Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple’s AirPower became MagSafe”.
(, energetic music, ) [ Jonathan Horst ], Remember AirPower. The idea was to create a convenient wireless charger that just worked. Using a whole bunch of coils. You could just place your device anywhere and not worry about bad alignment. It would just charge..
So, look for the AirPower charger next year.! Well, that never happened and what we got instead, three years later is this. MagSafe.. It’S a really neat feature added to the iPhone 12 last fall.. In essence, it’s a ring of magnets surrounding the iPhone wireless charging coil..
You can see it right there. And I think in many ways that it is better than AirPower could ever have been, because it makes for a much more interesting and handy ecosystem.. Let me show you how. (, energetic music ) You’re smart, because you bought an iPhone 12 mini.
My favorite small smartphone option on the market.. It’S easy to hold, doesn’t demand all your attention and fits in any pocket, but it might not have enough battery life for your heavy usage.. So if you’re, not at home, you might not be able to plug it into a wall and holding a battery pack plugged into a phone is just embarrassing..
So what about this ( light clicking ) (, melodious, music ). It’S Apple’s brand new MagSafe battery pack.. The first powered MagSafe accessory since the puck is designed to top up your phone in a pinch. Just attach it to the back and it’ll, send a 5 Watt trickle of power to your phone.. You can see how perfectly its dimensions match the edge of this mini.. It’S basically designed for this phone.
For $ 100. It’S such a peculiar little thing, full of little bits of Apple magic and odd priorities.. Let’S take battery capacity for example., It’s labeled at almost 1,500 million hours, which seems low, but battery capacity numbers make no sense to me because it’s rated at 7.62 volts and 11.13 Watt hours so …
I don’t know well. It means that when I tried to recharge my dead iPhone 12 mini it made it to 73 % and that took about three heat generating hours.. So it’s not gon na charge your phone up, completely., Not that it ever would have, because when you first attach the battery pack, you do get a notification telling you that it won’t charge past 90 %, which I imagine is there to help prolong the longevity of Your iPhone’s precious battery., Which I should also note, only costs $ 70 to replace..
It’S pretty neat that if you plug it into a modern 20 Watt charger with a USBC lightening cable, neither of which are included in the box, it turns into a full spec, 15 Watt, MagSafe charger like the puck. Or, if say you need to plug your phone Into CarPlay, but want to top up the battery pack, it supports reverse charging too., Placing it on your phone conjures up a nifty animation that shows the outline of the battery pack and what’s getting charged. And the capacity shows up in the battery widget, which I think You’Ll probably want to set up on your home screen or in the Today View..
The downsides are that you need iOS 14.7 to get it to work at all.. Also. I thought it would be clad in Apple’s, typically glossy white plastic, but it isn’t. It’s matte.. Now, there’s also something like this.: It’s the Anker PowerCore Magnetic 5k. Functionally it’s the same, but capacity wise.
It has more juice. Able to charge this iPhone 12 mini from empty to 98 % and hold it there for a bit.. It’S got the same, untethered charging speed and because it has a USB C-port that also doubles as a charging output. It’S a bit more useful if you have other devices to charge and a bit less useful.
If all you have are lightening cables in your home.. It also costs $ 46, which is $ 54 less., So like which one do you get These two very similar accessories kind of show. The interesting state the MagSafe ecosystem is in., (, energetic, music ) See these accessories here are not MagSafe. Rather they’re compatible..
It’S confusing. I know., Let me explain. Any accessory maker that wants to take full advantage of Apple’s, full-speed wireless charging magic and then have the privilege to print made for MagSafe on their box will have to pay into Apple’s. Mfi program.
Well, you’ll have to pay, but you know what I mean.. This presents a bit of a problem because there’s official MagSafe accessories and then there’s MagSafe compatible accessories.. It’S annoyingly hard to differentiate between the two. Looking in Apple’s accessory guidelines document where the specs and dimensions of the magnets are found.
It appears that Apple calls the ring of magnets MagSafe, Attach.. Okay, so then to be clear, if it’s MFied and officially sanctioned by Apple with fast charging, we’ll call it a MagSafe accessory. And if it simply has the magnets and uses everyday slower Qi charging we’ll refer to it as an accessory with MagSafe Attach.. Hmm, I think that’s easy to understand right And I got these right. Yes. Yes.. Now a quick word from our sponsor Setapp. With millions of apps available.
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Try Setapp for seven days for free by clicking the link in the description below.. The first and most famous MagSafe accessory is Apple’s official MagSafe charging cable. At $ 40. It’S expensive. With one meter length it’s short. And requiring a 20 Watt adapter that’s sold separately, it’s a little inconvenient.! Interestingly, when you search MagSafe on the internet, you often get accessories that merely hold this charger.. In fact, there’s a whole sub ecosystem of this stuff.
From cheap holders for your dashboard. All the way to this expensive and beautifully crafted mount by Grovemade., But mostly it’s all kinda lame. If you think about it, because as far as I’m concerned, if it doesn’t have its own magnets, it doesn’t really count as an interesting accessory., Especially when you consider this.. It’S the Belkin Boost Charge, 3-in-1 Charger affectionately referred to by a Verge writer as a charging tree thing. It’S cute and mighty convenient for the ultimate Apple device.
User. In its base is a 5 Watt Qi charging pad for AirPods., There’s a spot for your Apple watch and right next to that is an official MagSafe pad.. It means you get the full 15 Watts of inductive charging throughput well 12 on this mini and a cool animation, just like on the Apple watch.
