Apple Patent Discovered Offering One Power Supply For MacBook & iPhone At Once

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One of the toughest things about having a lot of mobile devices is keeping them all charged. Oh, sure, you can just buy a power strip and turn that into your dedicated mobile device strip. Indeed, some will even sell you a separate hutch so you can hide said power strip in a nice wood box and set your devices on it besides. But none of these is quite so simple an idea as just having one power supply to plug all your mobile gear into, and that’s one thing Apple was looking to do.

A recently unearthed patent showed that Apple was, essentially, looking to a power supply with multiple connection points, at which you could plug your device of choice–in this case they looked at an iPhone and a MacBook–and have it charge equally well thanks to a set of different plugs that would receive the correct voltage for their device. It includes a DC to DC converter to ensure that the iPhone isn’t getting charge meant for a MacBook, and still fits inside a normal power brick.

The reasoning behind it was geared more toward travelers than people charging their gear at home, but it made perfect sense; you packed up your mobile gear and discovered you were down a cord, you lost access to that whole device for the whole time you were gone. And speaking here as someone who’s done more than a little work in libraries and coffee shops following a local internet outage, it’s always good to know you have your power supply on hand no matter what. And since many of Apple’s devices use the same kind of power cords anyway–the dock connector serves at least three devices that I can think of offhand–engineering such a device might be a lot simpler than expected.

Personally, I call it a good idea, but what do you call it? Think that Apple would do well to bring such a device out into the field? Or do you think that maybe Apple’s got more important things on its plate than developing a new kind of power brick to serve all its devices? No matter what you think, we want to hear from you in the comments section below!