Behind my TV I have 16 open outlets on my UPS, but I can only access 8 of them because half of the bulbous plugs take up two plugs each.
So between my router, modem, switch, access point, Roku, TV, speakers, and Nintendo, I am running out of power outlets, not because there aren’t enough outlets, but because the plugs take up more than one outlet each.
Why can’t all plugs be designed to only take up one plug?
In: 7
The kind of electricity the wall supplies (AC) and the kind of electricity that computerized devices require (DC) are two different kinds. The reason for this is kind of long and fiendishly complicated, tl;dr version being one of these kinds of electricity is super-convenient for getting the electricity from the power station to your house, and it just happens to be the kind that computers can’t use.
You can convert from one kind to the other, but it takes some bulky circuitry to do it.
If you’re designing a product that is big and not really concerned with how chonky it is, like a television or a big desktop computer, you can build the conversion circuitry into the device itself.
If you’re designing something that needs to be lightweight, tiny, sleek, and sexy, like a nice laptop or some game consoles, your device can’t sacrifice room for the circuitry, so it gets kicked out onto the cord instead. If it gets kicked out onto the cord, you mostly have two choices on where to put it: either in the middle of the cord as a big awkward brick, or build it directly into the wall plug.
A brick in the middle tends to be the optimal choice if you’re making a device that you plan to sell internationally, as you can just design the brick half of it once and then attach it to whatever plug the country you’re selling to uses. (Also gives users who travel the benefit of easily swapping plugs out, so plug converters aren’t necessary!)
Building it directly into the plug is cheaper to manufacture if you don’t care about all that.
The holdout in the above is Apple (because of course it’s Apple), who make cables with the bricks on the plugs, but the plugs still have that plug-swapping feature. This is less Apple being cheap and more Apple building something weird and proprietary so that if your cable needs replacing, you have to go through them.
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