Zolt

A teeny tiny MacBook charger

3 followers

A teeny tiny MacBook charger

3 followers

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Physical Products

Launch tags:iOS•iPad•Mac

Launch Team

Render Sandboxes: a computer for every agentIsolated compute, persistent state and a real filesystem

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Hunter

Unfortunately, it doesn't ship outside of the US. Can someone explain why companies choose only to ship locally at the beginning? Love the design and it being cheaper than an Apple 60W charger, I think this is a winner! (If it ships beyond the borders of the US) ;)

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12yr ago

RCRDList

@joshuaoxj Cost, I'll bet. My last physical product effort, was 2-3x more to ship a few hundred miles to Vancouver than to ship a few thousand miles to NY. EU was even worse. I mean yea, you can offer it with higher shipping price, but then you run into pricing psychology questions and potential logistical hurdles and ultimately it feels more sensible to give up and stick domestic until you've got things polished. (Also, I've never used Celery, so maybe they're feature-limited there as well.)

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12yr ago

Neocities

@joshuaoxj Likely tooling / manufacturing costs for a first version (shipping is a pain too) but the plastic plugs, metal and internals (voltage) are different in different countries. Just a thought.

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12yr ago

Hunter

@duanewilsonsf Now that was a point that didn't cross my mind! Thanks for the insight!

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12yr ago

Hunter

@hupfen that was what I thought initially but @duanewilsonsf does have a point about the voltage differences. Makes sense now :)

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12yr ago

RCRDList

@duanewilsonsf @joshuaoxj Ah, of course! I completely forgot about that.

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12yr ago

CryptoPoops

It's not clear to me from the site/video how this charges laptops. Does it come with a USB->magsafe2 cable? Having trouble seeing the benefit here, other than design. I already use my laptop USB ports to charge my devices, so this really only saves me a few ounces in a 20-30lb carry-on when I travel. Still need all the cables, presumably it charges more slowly over USB power(?), and isn't much smaller than my current Apple power brick. It's beautiful, so I'll come back and look at reviews if/when mine dies. But that doesn't seem likely from past experience.

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12yr ago

Mux

@staringispolite It took me a while to find but if you look at compatibility section it says: "*Optional Apple Mac laptop cable accessory available for purchase when Zolt ships"

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12yr ago

Prime

@staringispolite See my (guess) comment replying to @arush as well, but USB -> Magsafe2 seems impossible. Well, possible if the port can handle it, but not following the USB spec. So either the cables are proprietary and do something clever in the handshake to tell the charger 'yup it's cool to send me 30x the power you'd send a USB device' or something else is happening that I don't understand. *Edit: According to the FAQ the device can output upto 70W which seems good for this, would easily handle a macbook air and a phone. My computer uses an 85W charger so pretty close.

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12yr ago

@staringispolite This will go badly. Has before: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/18/h...

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12yr ago

The 25 Days of Ideas

@willimholte @staringispolite @arush Yeah I didn't think that a USB port could even come close to providing the power a laptop needs. I'm not sure the max amps a USB gives, but its no where near what a laptop needs.

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10yr ago

Mux

This looks really cool, except it looks like it doesn't work with the Apple Macbook, unless another accessory cable is purchased. 1. How much does the accessory cable to use on a Macbook cost? 2. When using the accessory cable for the Macbook, how fast is the charge? (I'm worried that it might be much slower) 3. When does this ship? It bugs me when there is a place to preorder a product, but the ship date (or at least estimated) is not made clear.

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12yr ago

Strikingly

@dylanjha I agree. All it says is that "An optional Apple Mac laptop cable accessory will be available for purchase when Zolt ships."

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12yr ago

Lookabout

@dylanjha agreed. How can they not have an estimated shop date but have a pre-order?

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11yr ago

@dylanjha The optional cable to which they link does not have the correct cable end. They show accessory cables with an L connector and a MagSafe connector, but they do not show an accessory cable with USB-C, so I'd say this product is incomplete. They should go ahead and put a USB-C port on the stick itself, along with the USB-A ports, and make the product truly flexible.

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10yr ago

CollageMo

Looks awesome. Love the 3 USB ports.

cc: @aplusk

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12yr ago

Product Hunt

@aplusk @kristofertm LOL, it took me a moment but now I get the reference. 👏

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12yr ago

Try.com

Since this is using a USB to charge a mac, it would be great if they also came up with a laptop-to-laptop charger that allows me to daisy-chain charge my Mac through my friend's plugged-in Mac just by plugging in to his USB

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12yr ago

Prime

@arush I'd be surprised if the cables are actually USB > laptop power/Magsafe. Perhaps I'm totally misguided (as I'm not an electrical engineer) but as far as I know you can only draw ~3 watts from USB. (My rMBP magsafe charger is outputting 85w, so it would take ~28 times longer to charge from USB). Though I'm guessing on this/remembering physics from class years ago, perhaps someone with more real knowledge can chime in.

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12yr ago

mailshake

I've had bad luck with anything other than the chargers from Apple, but this one looks to be well made. Looking forward to following the progress, nice Magento store!

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12yr ago

Looks interesting I always hate having to lug around my apple charger to client offices as it just adds more weight to my bag. Will hold off until I read some more reviews. Also I'll probably order the Orange one as it's more flash than the purple one.

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12yr ago

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