When your gadget accessory goes on the blink

/ February 18, 2016

I use my iPad Air and iPhone 6 for so much.

Blogging here daily, with all of the writing and picture-taking that involves, for one thing. Not to mention the texting, emailing, national newspaper reading, researching, other online poking around, other writing uses and even a phone call or three.

I don’t own a laptop or landline phone anymore.

So these two Apple products must stay well-charged.

And did I mention that my dear wife Karen also has her iPhone 6 and an iPad, too.

Stay plugged-in.

Stay plugged-in.

So when one of our two living-room powering stations started loosing its juice, Karen figured out it was the fault of the plug inserted into the surge protector. Proof: The good one got warm and the bad one stayed cold.

A trip to Best Buy Mobile found the Apple-manufactured replacement for a bit more than $20.

Advice from the associate came with the purchase.

Do not charge the iPhone at this station, he said. These meaty plugs that come with the iPad send too much juice at once. Bad for the iPhone’s smaller battery, he said.

This came with the iPhone.

This came with the iPhone.

It’s best to stay with the smaller model included with the iPhone purchase, he said.

Of course I’ve been charging my iPhone 6 at the big station because of the faster charge.

No longer.

Which all leads me to wonder …

Does Apple build the iAccessories to wear out in X amount of time?

If you’ve had trouble with Smart Phone accessories, what were they, and how much did it cost to replace? What brand or phone or tablet do you use, and are you happy and why? What’s your favorite device to write and read and comment on blogs?

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35 thoughts on “When your gadget accessory goes on the blink”

  3. i use my laptop for blogging, and want to learn to use my ipad instead, makes it easier when traveling. so far, so good with plugs, phones and devices, but good to know about the plugs. oh, and except for the laptop i wiped out with my thanksgiving coffee last year )

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  4. All I’ve got to say about APPLE is …..GRRRRR. I have one product and it has caused me considerable headaches since I purchased it. With NO resolution from APPLE. I’ll never buy another APPLE product.

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  5. My girlfriend’s Mac Book was giving her issues and we pulled the battery to run it straight off the AC. We let the battery sit overnight and the whole casing exploded, literally popped from its casing. From? … You got it … overcharging. When my I Phone screen went black on me, I think I died a little. And though it was a momentary blip I will never get that piece of me back.

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  6. I’ve only seen those big charging docks at the kids’ schools, for the iPads. We don’t have tablets, we’re a laptop people, I suppose. I’m glad they told you that.

    A guy at the Geek Squad told me not to leave laptops plugged in all the time. They overheat, he said. He said charge, disconnect and recharge as needed to keep from frying the motherboard. I must say, having burned out three motherboards in ten years, this laptop has lasted substantially longer, so I presume he’s right, since I have followed his directions.
    Which leads me to wonder WHY DON’T THEY PUT THAT ON THE PACKAGING?!? Planned obsolescence, me thinks. What you don’t know WILL hurt you. 😦

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  7. I love using my iPad to blog. I haven’t tried blogging on my laptop because I really don’t know how to use my laptop and I LOVE blogging from my iPad. I just recently got an iPhone 6 so I really don’t have much to say about it yet. (Still learning how to use it).

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  9. My kids have a theory that Apple has designed the IPhone to start acting up when they come out with a new model. They say there is some kind of slow destructo mode introduced when the new IOS comes out, so you download that into your older IPhone and then everything starts malfunctioning. Then you are forced to buy the newer model. I used to think they were a bit paranoid, and why would a company like Apple do something underhanded, but now after reading your post today – it makes me wonder.

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      • My experience with laptops (and I have a notebook) is that they are hit and miss- get a lemon and you are well on your way to a mental health infarction. Ha! Funny story – i did a course where we were given Dell notebooks as a part of the course supplies and required to carry them with us as much material was only on line and all assignments were submitted on line. The funny part was that Dell was so proud of their products that they offered a full year guarantee, with a service tech coming to the equipment. Bad move. Our class had about 50 students – all were professionals and most traveled the world for a living (sales of high end goods like helicopters and radiation treatment machines, engineers, satellite designers, communication specialists, geophysicists, etc). We used to gather for beer after our weekend classes were finished and compare notes on which Dells had crapped out and where that week. One engineer said that he was walking down the airport concourse in Saigon on his way to a plane and he had a Dell tech guy running after him shouting for him to stop so he could fix his computer. I personally had my screen replaced 4 times – although I was usually in my office – and my boss actually had space set aside for the Dell guys to repair our laptops it was so common. One comm specialist said he was on a South Pacific island working on a relay tower when his Dell crapped out – Dell actually flew a technician to to island to replace the mother board. Ha! They were anal about keeping their warranty but I can tell you that one hour after the warranty was expired they wanted nothing to do with us – we must have cost them a fortune. 😀

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  12. Odd that they should make the charger and the iphone compatible when it is bad for the phone. Almost as if they were deliberately designing the product to malfunction so you’d buy another. It bothers me when companies offer products like that.

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    • That is interesting, Paul. I got the big plug with the tablet and because the phone plug fit, sure enough, figured it was a speedier way to charge that as well. If either the plug or phone literature told me not to do that, well, I did not take the time to read it. If that is the case, the onus was on me. How many people are like me that way? Plenty, I’d say.

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