11 ms·

Apple may make great USB chargers, but they have certainly cut corners and shirked responsibility when it comes to the rubber insulation of their Lightning and

Apple may make great USB chargers, but they have certainly cut corners and shirked responsibility when it comes to the rubber insulation of their Lightning and (MacBook) MagSafe cables. I've brought my frayed MagSafe charger, which has degraded to the point that it's been staining everything blue, to an Apple Store Genius Bar multiple times, and the Geniuses (in multiple countries) keep saying that it's my fault that the insulation degrades over time, and that such "wear and tear" is not covered under warranty.

wil421 5y ago
Never had this issue with my late 2011 MBP and my 2017 MBP. Both MagSafe chargers are in tact. The 2011 one outlasted the computer.
- dijit 5y ago
  I've also never frayed an actual Apple cable, but I've had some non-apple cables that didn't last very long. But, maybe part of that is understanding that the Apple ones suck? I know they've picked form over function for the strain relief, so I make a subconscious effort not to strain them. My ex-girlfriends charger didn't last very long, but mine (from 2011) is still quite well maintained, though darkened and discoloured with age. Ugh, this sounds like I'm saying "you're holding it wrong" but, what I mean is that maybe we have a bit of survivorship bias here and because we tried to keep our cables in good shape. I highly suspect too, that Apple is using eco-friendly plastics in the cables, which might be part of why they degrade so poorly, even when not strained at the ends.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Yea my wife’s cables don’t last long. I think it’s the way people curl it up. Anker probably makes the better 3rd party cables. Other brands on Amazon are far worse. I try not to buy 3rd party cables for my laptops but will by them for phones and tablets.
- randomdata 5y ago
  The charger from my 2009 MBP has its cable perfectly intact; looks brand new. The charger from my 2012 model disintegrated at both ends. They lived similar lives. I have to think the material quality declined somewhere in there.
jng 5y ago
Not to mention the cable deterioration. I recently got an M1 MacBook Air and the USB-C charger is finally designed such that the cable is replaceable. No admission of wrongdoing, blaming the user, but at least an acceptable final fix.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I wonder if their new braided cords are in response to the old yellowing plastics.
ryandrake 5y ago
Their strain relief is absolutely rubbish, too. How many of us have multiple Apple cables that end up looking like this [1]? They've been doing this for how long, and they can't solve strain relief, which every other cable manufacturer has figured out? 1: https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/40148-77246-000-lead-frayed-cable-xl.jpg https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/40148-77246-000-lea...
- Invictus0 5y ago
  They know, they just don't care.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    Of course they do care. Selling overpriced chargers must be a sizeable part of their income.
- baybal2 5y ago
  It's intentional. There is a business strategy called "planned obsolescence" or simply "planned breakdown" They would've not DRM chipped a freaking cable if not for them selling them for $20. Take a look on my experience from a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26134006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26134006 > I recalled that when in 2015, working for another sourcing shop working for likes of BestBuy/Futureshop/Target/London Drugs I was asked to tear down few chargers for them. > I found that diodes in parallel are surprisingly common around the industry. > This is such a thing which you are pretty much told on day 1 of any electronics course that it is impossible to not to know. > My only thinkable conclusion was that people keep doing it on purpose.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I would like to see a picture of that circuit, not just a diagram. I've used this trick to good effect, and also used another trick: to use the circuit board as a balancing resistor. Just make the track a little bit longer for instance by routing the wires less than efficiently or by putting a little wavy line in it and you have a very low resistance resistor just perfect for balancing out the differences in diode switch speed and bias voltage. In electronics not everything is what it seems to be at first glance. For an encore check out pcb fuses, coils and even capacitors.
outworlder 5y ago
> it's my fault that the insulation degrades over time Yeah, since the cable is not replaceable(at least, anything that's not USB-C), that's a crappy thing to say. It's obviously a widespread problem. The charger is expensive but can be replaced. I had a frayed Apple Thunderbolt Display cable. Non removable and can't be easily replaced. Had to use some insulation tape at the time because an authorized Apple shop also claimed this was wear and tear not covered under warranty.
