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More than 90% of ‘genuine’ Apple chargers and cables sold on Amazon are fake

284 points by Lio 10y ago

danso 10y ago
As a loyal Apple user, I humbly suggest that maybe this would be a lot less of a problem if Apple itself sold better cables for a more reasonable price? I have no problem going into an Apple store to buy overpriced things. I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape. The funny part of this story to me is why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker. edit: In retrospect, I don't have any complaints about the chsrgers. I've never bought a store charger because the ones that come with devices work just fine. It's the cables that I have issue with. Even with things like the HDMI-lightning adapter ($50), they go to pieces without being under heavy use.
- tashoecraft 10y ago
  While this may be true for lightning cables, apple power bricks are definitely worth their price. Yes they are expensive, but after I tried 3 different 3rd party bricks in the span of a year, it's apparent a high quality alternative can't be made for much cheaper.
  - agildehaus 10y ago
    The circuitry in the brick may be quality, but the cables attached to it certainly aren't. I consistently have to replace those bricks due to fraying cables. Apple could go a long way by making the cables on both ends of their adapter cheaply replaceable.
    - Lio 10y ago
      I guess this could happen if they move to all USB-c ports on the laptops. They could change the design to put the MagSafe part on the 'brick'. I'm not sure how well that would compare to the current system but I bet it's been considered.
    - deleted 10y ago
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- gr3yh47 10y ago
  > why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker. same reason you would buy almost any apple product i imagine. it's not the outdated, overpriced hardware; its the experience and the fit and finish.
- Lio 10y ago
  Here's a good teardown of an Apple charger which shows where the cost is in the design. http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr... What I don't get is how come the cable part is such lousy quality compared to the sophistication in the PSU part.
  - danso 10y ago
    Yeah I agree. I stupidly said "cables and chargers" when I just meant lightning cables. I haven't had a charger fail on me in any noticeable way. I've never bought a new USB charger because I have so many others lying around that can fill in for a pinch, but I've never considered looking for a third-party laptop brick adapter when needing to replace a lost one.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    > What I don't get is how come the cable part is such lousy quality compared to the sophistication in the PSU part Design
  - grapeshot 10y ago
    Apple cables always fall apart because they use the thinnest insulation possible and don't put on proper strain reliefs. Probably just another example of design over common sense. It gets especially bad when you wrap the cable tightly around the sharp plastic hooks on the MacBook power adapter that are supposed to keep everything organized.
    - sosborn 10y ago
      They also seem to be very weak to UV exposure.
- michaelt 10y ago
  The counterfeits are being sent to shoppers who were specifically looking for genuine apple products (I agree I've heard bad things about Apple's strain relief) so presumably the quality isn't the problem for these buyers. If people are walking by an apple store every day, but go bargain-hunting on the internet when they need an Apple product, then sure. Lower the price, get the customers away from Amazon, and you can make sure they get the genuine item. But if customers are going to buy from Amazon anyway, it's impossible to drop the price far enough to make counterfeits unprofitable, because counterfeits can always be more profitable as they can target lower specs. If a 2.5A fast charger costs $10 to make, and a shitty 500mA counterfeit costs $5 to make, the counterfeiter will make 100% profit even if the legitimate manufacturer sells at the cost of production.
- mikestew 10y ago
  I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape. I ask this a lot of times that I see someone complain about the quality of Apple cables: what the hell are you doing to your cables? I've still got 30 pin cables with cracked plastic on the 30 pin end, but they still work. After over 10 years of buying Apple devices that have cables, I count one cable that has gone bad. More of a rhetorical question I guess, as we're just trading anecdotes. But I find it interesting that some complain about the quality of Apple cables, whereas I have piles of them that just refuse to die.
  - ashark 10y ago
    Same question. I abuse the hell out of the half-dozen Apple cables in my house (2x macbook, a few ipad/phone)—roughly bunch them up and toss them in a bag or drawer all the time, yank them out of walls with little care, et c. My usual position for my Macbook at home puts the cable at an awkward, crimped angle and I really ought to stop that. Plus I've had my kids tripping over them, folding them, playing tug of war with them. At least once a week something happens to one of my cables that probably ought to break it. Not one has broken. WTF are people doing with their cables that's worse than what I do?
  - zuppy 10y ago
    Absolutely nothing, after about a year every one of them starts to break into pieces (and they also tend to stick like a gum). I've been using iPhones since the 3G. Now, I'm buying only cables not made by Apple. I think they're biodegradable and something triggers that faster, but I don't know what.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I've only ever had three chargers start pouring out smoke. Two of them were Apple chargers for a Macbook where the wire near the magsafe shorted so badly that the plastic had melted before I'd gotten it pulled. The second of those chargers were the one I received as a replacement for the first one. It was a clear design defect - the sleeves were too short. Despite insisting it was not their fault, I noticed the second replacement I received had a sleeve twice as long. Since then, we've not had chargers that turned out that bad, but multiple iphone charging cables have broken quickly with normal use. That said, I have plenty of failed micro USB cables for my Android devices too; there it is usually the plug that gets too loose to connect properly.
- pnathan 10y ago
  I looked for genuine Apple cables 1-2 months ago on Amazon. Couldn't find any. All offbrands and suspicious stuff. Consequently, I ordered direct from Apple. That's typical for my shopping on Amazon: I buy specific known brands usually, when I'm just browsing for something, it's pile after pile of crap... gotta sort it for the gold buried there.
- zerohm 10y ago
  Not sure if this is a reliable Apple perk, but I recently took a failing power supply into the store, expecting to pay $50-75 for a new one (because I did not trust the shady looking wares Amazon had to offer), and they replaced my 6 year old Magsafe T style with a sleek L style for free. I'm pretty sure they are incentivized to do this because of all the shady knockoffs.
- Steeeve 10y ago
  I don't buy a lot of cables... in fact I don't remember the last time I bought one. I was going through apple headphones entirely too frequently and at one point decided to get the protection plan with some. Best money I ever spent. Every few months I trade in my falling apart headphones for new ones.
saryant 10y ago
Beyond Apple accessories, Amazon is getting more and more unusable. With electronics and fashion, it's due to wading through fakes. But in virtually any category, the problem is wading through tens of thousands of results. The reviews can't be trusted. I've seen so many products with a seemingly five-star rating, but the top three up-voted reviews are 1-star. Yesterday I was searching for bedsheets. The term "bed sheet set" returns over 600,000 results. I just want the top 5 or 10. I don't want to wade through this many. Problem is, if I can't trust the reviews, how do I sort the shit from what I actually want? With some products, of course, this isn't a problem—books, for instance—but that's only because I know what title I'm looking for or my search is so niche that I'm only going to get a tiny handful of results. There's big money in someone taking Costco's model of picking the handful of products in a category that will work for most people and applying it to Amazon. Either search needs to get a hell of a lot better or someone needs to bring in curation. (I used to be skeptical of business models like Casper but now I get it—a lack of options can be a luxury)
