Which other company sells short USB cables for £60?
Not that AFAIK iPhones support Thunderbolt anyway so how is this relevant?
I understand as a consumer you get emotional and pissed, but even if true, that is a drop in the bucket and not "significant" profit for Apple.
The true value of MFi licensing to Apple would be influencing the accessory market, not peanuts in dongle sales.
They're going to keep milking their followers no matter how ridiculous each point seems when someone puts it in writing. That's how "the needle moves".
Last time I checked some European countries have not only tax-free churches, they also facilitate collecting taxes and funding them.
Instead of policing cults and dictating pricing, I suggest simply not purchasing what you don't like.
(While we are on the subject of forcing behavior changes, let's mandate air conditioning and a singular electrical wall outlet. Why not?)
> How significant? Doubtful it moves the needle for Apple.
I made no claims about governments dictating prices anywhere.
Dictating behaviour, however, is already being done in many areas, especially consumer protection, anti competitiveness and others.
Maybe you could consider Apple cables to be overengineered, but I can readily understand why a cable built this way - irrespective of manufacturer - is not overpriced. And it's not just about a chip.
The cable is simply factually better on every metric than the hand-soldered 4 wire el cheapo one at 15~16 min. There is no cult in that.
Now if one only needs to carry USB 2.0 speeds or a limited amount of power it'd be ridiculous to buy a 100+ or even 50+ cable. That doesn't make the cable overpriced either, merely overspecced for that use case.