After being forced to standardise to usb c and be responsible for some of the e-waste it produces, apple has finally relented.
They fought tooth and nail against the EU regulations to force charging standards. I don’t care if they up sell cables to some people; most people will reuse what they have and thats the whole point of the regulations.
Regulation works.
They transitioned most of their devices to usb save the iPhone before the EU legislation went into effect.
Apple caught shit for going USB-C only on their laptops years ago.
Exactly, and it’s still kind of annoying years later on my work laptop (2019 Macbook Pro). I got a USB hub and now I get all those other ports, but that wouldn’t have been necessary if they just gave me an HDMI and USB-A port. The newer M-series Macbook Pros went back to having HDMI, which is really nice.
I wish everything I had was the same port, but I’m not going to go out and repurchase everything to standardize on one plug.
HDMI is a dogshit standard and everyone should’ve moved over to DisplayPort or Thunderbolt over the USB-C form factor.
Not if when they add a chip in the official Apple cable that the iPhone/iPad/iwhatever checks for, and refuses to properly charge or transfer data without it. At this point, a generic USBC will only work for a short time, before the device rejects it, forcing you to bin it and buy a new one, which negates the benefits of the regulation. Regulations do work, but they have to be thorough, and this one isn’t covering all the corners.
Edit: changes when to if. It was causing confusion as to what I meant.
If only.
Now, I don’t know if it’s in USBC cables, but it was in their lightning cables.
Edit: apple isn’t hiding this program, either. Nor should they. It has merit. But it can be abused, as it was with certified lighting cables.
Edit: also, I think it’s funny that you assumed I was angry/mad about this hahahahaha I’m really not. I no longer buy apple, so it really doesn’t affect me. And if I did buy apple, I don’t think I would care that much, as when I did buy apple, I bought certified add-ons. I was simply pointing out the gap in the passed regulation. It seems that you’re more upset about this than I am. Sorry my comment affected you this way–it was not my intention.
Not sure about USBC, but it was in their lightning cables.
It’s not farfetched that they would also add it to their “certified USBC”.
Edit: apple isn’t hiding this program, either. Nor should they. It has merit. But it can be abused, as it was with certified lighting cables.
It’s fine if they reduce the price accordingly.
If it’s still the same price after they take the cable out, it was never about reducing waste to begin with.
Knowing Apple, that wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, which is why I never have and never will own any of their products.
Adjusted for inflation, last years 15 was $827.
The base 16 is $800 and a separate USB C cable from Apple is about $20 for 1m and $30 for 2m.
So, if you buy a phone and cable, you’re spending about as much as you did last year, adjusting for inflation.
I don’t know why I just wasted all that time calculating that. I need to get a life.
But here’s the question: does it cost Apple $20 to make a cable? I seriously doubt it. It probably costs them closer to 20 cents per cable. So in reality, they now make approximately $20 more from every sale than they did before.
Sure, not everyone is buying a cable with every phone. But cables get lost, they wear out, they get stolen by your kids to charge their iPhones because they broke theirs, they get chewed up by pets, etc.
And you can bet your ass that, just like any other high-margin item, the people in the Apple store are gonna be incentivized like hell to get every customer to buy a cable with their phone whether they really need it or not:
Do you have a charging cable?
Is it an Apple cable?
Are you sure you have one that’s USB-C and supports USB Power Delivery?
And it’s not worn out?
You say your dog chewed on it a little but it’s mostly intact and still works?
Well, I’d recommend getting a new one anyway.
Yeah you can get your own if you want but it’s best if you get an Apple cable.
OK great, that comes out to $820 total. And do you want to insure your phone for $5 a month?
How do they make $20 more if the price is reduced by $27 from last year and the cable taken out? At most they make the $3 more if people buy the 2m cable. For the 1m cable they make less than last year.
The phone plus cable last year adjusted to inflation is $827 and this year it’s $820. The cost of the cable for Apple is not in play here.
well…by selling both the cable and wall adapter as separate items it doubles the packaging by necessity so it was still never about reducing waste
which is why I never have and never will own any of their products.