- gshakir 10y ago
  Yes, I agree that reviews cannot be trusted. When I was shopping for a probiotic, the 5 stars products were mostly filled with paid reviews where the reviewer gets the product at a discount for their "honest" review.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Also the way Amazon averages reviews is... interesting to say the least. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/B01B6ZI2Y8/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_btm?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/B01B6ZI2Y8/ref=cm_cr_dp...
  - endemic 10y ago
    tl;dr version: http://imgur.com/a/eXWFE http://imgur.com/a/eXWFE
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  > With some products, of course, this isn't a problem—books, for instance Don't be so sure. I've run across counterfeit books on Amazon before. The quality of them was vastly inferior (covers printed on inkjets and laminated, basically), and of course no money is actually going to the author. I'd much sooner buy a real softcover book than a fake hardcover book.
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martin-adams 10y ago
I am now very wary of buying some products from Amazon due to counterfeiting. I seem impossible to buy genuine razor blades as one example. I bought my wife a Nutribullet from Amazon (marketplace seller) only to find it was counterfeit. It even cost more than my local store. Amazon weren't consistently helpful either. After being really supportive speaking with them, they just didn't follow through. They then asked me to return the item to the seller, but I refused as the seller would only list it again. If it wasn't a safety risk to others, I wouldn't have cared as much. I did get my refund after a lot of effort. When it comes to power adapters I don't risk cheap third party makes.
- techthroway443 10y ago
  How did you figure out it was counterfeit?
  - martin-adams 10y ago
    I saw a BBC report suggesting the dangers of this product being counterfeit which made me think. Then I compared online images to the product and the thing that convinced me was there is a missing registered symbol on the logo. The logo looked a little out of alignment as well. Then after buying a store brought version I compared them side by side and you can tell all the differences really easily then. It was a very, very good copy though.
- massysett 10y ago
  I will only buy from third-party sellers if the brand is operating its own store. Anker is a good example. I never buy from third parties selling name-brand items. But since Amazon commingles many products there are no guarantees. However, at least it is easy to get refunds on items Amazon fulfills.
- deleted 10y ago
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Apreche 10y ago
Yeah, if you want to buy the genuine article it sucks that you end up with a knock-off. It's very hard to tell the difference on Amazon where the photo on the product page isn't guaranteed to match the product you will receive. Happens with a lot more than just cables and chargers. I've even seen it with things like kitchen tools. But that's distracting from the real problem. That problem being that even genuine Apple cables are overpriced and shitty. If Apple provided quality durable cables of various lengths at reasonable prices, nobody would buy buying them from Amazon instead of from Apple. Every time someone goes to Amazon to buy a cable, it's because their Apple one disintegrated. As for chargers, the Apple ones are just fine, but they only charge one device at a time. There are plenty of small, inexpensive, and high quality charging devices available that can charge 5x or even 10x devices at once. The third party products are just better.
- cstejerean 10y ago
  It's definitely not every time. I haven't had any problems with Apple cables for example. But I still buy more on occasion because I have misplaced them, or because I need extras for traveling, for the car, for the office, etc. I am really curious what everyone complaining about Apple cables manages to do to theirs in order to cause so much damage. I suspect most people could benefit from learning how to properly coil a cable. https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tnhyut-coil-cable/ https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tnhyut-coil-cable/
  - Retric 10y ago
    For longer cables I often find this works even better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYQWJl3Zv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYQWJl3Zv8 The advantage is you can get at both ends, and add remove length at will, plus you avoid having excessive tension. Downside is you can't really throw long cables and have them unwind which can be really useful.
- spronkey 10y ago
  Yeah... If Apple oh, I don't know, halved the price of their cables, and maybe went outside the mould a bit with lengths and multi-chargers as you mention, I for one wouldn't bother looking elsewhere.
mox1 10y ago
Over the past year I've gotten increasingly frustrated with the overall Quality of the Amazon shopping "experience." I used to be able to trust Amazon. I could simply type in the type of item I wanted, search for the highest reviewed / rated and click buy. Now, I have to: 1. Wade through the Ads and crap products to find what I actually searched for. 2. Read all of the comments, perform some type of judgement whether these are fake reviews, sponsored reviews, etc. 3. Figure out if it is "Fulfilled by Amazon" or sold directly (I only recently realized all of the "Fulfilled by Amazon" items get commingled, so I'm getting basically god knows what). 4. If Fulfilled, now I have to research how reputable the selling company is. Just yesterday I found a company selling baby formula, whose domain name was registered last month, and via a privacy service!?!!? If you can't list your business address, I'm not buying from you. 5. Now I need to determine whether the sold by Amazon item is fake or legit. Lets hope some other sucker buys it before me and posts a good review. At this point, I would rather just goto Target or Walgreens, CVSm etc and buy the damn thing. Taking 20-30 minutes to research every purchase is getting very old. ...But hey 2 day shipping for $8/ month right!
- wpietri 10y ago
  Yes. For a long time, I felt like they were on my side. But that was before the introduction of ads, obviously manipulated reviews and star scores, and vast arrays of garbage products. Now I feel like they are starting to see me as an object of exploitation. That, alas, is the natural outcome of a metrics-driven management style. If you use short-term measures and see revenue increases as good, then you inevitably stop seeing your customers as people; human relationships are subtle and long term. For a long time no competitor could have gotten my interest, because I trusted Amazon. But now I'd be willing to switch.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    But the shipping is so great...
  - greggarious 10y ago
    Additionally if you have an issue, they often want you to ship the item back. Personally, I do not own a printer. If the 20 dollar Amazon Basics backpack I buy requires me to metro to a library, print a shipping label, find or buy a box to send it back in, then walk to a post office, that can be 1-2 hours of lost productivity - often more opportunity cost than the item itself cost. Now if something isn't urgent, I'm more likely to just go to a CVS or Walgreens - at least if the item fails I can return it.
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DenisM 10y ago
Just send the counterfeits back. Amazon will catch on fairly quickly.
- mikeash 10y ago
  That only works if you can reliably detect them.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Counterfeits are not always easy to detect, especially not right away. A counterfeit Macbook charger fooled me at first.
- astrodust 10y ago
  They ran out of fucks to give a long time ago.
infodroid 10y ago
There is a more interesting conclusion we can draw from the data, which is that 90% of people who bought Apple-branded chargers & cables sold on Amazon either: - didn't care that the products were fake, or - couldn't tell the difference between the two
- mikeash 10y ago
  Is the second one really that interesting? I have a hard time distinguishing, and I'm a professional in this industry and have been screwing with computers for 30 years. The average Jane or Joe has no chance. That's the whole point of trademark law: the average person can't reasonably detect whether a product is genuine or a ripoff based on its physical properties, so we make it illegal to pretend.