kevinherron 5y ago
I know this is a common complaint, but not one of my iPhone or PowerBook/MacBook/MacBook Pro cables has ever failed or started to look anything like these complaints. I don't really think myself as one to "baby" my gadgets, so I'm not really sure what the heck you all are doing to your cables.
- vmception 5y ago
  It could just as easily be environment causing corrosion Very strange victim blaming going on in this thread, nobody has even attempted suggesting how to avoid it
- babypuncher 5y ago
  Same here. I believe it happens, I see the frayed cables everywhere, but the MagSafe charger from my 2009 MacBook and the lightning cable that came with my iPhone 5 in 2012 are still perfectly fine and sees regular use in my car. The strain relief on these cables is practically nonexistent, so I won't put the blame squarely on abusive users.
- tooltalk 5y ago
  If you are using your Macbook like a desktop, you are unlikely to have any problem. If you are on the other hand a mobile user, ie, you move around between school, work, home, coffe shop, etc, yes, it's slightly more than an annoying issue. The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store until the company removed all user ratings & reviews in Nov, 2019.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    > The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store I mean, you'd expect that. Nobody is buying a new one for fun. ~Everyone buying a new one has had one fail on them, so poor reviews are absolutely expected.
    - tooltalk 5y ago
      Not really. Sure, we expect all things in life to wear and tear at one point. I'm pretty sure most MacBook users can deal with occassional failures without venting out their anger online. The frequency at which Apple Magsafe chargers fail is however quite insane and shows how they are poorly designed and built; therefore poor reviews -- and that's in spite of Apple user loyalty and a huge fanbois base who always come to the company defense's in public forums and reviews. I certainly didn't expect to see such piss-poor reviews on Apple's own website.
hughrr 5y ago
Not joking but this is entirely user related. In the 15 years I’ve been using the things I haven’t killed a single cable. Not one. The strain relief is not great but if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there. The killers are people who sit there with the cable rammed into their stomach bending it at 90 degree angle when using their phone. On the MacBook chargers it’s usually bashing it constantly or tugging it. I come from a world of RF cables which cost more than a MacBook and have very limited bend limits. What we have is insanely robust these days. Just be nice to it. Edit: my daughter had my 2010 MBP until recently which the original charger blew up on. After dissecting it the cable was fine but the main IC had cracked in half. No shorts on the cable grommet. It lasted 11 years! What are you people doing to these things?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I have the complete opposite experience aligning with the OP. Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault. This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?
  - hughrr 5y ago
    I'm using the cable that came with my 6s on my 12. There was an intermediate XR as well. The only unarguable thing is the disparity between what we're doing.
  - SmellTheGlove 5y ago
    In fairness, any cable of this style I've bought has failed the same way. I have a bunch of generic lightning cables that are white, with the little nub of rubber strain relief like the genuine cables, and they fail the same way too. They look nice, and even on the ones where the insulation is torn, I've only had to throw one away for not working at all (Apple or generic) of the probably dozen I own. But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.
jbay808 5y ago
Every time this is mentioned, it seems like there are vocal factions insisting that they treat the cables gently but they split and fray, and others insisting that they abuse them but they last forever. Anecdotally, I've actually seen examples of both. It's hard to imagine of Apple, but maybe they have high variance in cable quality between batches, or multiple suppliers?
- jakear 5y ago
  We need a form that asks a bunch of metadata and whether you are satisfied with Apple brand cables. Share that widely (somehow?) and look for correlations. The biggest concern is the self selection bias… if you’re perfectly happy with the cables would you care enough to respond to such a survey?
- stavros 5y ago
  I wonder what country each person is from. Maybe they just make the cables differently in each region.
jacquesm 5y ago
And on their - still - crap keyboards.
nemosaltat 5y ago
My wife used to burn through cables. Now, the first thing I do when I get a new Apple device is add strain relieve. I don’t remember where I learned it, but I use the springs out of empty “click pens” (think Bic). When a pen runs dry, I take the spring out and save it in a small container in the “packet drawer.” When I get a new cable, I wind a spring around each end. It has the added bonus of making the cables easily distinguishable as belonging to us.
