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Comment by nickpeterson | Hacker News Reader

I really wish we’d end up with something like the old MagSafe.

MagSafe was quite bad tbh. Exposed contacts that easily get contaminated and magnets attracting nearby particles to degrade the connection. At the same time, the disconnect force in the vertical direction is far too small (place the laptop on something soft and the connector tilts), and in the horizontal and perpendicular directions high enough to still yank the laptop.

I do not know if the new MagSafe is an improvement over V1 and v2, but solid connections or non-contact charging are the way to go.

What is your opinion on magnetic usb c adapters? For about 10€ you get 140W charging and 40Gbps.

Compared to magsafe it is not recessed (though that has not been an issue in my experience), but on the plus side it also does data, video and is universal. Currently using the same type of adapter for my laptop, phone and tablet with the ends on various chargers and docking stations.

I had a number of them from two or three different brands.

They had tendency to cause sparking and I lost at least one phone due to it. The phone was fine but it lost ability to be charged through the USB port. And because it did not have wireless charging, when the battery ran out it became an expensive brick.

Yikes. Haven't had an issue yet with the ones I use. Good to know.

Yup, I lost a chromebook that way. I think magnetic connections are fine for 5V power with no data line, but as soon as you add more connections and try increasing voltage/power you are asking for trouble.

My deep fryer has a magnetic connection for the power cord. That's high voltage and wattage, and works just fine.

Because the only two pins are hot and neutral, which are designed to have high voltage across them.

Put 20 V Vbus on a CC line and see what happens.

That seems more likely to be because that design was bad rather than that the concept is bad.

can't it be repaired?

maybe we can get that for USB-D in 2025 after the Apple magsafe patent runs out

Microsoft had a magnetic connector on the Surface laptops so I don’t thing patents are standing in the way.

Even before that, magnetic power connectors were common on kitchen appliances like kettles and fryers.

Can we just stop changing things up in the USB world for a while? USB-C causes me more headaches than the prior USB incarnations do, but changing these things is itself painful enough that I'd rather just put up with what we have now than change yet again.

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