What is the problem?

Got slightly sweaty fingers? Well, good luck getting this little thing out of the wall socket! It can be infuriating to use due to the shallow grip surface on the sides, the small amount of surface area on the grip, and the glassy texture covering the entire plug.

Is this a big problem? Maybe not, but it is something that I come across on a daily basis, which makes this more than a light inconvenience. I don’t think many people would argue about Apple being well known for the care and thought that they put into their products (see: Jony Ive in Objectified) but this one seems to have slipped the ranks and made it into production, with little or no response from anyone online? Apart from a few reviews on the Apple website.

Shallow gripped sides

Shallow grip + small surface area

Is there a solution?

I have however seen some thinking around making a power plug easier to remove from a wall socket — and this was from a designer by the name of Daniel Boros, who posted what he calls ‘Squid side’ on his dribbble account.

Squid side — by Daniel Boros

Whether or not this particular design is inline with Apples aesthetic is not what I am here to argue, but there is no denying that this plug seems to offer much superior usability. A significant challenge that comes with a change in shape for the Apple plug would be the packaging of the products that the plug is shipped with — the iPhone box has a specifically shaped place for the current Apple 5W USB power adapter, which leaves very little room to move without a large shift in the design of the packaging.

iPhone unboxed

Perhaps a simpler solution could be to further the indentation on the side of the plug (if the internals allow), or simply change the texture, so that Apple would not have to incur the cost of changing their packaging on the existing products that this item ships with. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them! Leave a comment with your idea.

TL;DR

Apple’s smaller power plug for the iPhone / Apple Watch / iPad mini are really difficult to pull out of the wall — Apple should make the ‘grips’ on the side of these much easier to actually grip, even if you have sweaty fingers.