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Let’s talk about the return of MagSafe! It seems...kinda dumb. Instead of plugging in a lightning cable, I can now stick a hockey puck to the back of my phone?
by cmckn 6y ago
Let’s talk about the return of MagSafe!
It seems...kinda dumb. Instead of plugging in a lightning cable, I can now stick a hockey puck to the back of my phone?
The “safe” in MagSafe came from its “yankability” without sending your device flying. But if my phone is laying on top of a hockey puck...it’s gonna go flying if I trip on the cable.
Why couldn’t we fill in the lightning port and use flush surface contacts, like the MagSafe of yesteryear?
I’m also not sure why my case needs to magnetize to my device, getting rid of the lip around the screen that made it less cringe to lay my phone face down.
Am I missing something? I really don’t understand this feature.
EDIT: did I see an AirPower reboot in there or am I dreaming?
- millzlane 6y agoEventually you will see the lighting port disappear with no way to back up the device locally. 5k cameras in cellphones with no removable storage and no way to locally backup.
- nojito 6y agoWhat? i've been doing wireless local backups for years
- xnx 6y agoBeing able to dock a device for charging with one hand (very difficult with a cable) is very nice. Wireless is superior to surface contacts because you can mount orient your phone in different directions without needing to account for the cable.
- cmckn 6y agoDepends how the magnets work; sometimes these types of things are pretty opinionated about the orientation. I think a “smart connector” approach like the iPad could also be used one-handed, but point taken.
- 72deluxe 6y agoBut docking an old iPod onto a dock was possible with one hand due to the wide connector. It isn't like it's an important problem to solve. Using 2 hands to put a cable into a device - is this really too difficult?? Using two hands for things doesn't seem like a difficulty really - playing a guitar, driving a car etc.
- jamesrcole 6y agoI like products that have less friction, and are easier to deal with. I often find it fiddly to insert the lightning cable into my phone, especially in low light. It’s not a matter of whether one way is too difficult or not. It’s a matter of whether an alternative has some improvements or not.
- 72deluxe 6y agoThat's a good way of looking at it, thanks.
- filoleg 6y ago> Why couldn’t we fill in the lightning port and use flush surface contacts, like the MagSafe of yesteryear? I don't remember MagSafe on macbooks ever being truly flush. It was less deep of a port than USB, sure, but it was still a port. As for why not, there could be many reasons, but I have a feeling it might have something to do with their waterproof/dustproof rating. That's just a pure speculation on my end though. Or, more likely, it is simply because swapping the lightning port with a magsafe one would make the phone pretty much impossible to use while charging. But with a lightning port + magsafe wireless charging, you get to have both use cases covered (using while charging with lightning, drop off for an overnight charge on your magsafe charging surface).
- cmckn 6y agoMagSafe wasn’t flush, no; but I don’t think this is an inherent requirement. I think it’d be possible to make something flat on both the cable and device side. > swapping the lightning port with a MagSafe one would make the phone pretty much impossible to use while charging How so? I used my MacBook in bed while charging with MagSafe all the time. The magnets were fairly strong. With a cable going away from the bottom of the device, I think it’d be perfectly usable. As far as waterproofing, getting rid of the lightning port seems inevitable, because it allows for better hermetic sealing. A flush set of pins seems great for this goal, surely it’s trivial to avoid shorting something out in the prescience of liquid? (I am not an electrical engineer)
- NoPicklez 6y agoI don't see how it would make the device impossible to use while charging. Unless when you hold the phone you bend the bottom of the charging cable.
- curiouser2 6y agoIt's likely solve the gap of "I can't use my phone while it's wirelessly charging". With the magsafe thing you can just clunk the charger to the back of your phone and keep using it. While battery life is still crap on these (side note - I didn't hear a single thing in the presentation about battery life... yikes) people are going to be charging their phones while they use them. I hate to be a pessimist but with them not including a charger or headphones, they're slowly moving toward no data port whatsoever
- cmckn 6y agoI guess my confusion is basically that: if I want to use my phone while it charges, I just plug it in with a lightning cable. I don’t need it to “wirelessly” charge if I’m having to connect something to the device anyway. It seems to be a weird 3rd option for charging. They’re definitely getting rid of the port, maybe next year.
- DominikPeters 6y agoTwo advantages: (1) the Lightning port can wear out if used often, but the magnets won't; (2) you can attach and remove the phone from a magnetic charger with one hand and without looking / in the dark.
- contravariant 6y ago>the Lightning port can wear out if used often Wait what? I hope you're just saying it can get scratched or warped with rough/improper use.
- mccolin 6y agoThe lightning port can essentially loosen over time, meaning the “snap” of the cable grips less and the plug can become susceptible to falling out. This has happened to me, even as someone who takes good care of his phone.