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  This is great! Definitely stealing this idea.
  - grawlinson 5y ago
    Doesn't this just move the point of strain from the end of the connector to the end of the spring? I could be mistaken.
    - nemosaltat 5y ago
      I haven’t had any issues with that. I think the major issues (at least with my wife) came from the fact that she usually disconnects by pulling the cable, and not the body of the connection. She still does this, but the spring covers about 2 inches of the cable and I haven’t had any frayed cables since I started doing this.
tooltalk 5y ago
can't believe that this is still an issue. Apple Magsafe chargers are great and aestherically pleasing if you never move around and your Macbook is glued to desk all the time. But like most mobile MacBook users, I had similar problems with fraying Magsafe 2 charger cables for my rMacBook Pro from 2012 (non-USB) -- they had to be replaced almost every year, which was insane. One of them also died in flame -- which the Genius quietly replacef (for free) -- but the majority died unceremoniously due to similar fraying cable issues up until 2019. The Magsafe chargers had the lowest user ratings on Apple store website until the company decided to remove all user reviews a couple of years ago. Needlessly I really had to part away from Apple products -- the first two years were covered by Amex's extended warranty, but after that the yearly "upkeep cost" started going up -- as there were also other issues with faulty GPU and bluetooth/wifi -- and continued until a couple of years ago (largely as a backup laptop).
reader_mode 5y ago
To people saying this is caused by use - this is irrelevant - people are upset because they use other comparable cables this way and don't have these problems nearly as often. I've noticed Apple usually has thinner cables - maybe it's that - frankly I'd prefer more robust ones.
BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
It's not just their cables. Their silicone iPhone cases suffer the same fate, sometimes after a year, sometimes after a month, just from moving in and out of your pocket. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/TMDdKNs https://imgur.com/a/TMDdKNs
- mmebane 5y ago
  Ugh, yes. The MagSafe silicone case I bought last fall got nicks in the corners within a few months of use, and they've been slowly but steadily growing ever since. Supposedly the case has a one-year warranty and I can take it in to get swapped out, but I haven't tried yet.
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    I'm worried by reports from people saying they took theirs in to Apple Stores and were denied replacements. I wish you success and hope you don't end up one of them.
gambiting 5y ago
>>I've brought my frayed MagSafe charger, which has degraded to the point that it's been staining everything blue How. I have a 12 years old magsafe charger and it's in perfect condition. Never frayed any cables, not the old 30-pin ones, not the lightning ones, not the new USB-C ones. I just don't get what people are doing with their apple cables to make them fray like this.
canadianfella 5y ago
I really don’t like when people call the employees “Geniuses”. You don’t have to follow the marketing crap. It’s worse than “Sandwich Artists” at Subway.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Apple may make great USB chargers, but they have certainly cut corners and shirked responsibility when it comes to the rubber insulation of their Lightning and (MacBook) MagSafe cables. Apple can be good at function, but their basic mindset is definitely form over function. It seems like they'll compromise anything in an instant if there's some kind of aesthetic payoff (even an extremely minor one).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
musicale 5y ago
>such "wear and tear" is not covered under warranty. Surprising - this same issue has happened to me multiple times with multiple power bricks but fortunately Apple replaced them every time. I am very careful with the power bricks, but I think it's a design flaw of the old integrated cable design and strain relief which didn't do what it was supposed to do. As I noted, each time I brought a failed brick in they replaced it under AppleCare. The old magsafe power brick design would tend to fray and fail at the strain relief points - either the one next to the power brick or the one near to the magsafe connector. I've seen the issue repeatedly for multiple other users as well - users who are not rough with the power brick or the computer. Fortunately the current USB C power bricks have removable AC and USB C cables so they basically eliminated the issue from the integrated cable failing at the strain release point.
logbiscuitswave 5y ago
Apple cables are pretty notorious for having inadequate strain relief which leads to fraying and cable failure. It’s a shame that for all the brilliant design within the power supplies that it can get sabotaged by this very Apple-like tendency to push aesthetics (I can just imagine Jobs or Ive demanding this) above all else.