  - infodroid 10y ago
    But if the counterfeit is as good as the genuine Apple product then what is the real difference anymore? The same isn't true for counterfeit products in other categories of goods such as designer clothing or accessories, which often use inferior materials, and are easier to detect for the average person.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      I agree that it doesn't matter to the buyer if the counterfeit is just as good. The trouble is that there's a huge middle ground between "just as good" and "obviously crap the moment you pull it out of the box." If a cable frays into uselessness a year after you buy it, or your power adapter is terribly inefficient, or some bit of shoddy construction starts a fire, how are you to know it's because it's a counterfeit and not just because you got a bad product from Apple? Even if you could know, it's too late, they already have your money.
    - pi-rat 10y ago
      Of course there is a big difference, your perfectly packaged charger is more than likely a fire hazard and you might not be able to tell based on the exterior or the first few weeks of usage. http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te...
gnicholas 10y ago
This headline is misleading—it’s not that 90% of all chargers/cables on Amazon are fake, it’s that 90% of the suspicious ones that Apple purchases/tests are. They’re not going to buy ones from Belkin, Amazon Basics, or other manufacturers that are Apple-certified. They’re going to focus on ones from unknown manufacturers, or ones with prices that are suspiciously low.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  I don't think Belkin et al. sell their products as 'genuine' Apple products, do they?
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    Good point. But still, it's not that 90% of all listed products are fake—it's 90% of the ones that Apple selected to purchase and test. Given that they only purchased 100 different products, this isn't a huge sample. It would be interesting to know how many they looked at on Amazon and decided not to purchase (presumably because the appearance and price were not suspicious). That would shed more light on the true percentage of "Apple" chargers/cables on Amazon that are fake.
tostitos1979 10y ago
I bought an Apple case at a retailer in my country (sort of like Radioshack). While the case was Apple priced, I have a bad feeling it was a fake (case has minor blemishes). What is bad is I have no good way of verifying if it is real or fake.
r1ch 10y ago
We sell esports merchandise (t-shirts, hats, etc) with our team logo, and there's a lot of counterfeits out there trying to use our brand on print-on-demand sites (Redbubble, Zazzle, etc) and generic shopping sites like Alibaba and Amazon. Out of all the sites we've investigated and sent takedown notices to, Amazon has by far been the worst. The marketplace is full of counterfeit products, and we've been having a very hard time trying to get them removed, even though we have copyright over the design and trademark on our brand name. Quote Amazon on our latest batch, "We respect a manufacturer's right to enter into exclusive distribution agreements. However, we do not help to enforce these agreements. This is a matter between the manufacturer and the distributors.".
mmagin 10y ago
One little trick I've found: Once you select something a couple levels down the tree of categories, then the "Seller" is a filter available on the left side of the screen. There are some searches where I just filter to what's directly sold by Amazon, because 90% of everything is the random sellers direct from China like you find on ebay.
desireco42 10y ago
However 'fake' they are, they seem to be working well.
- randyrand 10y ago
  Power adapters break all the time and there is a very real risk of burning down your house when they do. Electrical fires are not rare. Take a look at an Apple charger vs a counterfeit. The lack of proper circuit isolation on the counterfeit is a prime example of how to cause a fire when a component fails. http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te...
  - infodroid 10y ago
    There are hundreds of obscure branded power adapters on Amazon, and they are likely to be just as dangerous as a counterfeit Apple-branded adapter. So the real problem is the lack of electrical safety guarantees for products sold online, not the existence of counterfeit products. A counterfeit handbag never killed anyone.
    - randyrand 10y ago
      > So the real problem is the lack of electrical safety guarantees for products sold online I disagree. Not all products have this problem. I may be in the minority here, but I actively throw away my crappy power plugs because of the risk they pose. That's an uneeded risk I don't take. Looking in my apt I have: - Anker chargers for my USB stuff - An Apple power adapter for my mac - A Vizio TV with built in PSU - AudioTechnica PSU on my speakers - General Electric Microwave I'm sure I'm missing some PSUs that plug into the wall (as opposed to internal ones) somewhere. But the point is, I have a reasonable guarantee of safety when buying from an established brand. General Electric is over 100 years old. By allowing counterfeiters, my expectation of good engineering when buying from established brands is eroded. It diminishes my safety. If you don't use crappy PSUs, then crappy PSUs are not a problem.
xenihn 10y ago
I have an increasingly growing list of things that I'll never buy on Amazon because all of the listings are through 3rd-party vendors participating in Prime. The risk of receiving counterfeit and/or defective product is too great. - any peripheral for Apple not directly sold by Apple or Amazon - Gilette razor blades (yes, I've tried straight razors, my skin and hair are awful) - SD/MicroSD cards - Condoms I know Amazon will instantly refund me and pay for return shipping if I do get a fake, but I'd rather just spend a bit extra and buy it somewhere else where I know it won't be an issue.
- DanielleMolloy 10y ago
  In my experience their customer service indeed refunded and paid return shipping on counterfeit products. I had to request a refund due to fake products 2-3 times over the many years I have been a happy customer there. No problem with Amazon's service with such issues, ever. Counterfeits have been a problem on Amazon for several years. There was a time when only places like eBay or Rakuten had these issues. On Amazon you could just clearly see which products come directly from their warehouses and which you thus could trust 100%, and which from e.g. their Marketplace sellers (which has always involved a little risk). I am really puzzled when / why they decided to mix both worlds up, in visual disguise. Apparently at some point they have made the bad decision to become the Western Alibaba-like marketplace. I had hoped that they, having some very intelligent employees, will eventually solve this issue; but I don't see this happening right now. In online shopping trust is extra important, and regarding the counterfeits they are gambling with their strong customer trust quite a bit.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  counterfeit condoms? That's horribly scary!
- majewsky 10y ago
  > Condoms So Amazon babies are a thing now?
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >Gilette razor blades (yes, I've tried straight razors, my skin and hair are awful) Get a double-edged safety razor. It takes some practice to learn to use it well, but it's worth the investment. Personally I like the Edwin Jagger razor handles.
mancerayder 10y ago
All the counterfeit crap on Amazon has another unintended effect: it makes the reviews less accurate. For example, when looking at the review of shirts the other day from Lucky, some of the reviews were normal, then others said things like, 'Stitching came apart, material flimsy, but may have been a knock off. Shame on you Amazon for not preventing that.' Roughly paraphrased, I've been seeing reviews like that of late. It skews the average rating of the product and hurts the manufacturer.
- infodroid 10y ago
  It not only makes the reviews less accurate but it turns shopping into something of a gambling experience. Here is a current example... I was shopping for a Sony DK52 charging dock on Amazon UK. Even though this device is the only official dock from Sony for many of its current devices on sale, Amazon doesn't sell it (anymore?). It is only available new from one of 31 third-party sellers. And most of the prominent reviews on the product page [1] complain that the device they received was poor quality and likely to be fake! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DK52-Micro-Charging-Xperia-Black/dp/B00XWH0EFO/ref https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DK52-Micro-Charging-Xperia-Bla...
