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btw -- I just conducted a field test, and, yes, I can pull my Powerbook by the its powercord if pulled laterally.
From the double mention of your son's dislike for the name MacBook Pro (which I happen to agree with) to this entry -- anything to sully the MacWorld buzz.
Yet you still haven't commented on David Pogue's preview of Vista on the NYTime or how Microsoft plans to use its patent victory in the FAT case to deter interoperability between OSes.
Although I'm often critical of you, I typically think you're at your most interesting when talking about what Microsoft is doing...
Let's just say the wife has had an accident or two with her laptop...
About two weeks ago I'm sitting in the recliner in the living room with my powerbook in my lap, cord stretched across the floor. My wife wanders over and trips on it.
Laptop did not dive, however powercord is no longer functional. Busted connections in it somewhere. If the plug is popping out, try a right angle pull which is what happened to mine.
I would have loved it if the plug had popped out as the power supplies aren't cheap. Sadly, now I'm down to one (had two). So to me, this looked like a great feature.
MS: photos, music, TV, movies, home videos, radio, and a world of applications and services whether you're sitting in front of your Windows desktop or across the room with a remote control. Media Center is your all-in-one PC and home entertainment center.
Apple: music, photos and videos from any seat in the house with the Front Row media experience and Apple Remote.
Looks pretty comparable to me.
Innocent: my tablet has the power connector in the back, so if my wife tripped over it it'd just pop out. My new Lenovo is on the side, so that'd be a problem.
I guess we copied those things from a future Mac. My bad.
I wonder about your obsession with Apple. At least when you talk about Google or Yahoo!, your posts are substantive (even if I disagree with them on occasion).
When you discuss Apple, you tend to get irrational (see Tablet/Media Center, Elton John arguments) and are quick to criticize. What is it about you and Apple? Why are you even going to MacWorld?
And by the way, I've had many close calls after tripping over power cords (or having friends trip over them). I certainly would appreciate the magnetic power adapter.
Repeatable, unfortunately.
I remember when people said Macs were failures for the same reason. Do you? (I was a Mac fan back then). Seems I'm always supporting the failures of this industry (that 15 years later turn out to be successes). That's OK.
While Microsoft has been busy plugging away at the monstrous consumer demand for a PC that records TV and redistributes it via a repeater, it has been ignoring basic concerns like, oh say, security.
Windows is a pain in the butt to manage (unless of course we bust out your 17-point plan on locking it down) and certainly does not represent the state of the art in OS functionality.
You are so honest and transparent when you talk about Google. For some reason, when it comes to Apple you are not willing to discuss advantages/shortcomings in a candid manner. Why?
Apple sold more Macs this quarter than all the Tablet PCs sold since introduction.
For a company the size of Microsoft (and its OEMs), that has to be considered an absymmal failure.
My drops usually end up in a harddrive upgrade and a dent or some weight reduction due to all the excess parts (the stickers aren't just for looks). I prefer iBooks now because they're cheap and the cracks are easier to fix/ignore. Dented/bent powerbooks are teh suck. When I was buying PCs, I learned that the Thinkpad is _the answer_ for the swift of foot and cord oblivious.
I do lust after the Itronix and Toughbooks, but I'll wait until OSX86 is on the shelf before I plunk down the extra ducks.
Oh, and to say we aren't doing anything on security or usability just makes you look like an Apple evangelist. Which you are.
Not all wall sockets have the same "grip" on the power plug; perhaps the ones you're testing against are relatively loose.
Also, don't misquote me (or Steve). He didn't say that Apple wouldn't do a tablet. He said that the Tablet PC (as done by MS) was as failure, even at Apple's scale.
Nice try though.
As for security, I know Microsoft is now making it priority. My point, however, is that instead of wasting so much time on Tablet/Media Center PC, Microsoft should have focused on delivering generally applicable features (ie Spotlight, Widgets, etc.) sooner. 5 years between OS updates?!
Luckily, for once, I was in a different office than usual, and the wireless wouldn't hook up, so in a fit of stubbornness and retro I had an ethernet cable (remember those?) in it. The laptop ended up hanging off the side of the desk suspended just by the network cable. On a normal day, it would have been toast (it's already got a crack in the cover, it's just waiting for an excuse to explode in a million expensive little pieces anyway!)
