Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

I'm excited for the most silly pedestrian reason: Because I detest the Apple 'DRM' chip that is implicit in Lightning even when used just for charging. I call it "DRM'd Electricity."

Choices of cables we've had for the whole existence of the iPhone:

• Apple cables, $20-30, not even nice, cheap plastic with poor strain relief, work reliably until they succumb easily to damage

• Licensed (like Belkin), $20-30, nicer, work reliably

• 1,000 brands on Amazon, etc. Not licensed, 10% DOA rate, sometimes just stop working. Physically nearly always nicer than Apple. $3-12.

I'm really excited to be able to just have many of the same charging cables everywhere, and to buy them for $5 or less. Even buying cheap cables, I've never once had a USB-C (or even the terrible micro-B) cable fail to work.

Note: I actually feel just as strongly even though I only even use a cable in the car, and charge with "Magsafe" everywhere else. I just hate Lightning that much. Also, I could easily afford the Apple cables, but it would physically pain me to waste that much money knowing it's purely additional margin for Apple.

But now you'll get into the fun USB-C -land, where two USB-C cables can have wildly different capabilities with no external way to check it :)

One cable might only support power, one might only be for data and one supports USB-PD up to 120W. How can you know? By trying them all!

Buy good cables and throw the others away. (You can't really trust any cable you didn't buy anyway because of O.MG.)

The problem is that "good" cables are also really expensive. And thick.

Sometimes I just want to charge my matchbox sized flashlight from Aliexpress. I really don't want to use the full-on 120W + network + 8k video capable cable for that. It's so thick that the weight of the flashlight can't hold it down =)

Maybe they'll figure out some kind of markings for the cables eventually.

I'd mostly use three categories: Charge Tiny Device (5-10W enough), Charge Medium Device + data (20-30W, phones and tablets), Charge Big Device (laptops, power banks - as much as the spec can handle)

So there is an external way to check it-thickness

BUUUT for example the USB-C cable that comes with Apple's laptops is relatively thin and can still handle around 80-100W, can't remember exactly.

And my 3rd party kinda_known_name -cable does the same but is at least twice as thick and really hard to wrestle in tight corners. =)

But that laptop cable is also visually distinct

I think generally throwing away all of Apple’s sh**y plastic, USB2.0-at-best USB-C cables is the first step to take. (Ok I don’t literally, but I just leave them in the boxes in case I sell the device later).

I wouldn't get excited yet. TMK they are only required to implement the connector and certain charging requirements, not any particular complete USB protocol spec, so it seems likely they'll continue the same MFi program over USB-C cables.

I would be extremely surprised if Apple introduced a requirement for specially marked USB-C cables for the iPhone. The iPad already uses USB-C, and works with any USB-C cable.

What I would expect is that it will work with any USB-C cable but possibly only work at max speed or watts on MFi cables

As it turns out, that isn't the case:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/contrary-to-rumors-t...

I agree with the sentiment of anti-DRM but Anker (who are highly reputable) have been doing licensed cables for <$10 for years.

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