I recon that Apple is doing this to mitigate the risk that cables that actually do work within spec would muddy the waters with cables that don’t. As mentioned

I recon that Apple is doing this to mitigate the risk that cables that actually do work within spec would muddy the waters with cables that don’t. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, usb-c and usb3 in general is a bit of a tyre fire and mostly just a race to the bottom. You can find tech out there that actually works but these products are outliers. The usb3 brand is garbage. Apple probably doesn’t want their user base to even have the opportunity to gamble on a cable that may work within spec so they cripple all non-approved cables. This obviously sucks for consumers, especially tech savvy ones, but I can see why Apple may want to take this approach.