Comment by wyager
5 years ago
While obviously Jobs’ claim was false, I will say that Apple is the only company I am aware of that manufacturers power supplies which are reliably completely free of perceptible inductor whine. I have very acute high-frequency hearing and I often have to replace non-Apple USB(-C) switching power supplies with Apple ones so I don’t go crazy from the whining. Teardowns of Apple PSUs typically reveal very favorable electronic and industrial design as well.
> I have very acute high-frequency hearing...
Doesn't take "acute," just takes "not destroyed."
I've, at various points in my career, grumbled about various things whining audibly (one particular motion light sensor was defective and right outside my office for a while). The trick to getting other people to believe you ("I can't hear anything... are you sure?") is to wait for a bring-your-kids-to-work day. And ask if they can hear it.
Or, perhaps, if it's bad enough, you don't even have to do that, because the kids will ask what that horrid whining noise is. We did eventually get it fixed after that, but I was quite literally the only one in the hall who could hear it.
On the topic of power supplies, though - Apple has done some impressive work in their small power supplies. The Chinesium clones are similarly sized, they just skip literally every safety feature intended to keep mains voltage out of your USB cord...
> On the topic of power supplies, though - Apple has done some impressive work in their small power supplies.
And a nice teardown is done here, by the same guy: http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...
> Doesn't take "acute," just takes "not destroyed."
It depends. Played in an orchestra, and I've found out that hearing is very different from person to person. Seen people with hearing lower than 20Hz band, or people who can hear a wrong note in a symphony orchestra recording, or people who can perfectly tune their instruments by ear... The list goes on and on.
Our ears' equalizers are not always flat and equal. We can damage them yes, but not everyone starts from the same point.
> Seen people with hearing lower than 20Hz band
This is called subsonic hearing, and it is not any blessing. Those who can hear frequencies lower than most often experience pain. It's the low frequencies coming from diesel school busses that are most painful to me, when no one else nearby can even hear the bus at all until it gets close enough. What the GGP is talking about is supersonic hearing, which often also includes that extra detail of pain.
Gotta hand it to the kids. My 9 year old claims he can hear a whine from iPads and iPhones when their battery level is near 0%. And I thought I had good hearing...
Oh I believe it, when I was young I could tell if CRTs were powered on (even if the screen was black) just due to their whine.
My old MacBook Pro's power brick has perceptible inductor whine. It's not screamingly high, but I can hear it when it's near.
Probably my ears' sensitivity, and that little thing's age (~13 years) are both contributing factors.
It’s extremely frustrating, and I was always surprised when I returned mid-range USB chargers because of whine only to receive a replacement with the same problem and hundreds of reviews that failed to mention it. I’ve never had an issue with Apple chargers, and the extra cost is money we’ll spent.
Buy genuine Apple chargers, if not for you, then for your dog.
All brands should put USB-A and USB-C ports on the power brick.
> Apple is the only company I am aware of that manufacturers power supplies which are reliably completely free of perceptible inductor whine...I often have to replace non-Apple USB(-C) switching power supplies
it's a well-studied economic fact that monopolists generally sell higher quality products, and it helps them maintain their monopoly. With their market power and the fat margins they earn, there is plenty of budget to do R&D and have achieve scale benefits. Their optimum-profit product-mix and pricepoints are skewed higher. Nobody complained about IBM mainframe quality, nor Bell Telephone quality.
So, it's not testimony to Apple's prowess, it's simply a cookbook outgrowth of their product differentiation strategy.
> Nobody complained about IBM mainframe quality
Well, that's completely ahistorical. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" was due to conservatism and idiocy on the part of managers and businesspeople, not to mention... you know... IBM's monopoly power and the advantages that went along with that. During the bulk of the minicomputer and mainframe era it had little or nothing to do with the relative quality of IBM's stuff.
> it's a well-studied economic fact that monopolists generally sell higher quality products
What does this have to do with Apple, which has neither the completely captive market that AT&T did nor the overwhelming market control that IBM did?
But regardless of reason it still matters to the buyer. If Apple monopoly is giving me better products, then I am not complaining.
people who set policy need to think of all consumers, not just the rich ones such as yourself. More working class people could buy iPhones if they were not artificially high priced.
You too would benefit from a competitive iPhone market, there would have been an earlier introduction of large screens, cheaper memory options, perhaps getting choices that included repairability, replaceable batteries, microSD cards, etc.
Think of it this way: if Apple was broken into three Apples that compete with each other, the shareholders would not have lost anything that they are entitled to: they'd each still own what they owned before a share of each of the new companies instead of a share in the old. But previously monopoly prices would drop.
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This is so off-topic, but no one ever believes me when I'm complaining about a wall adapter across the room driving me mad. Glad to know I'm really not imagining things hah!
You're not imagining it at all.
This is an important consideration all electrical engineers should take seriously when designing products for people. It's a shame many don't.
https://product.tdk.com/en/techlibrary/solutionguide/acousti...
https://www.edn.com/reducing-mlccs-piezoelectric-effects-and...
It can be an issue even if you think you understand it at the design stage. I've sold services to identify sources so boards or assemblies can be redesigned. In one case two different clocks for two ICs on different boards interfered with each other causing problematic noise. Filtering the power supplies helped, but changing how one IC was used made the single biggest contribution to reducing the noise levels.
Don't worry, that problem will solve itself with time. Just let the lowpass in your ears grow a bit. ;)
I will say I have been very impressed with Anker's GaN power bricks of late.
I have one(60W) but its output isn't very smooth. Still great to have just one small device to charge my phone, laptop and headphones.
My Macbook Power Supply whines like crazy, especially when under load. The one thing that drives me crazy that I rarely see talked about is PWM fan control. I think different manufactures use different frequencies but it's usually far more annoying than the motor/air movement noise.