- 6y ago
- FoomFries 6y agoMagnetic force falls off pretty quickly - a phone case can cause enough of a difference to make that force lackluster. Apparently, it seems, enough to put magnets in the case itself to better maintain that force. Additionally, it looks like the goal is to let your phone be held vertically, while attached only to the magnet. This makes sense for car mounts, where you may want to mount your GPS via magnet and charge it simultaneously.
- cmckn 6y agoCar mounts are a great point, thanks! I hope those magnets are strong though.
- toxik 6y agoHow fast you ask? Why it’s an inverse square law! Like gravity. 1/r^2.
- tgb 6y agoAt the risk of being pedantic (or misremembering college classes), there's more to it than that. First, at the relevant distance scales, the magnets aren't point particles, they have an extent and very close to that surface it should be 1/r. Secondly, magnets are dipoles and at greater distances the two poles cancel out to first order and you have a 1/r^4.
- doc_gunthrop 6y agoThere appear to be a lot of people who use those ring-shaped grip holders (or a Popsocket, which has a similar functionality) that stick to the back of a mobile phone. It appears you can have either MagSafe or the phone holder, but not both. Does Apple have a solution for this?
- prh8 6y agoThey discussed how it could work through silicon cases, I wonder if it would work with the Popsocket in flat mode
- blantonl 6y agoI think the concept of the wallet that can quickly snap on and off of the phone is pretty neat. I currently use a case that has a wallet functionality (for my driver's license and credit cards) and that doesn't allow me to use wireless charging without completely taking the case off.
- cmckn 6y agoTrue, the wallet and pop socket support is a great point.
- binaryblitz 6y agoPopSocket has already confirmed they're working on something. This will be awesome for those of us who don't use wireless charging because of our popsockets.
- kace91 6y agoI see some issues there: - Is keeping a magnet near my credit /public transport cards safe? Can't they be damaged by magnets? - all of those cards are contactless in my country. Will I have to take them out to use apple pay, to avoid approaching a bung of nfc cards ?
- bredren 6y agoI also thought the usability of the charger was odd. It seems you would pick the phone up and if you didn’t grab and put down the charging disk, it would go clunk and hit the ground. Sort of like the watch charger will do if it isn’t in a holder. Except louder and more expensive to replace. This was actually shown in the “snap” video they showed where a phone was pulled away. I couldn’t understand, are we expected to adhesive this to our bedside stand? Velcro adhesive? Use some other accessory that holds it down? It just feels incomplete to me. The cases and wallet thing seem great but I don’t get this charger.
- cmckn 6y agoTotally! Apple is amazing at getting the tolerances on magnets, hinges, etc just right, but I don’t see how you could get by without a suction cup or something on the bottom of the hockey puck. A downside to wireless chargers has always been alignment. I always do a double take to make sure my phone is actually charging. Having the magnets guide the phone onto the coils is an improvement, I guess.
- bredren 6y agoYa. The inconsistency of placement has dramatically reduced the value of the wireless so far. Presumably they have the data to see that people have struggled.
- servercobra 6y agoPersonally, I'm waiting for it to release before jumping to conclusions. It's possible it's weighted so this isn't an issue, or the magnet is just strong enough to hold it in place but make it easy to pick up. Apple's usually pretty decent about providing a nice UX for these kinds of things. But I do agree the watch charger is a weird thing that pretty much requires a stand to feel complete.
- toxik 6y agoPut it on something magnetic. It sticks to whatever it sits on. I put it on my pc chassis.
- kube-system 6y agoMy phone always slides off the center of my wireless charger in my car and it stops charging without me noticing -- I would love to have this feature there.
- cmckn 6y agoTrue, the alignment help would be great. I had a Palm in like 2006 that had a magnetic wireless charging dock. Ended up modding a Galaxy Nexus to use it in the car.
- shard 6y agoI have a wireless charger in the car, which has clasps to hold the phone. It has never misaligned. This simpler solution seems preferable to the more complex MagSafe solution.
- enos_feedler 6y agoClasps? Have you ever felt an Apple watch just snap onto the charger? Feels like magic
- shard 6y agoMaybe it's because I have been playing with magnets since I was a kid, things snapping together because of magnets are no longer magical, although ferrofluids are still pretty cool.
- kube-system 6y agoWhat is complicated about a magnet?
- shard 6y agoThe process to manufacture a magnet and insert it into the product is more complicated than adding extensions to the plastic mold to form clasps.
- philihp 6y ago> Why not flush surface contacts? Cases then need to have an exposed area for charging, and the surface contacts lower the weather resistance.
- alistairSH 6y agoand the surface contacts lower the weather resistance Relative to USB-C or Lightning? I think the question was "why do a Lightning port AND fake-wireless instead of just flush surface contact?"
