Japanese Oil fryer power adapters make better laptop chargers.

Years ago in the early 2000s Apple changed my view on design and introduced me to design thinking. With a borrowed idea.

Japanese kitchen appliances had been using magnetic cords for years. The thinking was simple — if someone trips over the cord, it releases. No pull, no spill, no mess.

Apple had the same problem on their hands. Broken ports, damaged laptops.

Engineering kept reinforcing the hardware. But the hardware wasn’t failing — people were just tripping over cables. That’s not a design flaw… It’s just Tuesday.

So they applied a kitchen fix to a computer. A connector that releases the moment it’s pulled. MagSafe launched in 2006 and people loved it immediately — not because it was clever, but because it just made sense.

That’s the thing about good design. It doesn’t always come from reinventing anything. Sometimes it’s just paying attention to what’s actually happening and being open enough to find the answer somewhere completely unexpected.

A deep fryer solved a laptop problem.

Nobody saw that coming.