jbpetersen 10y ago
Anyone who's into blockchains take note. As fun as tracking complex financial logic may be, accurately tracking physical supply chains is probably the quickest route to notably improving the lives of people in general.
- infodroid 10y ago
  In the case of tracking counterfeit Apple products, how would a blockchain solution be better than a simple database of serial numbers maintained by Apple for example?
  - jbpetersen 10y ago
    The small addition of hashing updates to the database with a hash of the last snapshot provides a sense of history that can't be tampered with. Otherwise you risk headlines like "Counterfeit devices flood market after Apple registry hacked, AAPL down XX%".
  - majewsky 10y ago
    A SQLite file doesn't get you VC money.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I appreciate Apple pursuing this, they have the resources and it does give them a black eye when something seems legit and then blows up. And Amazon has definitely changed in terms of the sketchyness of its store experience. I expect that is a change in leadership and I really mourn the fact that Wall Street has rewarded them for it by boosting their stock price[1]. I observed Ebay trying to "get to Amazon's level" and of course Amazon has been coming down to Ebay's level and they are meeting somewhere in the middle, a global cutthroat marketplace with the buyer having to seriously up their game in order to avoid scams. But the case in point is counterfeit Apple products being sold both by Amazon and by people using Amazon as a sales platform. It would be useful if there was some blowback on Amazon itself for facilitating fraudulent sellers as that would provide some incentive for them to crack down on it. In much of these cases when it is a lot of disconnected individuals getting hurt there isn't an effective feedback mechanism to get it corrected. [1] Disclosure I do hold AMZN stock but not very much.
koolba 10y ago
They should check Woot too. They have "Genuine(TM) Apple Chargers" on there every other week. I wouldn't be surprised if some, or more likely all, of them fell in this category as well.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Woot is now owned by Amazon so its possible its from the same sketchy inventory.
exogen 10y ago
Shopping on Amazon has become terrible and I've stopped doing it unless it's the only option (which is very rare). There is seemingly just no quality control at all in their catalog; it's like shopping in a flea market or junkyard and they need to take responsibility for it. Two screenshots from last year, when I was trying to shop for electrical receptical covers: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQroCDU8AAw5U7.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQroCDU8AAw5U7.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQqWPnVAAArZM1.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQqWPnVAAArZM1.png The first is categorized under "Tools & Home Improvement > Power & Hand Tools > Hand Tools > Pliers > Snap-Ring Pliers". The second is categorized under "Musical Instruments > Drums & Percussion > Folk & World Hand Drums > Timbales". How does that even happen? Can't they use some machine learning to detect that this is so obviously wrong?
- majewsky 10y ago
  Machine learning wouldn't help there, because it will learn from the existing categorizations. Garbage in, garbage out.
  - exogen 10y ago
    (1) Why would they train on the existing categorizations? You train on a smaller, known-good dataset. (2) Outlier detection is a thing, even if they included the bad data. It would be trivial to detect that a small percentage of things categorized as "musical instruments" have extremely dissimilar facets/descriptions/images to all other things in that category, and very similar to things in a completely unrelated category.
izzydata 10y ago
So are we coming full circle? Are malls going to be popular again?
nikanj 10y ago
I'm currently waiting for a package ordered in september with a "2-3 days" shipping time. Apparently everyone and their dog are running drop-shipping businesses nowadays, and ordering from amazon gets you the same reliability and speed as aliexpress.com does.
throwaway420 10y ago
Interesting that Apple is concerned about the fire and electric shock hazard of the knock-off charger cables when their own cables are brittle as hell and subject to the same issues. Almost entirely across the board, Apple's hardware hardware quality is absolutely unmatched or comparable with industry leading standards except for their flimsy cables which routinely fall apart for so many people. Whichever person inside their company fetishizes thin cables is 100% evil. Not just in terms of deliberately designing a failing product that needs to be replaced after a year or so, but in terms of putting people at risk for fire and shock. This is a well known problem with Apple's products. The idiotic knock off companies should forget trying to copy Apple here and just make some normal slightly thicker cables with proper strain relief that don't break if you look at it wrong. You eliminate your lawsuit risk from Apple and you sell to a growing market of people who hate Apple's cables.
- majewsky 10y ago
  > Whichever person inside their company fetishizes thin anything is 100% evil. FTFY
jheriko 10y ago
this is poor form from amazon, but this rattles the cage of the bees in the bonnet of my bugbear because of the subject matter of apple proprietary standard cables why doesn't apple just use a generic standard? its in the best interests of everyone involved. they can still make official cables... i'd also give them a bit more credit if they made these things to a decent quality standard - like actually earthing my macbook when its plugged in instead of lacquering over the connector so it looks shiny but can't possibly work. i've never owned anything that so frequently gives me small shocks - and i've heard the same story from everyone who uses these things in the uk... (maybe other regions get some better quality... our plugs are after all their own special type) they are getting better though, the new iphone 5 and later charger cable actually has a practical level of build quality. unlike the previous generation of official apple cables, which seemed almost designed to fail.... that weak connection on the charging end that always wore out, always developed kinks, and in the hands of the naive would end up as frayed wires... and thats after a mere 6 months to a year of light use. worse build quality than any usb cable i've ever owned.
sevensor 10y ago
I'm waiting for Amazon to spin off its still-reliable store for physical books as a separate premium brand. (Although the only reason there's not much fraud there is that bookselling doesn't pay very well in the first place.)
ChildOfChaos 10y ago
i have always kinda hated Amazon. There service is just badly made and run, there products are pretty crappy too. Last purchase I made, took them ten days to get it to me, even though it was supposed to be next day delivery. I wasted three seperate days waiting at home for it all day, while there tracking showed it was out for delivery, only to find that it was far far away from me and had arrived at the wrong depot that morning (Why did nobody call or alert me of this?) They kept blaming the delivery company but it was Amazon's own delivery company that finally delivered the item. Even then on a different day than they promised and luckily someone else happened to be home. They then offered me a free month of prime, I couldn't care less about prime. It's a total rip off, basically a next day delivery service with a few half assed add on services, that if you wanted, you would pay someone else for a real version of the service, ie Music - Spotify etc, Movies - Netflix.
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SreejitS 10y ago
Well at least it is following the Sturgeon's law :)
dman 10y ago
Amazon is using dark practices in more than one place now. For instance in their Prime video page the listings and search results will include movies / shows you are not allowed to watch. (for some reason some content is only available for select devices or for certain regions). This makes the catalog look a lot larger than it really is. From a user point of view it is frustrating because you click through on many results before you find something you can watch. I reported this as an issue to them sometime back but havent seen any changes.

