagSafe cable breaks, you can get a Type C cable almost anywhere and keep using your Mac. Genius!
I’m not the Apple fanboy I seem, but I think Apple really got it right with the Return of MagSafe.
I've still got a Nokia N1 tablet from 2015, which I believe was the first usb c device, also the Google Chromebook Pixel (2015) was a usb-c equipped laptop available before any Apple product.
In my own experience with laptops dating back several decades, including devices running macOS, Windows, Linux and a few running DOS based diagnostic tools in the early 1990s, the closest I've come to having a laptop getting dragged onto the floor by it's cable, was on a telecommunications site and the cable was a serial interface cable.
Unless you MagSafe every port on the laptop, or never connect anything to your mac, there is still a risk of this happening.
I guess that's true in a way - it's the HDMI/SD card reader ports that are killing a Type-C. The two Type-Cs are on the same side as the MagSafe.
Still, I'd choose to lose any of them to bring another Type-C back.
Isn’t the real problem that the MBP doesn’t have six USBC ports?
No, wait, it needs 12.
In all seriousness: The latest MBP has three Thunderbolt4/USB 3.1 ports which can deliver 40 Gbps each. That's 120 Gbps of data. So I don't really believe you have this problem that your laptop doesn't have 160 Gbps of i/o. I think you just want to gripe. I don't even think you can buy drives that run at a full 40 Gbps and heaven knows how expensive four of them would be.
For that matter... and only benchmarks will tell... does the MBP even support this full 120 Gbps of data? Or can you even get the 30 Gbps of USB 3.1 data? All that i/o has to hit the CPU and memory bus at some point, so having more and more ports is a convenience, but it doesn't mean you're getting more io bandwidth.
Apple took HDMI out of the MacBook Pro line years ago and users have been complaining about it ever since. I've been to meetings at Apple and their conference rooms had an HDMI cable from the presentation screen in the middle of the table, and somebody from IT attached an array of dongles to the end of the HDMI cable using some sort of theft-resistant steel wire. Apparently, the dongles get swiped all the time, accidentally or deliberately. So it wasn't even working well for Apple. I continually bought and lost dongles over the years. Sometimes, a dongle wouldn't work with a particular TV set, and I'd get no video... it was not a good situation. Apple has a long track record at including HDMI with the AppleTV, so their HDMI connector should have rock-solid compatibility with any TV I attach... at long last!
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It's not often, but occasionally I do use all 4 ports. No griping just to gripe here. It's not hard to imagine, given these machines have had these 4 ports for about 5 years now, that people do have workflows that use all 4, and that they would prefer to have a general use rather than a specific use port.
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But that’s not a good setup.
Being realistic, the only scenario for four simultaneous USBC connections is your desktop, and plugging and unplugging so many cables is a nightmare. You can buy any number of hubs that will simplify that tremendously, keep the cable clutter down, etc. Point is, you don’t lose any connectivity or performance.
Yes, you can complain that you have to buy a hub that you didn’t need before, but that’s kind of the concept behind Thunderbolt and a desktop replacement laptop. And, what’s really cool is that the addition of MagSafe didn’t remove USBC charging, so you can get a docking station that will attach all of your devices AND charge with a single cable connection. There are a few rare scenarios where you’ll need more ports to deliver the bandwidth you need: Two very high res monitors (you can’t have a third) and/or a LOT of very specialized, expensive, ultra-fast storage.
So while port four could add convenience (can’t argue that), I don’t think it adds expandability or performance that you don’t already have, especially with the upgrade to TB4/USB3.1. The peripherals on the market have some catching up to do to exploit all the 40 Gbps performance of TB4.
No it would not. I want my data connections to be solid. Think external SSDs for example. But I want my magsafe connection to be able to disconnect easily. So there is a conflict of interest here.magnetic usb-c/TB4 would be cool
I have never tripped over the charge cable but a couple of times I've been using the machine while charging with it on my lap and jumped up for some reason-answering the doorbell that sort of thing- and forgotten so the cable has been pulled out. I have damaged a cable that way.
I think magsafe is a really good idea.
I think USB-C is here to stay however because it does so much so well.
It guarantees you can't use a charger that isn't safe for your machine for instance (if it's USB-C on the charger end) so you can safely use the same charger for the phone and your mac without worry.
It's reversible and backwards compatible.
It's great for high speed data transfer and the protocol allows Thunderbolt as well so great for video.
There's no way they could replace it with anything that would do as much any better at the moment: it isn't just about charging.
And personally although I had 4 ports on the Macbook pro I can't remember every using more than 2 simultaneously.
I'm sure there are people that need 4 but I don't think most people do.
But magsafe is a good plus in my opinion because you sometimes have a cable snaking across the floor to a table for instance, and some of us have pets. Dogs can be a real pain around tables when they want something.
USB-C does get a bit sloppy over time but it's the cables and you can tighten the cable connnecters up a bit by taking a pin or needle and if you hold the cable up vertically and look inside you will see there are 6 lugs on the inside of the outside edge. They get flattened with time and you can pull them out a bit with a pin and that will tighten them up again.
