As you know, the Touchstone charger and associated induction back use built-in magnets to align and secure the Pre to the charger. The magnets on the charging “puck” are the more powerful of the sets, but those in the Pre’s back could be strong enough to cause problems if inadvertently placed. I write this post because this morning after I was awakened by my Pre’s daily alarm, I grabbed the phone, killed the alarm, grumbled on the way to my computer (a MacBook Pro that crunches numbers through the night), and then set the Pre on the right palm-rest area (no pun intended) of the laptop. To my bemusement, the computer immediately went into sleep mode. So I pushed the power button on the laptop, it turned back on, and after a second went back to standby. “This is odd,” I said to my empty living room, so I turned it on again. And it turned off again.
Oh wait - that's right, the MacBook uses a magnet to activate sleep mode. Whoops. Although the magnets on the Touchstone battery door are fairly weak (far too weak to disrupt a hard drive, one hopes), I imagine that it's possible that they could disrupt other bits and bobs in a way similar to what happened to my MacBook.
The first thing that comes to mind is credit cards and access/ID cards. Every credit card and most state/federal/corporate ID’s have a magnetic strip across the back that can be disrupted by magnetism. Thankfully, since these cards’ magnetic strips only need to be written once, they are what’s called high-coercivity strips and are thus not very coercive to magnetic interference (as tested by Mythbusters). But hotel room key cards are a different story; they use low-coercivity strips to allow easy and quick rewriting for new customers, and are thus prone to failure in the face of magnetism. You or somebody you know has had a hotel key card stop working and the only explanation you (and the front desk) could conjure was that your cell phone had killed it. Most cell phones don’t even have magnets and yet are capable of causing wanton key card destruction, let alone the low-but-powerful-enough magnets in the Touchstone back.
Again, the magnets on the Touchstone Battery Door are very weak, so it's not as if they're a hazard. Still, any of you have magnetic horror stories, courtesy of your Pre?
Comments
Good to know! I would've freaked out if my macbook kept going into sleep mode like that.
I once set my Pre on top of my Mac Book Air. At first the screen started to go all weird but I didn't really care and left it.
When I returned home, my apartment was on fire. It made my Mac Book Air explode!
WHAT!?! Kill the screen, maybe. Kill the laptop, maybe. Explode!?!....are you kidding me!
Maybe he is kidding???
It's not a problem, it's a new Apple feature! :-)
It's actually a Palm Pre feature. Palm can't compete with the Apple offering so the Pre is designed to take Apple products out with magnets ... that is after it free loads off iTunes :p
The conflict between palm and apple continues!! Pre > Macbook ;)
how about a useful article? some inside scoops or something.. this is just a waste of time for the sake of having a new post.. i'd rather hear nothing at all until something "good" is announced! ya know.. like an os update or a touchscreen keyboard has been finished.. gah.. just thought i'd bicker a bit.. i mean, someone's gotta do it.. other than that.. I LOVE THIS SITE lol.. lmfao @ Kasracer! wow.. good one..
Honestly this isn't useless news. If it happened to Dieter i can happen to anyone and if it happens to anyone else and they don't have a clue this could be the problem it can cause them more problems like taking their mybook into a Mapple store and then they cant sync with their myPod!!! Anyways I think it is useful info to fill a time void where news isn't popping up left and right. (Hopefully someone got the clues)
how about a useful article? some inside scoops or something.. this is just a waste of time for the sake of having a new post.. i'd rather hear nothing at all until something "good" is announced! ya know.. like an os update or a touchscreen keyboard has been finished.. gah.. just thought i'd bicker a bit.. i mean, someone's gotta do it.. other than that.. I LOVE THIS SITE lol..
Yeah its funny the Macbooks using magnetic response for hibernation tripping but much of this article is common sense stuff. We've known from the get go that the touchstone concept is magnetic so if you have stuff that doesnt react well to it then dont keep it near the Pre? Hard Drives and much of other data-centric parts of computers are shielded and who keeps their credit cards on the Pre? If its that bad, go back to normal charging methods for you cannot change the nature of magnetism.
Now with that said, how many of these are tripping the theft sensors at stores :) rofl.
Any phone with a speaker on the back will have a magnet... most phones have a speakerphone
Well Derek you must not be aware that the Pre is actually a living entity created by Palm, and they trained it to attack any Apple product it gets close to, So the whole shutting your MaC Book off thing was actually it committing a telepathic attack on your devices.
