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Comment by kylec | Hacker News Reader

I knew the power bricks were different between the 12", 13", and 15", but I had no idea that the completely identical cables were also different and potentially incompatible. This whole transition has been a huge mess so far.

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And absolutely needlessly so. You can ship a fully compliant USB-C 3.1 cable for probably 40 cents more than a cheap version. It makes no sense to start a rollout this way, especially from a company like Apple.

What about Apple's cables makes them noncompliant?

The charge cable is USB 2.0, I believe. It's not that it's not compliant, it's just intended for charging only.

As someone watching this mess from the sidelines (no intention to buy a computer within a year) I think this annoys me much more than all the other problems reported so far. How can they make a mess out of their own lineup of a newly launched port so much? Inexcusable.

> You can ship a fully compliant USB-C 3.1 cable for probably 40 cents more than a cheap version. It makes no sense to start a rollout this way, especially from a company like Apple

You're talking about the company that no longer ships power cables with a little plastic clip to keep them tidy and now sells the extended lead as an extra, both of which have been in every one of their laptop chargers for 15 years+

To be fair, that plastic wind up clip was almost certainly the primary cause of failure in the old power bricks. Anyone who has ever worked as a roadie knows that that's an entirely wrong way to wind a cable.

also, to be fair, I wonder how many of the extensions died in the box.

That's more USB-C than Apple.

http://blog.fosketts.net/2016/10/29/total-nightmare-usb-c-th...

No, that's literally 100% Apple. They could've very easily shipped the higher specced cables for what amounts to a rounding error in the total overall cost. They just chose not to in order to sell more cables. They can now tell people that a cable is "only compatible with model X" - when in reality the 15" pro cable is compatible with all 3.

Exactly this. There is absolutely no technical reason that Apple could not ship one cable that works on all adapters, it would be overkill for some and just right for the high end one and the difference in money would be trivial compared to the support calls from people who can't get the cable to work or it fails while they are using it.

I don't think they sell the 12" MacBook cables stand-alone; I went to the store to get a new one, and they just sell the beefier ones. I personally think the problem is that the 12" MacBook was a test run of USB-C, and the cables they shipped for that ended up not being good enough to handle the needs of the new laptop they didn't ship until a year and a half later.

That's too sensible for an Apple hate thread, sorry.

The inane uninformed rant is more what this comment thread is about.

I suspect that the root is different purchasing agents writing different contracts based on different specs with different manufacturers. Each of which is optimizing locally and perhaps with an eye on their performance review and bonus. Just because nobody calls Apple 'enterprise' doesn't mean it ain't.

IF that's the case, Apple used to have a handle on all that. So IF that's the case, what happened?

I think the fixed point of Apple's design philosophy has become the Apple Store and everything is designed backward from its retail display. The engineering consists of stuffing stuff inside a predetermined case, not designing a case to house a set of components that perform at a predetermined level. That's how the more power hungry model winds up with a smaller battery.

The different SKU's for similar cables is hardly the most illustrative example of Apple's current design process. The MacPro has left and right hand versions of the GPU board in order to provide a dual GPU configuration for the cylinder. Modularity is not a design goal. The "SSD" on the new Macbooks is some chips soldered to the motherboard. Not upgradable, potentially with a limited life.

Honestly, the further Apple goes in this direction the better it segments the market and filters out the less lucrative ones. The most valuable customers are people who will pay more for the touchbar because it's in the Apple store. They'll buy the smaller battery that comes with it for the same reason.

> They can now tell people that a cable is "only compatible with model X" - when in reality the 15" pro cable is compatible with all 3.

Did you read the linked page? That's what it does say. Not the part you "quoted".

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