wil421 5y ago

Never had this issue with my late 2011 MBP and my 2017 MBP. Both MagSafe chargers are in tact. The 2011 one outlasted the computer.

dijit 5y ago
I've also never frayed an actual Apple cable, but I've had some non-apple cables that didn't last very long. But, maybe part of that is understanding that the Apple ones suck? I know they've picked form over function for the strain relief, so I make a subconscious effort not to strain them. My ex-girlfriends charger didn't last very long, but mine (from 2011) is still quite well maintained, though darkened and discoloured with age. Ugh, this sounds like I'm saying "you're holding it wrong" but, what I mean is that maybe we have a bit of survivorship bias here and because we tried to keep our cables in good shape. I highly suspect too, that Apple is using eco-friendly plastics in the cables, which might be part of why they degrade so poorly, even when not strained at the ends.
- wil421 5y ago
  Yea my wife’s cables don’t last long. I think it’s the way people curl it up. Anker probably makes the better 3rd party cables. Other brands on Amazon are far worse. I try not to buy 3rd party cables for my laptops but will by them for phones and tablets.
randomdata 5y ago
The charger from my 2009 MBP has its cable perfectly intact; looks brand new. The charger from my 2012 model disintegrated at both ends. They lived similar lives. I have to think the material quality declined somewhere in there.

jng 5y ago

Not to mention the cable deterioration. I recently got an M1 MacBook Air and the USB-C charger is finally designed such that the cable is replaceable. No admission of wrongdoing, blaming the user, but at least an acceptable final fix.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

I wonder if their new braided cords are in response to the old yellowing plastics.

ryandrake 5y ago

Their strain relief is absolutely rubbish, too. How many of us have multiple Apple cables that end up looking like this [1]? They've been doing this for how long, and they can't solve strain relief, which every other cable manufacturer has figured out? 1: https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/40148-77246-000-lead-frayed-cable-xl.jpg https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/40148-77246-000-lea...

Invictus0 5y ago
They know, they just don't care.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  Of course they do care. Selling overpriced chargers must be a sizeable part of their income.
baybal2 5y ago
It's intentional. There is a business strategy called "planned obsolescence" or simply "planned breakdown" They would've not DRM chipped a freaking cable if not for them selling them for $20. Take a look on my experience from a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26134006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26134006 > I recalled that when in 2015, working for another sourcing shop working for likes of BestBuy/Futureshop/Target/London Drugs I was asked to tear down few chargers for them. > I found that diodes in parallel are surprisingly common around the industry. > This is such a thing which you are pretty much told on day 1 of any electronics course that it is impossible to not to know. > My only thinkable conclusion was that people keep doing it on purpose.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I would like to see a picture of that circuit, not just a diagram. I've used this trick to good effect, and also used another trick: to use the circuit board as a balancing resistor. Just make the track a little bit longer for instance by routing the wires less than efficiently or by putting a little wavy line in it and you have a very low resistance resistor just perfect for balancing out the differences in diode switch speed and bias voltage. In electronics not everything is what it seems to be at first glance. For an encore check out pcb fuses, coils and even capacitors.

outworlder 5y ago

> it's my fault that the insulation degrades over time Yeah, since the cable is not replaceable(at least, anything that's not USB-C), that's a crappy thing to say. It's obviously a widespread problem. The charger is expensive but can be replaced. I had a frayed Apple Thunderbolt Display cable. Non removable and can't be easily replaced. Had to use some insulation tape at the time because an authorized Apple shop also claimed this was wear and tear not covered under warranty.

kevinherron 5y ago

I know this is a common complaint, but not one of my iPhone or PowerBook/MacBook/MacBook Pro cables has ever failed or started to look anything like these complaints. I don't really think myself as one to "baby" my gadgets, so I'm not really sure what the heck you all are doing to your cables.

