Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

As a loyal Apple user, I humbly suggest that maybe this would be a lot less of a problem if Apple itself sold better cables for a more reasonable price? I have no problem going into an Apple store to buy overpriced things. I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape. The funny part of this story to me is why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker.

edit: In retrospect, I don't have any complaints about the chsrgers. I've never bought a store charger because the ones that come with devices work just fine. It's the cables that I have issue with. Even with things like the HDMI-lightning adapter ($50), they go to pieces without being under heavy use.

View on HN

Here's a good teardown of an Apple charger which shows where the cost is in the design.

http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...

What I don't get is how come the cable part is such lousy quality compared to the sophistication in the PSU part.

Yeah I agree. I stupidly said "cables and chargers" when I just meant lightning cables. I haven't had a charger fail on me in any noticeable way. I've never bought a new USB charger because I have so many others lying around that can fill in for a pinch, but I've never considered looking for a third-party laptop brick adapter when needing to replace a lost one.

> What I don't get is how come the cable part is such lousy quality compared to the sophistication in the PSU part

Design

Apple cables always fall apart because they use the thinnest insulation possible and don't put on proper strain reliefs. Probably just another example of design over common sense.

It gets especially bad when you wrap the cable tightly around the sharp plastic hooks on the MacBook power adapter that are supposed to keep everything organized.

They also seem to be very weak to UV exposure.

The counterfeits are being sent to shoppers who were specifically looking for genuine apple products (I agree I've heard bad things about Apple's strain relief) so presumably the quality isn't the problem for these buyers.

If people are walking by an apple store every day, but go bargain-hunting on the internet when they need an Apple product, then sure. Lower the price, get the customers away from Amazon, and you can make sure they get the genuine item.

But if customers are going to buy from Amazon anyway, it's impossible to drop the price far enough to make counterfeits unprofitable, because counterfeits can always be more profitable as they can target lower specs.

If a 2.5A fast charger costs $10 to make, and a shitty 500mA counterfeit costs $5 to make, the counterfeiter will make 100% profit even if the legitimate manufacturer sells at the cost of production.

I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape.

I ask this a lot of times that I see someone complain about the quality of Apple cables: what the hell are you doing to your cables? I've still got 30 pin cables with cracked plastic on the 30 pin end, but they still work. After over 10 years of buying Apple devices that have cables, I count one cable that has gone bad.

More of a rhetorical question I guess, as we're just trading anecdotes. But I find it interesting that some complain about the quality of Apple cables, whereas I have piles of them that just refuse to die.

Same question. I abuse the hell out of the half-dozen Apple cables in my house (2x macbook, a few ipad/phone)—roughly bunch them up and toss them in a bag or drawer all the time, yank them out of walls with little care, et c. My usual position for my Macbook at home puts the cable at an awkward, crimped angle and I really ought to stop that.

Plus I've had my kids tripping over them, folding them, playing tug of war with them. At least once a week something happens to one of my cables that probably ought to break it. Not one has broken.

WTF are people doing with their cables that's worse than what I do?

Absolutely nothing, after about a year every one of them starts to break into pieces (and they also tend to stick like a gum). I've been using iPhones since the 3G. Now, I'm buying only cables not made by Apple. I think they're biodegradable and something triggers that faster, but I don't know what.

I've only ever had three chargers start pouring out smoke. Two of them were Apple chargers for a Macbook where the wire near the magsafe shorted so badly that the plastic had melted before I'd gotten it pulled. The second of those chargers were the one I received as a replacement for the first one. It was a clear design defect - the sleeves were too short. Despite insisting it was not their fault, I noticed the second replacement I received had a sleeve twice as long.

Since then, we've not had chargers that turned out that bad, but multiple iphone charging cables have broken quickly with normal use.

That said, I have plenty of failed micro USB cables for my Android devices too; there it is usually the plug that gets too loose to connect properly.

I see a lot of people unplug their MBPs at the end of the day, and wrap the cable so tightly around the power brick it's like they're trying to protect its chastity

And twisting the cable as they wrap it instead of rolling it up.

It's definitely erratic. I've had (genuine) MBP chargers that I toss in my backpack with relatively little care be entirely happy, while others that sit 24/7 in a cable shelf under my desk, comes up through it and lives their life in a channel/cable holders so there's zero tension on the connector fray into a lantern pattern of rubber.

I feel silly contributing to this tale of anecdotes, but ~50% of my Apple cables have gone bad.

The 30-pin cables have a fixed orientation for the connector, but the Lightning cables can be inserted either way.

This leads to a lot of bending near the connector end because you can plug them in any which way. And then you get splits of the cable near the connector.

My 30-pin cables never went bad. My most used Lightning cable (of five) has.

2 of my Apple laptop chargers have died in the same way: There's a little rubber clip on the cable for if you want to wrap the cable up. I never use it because my cables live on a desk or next to a sofa. But after a year or so, that rubber in that clip has reacted with the plastic sheathing of the cable so if you touch it, the whole cable just splits at that point. They use some tensioning in the cable to keep it from tangling, and once there's a tiny split in the sheathing, the cable is doomed.

While this may be true for lightning cables, apple power bricks are definitely worth their price. Yes they are expensive, but after I tried 3 different 3rd party bricks in the span of a year, it's apparent a high quality alternative can't be made for much cheaper.

The circuitry in the brick may be quality, but the cables attached to it certainly aren't.

I consistently have to replace those bricks due to fraying cables.

Apple could go a long way by making the cables on both ends of their adapter cheaply replaceable.

I guess this could happen if they move to all USB-c ports on the laptops.

They could change the design to put the MagSafe part on the 'brick'.

I'm not sure how well that would compare to the current system but I bet it's been considered.

Not sure if this is a reliable Apple perk, but I recently took a failing power supply into the store, expecting to pay $50-75 for a new one (because I did not trust the shady looking wares Amazon had to offer), and they replaced my 6 year old Magsafe T style with a sleek L style for free.

I'm pretty sure they are incentivized to do this because of all the shady knockoffs.

I looked for genuine Apple cables 1-2 months ago on Amazon. Couldn't find any. All offbrands and suspicious stuff.

Consequently, I ordered direct from Apple.

That's typical for my shopping on Amazon: I buy specific known brands usually, when I'm just browsing for something, it's pile after pile of crap... gotta sort it for the gold buried there.

I don't buy a lot of cables... in fact I don't remember the last time I bought one. I was going through apple headphones entirely too frequently and at one point decided to get the protection plan with some. Best money I ever spent. Every few months I trade in my falling apart headphones for new ones.

> why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker.

same reason you would buy almost any apple product i imagine.

it's not the outdated, overpriced hardware; its the experience and the fit and finish.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com