One of the dirty little secrets of Apple’s MacBook Pro was that there was no airplane power adapter available for it. In fact, since it draws 85 watts of power and most seats can only deliver 75 watts of power, so it was pretty much doomed from the start.

Last spring we had a long enough flight that I thought I’d want power for my MacBook Pro for longer than its battery would last, so I got myself a Targus generic power inverter since there were no Magsafe airline power adapters on the market yet. No go; it couldn’t make my computer happy, and that made me sad.

Fortunately, Apple recently released their own Magsafe airline power adapter. I think this is the first time Apple’s sold their own airline adapter; they’ve usually left that to others. I wonder if there are patent issues preventing other manufacturers from rolling their own.

I had the chance to use one of Apple’s adapters on a long flight yesterday, and it worked quite well. The adapter supports EmPower power jacks, and also cigarette lighter-equivalent jacks. Oddly enough, Apple says it won’t work in cars, although I’ve read mixed reports saying it does work in some cars. It probably depends on how much current your car can deliver through its lighter, er, power port.

Apple’s adapter is light and compact, which is nice… it’s basically just a wire with a magsafe connector on the notebook end and a connector to the plane on the other end. So it’s easy to pack; you could even carry it in your pocket pretty comfortably if need be. And the same adapter will work with any MacBook or MacBooK Pro.

Two things you should know about it. First, it won’t recharge your notebook. Sorry, but the plane just doesn’t deliver enough juice to do it. Just wait till we’re using octo-core 20″ notebooks… we’ll brown-out the entire plane! Second, the cigarette lighter tip may have a better grip on the plane than on the power cord. On my American Airlines flight yesterday, I almost didn’t notice that the tip didn’t unplug when I pulled the adapter out from the seat. Fortunately I caught it as I stared at the adapter marveling that I could finally do this at all. You might want to pay some extra attention to it if you use that tip on your flight.

You can buy the Apple Magsafe Airline Adapter from Amazon.com or directly from Apple.

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