Looks like the primary goal of Magsafe is to prevent damage to the connector (both the mobile part and device-attached part) from pulling the connector sideways. Wikipedia cites a patent issued in 2007.
That puzzles me. Isn't the problem at least several decades old? For example, Micro-USB seems to be designed for mobile devices and is super tiny and it's a result of many years of connectors evolution, so I guess the problem of pulling sideways should have been addressed there.
What are typical ways to mitigate risk of pulling sideways in connectors design?
Best Answer
That problem is normally solved by not having clumsy users yank at the cable at the wrong angle.
Most users are clumsy or have clumsy children or clumsy pets, so it's not a very good solution to rely on an absolute clumsy-free environment for your connectors.
Before magsafe there was one solution to clumsy users and that was to beef up the connectors and the cables to the point where the user was the one damaged in stead of the connector.