- varenc 6y agoMagSafe can be seen as the replacement for AirPower! It's solving the same problem in a much simpler way. AirPower's big promise was that it was a multi-device charging mat that didn't require perfect alignment to get high power charging. Apple ultimately cancelled it, likely because this proved too difficult to do safely. (rumored to be thermal issues with the multi-coil design) MagSafe solves the alignment problem in a simpler way. Instead of carefully aligning your phone, the magnets just "suck" your phone to the optimal charging position.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- remir 6y agoAira's FreePower technology seems to be what Apple was trying to achieve with Airpower. Haven't tried it yet (because it's expensive) but from the review I read, it's legit. https://airapower.com/ https://airapower.com/
- _rs 6y agoIt looks like they don't sell to consumers - do you know of any products that use this technology?
- varenc 6y agoThe “Base Station Pro” from Nomad is cited as the first consumer product that integrates their tech: https://airapower.com/partnerships/ https://airapower.com/partnerships/
- strawberrypuree 6y agoUnfortunately this base station does not live up to its promises. You still have to perfectly place your phone to get a charge, unless you want to position it horizontally and take up 2 charging coils to get it right. I returned it.
- poisonborz 6y agoBesides the convenience, it must be a way for Apple to eventually drop the charging port completely, maybe even with the next version. No police data tampering, but also no jailbreaks, a physically walled device.
- devenblake 6y ago....Further incentivizing the fascists to figure out how to either force Apple to give them a wireless backdoor or figure out a wireless backdoor for themselves...
- gowld 6y agoHow is wireless data more secure than wired data?
- XorNot 6y agoI'm unclear how this works stop anything. Physical access is total access: there's a JTAG port in there somewhere.
- kalleboo 6y agoCan't they burn a fuse to disable JTAG?
- egsmi 6y agoJTAG is very useful to test that this particular iPhone was manufactured correctly, so Apple doesn’t completely disable it. That said, Apple does have a hardware disable that removes the ability to access registers and memory via JTAG. One only has this ability with special development iPhones that have to be obtained illegally, in the US anyway. https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/10/ktrw-journey-to-build-debuggable-iphone.html?m=1 https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/10/ktrw-journey-...
- lmm 6y agoThere may be a JTAG port in between the glued-together battery and screen, but it's not going to be easy for someone who gets access to your phone for 5 minutes to exploit that.
- fudged71 6y agoI assume with MagSafe you can now plug your cable port (if you don’t use accessories) allowing the whole device to be basically sealed
- totaldude87 6y agoAnother note: the iPhone 12s still support Qi wireless charging, up to 7.5W. MagSafe allows faster 15W charging (sigh). Apple said during the event that it wants a MagSafe ecosystem, so expect chargers, mounts and so on from third parties.- nilay Patel on Twitter
- cmckn 6y agoUpon further reflection, the magnets might have been a necessary tweak to the AirPower concept. They couldn’t get it working with a large matrix of coils, on which you could lay the phone/watch anywhere. Instead, the combo charging mat shown in today’s presentation will use magnets to force proper placement on the mat.
- harha 6y agoI would have much preferred a USB-C plug for all my devices. It’s nice that it’s wireless on the new iPhone and all, but it’s still an extra cable (or puck) to carry around. Much like the headphone cable, I think that things like charging could be done in such a simple way, that the alternatives that are presented just don’t make the users lives easier and generate unnecessary waste.
- crooked-v 6y agoI find myself thinking that at some point they'll be moving to an iPhone with no ports at all, and aren't bothering with USB-C because they'll have a transition to entirely wireless charging instead.
- mister_hn 6y agobut then they should ship a wireless charger in the box. Now they totally dropped the charger from the box, which is odd for the price tag.
- minot 6y agoThey could potentially include the USB to wireless puck without the AC/DC wall plug adapter?
- harha 6y agoWhich almost doubles the size of what I need to carry along to simply charge my phone and more than doubles what needs to be on my table. I’d rather have a single cable on my desk, in my car etc. that ideally works across generations (from a slow ebook reader, charging headphones and power packs to connecting video and storage) and manufacturers (pretty sure the MagSafe connector won’t be available for non-licensed devices).
- ksec 6y agoYou can still charge it with any Qi Wireless Charger.
- scoutt 6y agoNow we should keep the phone away from our floppies!
- 72deluxe 6y agoAnd our CRTs! Can't have the rainbow colours sitting on your monitor forever!
- jankyxenon 6y agoMagSafe was probably a retroactive marketing message. Primary goal here is to get a secure, consistently lined up charging mechanism. Apple has used magnets in chargers before, and lo- a brand was reborn.
- znpy 6y agoBut wait, there's more! It also costs an extra! It's MAGIC! Aren't you excited?