✊👍
I’m not going to defend Apple’s profit maximization strategy here, but I disagree. Most people won’t end up buying a cable and adaptare because they already have one, and in contrast to those pieces made of plastic and metal, the packaging is mostly made of paper. I’m pretty confident that the reduction in plastic and metal makes up for the extra packaging that’s produced for the minority that does buy a cable and/or adapter.
I agreed when they removed the brick. Everyone was saying it was horrible and it wasn’t actually about reducing waste but, nobody needs a new brick. If you reeeaaally need one, it’s really not going to break the bank to buy one, and it does massively reduce waste to not include one with every single new phone. I don’t see why people support wasting all these resources that 95% of the time is just going to be e-waste.
I don’t care if they keep the extra couple cents they saved on not giving the cable. I fucking hate getting extra e-junk with my electronics. I hate getting new cables just like I fucking hated getting shitty headsets with pre-smart phones. Nobody used them regardless. For all I care all battery-powered electronics, including laptops, could very well come without chargers and standardised cables, just with large warning on the box (like the one on cigarette packs). That was the fucking point of this EU regulation, to reduce e-junk
I honestly can’t be mad at this point because what they SHOULD do is sell cables in bulk packaging to the Apple store, and then when they sell a phone they say “Do you need a USB cable? Free with the phone.” If they say “No we’re okay I’ve got hundreds of them by now” no problem, if they say “Yeah in fact can I get two?” Sure. Same with chargers. Of course this is Apple we’re talking about, so they’re probably $69.99 each.
There is a good Adam Savage video on yt about the engineering of the thunderbolt or whatever cables.
They still should be shipped in bulk to the store but it makes more sense why they wouldn’t be given away free
iPhones don’t come with those expensive high-bandwidth cables, they come with charging cables that only do USB 2.0
I’ve had one apart and to be fair they are not carelessly made. They’re jacketed in soft silicone under the braid and have thicker than average stranded conductors. You can totally use whatever cables you want, but theirs are built a little better than you’d think and they just feel nice.
Maybe this is a tactile/autism thing for me?
As long as a standard “unblessed” usb-c cable will work fully with the phone it’s non-issue.
I don’t get why even use their “blessed” hardware.
When I was at school, a few things made me want it:
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Apple was still kinda fine back then, playing nice with FOSS community;
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I had good memories from using QuickTime under Windows 2000;
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I’ve been Jobswashed by a few books for kids saying how innovative he was;
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I had a PSP, it was really cool to use for listening to music, playing games, reading books in the Web (over wi-fi) and even Skype, and I thought iPhones seem kinda similar;
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I was possessed by imitated (was bored, wanted to feel something real and heroic) romantic feelings and real (bright hair, greenish-gray eyes, warm smile, subtle voice, and at that moment she seemed intelligent and nice ; turned out not as honest though) sexual desire of one girl who had an iPhone, a perfect product placement, one can say;
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Apple’s UIs back then seemed very usable, only later I actually tried them and realized that even Windows makes me less furious;
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It still wasn’t today’s Apple, they seemed trustworthy.
None of this applies today.
One exception nowadays: Business notebooks - and that’s only because the rest of the notebook market went to shit. If you want a somewhat compact notebook with more than 64GB of RAM, decent CPU performance and good battery life Apple currently is the only one offering something.
A lot of people say that you can get X laptop with similar specs for $600 or whatever. But they usually have shit screens or are made from cheap plastic.
I still think Apple is a bit expensive, but a comparable windows laptop is not too much cheaper in most cases.
Because you’re getting a product that you know isn’t a cheap knockoff that will burn your house down, and you know it will charge your phone at the fastest speed it’s capable of.
You can of course get the same experience buying third party, but then you have to spend time doing research on which one to buy for your device, and the reputable third party brands can cost just as much as the Apple ones anyway.
and you know it will charge your phone at the fastest speed it’s capable of
Are you really advocating for buying an Apple-branded USB-C cable?
fear not you can buy an apple magic connector for just $60