284 points by Lio 10y ago

danso 10y ago

As a loyal Apple user, I humbly suggest that maybe this would be a lot less of a problem if Apple itself sold better cables for a more reasonable price? I have no problem going into an Apple store to buy overpriced things. I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape. The funny part of this story to me is why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker. edit: In retrospect, I don't have any complaints about the chsrgers. I've never bought a store charger because the ones that come with devices work just fine. It's the cables that I have issue with. Even with things like the HDMI-lightning adapter ($50), they go to pieces without being under heavy use.

tashoecraft 10y ago
While this may be true for lightning cables, apple power bricks are definitely worth their price. Yes they are expensive, but after I tried 3 different 3rd party bricks in the span of a year, it's apparent a high quality alternative can't be made for much cheaper.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  The circuitry in the brick may be quality, but the cables attached to it certainly aren't. I consistently have to replace those bricks due to fraying cables. Apple could go a long way by making the cables on both ends of their adapter cheaply replaceable.
  - Lio 10y ago
    I guess this could happen if they move to all USB-c ports on the laptops. They could change the design to put the MagSafe part on the 'brick'. I'm not sure how well that would compare to the current system but I bet it's been considered.
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gr3yh47 10y ago
> why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker. same reason you would buy almost any apple product i imagine. it's not the outdated, overpriced hardware; its the experience and the fit and finish.
Lio 10y ago
Here's a good teardown of an Apple charger which shows where the cost is in the design. http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr... What I don't get is how come the cable part is such lousy quality compared to the sophistication in the PSU part.
- danso 10y ago
  Yeah I agree. I stupidly said "cables and chargers" when I just meant lightning cables. I haven't had a charger fail on me in any noticeable way. I've never bought a new USB charger because I have so many others lying around that can fill in for a pinch, but I've never considered looking for a third-party laptop brick adapter when needing to replace a lost one.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > What I don't get is how come the cable part is such lousy quality compared to the sophistication in the PSU part Design
- grapeshot 10y ago
  Apple cables always fall apart because they use the thinnest insulation possible and don't put on proper strain reliefs. Probably just another example of design over common sense. It gets especially bad when you wrap the cable tightly around the sharp plastic hooks on the MacBook power adapter that are supposed to keep everything organized.
  - sosborn 10y ago
    They also seem to be very weak to UV exposure.
michaelt 10y ago
The counterfeits are being sent to shoppers who were specifically looking for genuine apple products (I agree I've heard bad things about Apple's strain relief) so presumably the quality isn't the problem for these buyers. If people are walking by an apple store every day, but go bargain-hunting on the internet when they need an Apple product, then sure. Lower the price, get the customers away from Amazon, and you can make sure they get the genuine item. But if customers are going to buy from Amazon anyway, it's impossible to drop the price far enough to make counterfeits unprofitable, because counterfeits can always be more profitable as they can target lower specs. If a 2.5A fast charger costs $10 to make, and a shitty 500mA counterfeit costs $5 to make, the counterfeiter will make 100% profit even if the legitimate manufacturer sells at the cost of production.
mikestew 10y ago
I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape. I ask this a lot of times that I see someone complain about the quality of Apple cables: what the hell are you doing to your cables? I've still got 30 pin cables with cracked plastic on the 30 pin end, but they still work. After over 10 years of buying Apple devices that have cables, I count one cable that has gone bad. More of a rhetorical question I guess, as we're just trading anecdotes. But I find it interesting that some complain about the quality of Apple cables, whereas I have piles of them that just refuse to die.
- ashark 10y ago
  Same question. I abuse the hell out of the half-dozen Apple cables in my house (2x macbook, a few ipad/phone)—roughly bunch them up and toss them in a bag or drawer all the time, yank them out of walls with little care, et c. My usual position for my Macbook at home puts the cable at an awkward, crimped angle and I really ought to stop that. Plus I've had my kids tripping over them, folding them, playing tug of war with them. At least once a week something happens to one of my cables that probably ought to break it. Not one has broken. WTF are people doing with their cables that's worse than what I do?
- zuppy 10y ago
  Absolutely nothing, after about a year every one of them starts to break into pieces (and they also tend to stick like a gum). I've been using iPhones since the 3G. Now, I'm buying only cables not made by Apple. I think they're biodegradable and something triggers that faster, but I don't know what.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I've only ever had three chargers start pouring out smoke. Two of them were Apple chargers for a Macbook where the wire near the magsafe shorted so badly that the plastic had melted before I'd gotten it pulled. The second of those chargers were the one I received as a replacement for the first one. It was a clear design defect - the sleeves were too short. Despite insisting it was not their fault, I noticed the second replacement I received had a sleeve twice as long. Since then, we've not had chargers that turned out that bad, but multiple iphone charging cables have broken quickly with normal use. That said, I have plenty of failed micro USB cables for my Android devices too; there it is usually the plug that gets too loose to connect properly.
pnathan 10y ago
I looked for genuine Apple cables 1-2 months ago on Amazon. Couldn't find any. All offbrands and suspicious stuff. Consequently, I ordered direct from Apple. That's typical for my shopping on Amazon: I buy specific known brands usually, when I'm just browsing for something, it's pile after pile of crap... gotta sort it for the gold buried there.
zerohm 10y ago
Not sure if this is a reliable Apple perk, but I recently took a failing power supply into the store, expecting to pay $50-75 for a new one (because I did not trust the shady looking wares Amazon had to offer), and they replaced my 6 year old Magsafe T style with a sleek L style for free. I'm pretty sure they are incentivized to do this because of all the shady knockoffs.
Steeeve 10y ago
I don't buy a lot of cables... in fact I don't remember the last time I bought one. I was going through apple headphones entirely too frequently and at one point decided to get the protection plan with some. Best money I ever spent. Every few months I trade in my falling apart headphones for new ones.

saryant 10y ago

Beyond Apple accessories, Amazon is getting more and more unusable. With electronics and fashion, it's due to wading through fakes. But in virtually any category, the problem is wading through tens of thousands of results. The reviews can't be trusted. I've seen so many products with a seemingly five-star rating, but the top three up-voted reviews are 1-star. Yesterday I was searching for bedsheets. The term "bed sheet set" returns over 600,000 results. I just want the top 5 or 10. I don't want to wade through this many. Problem is, if I can't trust the reviews, how do I sort the shit from what I actually want? With some products, of course, this isn't a problem—books, for instance—but that's only because I know what title I'm looking for or my search is so niche that I'm only going to get a tiny handful of results. There's big money in someone taking Costco's model of picking the handful of products in a category that will work for most people and applying it to Amazon. Either search needs to get a hell of a lot better or someone needs to bring in curation. (I used to be skeptical of business models like Casper but now I get it—a lack of options can be a luxury)

gshakir 10y ago
Yes, I agree that reviews cannot be trusted. When I was shopping for a probiotic, the 5 stars products were mostly filled with paid reviews where the reviewer gets the product at a discount for their "honest" review.
cmdrfred 10y ago
Also the way Amazon averages reviews is... interesting to say the least. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/B01B6ZI2Y8/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_btm?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/B01B6ZI2Y8/ref=cm_cr_dp...
- endemic 10y ago
  tl;dr version: http://imgur.com/a/eXWFE http://imgur.com/a/eXWFE
CydeWeys 10y ago
> With some products, of course, this isn't a problem—books, for instance Don't be so sure. I've run across counterfeit books on Amazon before. The quality of them was vastly inferior (covers printed on inkjets and laminated, basically), and of course no money is actually going to the author. I'd much sooner buy a real softcover book than a fake hardcover book.