vmception 5y ago
It could just as easily be environment causing corrosion Very strange victim blaming going on in this thread, nobody has even attempted suggesting how to avoid it
babypuncher 5y ago
Same here. I believe it happens, I see the frayed cables everywhere, but the MagSafe charger from my 2009 MacBook and the lightning cable that came with my iPhone 5 in 2012 are still perfectly fine and sees regular use in my car. The strain relief on these cables is practically nonexistent, so I won't put the blame squarely on abusive users.
tooltalk 5y ago
If you are using your Macbook like a desktop, you are unlikely to have any problem. If you are on the other hand a mobile user, ie, you move around between school, work, home, coffe shop, etc, yes, it's slightly more than an annoying issue. The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store until the company removed all user ratings & reviews in Nov, 2019.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > The Magsafe chargers were among the worst rated products on Apple's own online store I mean, you'd expect that. Nobody is buying a new one for fun. ~Everyone buying a new one has had one fail on them, so poor reviews are absolutely expected.
  - tooltalk 5y ago
    Not really. Sure, we expect all things in life to wear and tear at one point. I'm pretty sure most MacBook users can deal with occassional failures without venting out their anger online. The frequency at which Apple Magsafe chargers fail is however quite insane and shows how they are poorly designed and built; therefore poor reviews -- and that's in spite of Apple user loyalty and a huge fanbois base who always come to the company defense's in public forums and reviews. I certainly didn't expect to see such piss-poor reviews on Apple's own website.

hughrr 5y ago

Not joking but this is entirely user related. In the 15 years I’ve been using the things I haven’t killed a single cable. Not one. The strain relief is not great but if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there. The killers are people who sit there with the cable rammed into their stomach bending it at 90 degree angle when using their phone. On the MacBook chargers it’s usually bashing it constantly or tugging it. I come from a world of RF cables which cost more than a MacBook and have very limited bend limits. What we have is insanely robust these days. Just be nice to it. Edit: my daughter had my 2010 MBP until recently which the original charger blew up on. After dissecting it the cable was fine but the main IC had cracked in half. No shorts on the cable grommet. It lasted 11 years! What are you people doing to these things?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
I have the complete opposite experience aligning with the OP. Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault. This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?
- hughrr 5y ago
  I'm using the cable that came with my 6s on my 12. There was an intermediate XR as well. The only unarguable thing is the disparity between what we're doing.
- SmellTheGlove 5y ago
  In fairness, any cable of this style I've bought has failed the same way. I have a bunch of generic lightning cables that are white, with the little nub of rubber strain relief like the genuine cables, and they fail the same way too. They look nice, and even on the ones where the insulation is torn, I've only had to throw one away for not working at all (Apple or generic) of the probably dozen I own. But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.

jbay808 5y ago

Every time this is mentioned, it seems like there are vocal factions insisting that they treat the cables gently but they split and fray, and others insisting that they abuse them but they last forever. Anecdotally, I've actually seen examples of both. It's hard to imagine of Apple, but maybe they have high variance in cable quality between batches, or multiple suppliers?

jakear 5y ago
We need a form that asks a bunch of metadata and whether you are satisfied with Apple brand cables. Share that widely (somehow?) and look for correlations. The biggest concern is the self selection bias… if you’re perfectly happy with the cables would you care enough to respond to such a survey?
stavros 5y ago
I wonder what country each person is from. Maybe they just make the cables differently in each region.

jacquesm 5y ago

And on their - still - crap keyboards.

nemosaltat 5y ago

My wife used to burn through cables. Now, the first thing I do when I get a new Apple device is add strain relieve. I don’t remember where I learned it, but I use the springs out of empty “click pens” (think Bic). When a pen runs dry, I take the spring out and save it in a small container in the “packet drawer.” When I get a new cable, I wind a spring around each end. It has the added bonus of making the cables easily distinguishable as belonging to us.

