6 ms·

Not joking but this is entirely user related. In the 15 years I’ve been using the things I haven’t killed a single cable. Not one. The strain relief is not grea

by hughrr 5y ago

Not joking but this is entirely user related. In the 15 years I’ve been using the things I haven’t killed a single cable. Not one. The strain relief is not great but if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there. The killers are people who sit there with the cable rammed into their stomach bending it at 90 degree angle when using their phone. On the MacBook chargers it’s usually bashing it constantly or tugging it. I come from a world of RF cables which cost more than a MacBook and have very limited bend limits. What we have is insanely robust these days. Just be nice to it. Edit: my daughter had my 2010 MBP until recently which the original charger blew up on. After dissecting it the cable was fine but the main IC had cracked in half. No shorts on the cable grommet. It lasted 11 years! What are you people doing to these things?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
I have the complete opposite experience aligning with the OP. Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault. This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?
- hughrr 5y ago
  I'm using the cable that came with my 6s on my 12. There was an intermediate XR as well. The only unarguable thing is the disparity between what we're doing.
- SmellTheGlove 5y ago
  In fairness, any cable of this style I've bought has failed the same way. I have a bunch of generic lightning cables that are white, with the little nub of rubber strain relief like the genuine cables, and they fail the same way too. They look nice, and even on the ones where the insulation is torn, I've only had to throw one away for not working at all (Apple or generic) of the probably dozen I own. But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.
- ksec 5y ago
  The iPhone Cables are the only ones that does it without some sort of strain relieves, which means they have a far higher rate of failure. I brought Anker PowerLine II and III ( Not the + version ) for my family and friends and so far apart from one connector failure ( Not the cable ), all of them have survived the years of usage with no signs of cable damage. It is such a relieve knowing your cable should last years if not decades. We used to joke apart Apple made the cable so bad because they expect us to buy a new iPhone every two years anyway, which is when all of our lightning cables somehow failed. I am also wondering, if it is really that environmental friendly to make your cable free of certain material but they break 10 times easier and end up so much more in landfill. Compare to make one that last literally forever. Lightning Cables are sold in hundreds of millions unit a year. And Apple earns money and commission from lightning chips, connector and MFi.
- spear 5y ago
  I had a black Amazon Basics cable that failed, although the insulation had more of a clean break rather than disintegrating.
handrous 5y ago
It's definitely user related. My Apple cables last indefinitely—unless my wife gets ahold of them. Then? Look out. I'm just careful not to twist them or sharply bend them. If I pack them I usually just very-loosely wad them up and put them in a not-too-full part of a bag. That's the extent of my "care". [EDIT] However! This does not mean Apple shouldn't make their cables better so they survive whatever people are doing to them to wreck them, since it's evidently very common.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Oh yes exactly - my ex wife could fuck up a cable or some earpods in about 3 months. I lost count of the amount of earpods that went down the toilet.
  - pushrax 5y ago
    I use litz wire for headphone cables. For a cable that's constantly on you, there's always some chance something happens unexpectedly. I've broken my share of earpods.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Litz wire doesn't increase the durability as such, merely reduces skin effect in RF applications. Sennheiser used to sell steel cables for their professional headphones. Now those are durable. I ran over mine with my chair about 50 times a day and the cable was still going after 10 years.
      - pushrax 5y ago
        Steel makes sense for extreme durability - I suppose you could use extremely thin steel wire for in-ears to make it flexible, though it might require a very special alloy to be thin and low resistance? In my experience, litz wire is exceptionally flexible and suitable for getting shoved in a pocket frequently. Each wire can be quite thick due to the flexibility.
  - handrous 5y ago
mopsi 5y ago
It's wrong to blame users. To please Greenpeace, Apple removed PVC from their cables (maybe only in some markets?). Such cables deteriorated on their own. First they swelled up and turned gray near the MagSafe connector, then turned yellow, and finally became brittle and fell apart in sticky dark green bits. I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress. I suspect deterioration was either due to heat transmitted from the chassis over the MagSafe connector, or from finger oils, as people touch the cable most near the connector.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Anecdata, on my last MagSafe system, I went through 2 units that failed within the first year but the 3rd one lived for several years. I didn’t change my habits at all. Which makes me suspect they changed the formula.
