They can. There are brands selling durable USB-C cables, I think they cost around 20 Euros each.
For Apple stuff, they will make it durable once their customer base stops being a cult.
'* once the EU will make them
The problem is that you can’t go just off of the price because there are shitty brands that will sell the crappy one that will break early for 20 Euros to fool people into thinking they’ll last.
The cables that degraded that way were because they used a more recyclable product, they moved away from it and it stopped being a problem.
That so many of the Apple frayed outside cables survived despite the outside fraying is funny …
Their cables are now braided by default.
The “hating apple” or better yet “tech tribalism” in general is the real cult
Funny, Apple mainstreamed tech tribalism. Remember when they were so so butthurt when android entered the scene, that their whole cult started calling them poor people’s phone? Their whole schtick was being an expensive status symbol? Suing samsung because their phone was a rectangle? Suing a pear brand logo because theirs was an apple. They had to go so low to green bubble android users to.make them seem like outcasts in group chats for teenagers? Tim Apple’s “Buy your mom an iPhone” because they didn’t want to support RCS?
You can “achsually” spin it however the fuck you want, Apple is THE tech tribalist cult, that other companies fawn over. Not the smart ones, the dumb and loyal ones who buy expensive shit no matter what.
Fuck all Big Tech. They’re only after monopolizing the market for data and profits.
Apple mainstreamed tech tribalism
I assure you, from car brands to shoe brands to soda brands, brand tribalism by consumers has always been with us. On the tech side, we saw it with console wars of every generation, PC/accessory brand tribalism, even OS/software tribalism. TVs, radios, portable music players, AV equipment of all types, etc. When cell phones came on the scene, you had significant brand rivalries there, even before smartphones. (You see remnants in this when people get nostalgic about Nokias or Blackberries or Razrs).
Your comment so perfectly encapsulates what I’m talking about.
I use Apple products because I develop on a Unix system that has support from the manufacturer. That’s why I use Apple.
Nobody else provides that for me. I’d prefer to be using i3 on a Linux base but nobody provides that in a manner that ticks the boxes I need to tick for the requirements I provide.
It’s like you are wildly incorrect but having to join the tech fight
You can use an Apple product without being in the cult, but the cult still exists.
Sure. But the cult of anti Apple is on display here in this thread and is wildly MORE pervasive.
Then again it’s largely only kids who give a fuck, the second I take my mom hat off and stop trying to temper extreme mindsets it all disappears for me too.
All the tech in your pocket looks fantastic from my house.
Glad to see someone else mention this. I feel crazy enjoying the hell out of using what is basically “linux + commercial software” while everyone else is just like “Apple bad, too expensive.” Meanwhile my apple laptop and phone were both cheaper than the competition… never let that get in the way of a good narrative, I guess.
That’s exactly what it is.
Planned obsolescence, but my iPhone 11 from 2019 still receives updates. Do any android devices from then still get new Android?
None of my cords that did the fraying ever frayed, I had one friend who’s cord frayed. But it was all over the internet.
It’s called othering when we make shit up about people to categorize them as worse, but since tech isn’t people our baser instincts are fine.
Do any android devices from then still get new Android?
Oneplus 5 released in 2017 is still getting official LineageOS updates. Oneplus One released in 2014 is also getting updates, albeit unofficial ones.
And this is just the brand I’m familiar with, there probably are even older phones kept alive by the community. This isn’t possible with Apple’s hostile ecosystem.
My question wasn’t about Lineage though. OnePlus using lineage officially and supporting it is kind of the exception that proves the rule.
I’m talking which manufacturers offer a comparable product that is supported for as long?
Apple gets shit on for this very thing but Google and Samsung and Motorola were the worst offenders in that regard. Samsung users out here with an phone that stopped getting updates a year later shitting on people with 5 generation old iPhones still being updated regularly, my point entirely is that much of the “this company sucks for X reason” in both directions is typically people hating rather than backed by real shit.
Some stuff is bad, but rarely is any of the hate as bad as people make it out to be. It’s tribalism.
We hate things more than we like them. It’s a pretty human trait.