snowwrestler 5y ago
This is great! Definitely stealing this idea.
- grawlinson 5y ago
  Doesn't this just move the point of strain from the end of the connector to the end of the spring? I could be mistaken.
  - nemosaltat 5y ago
    I haven’t had any issues with that. I think the major issues (at least with my wife) came from the fact that she usually disconnects by pulling the cable, and not the body of the connection. She still does this, but the spring covers about 2 inches of the cable and I haven’t had any frayed cables since I started doing this.

tooltalk 5y ago

can't believe that this is still an issue. Apple Magsafe chargers are great and aestherically pleasing if you never move around and your Macbook is glued to desk all the time. But like most mobile MacBook users, I had similar problems with fraying Magsafe 2 charger cables for my rMacBook Pro from 2012 (non-USB) -- they had to be replaced almost every year, which was insane. One of them also died in flame -- which the Genius quietly replacef (for free) -- but the majority died unceremoniously due to similar fraying cable issues up until 2019. The Magsafe chargers had the lowest user ratings on Apple store website until the company decided to remove all user reviews a couple of years ago. Needlessly I really had to part away from Apple products -- the first two years were covered by Amex's extended warranty, but after that the yearly "upkeep cost" started going up -- as there were also other issues with faulty GPU and bluetooth/wifi -- and continued until a couple of years ago (largely as a backup laptop).

reader_mode 5y ago

To people saying this is caused by use - this is irrelevant - people are upset because they use other comparable cables this way and don't have these problems nearly as often. I've noticed Apple usually has thinner cables - maybe it's that - frankly I'd prefer more robust ones.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

It's not just their cables. Their silicone iPhone cases suffer the same fate, sometimes after a year, sometimes after a month, just from moving in and out of your pocket. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/TMDdKNs https://imgur.com/a/TMDdKNs

mmebane 5y ago
Ugh, yes. The MagSafe silicone case I bought last fall got nicks in the corners within a few months of use, and they've been slowly but steadily growing ever since. Supposedly the case has a one-year warranty and I can take it in to get swapped out, but I haven't tried yet.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  I'm worried by reports from people saying they took theirs in to Apple Stores and were denied replacements. I wish you success and hope you don't end up one of them.

gambiting 5y ago

>>I've brought my frayed MagSafe charger, which has degraded to the point that it's been staining everything blue How. I have a 12 years old magsafe charger and it's in perfect condition. Never frayed any cables, not the old 30-pin ones, not the lightning ones, not the new USB-C ones. I just don't get what people are doing with their apple cables to make them fray like this.

canadianfella 5y ago

I really don’t like when people call the employees “Geniuses”. You don’t have to follow the marketing crap. It’s worse than “Sandwich Artists” at Subway.

tablespoon 5y ago

> Apple may make great USB chargers, but they have certainly cut corners and shirked responsibility when it comes to the rubber insulation of their Lightning and (MacBook) MagSafe cables. Apple can be good at function, but their basic mindset is definitely form over function. It seems like they'll compromise anything in an instant if there's some kind of aesthetic payoff (even an extremely minor one).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

musicale 5y ago

>such "wear and tear" is not covered under warranty. Surprising - this same issue has happened to me multiple times with multiple power bricks but fortunately Apple replaced them every time. I am very careful with the power bricks, but I think it's a design flaw of the old integrated cable design and strain relief which didn't do what it was supposed to do. As I noted, each time I brought a failed brick in they replaced it under AppleCare. The old magsafe power brick design would tend to fray and fail at the strain relief points - either the one next to the power brick or the one near to the magsafe connector. I've seen the issue repeatedly for multiple other users as well - users who are not rough with the power brick or the computer. Fortunately the current USB C power bricks have removable AC and USB C cables so they basically eliminated the issue from the integrated cable failing at the strain release point.

logbiscuitswave 5y ago

Apple cables are pretty notorious for having inadequate strain relief which leads to fraying and cable failure. It’s a shame that for all the brilliant design within the power supplies that it can get sabotaged by this very Apple-like tendency to push aesthetics (I can just imagine Jobs or Ive demanding this) above all else.