Additional: Someone mentioned a hub I now notice.
I think if you only occasionally need more than 2 then a hub is the way to go.
They are cheap and light and they also have some advantages.
For instance, I have an external HDD which will only work through a hub. I guess it's the controller but it is a fact.
Also sometimes it's necessary to connect by ethernet and I have a couple of hubs that let me do that, plus I still have a load of USB A stuff that needs a hub.
I think magsafe is a really good idea.
I think USB-C is here to stay however because it does so much so well.
It guarantees you can't use a charger that isn't safe for your machine for instance (if it's USB-C on the charger end) so you can safely use the same charger for the phone and your mac without worry.
It's reversible and backwards compatible.
It's great for high speed data transfer and the protocol allows Thunderbolt as well so great for video.
There's no way they could replace it with anything that would do as much any better at the moment: it isn't just about charging.
And personally although I had 4 ports on the Macbook pro I can't remember every using more than 2 simultaneously.
I'm sure there are people that need 4 but I don't think most people do.
But magsafe is a good plus in my opinion because you sometimes have a cable snaking across the floor to a table for instance, and some of us have pets. Dogs can be a real pain around tables when they want something.
USB-C does get a bit sloppy over time but it's the cables and you can tighten the cable connnecters up a bit by taking a pin or needle and if you hold the cable up vertically and look inside you will see there are 6 lugs on the inside of the outside edge. They get flattened with time and you can pull them out a bit with a pin and that will tighten them up again.
Additional: Someone mentioned a hub I now notice.
I think if you only occasionally need more than 2 then a hub is the way to go.
They are cheap and light and they also have some advantages.
For instance, I have an external HDD which will only work through a hub. I guess it's the controller but it is a fact.
Also sometimes it's necessary to connect by ethernet and I have a couple of hubs that let me do that, plus I still have a load of USB A stuff that needs a hub.
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But having MagSafe with little hub (few USB+ethernet) in the charger would be sweet
I agree, though, that this is something you would not use for, let say, disks access.
Ok, but in that 4-port case, wasn’t one of the ports used to power the laptop? So with MagSafe, that USBC port is freed and it’s the same.
What are the actual things you connected to all four ports before which you can’t connect anymore? For me, a hub solves those problems. I have a RAID array, and another drive, and a 4K monitor, and a high speed card reader, the laptop charger, and an occasional lightning cable. Charge using MagSafe == same connectivity for me. I have all the storage plugged into one hub, the display plugged into another port, and lightning cables plug into the hub or directly. Works fine.
The only case I can think of? Three displays plugged into the laptop without using a Thunderbolt hub. But my MBP can’t do that anyway.
The new M1 Pro and Max MBP have three thunderbolt buses each capable of 40Gb/s according to the system information. A total of 120 GB/s split over 3 ports. On the Intel based MBPs there are only 2 TB controllers on the 4 port models. Ports on each side share bandwidth from each of the two controllers. A total of 80 GB/s split over 4 ports.
It is easy to mistakenly claim the 2021 MBPs are losing a TB (USB-C) port, but in fact they are gaining 40GB/s more bandwidth because they don't share controllers between each of the TB ports.
yeah, all this baloney about tripping over your power cord, is fiction in my opinion. In all the years I've owned a Mac, I've never once tripped over a power cord. I'm just saying.
In my case it happened like 8 times. But, partially, due to the fact that I was relying on MagSafe if something
otherwise I’d be more careful with cablingIt feels much better to me every time I connect mag safe as opposed to the USB C charger, maybe im freaking nuts, but its more pleasurable not yanking that usb c out every since Time I want to charge. It also scratches up the area around the usb c. And like you said, you have the option.
I’ve just taken the plunge and ordered a MacBook Air on Black Friday special at Costco ($800)!
This would be my first MacBook without Magsafe. I am, quite frankly, a klutz, and Magsafe has saved many a MacBook in my world when I trip on a cord. I still have my old Newton Messagepad 2100 with the broken-out connector from pushing in a power cable.
I am wondering whether it would be worth my investing in one of the Magsafe imitators on Amazon. I’d still have my second port for data—-and in fact am planning on getting a VGA Multiport adapter to drive an external monitor so I can do video visits with my patients on the MacBook screen while accessing my medical record back at the office via Microsoft Remote Desktop on my VGA monitor.
Anyone have experience with these charging adapters? It would appear to beat having to take the MacBook in for repair of a ripped-loose USB-C port.
This would be my first MacBook without Magsafe. I am, quite frankly, a klutz, and Magsafe has saved many a MacBook in my world when I trip on a cord. I still have my old Newton Messagepad 2100 with the broken-out connector from pushing in a power cable.
I am wondering whether it would be worth my investing in one of the Magsafe imitators on Amazon. I’d still have my second port for data—-and in fact am planning on getting a VGA Multiport adapter to drive an external monitor so I can do video visits with my patients on the MacBook screen while accessing my medical record back at the office via Microsoft Remote Desktop on my VGA monitor.
Anyone have experience with these charging adapters? It would appear to beat having to take the MacBook in for repair of a ripped-loose USB-C port.