Try your experiment at a brisk walk. And the angle of the movement (perpendicular to the direction of the plug) will make a difference too.
This wasn't a solution looking for a problem.
- Trip over power cord and bend connector.
- Trip over power cord and pull $2000 laptop off table on to floor (lucky for me, floor is carpted).
I like the feature.
Mujibur: where do you get this five year crap?
My Tablet PCs have been updated several times since 2002 (and for free, no less).
I have desktop search through a variety of vendors (including Microsoft). I have Widgets through Konfabulator and Goowy (Apple copied Konfabulator).
I was demonstrating to you that Steve lies. You didn't catch that, I guess.
Major updates, scobelizer old chap. Tiger was hardly an SP2 or security update. Correct me if I'm wrong but XP was released in 2001. Vista is expected to ship in 2006. If my math is correct, that is 5 solid years between major OS updates.
Now of course, you are going to raise your standard argument about Tablet PC and Media Center being major updates (that a TINY fraction of your userbase can take advantage of). Of course, you will argue SP2 constitutes a major update (to fix all the security holes that you're responsible for)....
Why are you so unwilling to admit Microsoft screwed up with Vista? See, I can believe (and actually do believe) that Microsoft has righted the ship when it comes to Vista development. But why are you so unwilling to admit that Microsoft screwed up in the first place?
And, Mac was a failure then. It didn't sell a million copies in the first three years either.
Someone else tripped over the cord which was sloped over the front of the table. So the cord was doing a 180 from where it went into the machine, then running along the side of the laptop. When pulled in that direction, the laptop swung a violent 180 while moving 18 inches or so, at which point it was off the table.
I caught it before it hit the ground (I have cat-like reflexes :-) but I can definitely see how it would happen.
besides, the *cool* OSX features you talk about constantly, you can get them for free on Windows...see it's a double-edged sword...you want Microsoft to bundle more things in the OS itself but then you chide it for bundling and being anti-competitive...
Scoble: I don't agree with Mujibur's tablet pc comments (that they suck and all) THOUGH I do think that Microsoft needs to do a lot more reference designs for OEMs AND it needs to market this product better as well...I showed 5 people down in Singapore your Channel 9 Tablet PC video and they were hooked...2 of them have already bought tablets and love em...I think Marketing is missing its mark here...
The iBooks and 12" powerbooks are light enough to damage if you hit the cable obliquely.
Powerbooks are worse as they dent and can be hard to get back into shape. iBooks just bounce. Recent Powerbooks have accelerometers in so it can park the disk heads before it hits the ground.
Place Compaq TC1100 tablet PC flat on smooth desk with power cord plugged in the top. Hook the other end of the cord around the foot of a 5-foot swivel chair. Sit at desk. Kick chair back to propel self to nearby table. Tablet quickly becomes airborne with a frisbee-like spin caused by the off-centre position of the power cord socket.
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/icurve/
I think it's a great feature, Dell should either copy it or licence it!
Apple should be commended for this move.
Scoble, you merely sound jealous. Freaking stop it. It's immature, uncool, and very ungeeky.
That could well prove very expensive to repair ...
Loic immediately offered to pay for the damage, of course, but I still think Scott reacted very calmly under the circumstances. I don't think he even cursed, at least not out loud.
One of our lecturers was pretty incompetent when it comes to technology - quite a feat when you bear in mind his field was cybernetics and artificial intelligence. Whilst trying to set up his laptop with projector ready for use, he caught the power cord with his leg and sent the hefty laptop crashing onto the floor in front of about 50 students. I'm sorry to say we laughed.
If I recall, he went back to using transparencies not long after that...
At a big Fortune 100 company where I used to work, this happened off and on, I saw it on the docket sheets. Conference tables, open spaces, factory areas. Heck, they even had a "recommended" policy that employees should charge laptops at their desks. Also mainly for security reasons, as people were charging up in conference rooms and then going to lunch, leaving the laptop a cooking up. Of course, they had bios-installed tracking software, so anyone stealing a laptop was the biggest fool ever, but it still happened, human nature being what it is. But during those charging sessions, lots of 'knock-offs' too.
