Tell HN: Apple products come with ungrounded plug in India
The standard 3 pin plug is required for grounding in India but Apple do not sell chargers with 3 pin by default or include it in any of their products. If you buy a macbook and use the default charger, you will feel a slight buzz on the top of the laptop. Your ports might also shock you.
This is quite unexpected given $200-400 laptops come with a decent grounded charger here.
Kids can get shocked while touching your laptop in charging state.
Picture with current testing device: https://ibb.co/YbqtgVX
71 comments
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Do not use the standard charger if you can feel buzz on top of your laptop. Find a replacement and use it.
I'm using a separate USB type c charger which does not have the issue with proper ground support (came with my $400 windows laptop).
While the buzz on top might be tame, the ports can result in more shock.
> TL;DR Chargers are grounded to neutral. The tingle you feel is the few mV of potential of neutral to actual ground due to slight misalignment of the three phases (R, S, T) which are combined into neutral. Your equipment is fine. This becomes life threatening only on ancient indoor electrical installations without an earth leakage relay which are illegal in most of the world and, frankly, can kill you in many more ways than a freak failure of the power distribution to your building. And no, Apple can't sell you something that's not following your local laws regarding equipment requirements.
>Chargers are grounded to neutral.
JESUS FUCK NO NO NO NEVER NO DO NOT DO THIS EVER THIS IS LETHAL NO NO NO (stop emoji) (death emoji) (stop emoji)
So you can kind of get away with this in the US, where electricians generally know how to wire outlets, and get neutral versus hot correct. But they sometimes screw up. And when they screw up, if you're dumb enough to "ground to neutral", you get 120 V AC to earth on your chassis. THIS IS JUST WAITING TO KILL SOMEONE. PEOPLE CAN AND WILL DIE IF YOU DO THIS. (Accordingly, it's not permitted, and if you take this bullshit to a NRTL, they had better fail your ass.) In Europe it's even worse: electricians don't bother to distinguish hot and neutral, to the point where they insist on fusing both lines of everything that gets fused. So in Europe this is a 50% chance of getting something lethal when it's plugged in.
So, uh, in short: this had fucking well better not be what Apple did, and even if they tried it, NEVER DO IT YOURSELF because IT CAN AND WILL KILL.
(More likely they're just using isolation and allowing build up of stray charge instead of dumping it to earth like usual, because they didn't bring in the earth conductor. Which is annoying but not going to get anyone hurt.)
In any case I wouldn't be too worried. Maybe check it out with a few different receptacles and consider getting a receptacle tester if that turns up something interesting. I kind of hate Apple, but their chargers set the benchmark for the industry. I doubt they're your problem.
I'm mostly trying to discourage anyone who comes across this from trying to "ground" anything to neutral, because it's bad. Very, very bad. (And taking an opportunity to mock European electricians, who have done more damage than they know.)
Fake, or genuine, but still bad Y caps are everywhere.
The tip of the charger that connects to the laptop the whole metal part, not just the leads) was quite noticeably electrified, while the laptop case only barely.
I'm not sure what the cause was in this particular case, as I had never noticed it doing that before.
Very nice.
- It only happens with the Mac Studio, I've never seen another device do this.
- It happens whether I use the original supplied cable or not
- A 30mA GFCI doesn't take much to trip, so I can imagine a little arc flash from the phase pins can create enough plasma sputter to then arc to ground
- It's certainly a ground fault as it only happens on GFCI protected circuits
- It's not a fault in my electrical installation, that has been checked recently now.
- It can be reproduced if plugged into any GFCI protected circuit, at home, in the office, a friends house
Some random ideas of mine:
- Perhaps Apple haven't adhered to the specs around the "gigantic clearances"
- The pins on the socket-side have this same matt-like finish the rest of the Aluminium body does, perhaps this has something to do with it.
It happens with both USB-C charging and MagSafe, but the intensity varies.
I would consider it slightly unpleasant, but have never heard about anyone getting an electric shock.
In the UK we have 3-pin plugs, but different appliances have different rules about grounding; class II double-insulated devices don't need to be grounded (afaik) and this link[1] talking about macbooks says:
> "The macbook is a class III appliance, meaning that it is powered by a safety extra-low voltage supply. The low voltage guarantees that coming to contact with energized parts poses no risk in normal circumstances. The actual appliance from a safety perspective isn't the macbook, but the power brick."
[1] https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/355824
Picture of testing device showing the current flow from a cable: https://ibb.co/YbqtgVX
Anything attached to the macbook port is causing shock on the exposed parts while it is plugged into that charger.
I wouldn't call it safe. If you read some of the bottom answers, they also elaborate on the same topic. Furthermore, I don't live in UK and there can be different electrical standards in terms of wiring.
I don't face this issue while using the grounded charger hence it is limited to apple charger which I double checked for missing ground support.
I've seen this for at least 10 years come up again and again, Apple should just sell an India edition Macbook with either a plastic case or a sleeve to avoid people complaining since there's no interest in addressing the cause.
However, that said, even if you intended for others to take your comment rhetorically rather than genuinely transphobically, to highlight how bad what the other person said sounds to you, I think it’s misguided at best; trans people get attacked enough as is, and I don’t think there is any need to bring imageboard slurs [1] into the mix to get the point across.
I don’t mean for all of that to come across as “virtue signaling” to distract from the original problem of racism by solely focusing on the transphobic language. The reason why I’m not ripping the parent comment apart or flagging it is that I interpreted it completely differently; I didn’t take it to be subtle racism toward Indians, as if they need to be “fixing the problem” (of not understanding the actual level of danger?), but rather that because Apple is seemingly so uninterested in addressing the issue, sarcastically, they should ship plastic laptops instead. Maybe this is too generous of an interpretation? I don’t know. But yeah, worth considering the other possibilities.
