4 ms·

> 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 car

> 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.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    The old mantra holds: treat it nice or pay twice.
    - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
      > The old mantra holds: treat it nice or pay twice. I mean, sure, ok, but there's another mantra that goes "nobody likes someone who blames users for product quality that is significantly worse than from every other manufacturer so that when users use the product normally without aggression toward the product this product fails while the others do not." I mean it really seems like you've come down on the side that it's totally ok that even simple gravity on just the cable itself puts too much unrelieved strain on a cable that for decades cost $100 or more to replace because it was integrated into the charging brick. And you argue that that's a problem with the user instead of grossly inadequate strain relief. We've staked out our sides. Let's agree to disagree.
      - hughrr 5y ago
        I'm going to leave it at that I used to treat my stuff like shit and blamed the manufacturer, mostly IBM and Lenovo back then, when it broke. Then I grew up. Life got easier and cheaper.
    - simonlc 5y ago
      I don't know how you can defend these crappy products. I don't want to baby a cable, and yet I have to act like a crazy person when ever someone touches my "precious" cable. Any other usb cable on my desk I can twist and bend at my heart's content, and I know they'll outlast the spec they were designed for. The only reason I use wireless charging now is because it's cheaper and easier than using broken cables. Sadly the one in my car looks like the terminator's arm when he cuts off his arm skin.
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      No it doesn't, you can buy any random cheap cable in ebay any they are mostly indestructible and last years while apple cables require extreme care to last and even then they seem to turn in to a gummy substance that basically falls apart.
- 7952 5y ago
  Surely the whole point of a strain relief is to prevent those kind of angles. Which other cables seem to do more effectively.
mns 5y ago
> 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 That’s quite a strong and definitive conclusion from your part. Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there, of course there are a lot of people with issues. But just like that, also based on anecdotes, I have lightning cables from the first time they released the port and they are perfectly usable. I never had an issue with an Apple cable in more than 10 years. In the same time, a friend of mine goes over one cable a year, so yes, I would say it’s also people, it’s scale, it’s manufacturing, it’s everything. But to call this an Apple issue is quite a stretch.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there I'm not sure how one can honestly argue that Apple has sold more laptops than every other laptop manufacturer. I they've sold more cables (I doubt it, but let's pretend), well...that would be because people keep having to replace them. This problem is common enough with Apple's laptop power cables that it has been a meme for more than a decade now. That's not the case for _any_ other vendor, and those other vendors have sold more laptops than Apple has by several orders of magnitude.
  - z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
    I don't know what you're talking about, but there are zero memes about Apple's phone chargers other than the ones you're sitting here making up.
    - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
      > there are zero memes I vouched your dead comment so I could reply. (Am I allowed to do this? I don't know!) Maybe you don't know that the word meme predates image macros and even the internet, but it does. The phrases "it became a meme" and "people make memes" are not talking about the same manifestation. Memes are ideas that take root, not funny pictures with words on them. My assumption is that anyone who reads "became a meme" as "people made memes about" must be very young, but that's my own bias showing. A person who has no memories of a world before philosoraptors and shy penguins or whatever image macros kids are making these days might not realize the difference, but there it is. Also... > phone chargers I actually did say laptops, and the reason I said laptops is because people have been complaining about Apple's power cables tearing/fraying for longer than Apple has been making phones. The problem applies equally well to their phone charging cables, of course, but standard micro USB cables are also usually complete shit whereas standard laptop power cables are not except for Apple's.
Cederfjard 5y ago
This is an irrelevant side note, but I found it amusing that your second Imgur link warned me that it might be adult content (spoiler: it’s not).
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  Weird and hilarious. Is it because of my fingers? Hah, I wonder.
winrid 5y ago
Pretty common to hear the "you're using it wrong" W.R.T Apple products breaking... I have a new MBP and a ThinkPad. You'd be hard pressed to say the MBP charger cable has half the strain relief of the ThinkPad.

