Microsoft Surface RT’s magnetic power adapter shows up online

Ever since the Microsoft Surface was announced there has been some discussion about its power adapter. That may seem like an topic to focus on but it is only because Microsoft appears to be borrowing a great feature from Apple: its magnetic power plug.

For those of you who don’t use Apple products, their laptops have a plug that “magically” sticks to the computer and charges via a tiny magnetic port. The benefit here is less wear and tear on the connector and if you accidently pull the plug or trip on the wire, it just pops off instead of dragging the laptop to the floor. It’s actually really nice.

With the Surface you’re going to have the same experience. In fact, the plug looks remarkably like Apple’s (they both have 5 prongs), which makes us wonder if Microsoft is licensing the technology from Cupertino [Edit: Turns out Microsoft has a patent on it]. Personally, we see this as a big selling point as once you go magnetic, you won’t ever want to fiddle with standard laptop power adapters again.

Source: Suning; via WPDang

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.