And sometimes, if at right angle, it sticks like a fish-hook, and drags it off. As laptops got lighter, it started happening more frequently, Vaio's in particular, but then at the same time battery life got better and Centrinos hit, less needing power charge zaps. And people became more hip to laptops, and it started happening less and less. Also some of those stick-on rubber bumper pads helped prevent some problems.
Sure it's on the wane now, but to say never a problem, is not dealing with a full-deck. Dell laptops weren't as much a problem, as the chord came out quickly, but then Dell laptops after a few of those jiggles had trouble maintaining power. Like cheap headphones, turn a little bit, sound goes off. So the problem manifested itself in many other ways. But I have heard of this issue for eons. Not sure what sort of bubble you live in as to miss it.
Now for consumers, calling up tech support, maybe they aren't going to admit what happened.
Now, the proper thing for a real professional Evangelist to do, would have been to praise the innovation. As such, now, you just look shrill and a meanie.
Send 5 consultants to a client site. Sit them around a 4 foot round huddle table in a 10 foot room, 5 chairs, two outlets, phone in the middle of the table, coffee cups, notebooks, and laptops. The cords will get tripped on or wrapped up in a chair and a Thinkpad or Toshiba - already too close to the edge of the table - will fall to the floor.
It will be the one with the unsaved final proposal on it, too.
When my advisor walked in (this was back in Boston), I spun my chair around to speak with him, and caught the power cable by the chair's arm. The laptop was a Sony Vaio. It flew off the desk and landed on its PCMCIA WiFi antenna, which caused the PCMCIA card to mash itself into the motherboard. The damage was phenomenal, the laptop wasn't back from repairs for almost a month... and hearing it thud felt not unlike getting kicked in the nether-regions :)
You really, REALLY went too far this time. How hard is it to acknowledge that Apple keeps thinking of USEFUL things to add to their products and not merely copying what others do, like your company does?
But one of the other side effects of pulling on the cord is the connector has a thin metal tube that can get bent and loosened and then the connection between the computer and the cord gets worse and jittery. This is a very welcomed enhancement, I am surprised its taken computer makers this long...its really nothing new. Look at the power cords for cooking oil friers...
Can't wait to get a MacBook!
The reason those PC laptops aren't falling to the ground when you yank em is quite simple. They weigh about 50 pounds! With that much weight on a laptop, I'm surprised you don't need a forklift to carry them around. Now take the sexy slim Power - 'errrr MacBook, and it's light weight factor, and it's quite easy to yank that pupy off of just about any surface but carpet. The powercord plug on those Apple laptops is also quite sturdy and tight. With such a snug fit, it's pretty easy for the laptop to go along for the ride. In my experience with the PC laptops I have owned, most had a goofy plug that after extended use (especially that square plug on Dell laptops), needed a little something to just keep them from falling out of the socket.
I wonder what your stance will be when the rest of the industry inevitably says "DOH", slaps themselves in the head, and says "Why didn't WE think of that?" and all of a sudden, PC laptops will come with this new innovation they will call their own. What will they call it...PowerMag? Hmmmmm......either way, I bet you'll think it's cool then!
Just my $.02 on the million dollar blog... :-)
I don't know about you, but my laptop power supply isn't stretching across the room when I use it. At most it's like 2 feet from my actual feet, and the cord is tucked behind or underneath something, to prevent exactly what we're talking about.
The magnetic plug is overkill in my mind, and I'm sure that it costs more to manufacture than a typical power jack. But hey, if you're buying Apple, you probably don't care about the price anyhow.
So, you Apple users, enjoy your magnetized power plug. I'm doing just fine without it, thank you very much!
I have been in meetings a couple of times where someone has tripped over my cord and pulled my TabletPC. One time I caught it before it fell over. The other time it luckily landed on my jacket that was on top of my backback beside the coffee table it was on.
In both cases it was someone just walking by and not seeing the cord. At full walking speed its amazing the amount of movement that tripping the power cord can have. You would think that the rubber on the bottom would be a good protector. However in one case while at a Starbucks I ended up suspending the tablet and putting it on top of a newspaper on the coffee table while we talked. That combination is what made it so easy to 'fall'.
Steve's magnetic power cord has interesting possibilities. I can see how it could protect my investment in my device. I hope Acer comes up with something similar when its time to buy the next one.