Same goes for Google and the others. They have a tribe or flock or cult. All the tech companies want that or have it to some degree. Though some are more obvious.
Yeah you can criticise Apple on many things, but definitely not in build quality and software support. They’re so far ahead of everyone else, it’s not even funny.
What a ridiculous statement… They are pioneers in planned obsolescence. They literally designed a laptop where all of the heat vented directly onto the vulnerable hinge until the screen eventually failed and an iPhone that couldn’t make phone calls until you bought an extra case for it.
I’m not saying they’re perfect, far from that, personally I despise their stupid marketing and clear cut decisions (the CD drive, the jack, etc.), the repairability is abysmal. They had big flukes and made stupid decisions, like fanless laptops, butterfly keyboards and such.
But an iPhone is supported for 10 years software wise, a MacBook is supported for 7 years. The build quality of pretty much all their products is also generally great with the occasional miss. Not many tech manufacturers come close. Maybe I’m mistaken and I’d be gladly proven wrong.
“Repairability” and they were the first ones to make batteries be glued so they can only be repaired by an Apple repair center. 😭
Yeah, that’s what I said?
The build quality is great, the repairability is shit. Both can be true.
Oh, sorry, I misread it lol. Thought you said that they were good quality and good repairability. My bad 😅
Edit: I now upvoted you, now that I better understood.
The “planned obsolescence” argument holds as much water as a sieve and always has.
It’s cope. Everyone seems to need to cope about why they got what they got and not the other thing. Nobody can just admit “I got the thing I wanted”
I wear yalls downvotes as a badge of pride that I triggered some tribalists who had to react but couldn’t respond
They are pioneers in planned obsolescence.
I have owned three laptops since 2004. Powerbook 2004-2014, Macbook Air 2014-2025, Macbook Air 2025-now. This doesn’t feel like planned obsolescence to me? This feels like computers that last way fuckin longer. but whatever. None of these laptops were more than about $800 either. I’m into apple because I’m cheap as hell, IDK man.
You’re literally parroting the same type of tech tribalism bullshit that I’m responding to.
They had a design defect. It happens.
They’ve never sold me a phone that explodes in my pocket though. I guess Samsung also planned that obsolescence?
It’s the “assigning intent” behind a thing that proves the tribalism.
For fucks sake just use the shit you want to use and let other people use the shit they want to use.
This is just whataboutism. Fuck “tech tribalism” and fuck every tech company.
It sure would be whatavoutism if I was trying to make one side the good guy or the other guy specifically the bad guy.
My point entirely is that they all do fucked up shit and pretending your favorite tech company is good while the other is evil is some stupid shit.
Use what you like. Accept there are problems and things that could be done better. Get something else if it ticks your boxes.
But to be a braindead tech tribalist by parroting the narrative that
foo product usersare inherently brainwashed and dumb is irony at its best.
Samsung isn’t good either. Anything closed-sourced and privative is bad by definition.
Thats a idealistic and naive definition, imo.
You’ve summed up this whole site
Their build quality is shit. I had a phone that I would throw into the air and let it land on concrete for funsies. That phone lasted me 5 years. It was a Motorola. The back was plastic, the front was either gorilla glass or plastic. Either way, I didn’t have a case on it, and it didn’t break.
If a phone needs a case, its because the build quality is absolute shit. Every phone should be able to be slammed onto the concrete without a case. It’s the gold standard of build quality.
Build quality has absolutely no ties with how resistant to abuse the product is ? That’s just a completely absurd opinion…
Build quality implies durability. If you needed to put a case on your car to protect it from normal abuse, you’d say the car was poorly made.
Exactly. My Aliexpress specials have lasted forever. Buying a “brand” is dumb.
7 cultists and counting
People seem to forget how easily phone cords went bad. We had to jiggle them or hold them at weird angles to keep talking.
You also bend, move, carry, unplug/replug, use a charge cable a lot more than we did land line phones.
… Tell me how young you are without telling me how young you are.
Maybe their family really didn’t use it that often. Even in the 90s, I don’t think my family used the landline phone more than once a day on average. I think that would have only been different in the early 80s and before due to not having answering machines to filter the incoming calls down to those we cared about.