Don't worry though your Pre doesn't hate you, It's just disappointed with you and your taste in computers...
On a serious note though: The touchstone is a neat device, but over priced given its cheap internals, For what we pay for it they could have added some extra shielding and made it more easy to center the Phone on the base. They will probably do these things in a later version once the Touchstone has became standard in Pre Owners homes and Offices.
That said I still Love the touchstone, and being aware of its magnetic properties is a small price to pay for the convenience. :D
I wonder if what you describe is some residual magnetism of the ferrous (but non magnetic) bits that the touchstone case uses to attract the magnets of the puck and align itself for charging. Ferrous metals generate a magnetic force for a little while after being magnetized. If you wait 30 minutes after taking the pre off the charger, I bet it won't put your computer to sleep. I tested the pre for magnetism when I first got it, and couldn't get it react to anything (staple, paperclip, etc.,).
But, your point is well taken that it does generate some magnetic force, especially when having just spent the night on the touchstone.
I carried my palm pre in the case that comes with it along with my hotel room key (the Wynn) in Vegas a few weeks back with no problems. I had it like this most of the weekend.
any phone with a speaker at all will have a magnet. it may not be very strong, but most conventional speakers (including most all in cell phones) have speakers. and true, if it has a speaker phone, or a speaker on the back, it will have a stronger magnet.
Interesting! (I disagree with dmoss).
I supposed this could explain the periodic weirdness (screen discoloration and some odd shutdowns) with my MacbookPro since I got my touchstone late last week. I do think my phone may have been in my lap, partly on the laptop wrist areas when the weird things have occurred.
The magnet in the Pre's speaker is way more powerful than what's in the Touchstone back. In fact, I don't think the Touchstone back has any magnets in it at all. The four dots don't attract a paperclip at all, while the Pre's speaker definitely does.
Not only an iphone killer but a mac book killer as well, pretty cool.
"iphone killer" <<--- and Pre failed miserably at this
I use to have a blackberry that used to demagnetized my BART tickets(SF transit with a magnetic strip). The magnet on the blackberry was to turn on or off the blackberry when it goes into the holster. So my question is, is the magnet on the pre-touchtone back strong enough to demagnetize these cards?
Has anyone tested if the Touchstone back either impairs or improves radio reception? There was always a dispute about whether a metal stylus impaired the radio reception in previous Palm products.
i just ordered the extended battery 2600, no tax, no shipping cost directly from the seidio website. every dollar counts these days.
Hmmmm. How long did it take you to figure out that there were magnets in the back case? I had guessed it before I got my Touchstone, and within 20 seconds I was absolutely sure (with 15 of those seconds being removing it from the packaging.)
It turns out the nagnetic field around the Pre speaker is significantly stronger than the touchstone battery door. So much so that I speculate that there aren't actually magnets on the touchstone door, just small bits of steel to attract to the touchstone.
Here's an experiment. Get a paperclip and see if it will stick to the touchstone door. Now hold it over the speaker. Speaker is much stronger. I can't detect any pull from the door.
Here in Canada we're slowly phasing out magnetic cards in favour of smart-chip based cards (mostly in credit cards), so as time goes on this shouldn't be a problem.
If you live in DC and ride the metro, don't put your Pre near one of the paper metro cards because it'll wipe the magnetic strip. Happened to me TWICE a few weekends ago. Not until the 2nd time did the station manager ask me if I had a smart phone because that could be causing the problem. Apparently it's probably related more to my touchstone back than anything.
Like others have said: it was probably the speaker. If the pre had magnets in the TS back plate, it would accumulate all manner of junk sticking to the back of the pre. Further, magnets are not NEEDED to get the pre to align on the TS: since the TS itself has powerful magnets on it, small metal discs in the pre are all that is needed.
Also, hotel keys are no more re-writeable than credit cards. The room lock is reprogrammed for the serialized key you are issued, the key isn't modified to fit the room.
Think about it: if you lost your key (or took it home as everyone does), wouldn't that be a huge security risk if the key needed to be reprogrammed to prevent it from opening your room?
There is nothing in this article based on reality.
Well what you've said is only half true. I believe they reprogram both the doors and the keys (or at least have the capability to do so). Certainly the machine they plug the keys in is more than just a reader--it's way too big to just be reading the strip. The hotel keys are VERY easy to erase. Many people have done it accidentally.
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