Are you really honestly trying to make that comparison? A product coming out in this decade compared to 30 years ago? The Apple I's launch price is the equivalent of $2286.50 today. But if you specifically meant the first computer referred to as Macintosh, that launched with a price equivalent of $4618.17. So now, not only are we talking about a TREMENDOUSLY different potential userbase (billions use computers today, maybe a few million then, mostly in schools and government), but you're also talking about a huge price difference. Show me a Tablet PC that retails for $4500 that has sold a million copies.
I'm not saying Tablets aren't cool and some people find great use out of them, but don't make irrelevant comparisons.
Mostly, I can attribute the cord yanking to my cats running through the cords as they try to leap on each other. However, I've certainly caught cables as I walk by them.
With wireless everything, the only thing laptops are tied down by, really are the power cords.
i'm interested to see how firm the new connector is.
And, yes, all have been pulled off of resting places by their power cords.
The most frequent seen damage however was the internal connector bending. On one model it would actually brak off and drop on the motherboard, thereby taling the entire board out. (HP Omnibook XE2)
I tripped over an USB cable of my desktop this morning and that ruined the internal connector.
So, Aples idea seems a good one.
It's amazing though how many comments you got for talking about a power cord. It's great diversionary marketing. Minimise the discussion down to one of minutia and you've won as much a victory as to have killed the story altogether :-)
It's also great to see the "How dare you criticise Apple" zealots are still around. Wonder if they will carry on being zealots of Apple manages to become really mainstream again. Familiarity breeds contempt after-all :-]
Seems like a nice advancement to me.
As was lighted keyboards, which other notebook manufacturers have yet to copy.
Person 2 steps on the cord or trips over it. Person 1 grabs the laptop so it doesn't crash to the ground. The tension of this wails on the power socket and then pulls the plug.
This wailing causes the power cord failure. I know because this is happening to me right now due to this exact thing happening 100x over the past 3 years.
Also, your other tests would be different if the little feet fell off... which they always do...
I used to travel a lot with my Powerbook, and inevitably the connector on the power cord would stop connecting--the slightest tweaks and the connection would break, and I'd end up buying a new cord.
Heck, I had to replace my power cord nearly as often as I had to buy an upgrade to the operating system!
I've Dell 8600 and one of Toshibas laptops. Somehow, I always manage to loose rubber stoppers beneath laptops. After that, if my laptop is at the edge of a table, a little pull to the power cable can win your contest. :-)
Oh and you're always talking about how the tablet is Windows greatest achievement and Apple has nothing that compares to it. Check out the iTab, an iBook converted into a tablet ( http://www.itablet.theplaceforitall.com/ ). They're selling them one-by-one on ebay until they've sold 100. I'm sure you could get microsoft to cover a $1500 "tablet research expense" to get one :)
The magnetic power cord, as has been pointed out in several other places, is not truly innovative. It already exists on common kitchen appliances. That would have been a more appropriate "attack" on the Apple hype, if that was your intent. Like Microsoft, Apple often gets credit for innovation by simply adopting someone else's idea.
But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that laptops get pulled to the ground, whether from a desk, coffee table or an unstable TV-dinner tray on a regular basis. As Jobs mentioned, they get them regularly back for repairs. The existing Apple power cord is in fact better that that on most laptops in that once disconnected from the laptop it's use of electricity stops (or at least goes way down.)
Your inability to reproduce the problem only speaks to your unfitness as a product tester (but I think we already knew that). There is plenty to criticize Apple for, I can't imagine why you picked this one. Their hardware IS overpriced and for those who think they are going to go head to head with Dell on hardware, or Microsoft on software I'm afraid they are in a "you can't get there from here" situation, because Microsoft won't be able to reproduce their own success in software, and Dell won't be able to reproduce their own success in hardware. Apple is aiming for targets that no longer exists. Dell and MS were both in the right place at the right time to do what they did, but those places and times are gone.
To say that Apple makes laptops even now isn't much different than saying that Microsoft "makes" the Xbox 360. IBM makes the CPU, ATI makes the video, some company in China makes all the rest of it, and Microsoft sells the thing at a loss (something most companies can't afford to do). Other than a big bucket-o-money derived from a monopoly situation more of IBM's making than MS's, Microsoft now has the luxury of searching for the next big thing. If they ever find it, maybe that stock price will take off again. Copying good ideas from Google, Apple and dozens of other companies doesn't make Microsoft look like a good investment, and sniping at fairly inconsequential "innovations" from other companies makes the oohing and ahhing you do over every new thing MS does seem even sillier than it otherwise would.
