The Problem
I love Macs but be warned, the quality of the power charger really needs some attention. (Are you listening Apple?). In the last 5 years of being an Apple MacBook Pro user, I’ve seen THREE of my power adapters experience the dreaded burn and melt! And only after the standard warranty expires. Now I know why they offer the “Apple Care Plans”. It looks like these chargers are not meant to be used for more than 2 years and they are not cheap to replace.

At first, I thought that maybe I was unlucky in getting a defective charger. But after some research online (got to love Google), I’m now pretty sure that this is an inherent defect in the design of the charger instead of it being an isolated problem. Some others experiencing the same problem.

Take a look at this video:

The Last Straw
Yep, that happens! When the charger on my wife’s “hand me down” 12″ MacBook Pro melted today, I decided that its the last straw. I’m not forking out another $50 to get a new charger anymore just because of a faulty wire connection. So I decided to crack open the brick and reconnect the wires. Now this is NOT and easy task and ‘m not recommending any one do this. If you decide to do it, do it at your own risk!

The Hack
First, I used a small screwdriver to dig out the rubberized end of the power brick.

Inside, the wire is actually knotted to prevent and fastened in place with a small square plastic block. I removed the knot and cut open the plastic square to give me some extra wire to strip and reconnect.

The Tricky Part
Now, I was expecting two wired enclosed in PVC tubing like normal power chords. However, the design of the Apple power chord is very different. The center wire is enclosed in PVC tubing as expected, but the outer wire is wrapped around this tubing in a lattice pattern. I had to carefully unwrap the wires to get enough to connect to the other end.

The End Result – Is It Safe?
Instead of using a solder (I don’t have one), I had these plastic wire connectors lying around the house so I connected the positive and negative wires using these connectors. The result, well I got it work again as you can see in the picture below. But is it safe? Hmmm.

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Tags: defect, macbook pro, power charger