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martin-adams 10y ago

I am now very wary of buying some products from Amazon due to counterfeiting. I seem impossible to buy genuine razor blades as one example. I bought my wife a Nutribullet from Amazon (marketplace seller) only to find it was counterfeit. It even cost more than my local store. Amazon weren't consistently helpful either. After being really supportive speaking with them, they just didn't follow through. They then asked me to return the item to the seller, but I refused as the seller would only list it again. If it wasn't a safety risk to others, I wouldn't have cared as much. I did get my refund after a lot of effort. When it comes to power adapters I don't risk cheap third party makes.

techthroway443 10y ago
How did you figure out it was counterfeit?
- martin-adams 10y ago
  I saw a BBC report suggesting the dangers of this product being counterfeit which made me think. Then I compared online images to the product and the thing that convinced me was there is a missing registered symbol on the logo. The logo looked a little out of alignment as well. Then after buying a store brought version I compared them side by side and you can tell all the differences really easily then. It was a very, very good copy though.
massysett 10y ago
I will only buy from third-party sellers if the brand is operating its own store. Anker is a good example. I never buy from third parties selling name-brand items. But since Amazon commingles many products there are no guarantees. However, at least it is easy to get refunds on items Amazon fulfills.
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Apreche 10y ago

Yeah, if you want to buy the genuine article it sucks that you end up with a knock-off. It's very hard to tell the difference on Amazon where the photo on the product page isn't guaranteed to match the product you will receive. Happens with a lot more than just cables and chargers. I've even seen it with things like kitchen tools. But that's distracting from the real problem. That problem being that even genuine Apple cables are overpriced and shitty. If Apple provided quality durable cables of various lengths at reasonable prices, nobody would buy buying them from Amazon instead of from Apple. Every time someone goes to Amazon to buy a cable, it's because their Apple one disintegrated. As for chargers, the Apple ones are just fine, but they only charge one device at a time. There are plenty of small, inexpensive, and high quality charging devices available that can charge 5x or even 10x devices at once. The third party products are just better.

cstejerean 10y ago
It's definitely not every time. I haven't had any problems with Apple cables for example. But I still buy more on occasion because I have misplaced them, or because I need extras for traveling, for the car, for the office, etc. I am really curious what everyone complaining about Apple cables manages to do to theirs in order to cause so much damage. I suspect most people could benefit from learning how to properly coil a cable. https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tnhyut-coil-cable/ https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tnhyut-coil-cable/
- Retric 10y ago
  For longer cables I often find this works even better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYQWJl3Zv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYQWJl3Zv8 The advantage is you can get at both ends, and add remove length at will, plus you avoid having excessive tension. Downside is you can't really throw long cables and have them unwind which can be really useful.
spronkey 10y ago
Yeah... If Apple oh, I don't know, halved the price of their cables, and maybe went outside the mould a bit with lengths and multi-chargers as you mention, I for one wouldn't bother looking elsewhere.

mox1 10y ago

Over the past year I've gotten increasingly frustrated with the overall Quality of the Amazon shopping "experience." I used to be able to trust Amazon. I could simply type in the type of item I wanted, search for the highest reviewed / rated and click buy. Now, I have to: 1. Wade through the Ads and crap products to find what I actually searched for. 2. Read all of the comments, perform some type of judgement whether these are fake reviews, sponsored reviews, etc. 3. Figure out if it is "Fulfilled by Amazon" or sold directly (I only recently realized all of the "Fulfilled by Amazon" items get commingled, so I'm getting basically god knows what). 4. If Fulfilled, now I have to research how reputable the selling company is. Just yesterday I found a company selling baby formula, whose domain name was registered last month, and via a privacy service!?!!? If you can't list your business address, I'm not buying from you. 5. Now I need to determine whether the sold by Amazon item is fake or legit. Lets hope some other sucker buys it before me and posts a good review. At this point, I would rather just goto Target or Walgreens, CVSm etc and buy the damn thing. Taking 20-30 minutes to research every purchase is getting very old. ...But hey 2 day shipping for $8/ month right!

wpietri 10y ago
Yes. For a long time, I felt like they were on my side. But that was before the introduction of ads, obviously manipulated reviews and star scores, and vast arrays of garbage products. Now I feel like they are starting to see me as an object of exploitation. That, alas, is the natural outcome of a metrics-driven management style. If you use short-term measures and see revenue increases as good, then you inevitably stop seeing your customers as people; human relationships are subtle and long term. For a long time no competitor could have gotten my interest, because I trusted Amazon. But now I'd be willing to switch.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  But the shipping is so great...
- greggarious 10y ago
  Additionally if you have an issue, they often want you to ship the item back. Personally, I do not own a printer. If the 20 dollar Amazon Basics backpack I buy requires me to metro to a library, print a shipping label, find or buy a box to send it back in, then walk to a post office, that can be 1-2 hours of lost productivity - often more opportunity cost than the item itself cost. Now if something isn't urgent, I'm more likely to just go to a CVS or Walgreens - at least if the item fails I can return it.