Side note: The comment above me says #94, but the bold text at the top of the comment list says there are 93 comments. Weird number mojo?
1) plug in power adapter.
2) lay attached cord across the keyboard snugged to the base of the screen.
3) close the lid.
4) rotate the laptop to a 90 degree perpendicular to the edge of any table.
5) yank like you mean it!
m3mnoch.
I have a 12" Powerbook and I keep it on a wood top TV tray. The cord goes over the side of the tray, down to the floor and across the front of the couch to the plug.
If you pull on the cable perpendicular to the socket on the Powerook, it doesn't let go. My dog gets tangled in it sometimes, but usually I'm close enough to pull the cable out before she drags it off the tray. The laptop's light and the socket does hold on...it's kinda deep seated. The Windows laptop I have for work (A Dell Inspiron 800) s heavier and the power socket doesn't have as much to geab onto.
Maybe it's a thing of Microsoft planting shills to promote its monopoly thingie.
How else can one compare and contrast Robert Scoble's cheerleading over every tiny little Windows CE-based thing at CES with his dishonest attack at Apple's switching to an entire new architecture.
From Robert's wikipedia entry: "Although Scoble often promotes Microsoft products like Tablet PCs and Windows Vista, at the same time he criticises his own employer and praises its competitors (like Apple and Google)."
Yeah right.
1) Set the laptop down with the power-cord edge hanging about 30% off the edge of the coffee table. (This is easy to dumbly do... I sometimes temporarily set my laptop on the corner of the coffee table with 2 edges overhanging about 30% because there's no flat space anywhere else.)
2) Accidentally step on the cord when you're getting up.
3) Cord pulls down on the overhanging edge of the laptop, tipping and sliding it so that it's more than 50% off the table.
4) Laptop tips off the table.
Apple vs. MS war: I don't really care. I made an honest effort to get in to Mac programming once. The experience was traumatic. I couldn't find a serious developer community to help get me started. The best (free) resource I found was an 8 year old book at the public library with examples in Pascal. I never even found a compiler. Scoble and his friends are the main reason I stick with MS. btw- I don't like your "evangelist" title either.
What does happen: Bent connector pins, out-of-alignment power sockets and such. All of which require (expensive if out of warranty) repairs.
Still, the apple connector looks neat. The entire notebook looks neat. And who cares about the name? 'Lenovo' doesn't sound all that great either.
What would really make me happy if all the notebook manufacturers would get together and settle on a universal adapter design. Hell, if just one manufacturer would be so gracious to design one adapter for their entire range of notebooks instead of 6 or 7 different ones I would be happy.
Also I have pulled several laptops off desks because of power cables. And the result tended to be bent pins and such. I dont think the power connector is THE feature that would swing me but I think its a nice evolution of the old one which I knew they were going to change because the old one is to bulky for a slimmer laptop.
I have also accidentally pulled a Toshiba 700CDT laptop off of a desk by catching the cord in a desk chair, if my memory serves me. This cord was one of those "figure 8" cords that connected directly to the power supply inside of the laptop.
I have also accidentally pulled a Sony VAIO of recent vintage whose model number I do not recall on to the floor off of a couch when a guest tripped across the cord going to the wall. This AC adapter tip was straight, but relativevly snug in fit.
I use my laptops 40 to 60 hours a week and am not particularly hard on my gear, but do not find Steve Job's notion that a quick release powercord is of potential value, to be a far fetched marketing claim.
Too many times...
As usual, you're brilliant. Maybe not intentionally, but even so... :D
Laptops: Sony Vaios (two different models)
Damage caused:
1) Harddisk issues eventually leading to a completely dead HD.
2) Cracked and damage case
this murphy cole i will like to no if u are carry tennis racket and tennis shoes with clothing that i can buy. And with pay ment do u accept. And i will like the items to be send to nigeria and i will pay for the shipping cost and the tax fees .
Luckily no damage except I can't find those little rubber feet (six on the VAIO).