General > General Technical Chat
Rant. DC Barrel Jack sizes.
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tooki:

--- Quote from: exe on February 10, 2020, 03:39:04 pm ---USB-C looked like an interesting common denominator to all power port problems, but sockets have questionable reliability (talking about macbook pro, both ports on which got worn out in two years). No surprise vendors want to install a temperature sensor in them.

--- End quote ---
Without in any way intending to be rude or anything, that is most likely down to the user.

Some people are simply WAY, WAY rougher on their electronics than others. Like... me, I'm super gentle on mine. My sister is like a bull in a china shop. Literally, we have bought the same product at the same time, more than once, and invariably, hers is broken within a year or two, and mine still looks (and works) brand-new years later. She managed to break off the power plug in her old iBook three times. (Me, zero, and I owned laptops far longer than she did.) I lost count of how many phone and iPad screens she's cracked. (Me, zero.)

And over years of working in IT, the interesting thing I've learned about people who are rough on their gear is that they aren't aware they're being rough. They're perpetually baffled at why their stuff is broken!



Anyhow, I haven't heard of any widespread issue with USB-C failures in MacBooks*, and they've been using them for years now, so I think it's unlikely that they're particularly delicate.

With that said, I still miss the old, original MagSafe 1 connector. It was just perfect. (MagSafe 2, the thinner version of it, pops off far too easily.)




*I'm sure such failures do exist, but they're not widespread, and I keep a pretty close eye on the Mac tech world.
exe:

--- Quote from: tooki on February 10, 2020, 06:01:27 pm ---*I'm sure such failures do exist, but they're not widespread, and I keep a pretty close eye on the Mac tech world.

--- End quote ---

Well, searching "macbook pro usb-c falls out" gives 9M results. You decide if it is wide-spread or not.

As of my laptops, they are abused a lot, but in my opinion they fail not because of that. I drop them, I squeeze them in a packed knapsack, etc. They keep working. But I'm gentle with ports. The plastic of power ports that I replaced like 5 or 6 times was just very thin and brittle.
dnwheeler:
I don't have any evidence to back it up, but my recollection (from a long time ago) was that center negative was used to ensure the ground contact was made first when plugging in the connector.
tooki:

--- Quote from: exe on February 10, 2020, 06:38:51 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on February 10, 2020, 06:01:27 pm ---*I'm sure such failures do exist, but they're not widespread, and I keep a pretty close eye on the Mac tech world.

--- End quote ---

Well, searching "macbook pro usb-c falls out" gives 9M results. You decide if it is wide-spread or not.

--- End quote ---
Which of course doesn't even begin to mean that there are 9 million pages about the USB-C port failing on a MacBook. After a few pages of hits, it's just random pages that contain one or more of any of those words. (As with any google search for more than one word.)

For sure, that's not the rarest problem (it looks like 2017 and later ones retain the plugs better?), it's not as though it's affecting everyone. I'll amend my claim to "...but they're not super widespread", as they do appear to be more common than I thought.
tooki:

--- Quote from: dnwheeler on February 10, 2020, 06:54:17 pm ---I don't have any evidence to back it up, but my recollection (from a long time ago) was that center negative was used to ensure the ground contact was made first when plugging in the connector.

--- End quote ---
Nope, though that might be a side effect in some designs. The reason for center-negative is that then, the outer contact is positive, and the switch in the socket can bridge to the positive of the battery when on battery, or break that and connect to the positive of the AC adapter.
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