I Stopped Using The MacBook’s MagSafe

And I feel conflicted because I really love it, but it’s redundant…

Have you ever felt like an absolute spoiled brat? No? Just me? Right. OK, I guess I’ll own up to it by myself. But really, all jokes aside, I do feel a bit like that. For months and years I and millions of other Apple customers have been bitching about the lack of MagSafe on the last few generations of MacBooks, and yet, here I am, rocking the latest and greatest 16” MacBook Pro and the very thing I was screaming for is gathering dust.

Apple must be thinking — look at these eejits, we gave them MagSafe, and now they’re not using it — but to some extent it’s also Apple’s fault we don’t. Yes — we — because I know for a fact I’m not alone in abandoning MagSafe now that it’s finally here.

The first reason is, as I said, Apple. The launch of the Apple Studio Display brought back what many of us always liked: the ability to power our laptops through a single power-source — the monitor’s.

This changes a lot in terms of day-to-day use, for those who aren’t on the move a lot, so wanting to have a tidier desk makes all the sense in the world. The 140W power-brick while fast to charge becomes entirely redundant.

Any solution that removes stuff from my desk while keeping me just as productive as before, I’ll happily take.

Of course, you may claim there aren’t really that many who have a Studio Display, after all, stocks are low or entirely unavailable in many places due to various chip-shortages and lockdowns and God knows what else. Furthermore, the Studio Display is relatively expensive, so realistically, it’s a small group to care about, and MagSafe still makes a lot of sense for everyone else. It does, perhaps, right now, except looking at Dell’s latest 27” UltraSharp display that comes with a power delivery of 90W capable of charging at full speed all but the 16” MacBook Pro, it seems the industry is taking notice of a potential decluttering trend.

And this is not all. If rumours are anything to go by, the new 13” MacBook Pro and the new MacBook Air will both get MagSafe and I bet those need a lot less than 90W of power to charge, which means there are already a few monitors out there that can support 65W power delivery over USB-C, in which case if you own these monitors, your MagSafe port will instantly become redundant or severely under-utilised.

There is an undeniable convenience and cool-factor from just plugging a single cable into your laptop and have it both charge and output a 5K, 4K or 1080p image. Add to that the fact that monitors with power-delivery sometimes come with a wide array of ports — the new Dell certainly does — which also replaces your USB-C dock or hub, removing even more clutter from your desk, just like the more expensive Studio Display. I, for one, can certainly see this become a major selling-point in mid-range monitors going forward, and knowing Apple customers, mid-range displays are precisely what most of them are happy to pay for.

I love MagSafe, but maybe, just maybe, in a USB-C dominated world, it’s a bit too little, too late.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!