Jokes for days!
As many of you are likely aware, Apple used to provide some flippin’ sweet charge connectors for their laptops – they called them MagSafe, and they were, for the uninitiated, a magnetic charging port connection (as the name implies).
This provided the enviable attribute of, when your friend, your pet, your pet’s friend, or anything else caught the charging cord of the laptop, it would simply separate from the laptop cleanly instead of dumping the laptop on the floor and very possibly destroying it.
Unfortunately, my current generation Air only comes with a headphone jack and two USB type C connectors, with no magnets in sight.
The good news is there’s a pretty robust secondary market for magnetic adapters!
The bad news is they’re not terribly… well… good.
It protrudes very little, which is desirable, and is overall fairly well-constructed. I’ve got no complaints about build quality.
My biggest gripe falls in the category of “the %^&@ing thing won’t stay connected”. Unfortunately the charge cable separates from the adapter far too easily – even something as simple as the cord being twisted the wrong way can cause separation, and this can be, shall we say, disadvantageous.
If you’re careful and a bit cautious, it’ll work just fine, but if you bump or twist the cable even the smallest bit, it separates, and frustratingly sometimes it’ll do so invisibly – just enough to separate the charge pins but not enough to separate the magnets, so it’s not apparent the laptop isn’t charging.
Fortunately if you’re careful you can avoid this the majority of the time, but I still pine for the days of the proper Apple MagSafe connectors.
Until then, this model works… acceptably, but I’d love to see a more “proper” solution from the folks at Apple (or, failing that, a well-designed secondary market solution).
The other thing I looked for but couldn’t find is one adapter cable that came with a USB type C and a Lightning connector/dongle, with the idea that I could charge my laptop and my phone, all with magnets.
Please take this idea and run with it – my only request is you send me a few samples if you do!
-T