The whole Apple playbook these days: charge everyone a troll toll in the name of safety

And consumers are fine with that proposal because they end up with stuff that actually works.

But they are fine with it only because those safety mechanisms are not enforced by goverments already, and of course Apple is more than happy to be the one in charge of enforcing it.

For things with actual safety issues like batteries and power bricks, the government should be regulating them more. For things like "does this usb-c cable meet the required specs to provide consistent video and high speed data transfers?", this seems like exactly the kind of thing private companies can validate.

Finish the thought. If governments did the enforcement, Apple wouldn’t have to do so.

If consumers are fine then the vast majority of cables I’d see people owning would be Apple cables. That’s rarely the case. Most people are buying 3rd party cables even to use with Apple devices and I doubt any but a small minority even know what MFI is, never mind basing their purchasing decision on it.

From a cursory look at that thread, everybody is using Anker or Belkin, all MFI-certified, or a variety of Qi chargers which are also fully supported.

I guess I'm not sure what your point is.

rhaway84773 conflated Apple cables with MFI cables. The Apple tax is high, the MFI tax not so much.

The customers that buy Apple don't flinch at 40 bucks for a cable, no.

There's a reason that Apple is not that big in lower income countries like here in Spain.

Please point me to the iPhone cables you're buying.

Here's Apple's own; 40 smackaroos for USB 2.0 (eg 2002-era) transfer speed: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HN5S2ZM/A/native-union-ni...

The future, everyone!

God forbid you buy one of those "cheaper" $20 rubber cables and live in a house with pets. No joke, I have went through more than a half dozen of those cables from regular wear-and-tear.

I wouldn't call that "Apple's own" cable. That's a third-party cable that they sell in their store, and is notably more expensive than their own officially-branded cables.

(That said, I do agree that their branded cables are generally overpriced for their level of durability.)

these days?

While their accessories are quite overpriced, it's not just "in the name of". It's in reality, too: there are quite a few teardowns comparing the insides of e.g. Apple chargers vs. generic chargers. Whatever issues you may have with Apple accessories, cheaper ones are often much worse.

You have it backwards. Charging will be permitted with any cable - only data communication will be blocked unless you pay the Apple tax.

This helps exactly no one - except Apple of course.

None of my Lightning cables are “Apple certified”. They all transfer data find.

These are my “universal charging cables”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092ZT8CJ9

- USB A/USB C on one end

- USB C/Lightning on the other

They transfer data at USB 2 speeds

But my truly universal cables are these

https://a.co/d/4NVYrmN

- USB A/USB C on one end

- lightning/USB C/MicroUSB on the other end

- 10 Gbps data

- 100W charging

- video over USB C for my portable display that gets power and video over 1 cable

These are thicker and less convenient than the first ones.

>USB cables available online from any arbitrary retailer could be so wildly out of spec they burn out gadgets, or include some phone home thing.

Apple's tristar (or whatever they call it now on new models) should reject anything out of spec, I don't think a cable should be ultimately trusted that it will work due to very real world wear scenarios.

Phone home is probably tin foil hat thinking.

> Phone home is probably tin foil hat thinking.

Probably, but also be careful which cable you're using! https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable

This one is physically exactly the same as an Apple Lighting cable, but contains a WiFi Server and a bunch of other doodads

Wow, that's a really good price for such a neat hack.