Justin Stangel, one of the writers for David Letterman, took a nice video of his MacBook adapter initiating its self-destruct sequence and smoking like a 60-year-old spinster on Bingo night.
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He did say it was a PowerBook, not a MacBook.
Just saying.
This is another example of shoddy quality control. Though Apple seems to do good on the industrial design aspects of their products, how they miss the boat on QC’ing power components astounds me (hint: Sony battery issue should have shown up in in-house testing at Apple).
(Now let’s all be adults and not slavering fanboi types. No one’s knocking the products, just the bad testing.)
yeah, but the title said macbook. either way, it’s burning.
Shoddy quality control? Or maybe a power cord that got a nick in it, as it looked like from the video, and then got ganked around a lot. It’s called fatigue, and all materials are susceptible to it, particularly when external damage causes a stress concentration.
I”ll vote for the fatique theory. Im not a huge Apple fan, but this is not a QC problem. Much more likey the cable was damaged when Justin was swinging the cord over his head in a vain attempt to lasso a doughnut across the room.
On the other hand, this is the kind of thing that the pinheads at Apple should not even hesitate to replace, even if it was not Apples fault.
I think Justin should call Apple directly, not the Apple store.
This happened with mine, and it was because of a dodgy battery inside the MacBook Pro. After a long time getting through to Apple (Their customer service is terrible), they sent me a new battery, new power adapter and a laptop case.
Or maybe a new feature on Letterman, “Stupid Apple Tricks”
It’s happening to me right now.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/schroepfer/1112217032/?rotated=1&cb=1187069034661
It would be due to broken wires shorted out inside the insulation. That would cause it to smoke. It seems more likely that it’s because of damage inflicted by the person rather than quality control.