Yeah, but I never saw anyone talk on the phone without also fiddling with the cord with their fingers (often, trying to undo those weird half-twist pairs that would form). Or at least not until cordless phones started getting popular.
I don’t remember that at all… Was it before 90s?
I don’t think many of those types of phones were made/used in the 90’s.
I had one of those until mid 2000’s. I remember fidgeting with the curly umbilical cable thing while on the phone
Landlines of course were, what are you on about?
So…. Look at the picture. See the phone? THOSE WEREN’T MADE IN THE 90’s.
Oh you only meant Western Electric Model 2500? Right…
Well, think of the data transfer rates. One carries voice, which can be in the kb/s
A lightning cable can carry a few gb/s.
All this extra data weighs down the cable, causing it to fail sooner.
You can solve this problem by switching to light-weight data, or by simply filling your cable with helium to counteract the extra weight!
Thanks, Cave Johnson.
He’ll get the nerds in the lab to cook something up.
Calvin’s Dad Explanation Award
extra data weighs down the cable
Does it really? I get that you’re taking the piss, and it won’t have any significant or even perceptible impact, but seriously does it?
Like it exists, right? I might just be tweaking here.
I’m gonna end up full Steve here if i think about it much longer
There is a weight associated with the electrons needed to convey information, but it’s negligible.
Beyond that though, we’re not actually so interested in moving the electrons, but in toggling the electric field. Most of the electrons in the wire stay in the wire, and any that leave are balanced by another coming in on the other end. Electrons can move between the atoms, but if your cable is actually changing the number then something has gone wrong, since laptops don’t typically ionize copper.
It’s a pretty straightforward calculation, since amperage is the number of electrons per second, and the cables has a well documented signaling rate.
It works out to a bit weighing about 2x10^-22 grams for a USB cable.Data is essentially just fancy electric current. Current doesn’t really ‘flow’ so much as propogate a wave similar to a newtons cradle desk toy. A physicist might chime in on this, but no, I don’t think data being transmitted actually weighs anything.
Unless you factor in the interaction between any induction effects and the earths magnetic field. But it’s beyond negligible.
The data exists as electricity, and while electrons have mass, there’s always going to be roughly the same number of electrons in the cable. They’re flowing in a loop across the cable, so more electrons aren’t needed for more data. It’s the pattern they move in that carries the data (kinda).
At least that’s my simplistic view of it. There’s probably some technicalities I’m glossing over, but I think the point stands that a cable carrying more data isn’t heavier due to that data.
It’s only 4 wires, only 2 of which carry data. A 6ft cable transferring at a max usb speed of 80gb/s moving at the slow end of signal propagation through copper of .5c would have less than a kilobyte on it at any time.
You can buy a coiled USB-C cable, I have a couple, they’re pretty sweet. A company called Cable Matters makes them, they generally make quality stuff
The idea of a spring plus the poor retention of USB-C just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. Seems like these would just be a lot of cable coiled up to make a short cable.
Finally a counter-example to enshittification.
That’s actually a more shitty cable. The USB spec gives a maximum cable length based on when wire length will start to pick up more interference and impact data rates.
Basically this is a curly cable that can’t be as long as it otherwise would, and if you try it’s going to actively try to pull itself out of the device because it’s a spring.Wouldn’t they still fray near the end?
I’ve bought some good quality ones of these and because the coil pulls on the connection it often causes a kink failure near the connector.
I like guitar cables that coil like this, they don’t get tangled easily
Planned obsolescence is one of the cornerstones of our economic order.
I’m in tech, I can answer this for OP (on apple’s behalf):
Because fuck you, thats why.
FYI:
Greenpeace pressured apple to stop using PVC in their plastics around 2007
Apple realised they could gain PR while making more money by having customers needing to rebuy new cables.
You don’t need PVC to create durable cabling.
And give up the opportunity to get applause for planned obedience? That is not how you capitalism.
Its quite telling that ever since apple got forced to use usb-c the quality of their cables made a huge leap. It’s almost like the availability of competing cables is good for innovation or something.
planned obedience
Might want to proofread that
Whats the matter with PVC specifically?