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.
- hughrr 5y ago
  The old mantra holds: treat it nice or pay twice.
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    > The old mantra holds: treat it nice or pay twice. I mean, sure, ok, but there's another mantra that goes "nobody likes someone who blames users for product quality that is significantly worse than from every other manufacturer so that when users use the product normally without aggression toward the product this product fails while the others do not." I mean it really seems like you've come down on the side that it's totally ok that even simple gravity on just the cable itself puts too much unrelieved strain on a cable that for decades cost $100 or more to replace because it was integrated into the charging brick. And you argue that that's a problem with the user instead of grossly inadequate strain relief. We've staked out our sides. Let's agree to disagree.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      I'm going to leave it at that I used to treat my stuff like shit and blamed the manufacturer, mostly IBM and Lenovo back then, when it broke. Then I grew up. Life got easier and cheaper.
  - simonlc 5y ago
    I don't know how you can defend these crappy products. I don't want to baby a cable, and yet I have to act like a crazy person when ever someone touches my "precious" cable. Any other usb cable on my desk I can twist and bend at my heart's content, and I know they'll outlast the spec they were designed for. The only reason I use wireless charging now is because it's cheaper and easier than using broken cables. Sadly the one in my car looks like the terminator's arm when he cuts off his arm skin.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    No it doesn't, you can buy any random cheap cable in ebay any they are mostly indestructible and last years while apple cables require extreme care to last and even then they seem to turn in to a gummy substance that basically falls apart.
7952 5y ago
Surely the whole point of a strain relief is to prevent those kind of angles. Which other cables seem to do more effectively.

mns 5y ago

> 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 That’s quite a strong and definitive conclusion from your part. Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there, of course there are a lot of people with issues. But just like that, also based on anecdotes, I have lightning cables from the first time they released the port and they are perfectly usable. I never had an issue with an Apple cable in more than 10 years. In the same time, a friend of mine goes over one cable a year, so yes, I would say it’s also people, it’s scale, it’s manufacturing, it’s everything. But to call this an Apple issue is quite a stretch.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> Apple is a company that sold hundreds of millions of these cables, probably more than any other company out there I'm not sure how one can honestly argue that Apple has sold more laptops than every other laptop manufacturer. I they've sold more cables (I doubt it, but let's pretend), well...that would be because people keep having to replace them. This problem is common enough with Apple's laptop power cables that it has been a meme for more than a decade now. That's not the case for _any_ other vendor, and those other vendors have sold more laptops than Apple has by several orders of magnitude.
- z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
  I don't know what you're talking about, but there are zero memes about Apple's phone chargers other than the ones you're sitting here making up.
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    > there are zero memes I vouched your dead comment so I could reply. (Am I allowed to do this? I don't know!) Maybe you don't know that the word meme predates image macros and even the internet, but it does. The phrases "it became a meme" and "people make memes" are not talking about the same manifestation. Memes are ideas that take root, not funny pictures with words on them. My assumption is that anyone who reads "became a meme" as "people made memes about" must be very young, but that's my own bias showing. A person who has no memories of a world before philosoraptors and shy penguins or whatever image macros kids are making these days might not realize the difference, but there it is. Also... > phone chargers I actually did say laptops, and the reason I said laptops is because people have been complaining about Apple's power cables tearing/fraying for longer than Apple has been making phones. The problem applies equally well to their phone charging cables, of course, but standard micro USB cables are also usually complete shit whereas standard laptop power cables are not except for Apple's.

Cederfjard 5y ago

This is an irrelevant side note, but I found it amusing that your second Imgur link warned me that it might be adult content (spoiler: it’s not).

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
Weird and hilarious. Is it because of my fingers? Hah, I wonder.

winrid 5y ago

Pretty common to hear the "you're using it wrong" W.R.T Apple products breaking... I have a new MBP and a ThinkPad. You'd be hard pressed to say the MBP charger cable has half the strain relief of the ThinkPad.