At $ 140. It’S a lot of money.. I wish it had USBC and a more discreet wall, adapter for when you can’t plug it into a wall, but I, like it., Put one of these things on your desk at work and you can schedule your charging routine for then, meanwhile, not missing on any notifications..
Now, if we broaden the horizon to include MagSafe, Attach then there’s a lot of interesting and convenient accessories. Available.. Take this kit from Moment for instance.
Rigging up a phone to make good social content can become an annoying faff. But what Moment has done is beefed up their magnets in both their cases and in here. These little pucks easily stick onto the back of your iPhone and turn it into the ultimate production rig..
This tripod adapter is brilliant actually. At the top. You have a cold shoe mount for a light or better, yet a microphone.
Dongle, not included.. There are three variations, including this one, which lets you vertically mount your phone on your tripod, so that you can record the hottest, Tik, Tok, dances. And then there’s also this multi-threaded puck, which the camera guys here say is extremely handy for rigging.. The ease at which you can place and remove your phone really makes this compelling.. You can have a rig setup for precious moments without your phone becoming a right old mess and it’s all for a cost of between 40 to $ 60.. But here’s an important thing to remember.
If you’re going to be using MagSafe, Attach you need to make sure that you have a case with the magnets built in.. The separation, a normal case, creates from the iPhone’s built-in magnets weakens them significantly, which leads me to an interesting thought.. These Moment cases would be perfect for Madison our social media coordinator here.. However, her work phone is an iPhone 11 Pro which doesn’t have MagSafe Attach, but if the MagSafe Attach specification is a simple ring, why can’t someone just buy a case with those magnets built in for their older phone Satechi has a sticker. You can adhere to the back of your phone to give it its MagSafe capability, but I think you can do better.. I searched high and low and found this.
The Zeera clear, MagSafe case.. It looks very much like Apple’s clear case, but with a difference.. It’S also available for all of the iPhone 11 models., And I’ve tried it with all our accessories here and it works flawlessly., While not being the most quality of plastic cases.
It is around $ 27 for two.. I should note that I have seen MagSafe Attach cases for older phones, scattered on Ali Express as well, but the usual caveats of that platform. Apply.
Long shipping times question on quality you know. ( gentle clicking ), ( phone dinging, ), Now back to inductive charging.. Outside of officially sanctioned MagSafe, there are plenty of options. There’s. This Satechi stand, for instance, which is about $ 60.. That’S about $ 15, less than the comparable Belkin., And this power wave magnetic from Anker is even less if you can get it.
For the road warriors. Among us, MagSafe Attach can actually be pretty handy.. A lot of you were asking what I was using in my AirTags video and it’s this., The $ 36 ESR Gear HaloLock car mount.. Now it’s far from the prettiest car mount in the world, but it does actually charge your phone as you drive along, albeit very slowly cause I’m using this gas station ( indistinct, ) adapter, but at least it’s something.. Otherwise, if you don’t care about charging the stronger magnets and slim profile of the Moment, car mount is a pretty good option. ( melodious, music ).
I’M still pretty shocked that, after eight months we haven’t seen more official MagSafe accessories hit the market. Where’s the official Fast Charge car mount. Where are the cool interactions created by the NFC chip? That’S part of MagSafe, I can’t find them.. The MagSafe Attach ecosystem, however, is thriving quite well, but I feel, like it’d, be pretty easy to make it even better..
Well, Zeera has shown that it’s perfectly workable to add a ring of magnets to an iPhone 11 case.. Why stop there? Why aren’t there good cases for older iPhones that support Qi, charging or even Android phones To be able to easily and conveniently attach to a burgeoning accessories market would make MagSafe or MagSafe Attach all the more compelling.? It’S not hard and I have a box full of chargers that are useless. Otherwise., (, energetic, music ). You get a MagSafe Attach charger.
You get a MagSafe Attach charger. You get a MagSafe Attach charger. You get a MagSafe charger.! You get a MagSafe charger.! You get a MagSafe charger., You get a MagSafe charger. ( soft giggling, ) [ Edzel ] Wow., It’s …, pretty cool..
Are these keepers? Can I have them Apple’s MFi program first started with the iPod.. Remember how many different accessories were available back then. The ecosystem thrived because lots of people wanted to easily use their iPods outside of their headphones and Apple, was the sole gatekeeper of the iPods, 30 pin connector., But with MagSafe Qi charging is not controlled by Apple, so nothing stops third-parties from avoiding the burden of Apples. Mfi program, while making accessories that still work.. Meanwhile, I think customers will be happy to put up with slightly slower charging if it means they save 20 or $ 40 off the price.. There are murmurs that MagSafe might become the future of charging on the iPhone and that certainly would increase demand for MagSafe accessories, but at a cost to your wallet and power.
Efficiency. Look, MagSafe is neat., It’s a feature for charging, but please not the future., Thanks for attaching to this Mac address. If you’d love to be able to magnetically attach your phone to things. Give this a like and if you’ve already experienced that. Why not subscribe Now? One thing I didn’t mention is that Moment also: has this magnetic wall mount that you can drill or glue onto the wall, but I’m having trouble coming up with a use for it.? The best I can think of is putting it on the wall, opposite of the toilet, for watching YouTube like what you’re probably doing right now.. But if you have an idea, let me know in the comments below .