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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

But they still value aesthetics over quality. The lack of strain relief causes increased wear on the cable ends.

http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/a-kickstarter-project-a...

After one of my Apple cables started fraying, I preemptively wrapped the ends of the rest with Sugru in hopes that it will help. Worked well so far, sucks that I had to do it at all.

The issue isn't as much strain relief as it is people disconnecting the cords by yanking them by the cable instead of the connector.

Which is what a "strain relief" is for.

Strain reliefs are used because you have to assume that users will apply strain in every direction imaginable, and some that aren't.

No, that's not the reason. Repeated bending of the weak connection point is the reason, and there's no reinforcement there to protect it.

The class action over the mag-safe connector shows that the strain relief was inadequate.

A class action lawsuit over strain relief shows one thing: that lawyers see Apple as a nice juicy target. Smaller companies have made much worse connectors, but nobody cares, because there is no profit to be had from suing them.

You do realize that kickstart project failed horribly and it was actually useless. Look at reviews.

I don't know the first thing about how the project went. The project wasn't the point. The motivation of the project is what I'm talking about.

Didn't they recently fix this?

But they are aware of the problem and trying to fix it. The strain relief of this year's iPad cable tripled in length compared to last year.

They are aware of it and still build inferior quality cables. This is a problem across their entire product line, from MacBooks to iPods, iPhones and iPads.

The commenter you responded to did provide a case for Apple trying to fix that though, didn't he? I'd expect it to be rolled out across the next refresh of the product line. Might be naive?

they were designing for 1yr of life. people complained, they changed the design to last 2yr of use.

the entire cable will become strain relief and then the problem will start again!

I've had the same problem with all apple cables. Design over substance.

Can you hear that sound? It’s the sound of my eyes rolling.

So, uhm, I’m not exactly sure what you want. Why are you so convinced that this updated design will also fail?

So, uhm, I’m not exactly sure what you want.

Well, it'd be nice if the high-$$$ Apple cable were as reliable as the one on the latest $1.99 gray-market gadget off the boat from Shenzen.

Why? Just buy the $1.99 gray-market gadget off the boat from Shenzhen.

History repeats itself. Apple cables have been fraying since FireWire ipods. I've heard the promise so often its now boring me.

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