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I knew the power bricks were different between the 12", 13", and 15", but I had no idea that the completely identical cables were also different and potentially incompatible. This whole transition has been a huge mess so far.

And absolutely needlessly so. You can ship a fully compliant USB-C 3.1 cable for probably 40 cents more than a cheap version. It makes no sense to start a rollout this way, especially from a company like Apple.

What about Apple's cables makes them noncompliant?

The charge cable is USB 2.0, I believe. It's not that it's not compliant, it's just intended for charging only.

As someone watching this mess from the sidelines (no intention to buy a computer within a year) I think this annoys me much more than all the other problems reported so far. How can they make a mess out of their own lineup of a newly launched port so much? Inexcusable.

> You can ship a fully compliant USB-C 3.1 cable for probably 40 cents more than a cheap version. It makes no sense to start a rollout this way, especially from a company like Apple

You're talking about the company that no longer ships power cables with a little plastic clip to keep them tidy and now sells the extended lead as an extra, both of which have been in every one of their laptop chargers for 15 years+

To be fair, that plastic wind up clip was almost certainly the primary cause of failure in the old power bricks. Anyone who has ever worked as a roadie knows that that's an entirely wrong way to wind a cable.

also, to be fair, I wonder how many of the extensions died in the box.

That's more USB-C than Apple.

http://blog.fosketts.net/2016/10/29/total-nightmare-usb-c-th...

No, that's literally 100% Apple. They could've very easily shipped the higher specced cables for what amounts to a rounding error in the total overall cost. They just chose not to in order to sell more cables. They can now tell people that a cable is "only compatible with model X" - when in reality the 15" pro cable is compatible with all 3.

Exactly this. There is absolutely no technical reason that Apple could not ship one cable that works on all adapters, it would be overkill for some and just right for the high end one and the difference in money would be trivial compared to the support calls from people who can't get the cable to work or it fails while they are using it.

I don't think they sell the 12" MacBook cables stand-alone; I went to the store to get a new one, and they just sell the beefier ones. I personally think the problem is that the 12" MacBook was a test run of USB-C, and the cables they shipped for that ended up not being good enough to handle the needs of the new laptop they didn't ship until a year and a half later.

That's too sensible for an Apple hate thread, sorry.

The inane uninformed rant is more what this comment thread is about.

I suspect that the root is different purchasing agents writing different contracts based on different specs with different manufacturers. Each of which is optimizing locally and perhaps with an eye on their performance review and bonus. Just because nobody calls Apple 'enterprise' doesn't mean it ain't.

IF that's the case, Apple used to have a handle on all that. So IF that's the case, what happened?

I think the fixed point of Apple's design philosophy has become the Apple Store and everything is designed backward from its retail display. The engineering consists of stuffing stuff inside a predetermined case, not designing a case to house a set of components that perform at a predetermined level. That's how the more power hungry model winds up with a smaller battery.

The different SKU's for similar cables is hardly the most illustrative example of Apple's current design process. The MacPro has left and right hand versions of the GPU board in order to provide a dual GPU configuration for the cylinder. Modularity is not a design goal. The "SSD" on the new Macbooks is some chips soldered to the motherboard. Not upgradable, potentially with a limited life.

Honestly, the further Apple goes in this direction the better it segments the market and filters out the less lucrative ones. The most valuable customers are people who will pay more for the touchbar because it's in the Apple store. They'll buy the smaller battery that comes with it for the same reason.

> They can now tell people that a cable is "only compatible with model X" - when in reality the 15" pro cable is compatible with all 3.

Did you read the linked page? That's what it does say. Not the part you "quoted".

USB replaces a huge number of different cables[1].

[1] With a bunch of incompatible and identical looking USB-C cables.

Exactly. In a way it's worse, because at least before you could tell what a cable was compatible with by looking. HDMI, ethernet, USB, all easily distinguishable. And power cables generally worked with the thing they could plug into (not always, but generally. A lower powered Magsafe charger could at least charge a higher powered MacBook, even if it would drain if in use.)

Now we have a mess of incompatible cables AND you can't tell the difference by looking at them.

They should've called USB-C, USB 4, and said "Right, there's one type of USB 4 cable, and it works with everything it can be plugged into."