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DenisM 10y ago

Just send the counterfeits back. Amazon will catch on fairly quickly.

mikeash 10y ago
That only works if you can reliably detect them.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
Counterfeits are not always easy to detect, especially not right away. A counterfeit Macbook charger fooled me at first.
astrodust 10y ago
They ran out of fucks to give a long time ago.

infodroid 10y ago

There is a more interesting conclusion we can draw from the data, which is that 90% of people who bought Apple-branded chargers & cables sold on Amazon either: - didn't care that the products were fake, or - couldn't tell the difference between the two

mikeash 10y ago
Is the second one really that interesting? I have a hard time distinguishing, and I'm a professional in this industry and have been screwing with computers for 30 years. The average Jane or Joe has no chance. That's the whole point of trademark law: the average person can't reasonably detect whether a product is genuine or a ripoff based on its physical properties, so we make it illegal to pretend.
- infodroid 10y ago
  But if the counterfeit is as good as the genuine Apple product then what is the real difference anymore? The same isn't true for counterfeit products in other categories of goods such as designer clothing or accessories, which often use inferior materials, and are easier to detect for the average person.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I agree that it doesn't matter to the buyer if the counterfeit is just as good. The trouble is that there's a huge middle ground between "just as good" and "obviously crap the moment you pull it out of the box." If a cable frays into uselessness a year after you buy it, or your power adapter is terribly inefficient, or some bit of shoddy construction starts a fire, how are you to know it's because it's a counterfeit and not just because you got a bad product from Apple? Even if you could know, it's too late, they already have your money.
  - pi-rat 10y ago
    Of course there is a big difference, your perfectly packaged charger is more than likely a fire hazard and you might not be able to tell based on the exterior or the first few weeks of usage. http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te...

gnicholas 10y ago

This headline is misleading—it’s not that 90% of all chargers/cables on Amazon are fake, it’s that 90% of the suspicious ones that Apple purchases/tests are. They’re not going to buy ones from Belkin, Amazon Basics, or other manufacturers that are Apple-certified. They’re going to focus on ones from unknown manufacturers, or ones with prices that are suspiciously low.

kgwgk 10y ago
I don't think Belkin et al. sell their products as 'genuine' Apple products, do they?
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Good point. But still, it's not that 90% of all listed products are fake—it's 90% of the ones that Apple selected to purchase and test. Given that they only purchased 100 different products, this isn't a huge sample. It would be interesting to know how many they looked at on Amazon and decided not to purchase (presumably because the appearance and price were not suspicious). That would shed more light on the true percentage of "Apple" chargers/cables on Amazon that are fake.

tostitos1979 10y ago

I bought an Apple case at a retailer in my country (sort of like Radioshack). While the case was Apple priced, I have a bad feeling it was a fake (case has minor blemishes). What is bad is I have no good way of verifying if it is real or fake.

r1ch 10y ago

We sell esports merchandise (t-shirts, hats, etc) with our team logo, and there's a lot of counterfeits out there trying to use our brand on print-on-demand sites (Redbubble, Zazzle, etc) and generic shopping sites like Alibaba and Amazon. Out of all the sites we've investigated and sent takedown notices to, Amazon has by far been the worst. The marketplace is full of counterfeit products, and we've been having a very hard time trying to get them removed, even though we have copyright over the design and trademark on our brand name. Quote Amazon on our latest batch, "We respect a manufacturer's right to enter into exclusive distribution agreements. However, we do not help to enforce these agreements. This is a matter between the manufacturer and the distributors.".

mmagin 10y ago

One little trick I've found: Once you select something a couple levels down the tree of categories, then the "Seller" is a filter available on the left side of the screen. There are some searches where I just filter to what's directly sold by Amazon, because 90% of everything is the random sellers direct from China like you find on ebay.

desireco42 10y ago

However 'fake' they are, they seem to be working well.

randyrand 10y ago
Power adapters break all the time and there is a very real risk of burning down your house when they do. Electrical fires are not rare. Take a look at an Apple charger vs a counterfeit. The lack of proper circuit isolation on the counterfeit is a prime example of how to cause a fire when a component fails. http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te...
- infodroid 10y ago
  There are hundreds of obscure branded power adapters on Amazon, and they are likely to be just as dangerous as a counterfeit Apple-branded adapter. So the real problem is the lack of electrical safety guarantees for products sold online, not the existence of counterfeit products. A counterfeit handbag never killed anyone.
  - randyrand 10y ago
    > So the real problem is the lack of electrical safety guarantees for products sold online I disagree. Not all products have this problem. I may be in the minority here, but I actively throw away my crappy power plugs because of the risk they pose. That's an uneeded risk I don't take. Looking in my apt I have: - Anker chargers for my USB stuff - An Apple power adapter for my mac - A Vizio TV with built in PSU - AudioTechnica PSU on my speakers - General Electric Microwave I'm sure I'm missing some PSUs that plug into the wall (as opposed to internal ones) somewhere. But the point is, I have a reasonable guarantee of safety when buying from an established brand. General Electric is over 100 years old. By allowing counterfeiters, my expectation of good engineering when buying from established brands is eroded. It diminishes my safety. If you don't use crappy PSUs, then crappy PSUs are not a problem.

xenihn 10y ago

I have an increasingly growing list of things that I'll never buy on Amazon because all of the listings are through 3rd-party vendors participating in Prime. The risk of receiving counterfeit and/or defective product is too great. - any peripheral for Apple not directly sold by Apple or Amazon - Gilette razor blades (yes, I've tried straight razors, my skin and hair are awful) - SD/MicroSD cards - Condoms I know Amazon will instantly refund me and pay for return shipping if I do get a fake, but I'd rather just spend a bit extra and buy it somewhere else where I know it won't be an issue.

DanielleMolloy 10y ago
In my experience their customer service indeed refunded and paid return shipping on counterfeit products. I had to request a refund due to fake products 2-3 times over the many years I have been a happy customer there. No problem with Amazon's service with such issues, ever. Counterfeits have been a problem on Amazon for several years. There was a time when only places like eBay or Rakuten had these issues. On Amazon you could just clearly see which products come directly from their warehouses and which you thus could trust 100%, and which from e.g. their Marketplace sellers (which has always involved a little risk). I am really puzzled when / why they decided to mix both worlds up, in visual disguise. Apparently at some point they have made the bad decision to become the Western Alibaba-like marketplace. I had hoped that they, having some very intelligent employees, will eventually solve this issue; but I don't see this happening right now. In online shopping trust is extra important, and regarding the counterfeits they are gambling with their strong customer trust quite a bit.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
counterfeit condoms? That's horribly scary!
majewsky 10y ago
> Condoms So Amazon babies are a thing now?
Grishnakh 10y ago
>Gilette razor blades (yes, I've tried straight razors, my skin and hair are awful) Get a double-edged safety razor. It takes some practice to learn to use it well, but it's worth the investment. Personally I like the Edwin Jagger razor handles.

mancerayder 10y ago

All the counterfeit crap on Amazon has another unintended effect: it makes the reviews less accurate. For example, when looking at the review of shirts the other day from Lucky, some of the reviews were normal, then others said things like, 'Stitching came apart, material flimsy, but may have been a knock off. Shame on you Amazon for not preventing that.' Roughly paraphrased, I've been seeing reviews like that of late. It skews the average rating of the product and hurts the manufacturer.

infodroid 10y ago
It not only makes the reviews less accurate but it turns shopping into something of a gambling experience. Here is a current example... I was shopping for a Sony DK52 charging dock on Amazon UK. Even though this device is the only official dock from Sony for many of its current devices on sale, Amazon doesn't sell it (anymore?). It is only available new from one of 31 third-party sellers. And most of the prominent reviews on the product page [1] complain that the device they received was poor quality and likely to be fake! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DK52-Micro-Charging-Xperia-Black/dp/B00XWH0EFO/ref https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DK52-Micro-Charging-Xperia-Bla...