- joecool1029 5y ago
  >I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress. I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well. To contrast I have 30+ year old NEMA connector cables (kind for server/desktop PSU's) with zero signs of wear, maybe they got a little stiffer over the years but no cracking. I have also used extension cords this old and again, none of this chemical degradation. I think lead stabilizers were used in outdoor cables and this is why they hold up better, and also carry lead warnings sometimes on the cables?
  - ValentineC 5y ago
    > I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well. I looked this up a few weeks ago! It's because the rubber-like coating (TPE, or thermoplastic elastomer) interacts with body oils, causing it to eventually degrade: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6fznfp/cant_companies_stop_using_coatings_that_make/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6fznfp/cant_compa... I've always thought that it was because of heat and humidity.
mfarris 5y ago
I'm extremely careful with my Macbook magsafe charging cables. But in ten years I've had three fray into uselessness. My current cable has black electrical tape at both the charger block and connector ends. No matter how carefully one loops these things before putting them in a bag, the rubbery material eventually abrades and cracks. In contrast, I used Powerbooks for 15+ years and never had a single cable go bad.
chrismcb 5y ago
So what you are saying is, they are holding it wrong? Sure, if you treat almost anything with kids gloves it will last forever. But that isn't how people use the product. The reality is, the cords from apple are the only ones I've seen break like that.
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  > So what you are saying is, they are holding it wrong? People love to dunk on that Jobs quote, but he was right. If you took the iPhone 4, wrapped your whole hand around it, and squeezed hard, you could make the bars drop. If you held like a regular cell phone, it worked fine. As proof I offer the fact that the iPhone 4 sold very well for years, even after Apple ended their free bumper program. I had one (sans bumper) and the reception was fine.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Also, the same treatment to all the other major phones of the time produced the same results. Samsung phones even had a warning in the user manual about it.
alfalfasprout 5y ago
I agree that for MagSafe cables this is really rare. Granted, I haven't had any issues with the USB-C cables ever since they switched to them when they came out with the Touch Bar MBP. The lightning cables though... those things seem to break super easily. USB-C vs. USB seems to make no difference-- the strain relief is pretty terrible. Doesn't help that some of these cables get a lot of use (eg; for Apple CarPlay). I've found that it's usually the lightning end that goes not the other end. I wonder if switching the iPhone to USB-C might not help. But at this point it sounds like they're aiming for full wireless.
asdff 5y ago
You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine. Those things are indestructible. You could repel off a cliff with one. Have you ever seen one frayed or damaged at all? I haven't. Meanwhile, go to any college lecture hall and you will find about half the macbook chargers are covered in tape or frayed. This is "You are holding it wrong" all over again. Maybe the macbook charger is stronger than your expensive RF cables, but it is far weaker than anything else the competition puts out and that's a huge annoyance, as a mac user myself who gets maybe 3 years out of a given apple cable, be it magsafe charger, lightning cable, or even the wired headphones. It's a distinctly Apple issue, cables in my hands from other manufacturers, even no name junk looking cables, don't have these issues.
- hughrr 5y ago
  We've got a box of fucked up Dell chargers in the office and a box of fucked up Dells as well. Oh and some HP ones. That does not hold.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine. Those things are indestructible. These fail. And good luck getting an OEM replacement if it's more than a couple of years old and from a low-end laptop.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  > You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine The cable itself may last, but the connectors sure as hell don’t. Barrel jacks are well known for getting loose and making poor connections over time.
  - f1refly 5y ago
    Well known among whom? My thinkpad barrel chargers still go strong, the oldest is from 2006.
- spear 5y ago
kruxigt 5y ago
Semi related. The power cable to my one year old iMac Pro started to get sticky to the touch only a few months after I installed it. It's like it is melting.
BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there That's clearly false, and feeling the need to include "if you're careful" in your statement exposes its falseness. No other major manufacturer makes power cables that chronically disintegrate like this so much that it has become a meme specifically about Apple's cables: https://imgur.com/AVP6riy https://imgur.com/AVP6riy Not unsleeved. Disintegrated. It's because the material they use is soft and extremely undurable, unlike literally every other major cable manufacturer. Apple's cables, and _nobody_ else's, do this when even the slightest amount of angle is applied: https://i.imgur.com/seu0xh8.jpg https://i.imgur.com/seu0xh8.jpg Look closely at the circled part. That bulge is caused by extremely soft sleeve material that isn't bonded to the internal wires combined with inappropriately abrupt strain relief. That bulge is why Apple cables disintegrate so often, and even just the downward force of gravity from a laptop being on the edge of a table with the power cord dangling off the side onto the floor is enough to cause it over time.
- hughrr 5y ago
  The bulge is where the cable has been repeatedly knocked or compressed into an extreme angle. Of course that will happen at the strain relief. It happens on Amazon Basics lightning cables, Lenovo laptop power supplies, anything if you exceed the min bend radius of the cable. Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop. I'm sitting here with my M1 MBA on charge at the moment. Is it strained? Hell no: https://imgur.com/a/lXGpj4E https://imgur.com/a/lXGpj4E
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    > Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop. And if you suspend it in zero gravity and never touch it then it will last forever. Being able to baby something into lasting doesn't make the product durable. The fact remains that Apple's cables are demonstrably and notably more prone to fraying than every other manufacturer's cables even when the same people use them in the same way.
dirtyid 5y ago
The only cables that ever broke for me with less than 12 month use has been Apples, which I subject to same treatment as other devices, frequently Apple devices weren't even used as primary. I've since switched over to universal magnetic adapter heads and braided, magnetic charging cables with 90 degree heads.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stordoff 5y ago
I'm unconvinced. I used a MacBook for about three years around 2010, and had to have the charger replaced twice as the cable started cracking near the MagSafe connector. The third charger started falling apart (insulation yellowing and cracking along much of its length) while sat unused in a drawer. I've also had two or three Lightning cables fail in a similar manner until I switched to Anker cables. I've only ever had one non-Apple laptop charger break in a similar way, and that was after five years of heavy daily use. I've never had the insulation break on a micro-USB or USB-C cable (I used Windows Phones until I got an iPhone 11). If it were entirely due to user behaviour, I wouldn't expect to see such a disparity between Apple and non-Apple cables.
deergomoo 5y ago
When I first got an iPhone 7 (the first one without a headphone jack) I bought a second adapter straight away, because I looked at the one that came in the box and figured it would last about five minutes. Nearly 5 years later, that same flimsy adapter is still going strong in my car. It’s been plugged and unplugged thousands of times (my fiancée’s phone needs a USB-C adapter—what a fun world we live in), stood on, left on the floor, left in both sub-freezing and summer heat wave temperatures. Still haven’t needed that second one. I’m kind of amazed (but would still prefer a headphone jack).
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
Strain relief for cables has been a solved problem for decades, but Apple intentionally switched to an inferior design around 2008 [1] for aesthetic reasons. [1] https://i.imgur.com/yAywo.jpg https://i.imgur.com/yAywo.jpg
passivate 5y ago
If Apple's cables were so great fewer people would be buying replacement cables and/or complaining about them. To me, it indicates that they were not designed tough enough to accommodate the average person's use. You can reject it as anecdotal but almost all of my apple cables have frayed at-least once in their lifetime - headphone, charging, lightning/usb. The only one that didn't fray is the power cable to my mac mini.
koyote 5y ago
I've only ever had two cables fray and I've also only ever had two Apple products: two iPods that had their cables fray within 2 years of owning them. I've had countless other mp3 players, laptops and other electronics and have never had a cable fray. So sure, it might be user related, but that does not change the fact that other manufacturer's cables don't have that issue.
0x38B 5y ago
I’ve had the same experience: Apple cables last years for me. The cable that came with my iPad Pro survived years of use at home and abroad.