Supposedly greenpeace calls it “the poison plastic” and “the most enviromentally damaging plastic”
Gonna have to ask them for their scientific sources.
Personally i think plastics are fine if the product is actually durable. I take good care of my things. My 15 year old ipad mini is practically mint and if it wasnt for “making it more enviromental” i would still be using its original cable also.
This is the paradox. I still have old cables from 20+ years ago, the new stuff degrades. At least the woven/braided cables seem like they might last longer.
It’s not a paradox. There is a reason why those old cables don’t degrade, and it’s the same reason why fish are full of microscopic shredded plastic that will never go away.
I understand what you’re getting at, although I think that I maybe have had the majority of plastic removed from my body with how much blood was removed from me. Actually it wouldn’t surprise me if I was a blood bank for the ER when I was in the hospital last year.
The plastic is in your water and food. If you have organic mass, you have microplastics in you.
I not sure what to think when you phrase it that way. Are you a follower of the Omnissiah? I have a good amount of metal in my organic mass.
Personally i think plastics are fine if the product is actually durable
My problem is this just kicks the can down the road. Some day, no matter what, that plastic is becoming waste. Maybe it gets recycled, but most likely, it doesn’t. If it doesn’t need to be plastic, it should not be plastic. Questioning if it’ll last long enough is just asking if it can last long enough to be someone else’s problem.
Definitely a good point if if doesn’t actually need to be plastic, i highly prefer natural materials overall. But thats not always practical.
I dont get the “someone elses problem” though. If the item is still perfectly usable then why would the next owner not also just want to use it? I personally value a hand me down that “served” my family for ages over “new thing”
If it is broken then it can get a new life by getting recycled.
Under current consumerism the pattern is that shit breaks and you buy it new, which causes us to psychologicly devalue the item (and thus materials) as it ages, i believe this is why so many plastics end up non recycled.
If items where durable, reliable, repairable. People will be more capable to perceive their value and be more concious about what happens to it after it breaks because losing it will hurt. Not quite like but somewhat similar to how we care about what happens to remains after death.
Also things being repairable increases the awareness of the materials because your working with them.
I dont get the “someone elses problem” though. If the item is still perfectly usable then why would the next owner not also just want to use it? I personally value a hand me down that “served” my family for ages over “new thing”
Because eventually, inevitably, there can’t be a next owner and it becomes garbage. Then, you’re right back to contributing to plastics pollution because while you can say that
If it is broken then it can get a new life by getting recycled
The reality is that a huge portion of plastic doesn’t get recycled.
If items where durable, reliable, repairable. People will be more capable to perceive their value and be more concious about what happens to it after it breaks because losing it will hurt. Not quite like but somewhat similar to how we care about what happens to remains after death.
I think you’d need a massive cultural shift to make it plausible, not just different stuff. And while we should be recycling, I don’t think it’s the right emphasis right now because recycling is largely an attempt by the oil and plastics companies to put the onus on us for the environmental harm caused by their product. It’s an attempt to fabricate an excuse to produce things out of plastic that really don’t need to be, and we’ve fallen for it. Of course we should recycle all the plastic we use, but we still shouldn’t be using plastic anywhere we don’t have to. There’s a reason the saying is “reduce, reuse, recycle”. They’re in order of priority, and recycling is the last defense. We need to start by significantly reducing the amount of plastic we use.
Can’t burn or recycle it without releasing chlorine
I actually haven’t had a cable do this since I stopped buying apple cables. I usually will buy just whatever brand I find and they might stop working eventually, but rarely do they fray like those iPod ones used to.
That’s because Apple’s cables are designed for aesthetics first and everything else second.
Just like all apple products
Better yet don’t buy apple products at all.
The main thing that kills them is sunlight. Totally disintegrates the cover apple uses on their cables.
But non-Apple cables are not officially supported, right? I think apple can’t guarantee that your iPhone works and charges well with an unlicensed cable. Also I don’t know if the Apple Repair Shop will accept a phone that has been charged with an unlicensed cable. But what do I know, I am an Android user
As long as they have the MFI certification they are officially supported. I’ve been using a non-MFI cable for a while now and it’s never been a problem, even with getting my battery replaced by Apple.