jbpetersen 10y ago

Anyone who's into blockchains take note. As fun as tracking complex financial logic may be, accurately tracking physical supply chains is probably the quickest route to notably improving the lives of people in general.

infodroid 10y ago
In the case of tracking counterfeit Apple products, how would a blockchain solution be better than a simple database of serial numbers maintained by Apple for example?
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  The small addition of hashing updates to the database with a hash of the last snapshot provides a sense of history that can't be tampered with. Otherwise you risk headlines like "Counterfeit devices flood market after Apple registry hacked, AAPL down XX%".
- majewsky 10y ago
  A SQLite file doesn't get you VC money.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I appreciate Apple pursuing this, they have the resources and it does give them a black eye when something seems legit and then blows up. And Amazon has definitely changed in terms of the sketchyness of its store experience. I expect that is a change in leadership and I really mourn the fact that Wall Street has rewarded them for it by boosting their stock price[1]. I observed Ebay trying to "get to Amazon's level" and of course Amazon has been coming down to Ebay's level and they are meeting somewhere in the middle, a global cutthroat marketplace with the buyer having to seriously up their game in order to avoid scams. But the case in point is counterfeit Apple products being sold both by Amazon and by people using Amazon as a sales platform. It would be useful if there was some blowback on Amazon itself for facilitating fraudulent sellers as that would provide some incentive for them to crack down on it. In much of these cases when it is a lot of disconnected individuals getting hurt there isn't an effective feedback mechanism to get it corrected. [1] Disclosure I do hold AMZN stock but not very much.

koolba 10y ago

They should check Woot too. They have "Genuine(TM) Apple Chargers" on there every other week. I wouldn't be surprised if some, or more likely all, of them fell in this category as well.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
Woot is now owned by Amazon so its possible its from the same sketchy inventory.

exogen 10y ago

Shopping on Amazon has become terrible and I've stopped doing it unless it's the only option (which is very rare). There is seemingly just no quality control at all in their catalog; it's like shopping in a flea market or junkyard and they need to take responsibility for it. Two screenshots from last year, when I was trying to shop for electrical receptical covers: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQroCDU8AAw5U7.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQroCDU8AAw5U7.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQqWPnVAAArZM1.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQqWPnVAAArZM1.png The first is categorized under "Tools & Home Improvement > Power & Hand Tools > Hand Tools > Pliers > Snap-Ring Pliers". The second is categorized under "Musical Instruments > Drums & Percussion > Folk & World Hand Drums > Timbales". How does that even happen? Can't they use some machine learning to detect that this is so obviously wrong?

majewsky 10y ago
Machine learning wouldn't help there, because it will learn from the existing categorizations. Garbage in, garbage out.
- exogen 10y ago
  (1) Why would they train on the existing categorizations? You train on a smaller, known-good dataset. (2) Outlier detection is a thing, even if they included the bad data. It would be trivial to detect that a small percentage of things categorized as "musical instruments" have extremely dissimilar facets/descriptions/images to all other things in that category, and very similar to things in a completely unrelated category.

izzydata 10y ago

So are we coming full circle? Are malls going to be popular again?

nikanj 10y ago

I'm currently waiting for a package ordered in september with a "2-3 days" shipping time. Apparently everyone and their dog are running drop-shipping businesses nowadays, and ordering from amazon gets you the same reliability and speed as aliexpress.com does.

throwaway420 10y ago

Interesting that Apple is concerned about the fire and electric shock hazard of the knock-off charger cables when their own cables are brittle as hell and subject to the same issues. Almost entirely across the board, Apple's hardware hardware quality is absolutely unmatched or comparable with industry leading standards except for their flimsy cables which routinely fall apart for so many people. Whichever person inside their company fetishizes thin cables is 100% evil. Not just in terms of deliberately designing a failing product that needs to be replaced after a year or so, but in terms of putting people at risk for fire and shock. This is a well known problem with Apple's products. The idiotic knock off companies should forget trying to copy Apple here and just make some normal slightly thicker cables with proper strain relief that don't break if you look at it wrong. You eliminate your lawsuit risk from Apple and you sell to a growing market of people who hate Apple's cables.

majewsky 10y ago
> Whichever person inside their company fetishizes thin anything is 100% evil. FTFY

jheriko 10y ago

this is poor form from amazon, but this rattles the cage of the bees in the bonnet of my bugbear because of the subject matter of apple proprietary standard cables why doesn't apple just use a generic standard? its in the best interests of everyone involved. they can still make official cables... i'd also give them a bit more credit if they made these things to a decent quality standard - like actually earthing my macbook when its plugged in instead of lacquering over the connector so it looks shiny but can't possibly work. i've never owned anything that so frequently gives me small shocks - and i've heard the same story from everyone who uses these things in the uk... (maybe other regions get some better quality... our plugs are after all their own special type) they are getting better though, the new iphone 5 and later charger cable actually has a practical level of build quality. unlike the previous generation of official apple cables, which seemed almost designed to fail.... that weak connection on the charging end that always wore out, always developed kinks, and in the hands of the naive would end up as frayed wires... and thats after a mere 6 months to a year of light use. worse build quality than any usb cable i've ever owned.

sevensor 10y ago

I'm waiting for Amazon to spin off its still-reliable store for physical books as a separate premium brand. (Although the only reason there's not much fraud there is that bookselling doesn't pay very well in the first place.)

ChildOfChaos 10y ago

i have always kinda hated Amazon. There service is just badly made and run, there products are pretty crappy too. Last purchase I made, took them ten days to get it to me, even though it was supposed to be next day delivery. I wasted three seperate days waiting at home for it all day, while there tracking showed it was out for delivery, only to find that it was far far away from me and had arrived at the wrong depot that morning (Why did nobody call or alert me of this?) They kept blaming the delivery company but it was Amazon's own delivery company that finally delivered the item. Even then on a different day than they promised and luckily someone else happened to be home. They then offered me a free month of prime, I couldn't care less about prime. It's a total rip off, basically a next day delivery service with a few half assed add on services, that if you wanted, you would pay someone else for a real version of the service, ie Music - Spotify etc, Movies - Netflix.

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SreejitS 10y ago

Well at least it is following the Sturgeon's law :)

dman 10y ago

Amazon is using dark practices in more than one place now. For instance in their Prime video page the listings and search results will include movies / shows you are not allowed to watch. (for some reason some content is only available for select devices or for certain regions). This makes the catalog look a lot larger than it really is. From a user point of view it is frustrating because you click through on many results before you find something you can watch. I reported this as an issue to them sometime back but havent seen any changes.