I don't know. In twenty years of owning many, many laptops of all kinds of brands and designs I have never had one yanked off the table like that. I have never even had anyone trip over the cord and break-off the connector. I've used them at home, in the garage, at the shop, at the office, on airplanes, at trade-shows and while camping. To me the mag-safe idea is simply a "feel-good" marketing checkbox rather than a real need. Again, that's my experience. I've seen people that are simply not carful and don't take care of their stuff. And some that might be more accident prone than others. So, I'll admit that this is just one data point.
I've personally yanked a laptop off of a dining room table by tripping over the cord, but that was many years ago. But more recently, my 4 year old has pulled the mag-safe adapter out of my MBP a couple of times. Someone I used to work with had the unfortunate experience of having part of the AC adapter plug break off and get stuck in the side of an older MacBook. That was an impossible fix.
So, here's another data point or two... I've been very happy with the mag-safe adapter. It's one of those things that you don't need until you do. And if you don't have it, you could do some real damage.
To summarize: either MagSafe is a solution to a made-up problem, or you're more careful, value your stuff more, and are less accident prone than most people.
This is the way I look at it. When you write if-else-then statements all day long for a living you should probably be trained to think that way about everything. That's what happens to me all the time. I tend to consider the "else" and "else if" conditions almost instinctively. So, for example, if I am using a laptop at the diner table, I'll be sure to drape the power wires such that there's slack in the event of a tug. I'll also place a chair over the cable going to the wall so that there are very few ways for the kids to run into the cord and rip it out of the wall or computer.
I am, by no measure, infallible. Maybe I've just been lucky with notebooks.
