In my extremely unscientific personal test, the iPod data cable actually came out of my iPhone with less force required than attempting to unplug the MagSafe cable from my laptop.
Of course, that wouldn't be the case when the pulling isn't completely in-line with the socket (although you can exert quite an amount of strain on a MagSafe cable by pulling it out sideways). I think it's too simple to assume that MagSafe wouldn't suffer from this problem.
The explanation given by the parent post rings true for me, certainly I've had these kinds of splits in plenty of cables with traditional "strain-relief" on. I think I'm going to stop unplugging things by tugging the cable. :)
That actually matches what I've observed. Namely that after 2 years of heavy use my magsafe has not had any issues with the connection.
I always remove the connector by tilting it first, instead of pulling. In fact I think there was something in the manual about this - though I can't find it at the moment.
It's a magnet. Shearing / levering is easier than pulling. You're doing it, even if you're not thinking about it, just because you're not pulling perfectly straight. Intentionally tilting it away makes removing it a lot easier than doing so accidentally, though.
i've notice that if you go at an angle it's easier to yank the magsafe cable. straight on it a lot stronger. I'm assuming ti's due to the angle making the force be applied to a small region and not the whole magnet.
Out of curiosity, how does iTerm2 help you more effectively use the command-line? I've seen many people say it's better.. but the features listed on the site just don't seem to be things I need (or things more appropriately done elsewhere, e.g. my zsh does completion).
The author cites mouse events, but this is something I've never missed (and never use it when I'm working on Linux). Is that something you use? If so, what for? You use MacVim, so presumably you don't need mouse events in your terminal for vim.
I should note I don't use a vanilla Terminal.app - I use it with Visor (http://visor.binaryage.com/) to quickly invoke the command-line from anywhere, and I use MacVim as my editor.
I get what he says about package managers. MacPorts really was something I loathed. I recently discovered homebrew and "breath of fresh air" covers it exactly.
Well, for one, with iTerm2 I don't have to use visor, the app itself handles this. To be totally honest with you though, iTerm1/2 over Terminal.app hasn't really been that big of a change, I mostly like the improved key-settings and the theming. What motivated that change was that I was having a lot of trouble with getting the modifier keys do what I wanted, as strange as that sounds. Changing to iTerm just fixed it, and I liked what I saw, so there never was any reason for me to go back and figure out what I did wrong.
The biggest change by far for me was going from TextMate to MacVim/vim, which has boosted my programming speed immensely (after the usual month of pure frustration and all development grinding to a near halt).
Of course, that wouldn't be the case when the pulling isn't completely in-line with the socket (although you can exert quite an amount of strain on a MagSafe cable by pulling it out sideways). I think it's too simple to assume that MagSafe wouldn't suffer from this problem.
The explanation given by the parent post rings true for me, certainly I've had these kinds of splits in plenty of cables with traditional "strain-relief" on. I think I'm going to stop unplugging things by tugging the cable. :)