by hughrr 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

systemvoltage 5y ago

I have the complete opposite experience aligning with the OP. Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault. This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?

hughrr 5y ago
I'm using the cable that came with my 6s on my 12. There was an intermediate XR as well. The only unarguable thing is the disparity between what we're doing.
SmellTheGlove 5y ago
In fairness, any cable of this style I've bought has failed the same way. I have a bunch of generic lightning cables that are white, with the little nub of rubber strain relief like the genuine cables, and they fail the same way too. They look nice, and even on the ones where the insulation is torn, I've only had to throw one away for not working at all (Apple or generic) of the probably dozen I own. But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.
ksec 5y ago
The iPhone Cables are the only ones that does it without some sort of strain relieves, which means they have a far higher rate of failure. I brought Anker PowerLine II and III ( Not the + version ) for my family and friends and so far apart from one connector failure ( Not the cable ), all of them have survived the years of usage with no signs of cable damage. It is such a relieve knowing your cable should last years if not decades. We used to joke apart Apple made the cable so bad because they expect us to buy a new iPhone every two years anyway, which is when all of our lightning cables somehow failed. I am also wondering, if it is really that environmental friendly to make your cable free of certain material but they break 10 times easier and end up so much more in landfill. Compare to make one that last literally forever. Lightning Cables are sold in hundreds of millions unit a year. And Apple earns money and commission from lightning chips, connector and MFi.
spear 5y ago
I had a black Amazon Basics cable that failed, although the insulation had more of a clean break rather than disintegrating.

handrous 5y ago

It's definitely user related. My Apple cables last indefinitely—unless my wife gets ahold of them. Then? Look out. I'm just careful not to twist them or sharply bend them. If I pack them I usually just very-loosely wad them up and put them in a not-too-full part of a bag. That's the extent of my "care". [EDIT] However! This does not mean Apple shouldn't make their cables better so they survive whatever people are doing to them to wreck them, since it's evidently very common.

hughrr 5y ago
Oh yes exactly - my ex wife could fuck up a cable or some earpods in about 3 months. I lost count of the amount of earpods that went down the toilet.
- pushrax 5y ago
  I use litz wire for headphone cables. For a cable that's constantly on you, there's always some chance something happens unexpectedly. I've broken my share of earpods.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Litz wire doesn't increase the durability as such, merely reduces skin effect in RF applications. Sennheiser used to sell steel cables for their professional headphones. Now those are durable. I ran over mine with my chair about 50 times a day and the cable was still going after 10 years.
    - pushrax 5y ago
      Steel makes sense for extreme durability - I suppose you could use extremely thin steel wire for in-ears to make it flexible, though it might require a very special alloy to be thin and low resistance? In my experience, litz wire is exceptionally flexible and suitable for getting shoved in a pocket frequently. Each wire can be quite thick due to the flexibility.
- handrous 5y ago

mopsi 5y ago

It's wrong to blame users. To please Greenpeace, Apple removed PVC from their cables (maybe only in some markets?). Such cables deteriorated on their own. First they swelled up and turned gray near the MagSafe connector, then turned yellow, and finally became brittle and fell apart in sticky dark green bits. I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress. I suspect deterioration was either due to heat transmitted from the chassis over the MagSafe connector, or from finger oils, as people touch the cable most near the connector.

Scoundreller 5y ago
Anecdata, on my last MagSafe system, I went through 2 units that failed within the first year but the 3rd one lived for several years. I didn’t change my habits at all. Which makes me suspect they changed the formula.
joecool1029 5y ago
>I have never seen any cable, even under great stress, fall apart like that. It was an obvious chemical change, not physical stress. I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well. To contrast I have 30+ year old NEMA connector cables (kind for server/desktop PSU's) with zero signs of wear, maybe they got a little stiffer over the years but no cracking. I have also used extension cords this old and again, none of this chemical degradation. I think lead stabilizers were used in outdoor cables and this is why they hold up better, and also carry lead warnings sometimes on the cables?
- ValentineC 5y ago
  > I dug out some old cables from the end of the featurephone era and noticed that the USB data cables had chemical disintegration, like the plasticizer up and left the synthetic rubber or whatever it's made out of. This left the outside crumbling off. I really do wonder what they were made out of and why it does this. Similarly the rubberized coatings so popular on mp3 players of the late 90's, early 2000's do this as well. I looked this up a few weeks ago! It's because the rubber-like coating (TPE, or thermoplastic elastomer) interacts with body oils, causing it to eventually degrade: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6fznfp/cant_companies_stop_using_coatings_that_make/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6fznfp/cant_compa... I've always thought that it was because of heat and humidity.