[1]: tbh, I’m not sure if we can refer to verbs as slurs or if they are solely nouns. I can’t actually think of another similar verb to compare (Maybe this is my wordcel moment). You get the point, though.
I wasn't kidding about selling a case or making the case out of plastic or coating the outside with a rubberized material. Apple chose to be the odd manufacturer going all metal and that leads to unmasking issues like this. I would wonder whether it's cheaper to ship a 3-prong or a silicone sleeve for the laptop.
Telling India to fix its electrical standards to avoid this annoyance is just as futile as telling Americans to bury their electricity transmission lines. Even if it was codified it'd take years for components to get replaced.
OSHA have an interest in electrical safety[1] - "Electricity has long been recognized as a serious workplace hazard. OSHA's electrical standards are designed to protect employees exposed to dangers such as electric shock," and they call out ground faults: "The following hazards are the most frequent causes of electrical injuries: contact with power lines, lack of ground-fault protection, path to ground missing or discontinuous".
You could be a hero by reporting every macbook using company to OHSA. Let me know when you do, I'd like to read what they decide.
[1] https://www.osha.gov/electrical
(As a kid there were some field telephones[1] in the house, they are ex-military phones you wire directly to each other and they have hand-wound generators which power the other side to ring; we used to play a game of "how long can you touch the contacts while winding it" - that was uncomfortable but had no safety effects that I know of (no burns, bruises, doctor's visits, etc). Even being shocked is not automatically unsafe, although it may be unpleasant and undesirable from any consumer product, let alone premium ones).
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=field+telephone&iax=images&...
People put their hands on Van de Graaf generators[1], people buy electric shock buzzers from joke shops[2], people stand on body-fat measuring scales which send electric current through your body to measure its conductivity and estimate fat content, people touch vehicles on humid days and get static electric shocks, people use electric shock to the brain as a therapy[3].
The safety risks I'm aware of are alternating current across your heart strong enough to override the heartbeat signals and make it quiver instead of beat normally (e.g. touching mains power with both hands, current flow through the chest), and enough current flow to cause flesh burns (extreme examples: lightning strike, touching electricity substations). I'm not aware that "feeling a buzz" is inherently a safety risk without any more context or explanation.
[1] https://assets.fishersci.com/TFS-Assets/CCG/product-images/F...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/IDS-Electric-Shock-Buzzer-Classic/dp/...
[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/sherwin_nuland_how_electroshock_th...
There's usually a tacky staticky feel to either side of the touchpad when it is plugged in.
I know from a previous Mac that had this that using the extension power cord it comes with stops it. Meanwhile if I make contact with the wife's arm with one hand she can tell when I touch and remove my other hand from the Air.
It isn't one of the things I find impressive about Apple, but I live with it.
I saw this once with a 2009 MacBook Pro when using the charger with the 2-prong adapter. A 3-prong grounded adapter would fix it.
My remaining older laptop, a 2012 Air with MagSafe, also has it. Unless I add in the power adaptor extension cable.
For clarity no non-Apple device does this, including several (now retired) Chromebooks and ThinkPads over recent years.
Then one day I bought a cheap knock-off charger and instantly felt a tingling when touching the chassis.
It means nothing at all.
It also has nothing to do with the age of your house wiring.
Congradulations on either winning the binning lottery, or simply being insensitive to the sensation.
The number of people reporting the phenomenon are not all hallucinating, nor all doing something wrong that you're doing right.
You simply got a slightly better unit.
Or actually possibly a worse one, since the cause is actually good insulation, and a slight leak (contamination like leftover flux or an old spilled drink or literally anything like dust or a bug on the pcb surface bridging traces) could be what's keeping your case drained to neutral rather that building up a charge.
Manufacturing variance is the most uninteresting non-mystery in the world.
Different people's different levels of sensitivity or perceptiveness is also a non-mystery.
"Why don't I feel it?" For a hundred possible reasons, none of which are "because the problem doesn't exist"
But yeah, their aluminium body used to sock me every so often with their 2 pin chargers in the us. Was always kinda surprised they never sold 3 pin chargers like in any other developped county !
If you feel an electric shock from touching the MacBook while plugged in, there's a fault in your electric system. You need to have a professional electrician come out and look at it, immediately. Delaying or not doing so is waiting for a disaster to happen. You may now be liable too, because you know there's a problem and didn't fix it.
Why? No idea, but get your shit fixed before someone gets hurt.
It means isolation on the charger is faulty.
A properly working modern charger should not have any galvanic connection to the grid.
The isolation transformer is likelly to be defective.
My M1 MacBook Pro came with a UK plug, in which the slot in the top of the plug for the tab is entirely plastic. So, as it came out of the box it is not grounded.
I am using a mains extension lead that connects to the charger where the plug goes; its slot has metal connectors on either side that you can see if you look into the slot from the direction that the tab goes in. So, with the extension lead, the charger is grounded.
I noticed the mains buzz feeling in the case of my old MacBook when I used an ungrounded charger. I have only used my M1 with the grounded mains extension lead, and there is no tingle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appliance_classes#Class_II
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/design/power#wi...
So definitely not a safety hazard, more an annoyance.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_discharge
I suggest reading the reviews since some people got the wrong ungrounded version of cable on amazon.
Apple India support is aware of the issue.
They take away ports and sell dongles that require additional dongles. They sell laptops and phones — well over thousands of dollars — without adapters because it’s “environmentally safe”, just to have most people purchase it separately. Such a shit company; I say this a person that owns almost everything in Apple flagship lol
Also — cool it with the subtle racism