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Comment by samtho | Hacker News Reader

Cables are subject to breaking (specifically the connectors) and given how hard it is for many phones to listen to music via headphones and charge at the same time, I can see the appeal. Also, jacks are only rated for a limited number of cycles (connects, disconnects) due to the fact that there is mechanical connection taking place.

In the future, I imagine wireless charging being built into key pieces of furniture (see Ikea's attempts) where you might like to charge your phone. At the makerspace I run, we are embedding wireless charging into our custom-built tables which, I have to say, is super nice just to drop your phone down and have it charge.

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Wireless charging is not without costs. One of the costs is that coil heating the article talks about is not limited to the charger, the phone coil also heats up. And being usually stuck to the battery, the already stressed battery (by the charging) is also stressed by the additional coil heat - not good for the non-replaceable battery. I understand that phones (even $1000 ones) are disposable these days, but this makes them even more short-lived.

yep. The more I think about it and my own prior habits, I think there are a lot of people who are overusing wireless chargers. I once had wireless chargers everywhere and I never had such poor battery longevity in a phone than on those I charged wirelessly everywhere. If I do it again, I'll leave it by the bedside and that will be it.

USB-C is rated for at least 10,000 disconnects. That's four connects/disconnects a day for more than six and a half years.

Cable or port? That's not a lot for a port.

> "Cables are subject to breaking (specifically the connectors)"

Apple cables are. Somehow I don't have this problem with other brands... ever.

The best way to make profit is to introduce both the problem and the solution.

The amount of money Apple makes from selling replacement cables due to fatigue due to inadequate (in their opinion “ugly”) strain relief is negligible. Please stop spreading this inaccurate meme.

Apple makes money because they sell metric shitloads of $1200 phones and $600 watches and, increasingly, software and services for them. Not cables.

I wonder how many people choose to get a replacement device when their cable breaks.

Very few, I’d imagine.

I can get an Amazon Basic's brand USB-C cable for $4.17 per meter. Apple sells theirs for $19 per meter.

Is Apple selling these cables at cost, or are they making a profit from them? Amazon isn't a brand I trust either, but from the magnitude of that difference I'm pretty sure Apple is making a tidy profit on these cables. I don't think Apple is a trillion dollar company because of cable sales, but from where I sit it sure seems like Apple is a company that loves nickel and diming people even though they don't need to.

The USB-C standard is arcane and cables can have wildly different functionality and quality and still comply with the standard. Occam's razor suggests that there is not some cable markup conspiracy going on here. Higher quality cables + luxury brand tax is a far more reasonable solution.

Apples cables don't have to implement the entire USB-C spec. Only the parts that apple want to use.

> "+ luxury brand tax"

Well that's the contention isn't it? Whether that tax is present, and whether the mechanical build quality justifies it.

Apple sold 2.2 billion iPhones and 360 million iPads before they stopped reporting numbers.

Assume for every phone or iPad they sell, they average one extra cable (for work, for the car, because it breaks, whatever..)

Apple charges $19 for an extra cable. Assume it costs them $2 to make the cable (and it probably costs much less).

That's 43.5 billion right there. Which even for Apple is not small potatoes. Especially because cables are probably their highest margin product.

Who is buying $19 Apple branded charging cables? I guess if consumers want to lean into every minor expense it's hardly fair to blame the company for taking their money... Clearly they were eager to give it to someone in a hurry.

The authentication chip inside each cable drives up the price, I suspect:

https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/136947-apples-mega-c...

And the video dongles do transcoding, IIRC. https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...

>That's 43.5 billion right there.

Apple's filings show that less than one half of one percent of their revenue comes from the entirety of the MFi program, which includes not just the first-party cables they make, but every single licensed iPhone-compatible accessory of any kind anywhere in the world.

It seems silly to me to think that Apple would jeopardise the value of the number one consumer electronics product on the planet, the product that produces 60% of their revenue, by nickel-and-diming customers on cables.

Don’t know what you do to your Apple cables but I don’t think I’ve ever bought one in however many years since iPhone 3s.

I think two have gone bad, both replaced by Apple care.

Ah there it is, the obligatory blaming of the user. It's a well known fact that Apple makes cables with insufficient strain relief[0]; it's infuriating when somebody starts pretending that isn't the case. Cables aren't fruit, they aren't meant to "go bad". Even a cable that gets replaced for free is still a cable that gave me grief and wasted my time.

Even your claimed failure rate, 2 replacements in 10 years, is abysmal! That's what, 3 or 4 years per cable? I have cables 20+ years old that are as good as the day I bought them.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Apple%20strain%20relief&type=c...

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