mfarris 5y ago

I'm extremely careful with my Macbook magsafe charging cables. But in ten years I've had three fray into uselessness. My current cable has black electrical tape at both the charger block and connector ends. No matter how carefully one loops these things before putting them in a bag, the rubbery material eventually abrades and cracks. In contrast, I used Powerbooks for 15+ years and never had a single cable go bad.

chrismcb 5y ago

So what you are saying is, they are holding it wrong? Sure, if you treat almost anything with kids gloves it will last forever. But that isn't how people use the product. The reality is, the cords from apple are the only ones I've seen break like that.

snowwrestler 5y ago
> So what you are saying is, they are holding it wrong? People love to dunk on that Jobs quote, but he was right. If you took the iPhone 4, wrapped your whole hand around it, and squeezed hard, you could make the bars drop. If you held like a regular cell phone, it worked fine. As proof I offer the fact that the iPhone 4 sold very well for years, even after Apple ended their free bumper program. I had one (sans bumper) and the reception was fine.
- simonh 5y ago
  Also, the same treatment to all the other major phones of the time produced the same results. Samsung phones even had a warning in the user manual about it.

alfalfasprout 5y ago

I agree that for MagSafe cables this is really rare. Granted, I haven't had any issues with the USB-C cables ever since they switched to them when they came out with the Touch Bar MBP. The lightning cables though... those things seem to break super easily. USB-C vs. USB seems to make no difference-- the strain relief is pretty terrible. Doesn't help that some of these cables get a lot of use (eg; for Apple CarPlay). I've found that it's usually the lightning end that goes not the other end. I wonder if switching the iPhone to USB-C might not help. But at this point it sounds like they're aiming for full wireless.

asdff 5y ago

You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine. Those things are indestructible. You could repel off a cliff with one. Have you ever seen one frayed or damaged at all? I haven't. Meanwhile, go to any college lecture hall and you will find about half the macbook chargers are covered in tape or frayed. This is "You are holding it wrong" all over again. Maybe the macbook charger is stronger than your expensive RF cables, but it is far weaker than anything else the competition puts out and that's a huge annoyance, as a mac user myself who gets maybe 3 years out of a given apple cable, be it magsafe charger, lightning cable, or even the wired headphones. It's a distinctly Apple issue, cables in my hands from other manufacturers, even no name junk looking cables, don't have these issues.

hughrr 5y ago
We've got a box of fucked up Dell chargers in the office and a box of fucked up Dells as well. Oh and some HP ones. That does not hold.
rsynnott 5y ago
> You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine. Those things are indestructible. These fail. And good luck getting an OEM replacement if it's more than a couple of years old and from a low-end laptop.
deergomoo 5y ago
> You could literally use one of those bog standard black PC laptop chargers as a weapon and it would be fine The cable itself may last, but the connectors sure as hell don’t. Barrel jacks are well known for getting loose and making poor connections over time.
- f1refly 5y ago
  Well known among whom? My thinkpad barrel chargers still go strong, the oldest is from 2006.
spear 5y ago

kruxigt 5y ago

Semi related. The power cable to my one year old iMac Pro started to get sticky to the touch only a few months after I installed it. It's like it is melting.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