Even if all USB-C cables were the highest spec and worked with anything USB-C, further multiplexing the port with Thunderbolt 3 adds yet another whole layer of messiness. Not only are Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C cables not interchangeable but there are a whole bunch of interop issues surrounding Thunderbolt 3: http://plugable.com/thunderbolt-3/ gives a good overview.

I have said this in other threads: Herein lies the rub of USB-C: It isn't a universal logical interface, it is a multi-use physical connector. By overloading the port's logical functions you introduce incompatible physical configurations.

What happens if the wrong cable/adapter are combined? I'm just curious as a non-Apple user. I mix-and-match USB-B chargers and cables between my various devices all the time, and never experience a problem (except maybe slower than maximum charging sometimes). I assume the issue here would also simply be sub-optimal charging; but I have heard that some USB-C situations can actually be dangerous to the device since more power logic is in the USB cable ends?

I am pretty sure you can use the cables that are designed to support the higher wattage chargers on the smaller devices (and that's what I'm doing right now: Apple doesn't even sell the crappier cable the 12" MacBook shipped with a year and a half ago standalone right now, AFAIK).

Some usb-c cables that don't follow the usb spec can be dangerous (i.e. cheap 3rd party cables) Apple cables wouldn't have a problem with this, they would just charge devices slowly. The only danger occurs when usb cables lie about what they can do (in the physical layer to the host/slave devices)

cables are rated for different power and that is signalled by specific resistor values. I'm assuming in this case Apple just cheaped out, to save a few cents, and didn't make them all rated for 3A. Therefore you'd only get slow charging as a side-effect.

>For a company whose brand was for quite some time "It just works" to ask you to read a serial number, printed in gray, in 4 or 6 point font, off a light gray cable is dumbfounding.

They had the same kind of support pages since forever, with the same kind of instructions (checking which exactly model mac or router you have, which cable goes where, what video connections your thunderbolt supports, etc). It's for troubleshooting specific conditions, not for everyday consulting. When you get your laptop and your cable in the box, it just works, obviously.

Living in a household with all kinds of Apple devices this is just not how this is going to work out long term. Family members borrow cables, you use one to connect something else while leaving the charger in another room, then you put it back but you mix up all these same looking white cables, and next thing you know your computer isn't charging properly anymore.

Sorry, this is not acceptable. Apple used to sweat these details. If they don't anymore I can as well buy PCs from now on.

>Living in a household with all kinds of Apple devices this is just not how this is going to work out long term. Family members borrow cables, you use one to connect something else while leaving the charger in another room, then you put it back but you mix up all these same looking white cables, and next thing you know your computer isn't charging properly anymore.

Then maybe one could just use the higher ranked cables for everything in the family?

>Sorry, this is not acceptable.

Sounds totally acceptable, and relatively minor. It might be because I'm foreign, but a phrase like "not acceptable" sounds more fit for another country wanting to invade yours, or at least a guest making a pass at your spouse, not whether one can easily re-use cables between devices.

Even if we constrain it to computers, Apple did have its share of "not acceptable" issues (e.g. green cooling goo leaking out of old Mac Pros, display glitches, etc). Those were indeed not acceptable as they actually and actively prevented working with the computer. I don't see mixed cables with other devices as a reason not to accept (which to me would mean "return") a laptop.

Where am I going to get these higher ranked cables for? Why shouldn't I just be able to use the cables which already came with all of our macs?

Just like it's always been with chargers - it still does "just work" but the correctly powered charger will charge much faster, no different to previous MacBooks, iPhones or iPads.

I tried searching for one on my wife's new 13" MBP cable. Holy crap, that took me five minutes to find. If you hadn't given me a rough idea of where to look, never would have found it.

I've had a Mac since 2004. In that time, I had several defective logic boards and several defective displays, and one (slowly, harmlessly) exploding battery. In these cases, I also had to read off a tiny gray serial number off my laptop somewhere, this isn't really new. Hardware fails sometimes, it happens. In my experience, Apple's hardware in the last few years is much more reliable than their hardware a decade ago. Their software quality, on the other hand...

You're talking about returning defective hardware. The OP is talking about determining compatibility on identical-looking hardware.