all the best ideas explode in balls of hellfire
[tech]
posted by tom / March 17, 2006 / 
Don't get me wrong: the new Macbook Pros look pretty sweet. Yglesias bought one after his Powerbook got pinched, and it's a beautiful machine. But most of the new features don't thrill me. Matt reports that the integrated iSight is tough to aim. And Apple has long ago spent all their credibility when it comes to the relative merits of different processor architectures.
No, the one feature that really got me excited was the new magnetic power connector. And now Gizmodo has a report of one of them catching on fire. Sigh. Here's hoping this is just a weird aberration.
Comments
I think, as with any computer, if they release version N, and you are on version N-1 or N-2, there's rarely a reason to upgrade. I just got one and I was previously on version 1. So, yeah, it's pretty awesome. But I'm sure I would've been just as happy with the previous model.
Also, here's a weird error message from MT:
Odd number of elements in hash assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Use of uninitialized value in list assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Subroutine _hdlr_entry_tb_link redefined at lib/MT/Template/ContextHandlers.pm line 1118.
Those error messages have been around ever since we upgraded from MT 2.661. I haven't been sufficiently motivated to actually dig through the code and figure out why they're occurring.
Those pictures and the story may be pointed out as frauds any day now. I have a feeling the guy was using the cable inappropriately (on purpose even). If anything, the power adapter would have been the first thing to blow before the connector caught "fire". Oddly there are no pictures of the AC adapter. The guy also took closeup shots on a nice white background and apparently had another computer to upload the picks to Flickr. The behavior doesn't match the incident.
If something like that happened to me, I'd be running to the store to get it returned. Posting the info on the net before talking to cusomer support seems rather strange. This guy may have Munchausen syndrome with his laptop.
It may very well be faked, but there's no reason why it would have necessarily blown the transformer first. I've had laptop power supplies start to smoke at the connector before, after a lousy repair of a short in the cable (I was at work, making do with what I had). The new adapters are rated to deliver 75 watts -- presumably they can do so without tripping their own failsafes. That's plenty of power to melt a connector or two.
nerd SNAP!
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