> if you’re careful it’s absolutely fine and it’s no worse than the other cables out there That's clearly false, and feeling the need to include "if you're careful" in your statement exposes its falseness. No other major manufacturer makes power cables that chronically disintegrate like this so much that it has become a meme specifically about Apple's cables: https://imgur.com/AVP6riy https://imgur.com/AVP6riy Not unsleeved. Disintegrated. It's because the material they use is soft and extremely undurable, unlike literally every other major cable manufacturer. Apple's cables, and _nobody_ else's, do this when even the slightest amount of angle is applied: https://i.imgur.com/seu0xh8.jpg https://i.imgur.com/seu0xh8.jpg Look closely at the circled part. That bulge is caused by extremely soft sleeve material that isn't bonded to the internal wires combined with inappropriately abrupt strain relief. That bulge is why Apple cables disintegrate so often, and even just the downward force of gravity from a laptop being on the edge of a table with the power cord dangling off the side onto the floor is enough to cause it over time.

hughrr 5y ago
The bulge is where the cable has been repeatedly knocked or compressed into an extreme angle. Of course that will happen at the strain relief. It happens on Amazon Basics lightning cables, Lenovo laptop power supplies, anything if you exceed the min bend radius of the cable. Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop. I'm sitting here with my M1 MBA on charge at the moment. Is it strained? Hell no: https://imgur.com/a/lXGpj4E https://imgur.com/a/lXGpj4E
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > Regarding dangling it over the edge of the table, you're pulling it down. That's one of the problems. It should lay flat on the table for a few inches at least and then drop. And if you suspend it in zero gravity and never touch it then it will last forever. Being able to baby something into lasting doesn't make the product durable. The fact remains that Apple's cables are demonstrably and notably more prone to fraying than every other manufacturer's cables even when the same people use them in the same way.

dirtyid 5y ago

The only cables that ever broke for me with less than 12 month use has been Apples, which I subject to same treatment as other devices, frequently Apple devices weren't even used as primary. I've since switched over to universal magnetic adapter heads and braided, magnetic charging cables with 90 degree heads.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stordoff 5y ago

I'm unconvinced. I used a MacBook for about three years around 2010, and had to have the charger replaced twice as the cable started cracking near the MagSafe connector. The third charger started falling apart (insulation yellowing and cracking along much of its length) while sat unused in a drawer. I've also had two or three Lightning cables fail in a similar manner until I switched to Anker cables. I've only ever had one non-Apple laptop charger break in a similar way, and that was after five years of heavy daily use. I've never had the insulation break on a micro-USB or USB-C cable (I used Windows Phones until I got an iPhone 11). If it were entirely due to user behaviour, I wouldn't expect to see such a disparity between Apple and non-Apple cables.

deergomoo 5y ago

When I first got an iPhone 7 (the first one without a headphone jack) I bought a second adapter straight away, because I looked at the one that came in the box and figured it would last about five minutes. Nearly 5 years later, that same flimsy adapter is still going strong in my car. It’s been plugged and unplugged thousands of times (my fiancée’s phone needs a USB-C adapter—what a fun world we live in), stood on, left on the floor, left in both sub-freezing and summer heat wave temperatures. Still haven’t needed that second one. I’m kind of amazed (but would still prefer a headphone jack).

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

Strain relief for cables has been a solved problem for decades, but Apple intentionally switched to an inferior design around 2008 [1] for aesthetic reasons. [1] https://i.imgur.com/yAywo.jpg https://i.imgur.com/yAywo.jpg

passivate 5y ago

If Apple's cables were so great fewer people would be buying replacement cables and/or complaining about them. To me, it indicates that they were not designed tough enough to accommodate the average person's use. You can reject it as anecdotal but almost all of my apple cables have frayed at-least once in their lifetime - headphone, charging, lightning/usb. The only one that didn't fray is the power cable to my mac mini.

koyote 5y ago

I've only ever had two cables fray and I've also only ever had two Apple products: two iPods that had their cables fray within 2 years of owning them. I've had countless other mp3 players, laptops and other electronics and have never had a cable fray. So sure, it might be user related, but that does not change the fact that other manufacturer's cables don't have that issue.

0x38B 5y ago

I’ve had the same experience: Apple cables last years for me. The cable that came with my iPad Pro survived years of use at home and abroad.