The "MagSafe" or why I will never buy a Apple 1.0 product in my life again
Apple is overall a great company - at least better then 99% of its competitors in many fields - but there are things this company never ever seems to get right and most of it has to do with its self imposed secrecy. By not allowing user testing on a broad scale in fear that their "revolutionary" products will be revealed to the public they are taking the risk of huge failures on any new technology they impose. After the Titanium G4 Rev 1 fiasko (the frame has now been shattered multiple times, the motherboard has cracks the hinges have completely fallen off - all after 3 years of using - the machine lies in a grave now) I decided to never ever buy a Rev 1 product again - I fall for the G5 - I thought "well its a tower what can go wrong" and bought the G5 dual 2.0 Ghz Rev 1 - and until this day I have a loud noisy tower under my desk that has "chirping noises" that have never been resolved - sometimes they drive me insane. This time around so - also because I lack the funds - I will not jump the gun as the stakes are much much higher then ever before for Apple and that a component failure at a complete architectural change is almost unavoidable. The iMac Intel did fare well until today and there have been only scarce reports of any MacBook problems - but as I reported a couple days ago in my own hands on MacBook review the "all to apparent problems" have shown up in this guys MacBook already - the same chirping "drive me mad" noise that plugs my G5 and the too easely unplugged "Safe Poweradapter". Yet today must be the official Intel Switch Rev 1 GAU for Apple. Readers report of froozen USB devices on the Intel iMacs - especially happening in games - yesterday a guy showed photos of the "you are safer with our easier then smashing a cake unpluggable poweradapter" that was completely fried and also fried the machine! I can clearly see how this happens - if you have the machine on your lap and the powerplug is just slightly tilted it would get off the contacts and a electric arc would form as it does with any other electric plug system that is not 100% attachted - sometimes you see it on old wall plugs when you plug in a connector you get a bright spark - now you can sustain that spark if you plug in the connector not 100% just like 99.9% and a powerfire will occur shortly later. I for one hope to god that apple pulls that feature - as said before in a live performance setting this thing is the absolute problem on a table fully of wires and never enough space or time to setup your thing. Also I think Apple should test technologies like this with its target group and not only its high paid engineers who never seem to use their laptops in a "bed" setting. I like the idea of the MacSafePlug but it is just not working at all in its current incarnation - maybe a round version that plugs in a little deeper would be the way to go?
Anyway its absolutely not surprising to see what happened to Apple as this has happened every single time Apple made a new enclosure or had a vastly different architecture inside their machines - Powerbook 5300, iBook G3, PowermacG4 PCI, PowerMac G5, Powerbook G4. Lets see what Rev 2 brings and maybe just wait until they bring out a real outstanding machine and not just a bridge to go from old to new.