Whence MagSafe?

posted by Jason Swihart on October 18, 2008

Getting ready for the IDF Taipei Tech Showcase preview this afternoon, I decided a bit of caffeine would be in order. My room has a hot water pot which I removed from the cabinet and proceeded to fill from the tap. When I went to plug it in, I was amazed to find it has its own version of the MagSafe plug.

(Click for a larger view and some notes.)

For the uninitiated, the MagSafe is a plug introduced on Apple MacBooks a few years ago. Instead of a friction connection holding the plug inside a socket on the laptop, Apple uses a magnet which releases easily when tugged. It's an ingenious innovation which prevents the very real problem of laptops being flung to the floor when someone trips over their cords, and also allows for a longer life expectancy for the cords themselves since they are subject to much less stress.

Seeing this innovation on a humble hot water pot though, one wonders: did some Apple engineer discover this idea while traveling in Asia, or did Apple develop it on their own? It makes perfect sense on a hot water pot where the hazard of tripping over a cord is significant.

But it hardly matters who originated the idea--what's really fascinating is to see how they do things elsewhere. Which, as it turns out, is also a very good reason to travel 7000 miles for IDF. In about 30 minutes, I get to preview how technology is being used in new and different ways--and how we'll be using it in the future.

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tagged: apple, ideas, idf, idf08, innovation, magsafe, Taipei, Taiwan