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When new 13" macbooks can be fried just by a drop of water

When some Apple genius put high current circuit next to data line that goes to the CPU... 
 


Possible explanation in the pinned comment:

Quote
Hey Louis, as a former hw engineer of a large company, it's easy to see where this error arose. No single designer is responsible for the design from start to finish in a large corporation. The error started with the CAD librarian (responsible for drawing schematic symbols for new parts and maintaining them in a "library") who incorrectly labeled pins 1 and 43 to be far apart numerically when physically they are close together with the mindset that the physically larger rail (voltage and ground) pins (43 and 44) should be grouped together with the other rail pins (45+), without highlighting that pins 43 and 44 are actually physically super close to pins 1 and 2. The board/circuit designer (person responsible for designing the schematic) then imported the connector into the schematic and performed pin assignment with the assumption that pins 1 and 43 are far apart because they're numerically far apart (a completely different mindset than what the librarian had). When this is passed onto the layout engineer (person responsible for actually routing the design on a physical board), he routes the design blindly and does not catch the error because he does not know or really care about how the circuit functions. When the board goes thru testing, nothing is ever caught since nobody has the foresight to purposely try to short a design during testing. Ultimately this is a flaw due to a misunderstanding/mismanagement between multiple engineers with different functions. This would never happen in a smaller company where the design is owned by one person from start to fab, so Apple being rich and large actually works against them because all of the engineers that work on a board need to have the same exact design philosophy or at least adhere to the same standard. This flaw is still, of course, unacceptable and can be remedied with better communication or a set internal design philosophy standard.
 


 

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22 minutes ago, PeterBocan said:

This flaw is still, of course, unacceptable and can be remedied with better communication or a set internal design philosophy standard.

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I'm sure most other laptops also have stuff like this but nobody cares enough to analyze the circuitry of some random windows laptop.

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3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

I'm sure most other laptops also have stuff like this but nobody cares enough to analyze the circuitry of some random windows laptop.

random laptops dont cost 2200$+ :D

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3 minutes ago, PeterBocan said:

random laptops dont cost 2200$+ :D

Yeah....they do though. Apple is far from the only company to sell expensive ultrabooks (that are frequently recommended). 

 

And let's not ignore the fact that this "malfunction" that is going to kill the CPU because of the design issue is going to be user-induced water damage 99.9999% of the time. 

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1 minute ago, 79wjd said:

Yeah....they do though. Apple is far from the only company to sell expensive ultrabooks (that are frequently recommended). 

 

And let's not ignore the fact that this "malfunction" that is going to kill the CPU is going to be user-induced water damage 99.9999% of the time. 

Which random company sells notebook over 2000$? Dell, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte... Acer maaaybe? Not really random...  and no, those pins are what, a millimetre or two apart? One sparkle because of dust particle...  #shitHappens :D but water damage would be the first cause... so I dont think Apple macbooks are safe to use in outdoor environment :D  

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15 minutes ago, PeterBocan said:

Which random company sells notebook over 2000$? Dell, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte... Acer maaaybe? Not really random...  and no, those pins are what, a millimetre or two apart? One sparkle because of dust particle...  #shitHappens :D but water damage would be the first cause... so I dont think Apple macbooks are safe to use in outdoor environment :D  

Yeah....a dust particle isn't going to conduct anything across the gap between pins. This is going to be an issue caused by water damage or possibly metal shavings... If a simple dust particle was enough, then the RMA rate would be so stupidly high and there would be a class action already in play given that this issue affects Macs from the past 2+ years. 

 

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Both are very much so over $2000 and both are in the same price bracket with the same target audience. 

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17 minutes ago, PeterBocan said:

random laptops dont cost 2200$+ :D

There are many laptops that cost over $2k...

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a drop of water can kill anything if dropped at the right place. 

 

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Its a good thing I don't open up my laptop to expose these pins while drinking small drops of water at a time then. 

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