Oh I just stopped buying apple products altogether after I stopped using iPods. But yeah I have heard that before.
Did you know that the mfi certification cost like $10,000 and requires you to provide three prototypes to Apple that they are allowed to destroy, as well as your full schematics and the complete design of the product? Gee how do they come up with so many ideas…
You could of course try to skip that but then Apple will fence you off from access to some of their chipsets and protocols so your product will work less well than ones that capitulate.
Seriously fuck Apple
Car manufacturer can’t garuntee that the car will drive fine on a road not made by them.
What you said/quoted is a meaningless sentence that just reduces into “bad products are possible to make”
Lmao maybe if you don’t know what you’re talking about you just shouldn’t post it 🥰
I wanted to trigger some apple users, and it seems that they love me
It’s fun spreading lies?
Pretty interesting take.
You must be fun at parties
Because I don’t like when people lie?
You need to do a better job at being a troll. A good comeback needs to actually make sense, not be an overused cliche.
Maybe you’ll do better next time bud.
If you don’t like a joke then just move on and don’t waste your time. You are just beeing unnecessarily dramatic.
must be an apple thing lol i have never had this happen
Which brands do you say are longlasting?
idk basically any USB cable. It’s rare that they fail for me in general, though I have a couple that have given out, and I’ve seen this happen to other people, but I’ve never had it happen to me.
Perhaps anecdotal, but I try to avoid unplugging by pulling the wire whenever possible and I also try not to bend it near the connector if I’m using it while charging.
I’ve had it happen with a few Lenovo laptop chargers. Razer mice though, were especially bad at this 10 years ago. Haven’t owned a Razer product since then though, but I’d go through 2 cables per year because of this. Haven’t lost a single cable since changing to other brands though.
I think around 2016 is when Razer really went down the toilet. There was a time when they built good quality hardware, but they’re just enshittified garbage with a flashy hue cycle now.
Man, we had some dell WSD19 docks that were pushing like 90 or 120w through USB-C and those things would rarely last more than a year.
Yeah, USB cables that became defective for me either had a damaged plug in micro-usb times or they had internal breaks after intense and frankly pretty rough use.
Pull on the connector instead of the cable and it’ll last 3x longer
Also stop resting it on the cord bend while using it in bed. The number of times I have seen this prevented by a 90° adapter is… at least 3.
While that might be right in some cases, these just had really bad plastic coverings. I had an htc cable made with the same stuff. Without using it just sitting the drawer, it now is cracked all over and the cover is falling apart. Mechanical stress probably would make it break faster, but these cables also just sucked.
Just from oxidation
Or grab a wireless charger. Of all the great things about USB-C, that tiny little “tongue” in the socket isn’t one. Wireless charging will get rid of 99% of the wear that port will see.
I use these on all my cables both ends. This cable is 5 years old and still strong. Costed me 1 rupee per piece. Got a pack of 100 for 100rs (~1 us dollar)
I’m just thinking about the fact that they really GOTTA stop making white charger cables
I know what I’m gonna buy later (assuming a USB-C version exists).
It’s agnostic. You can pretty much put it on any cable as long it’s not too thick.
How are they called?
Usually “cable strain relief”
What exactly am I looking at here?
cable strain relief
Because then you would only buy one of them
Back in the day, the phone was property of the phone company, so it was in their best interest not having someone come replace the cable.
Yeah, but even after then the phone cord was still a buy it for life item and it came for free with the phone. They haven’t belonged to the phone company since the 70s at the latest.
No thanks, at that point I’d rather just a buy a third party one of higher quality.
Because then they couldn’t sell you a new one for $15 every 3 months.
Can confirm, I buy a 3 pack every year
I have Sennheiser HD 280 headphones. They have a telephone cord for a wire. So good. So worth it. Cable still going strong after 6 years. And get this… when it breaks? I can replace it. They make spare parts. Saved me a ton of money in the long run
I’ve had them for over 15 years. Still on original cable.
Enshitification
