Comment by ksk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksk | Hacker News Reader

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>But I wouldn't question the value that highly integrated designs that Apple and others have brought to the table.

And yet nearly every single person I know has had their power cable for their iphone and/or macbook fray after a year or so. Meanwhile the "ugly" Sony one that I have for the past 7 years, continues to work just fine. Apple do make well designed products, but they're not above sacrificing functionality for looks, and when they do, its kinda embarrassing. Especially rookie mistakes like not having proper heat dissipation for their laptop GPUs. Also.. didn't the first unibody macs have several design flaws with the hinges and the battery bulging, etc ?

>Modularity and repairability are a necessary sacrifice to build products that sleek.

Apple can already repair it themselves. They're artificially restricting the supply of parts so others can't repair it. Apple repair costs are substantially higher and its unfortunate that they're against other repair shops competing with them.

It's just about unforgivable how long Apple sat on their Macbook charger til they finally let us swap out the brick<->laptop stretch of wire -- the part that actually breaks.

Astonishingly wasteful (both in dollars and electrical waste) to buy a new $70 brick when it was never the brick that broke.

Now you can just buy a $7 cord from Amazon when it breaks. Of course, go for an off-brand if you want one that won't fray in <1 year.

That's why I can't understand people who complain about removal of MagSafe. Seriously, it was a great thing to have but replaceable cord is MUCH better for me.

I'm very careful with my laptops and never needed MagSafe (luckily) but during the years I broke 6 or 7 chargers. Sometimes it was a year, sometimes two, but the cord always snipped. No matter how careful I was.

People complain because Apple could've made a replaceable MagSafe cable.

I have several frayed lighting cables but mag safe has not failed me even after 8 years of use. And it has served me many times.

I don't see the problem of spending $70 for a new power cable for a laptop that cost me over $3000. Some people are just bad at math.

I don't follow. Because you spent $3000, it's acceptable to then waste money?

Once again, the $70 brick isn't the thing that's broken when the cord frays, so I'm not sure why you'd be cool with buying another one unless you just have a bunch of fuck-off money.

I'm not sure how math factors into it, but I see how financial sense and thrift do.

So if you are bad with money and pay 3 times as much as your competitors customers why care about a proportionally smaller waste. Totally tracks.

To be fair, MagSafe can be added on top of any connector. I'd also rather have a replaceable cord than MagSafe, but now we can have both.

Isn't that stuff about the cords just anecdotal? I have every power cord I've ever owned for my various Apple products; sometimes I feel like they are taking me over. Totally agree on your other points though.

It definitely is anecdotal and I can't speak to your experience. But like I replied to the other comment, Apple instituting a replacement program is as close as you can get to them admitting that it was/is a problem.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204551

Of course it's anecdotal but since it's anti Apple it's immediately accepted as truth since who wants to be pro Apple.

I can replay with equal validity that I've NEVER had an Apple cable fail either power or data and that goes back to my Newton 2100 which is still working with original cables.

Plus add to that I work in a public library and we loan out cables and MacBook Airs and we've never had any cables fail. Plenty stolen but that's another story. 8-(

I've seen PLENTY of people treat their cables without a thought to protecting them from poor treatment. People that pull out the cable using the wire, retrieve their dropped phones and PCs buy reeling up on the cable.

There's no cables that can survive that and be cost effective in the quantities that Apple needs to produce. Sure a 3rd party cable maker can but their scale of production is minuscule compared to Apple's.

In our home every single power cord or iPhone charger broke at the same spot (we went through quite a few). Very frustrating and I was quite pissed at Apple for a long time, because of that. Today i know that we have simply been handling the cable too carelessly, pulling it out by the cable, having it continuously bent/twisted in a weird way. I know it sounds silly, but it never occurred to me that that kind of stress would be too much for a part that is used on a daily basis. We have one iPhone charger left and since I am making sure to not ever unplug it by pulling the cable or having it twisted or bent it still looks just as good as in the beginning.

I am sure Apple could produce a more robust cable if they wanted to, but it would probably not lock slick enough.

So "every single person you know has had their power cable for their iPhone and/or Macbook fray after a year" is some kind of legitimate sample set? Let me answer that - no.

I find comments from folks like you ignorant and of low quality. I'm sorry you and your friends have had issue - I can just as easily say that me and my friends have never had any issues with their Apple cables (which is true by the way). What does that mean? Nothing.

If you're going to make 50 million of something then your quantity of scale in production is UNIQUE and you can't compare the product of that production to other people that can a) source much lower quantities b) produce them slower and c) have less distribution and support issue.

As for your repair comment you think Apple takes defective motherboards and reworks them? Haha. Even back in the 80's when I was an Apple Certified Repair tech and went down to the North Carolina Level 3 center for repairs the folks there loved to show us the "motherboard" closet - a room with hundreds of motherboards waiting for rework "if they have time". Even then it was cheaper to make a new motherboard than take the time to diagnose and rework an old one.

If consumers want reliable and cheap (yes cheap) technology then manufacturers are going to choose those qualities over repair-ability. I for one would choose cheaper over more repairable considering the methods for mass producing electronics go hand in hand with more rugged electronics.

You'll need to prove this statement - "They're artificially restricting the supply of parts so others can't repair it" but you can't so I'm going to ignore it.

> And yet nearly every single person I know has had their power cable for their iphone and/or macbook fray after a year or so.

You don’t know me, but in 12 years of solely using Apple laptops and phones (obviously < 12yrs for the phones), I’ve never once had a cord/cable fray or fail. I’ve had 4-5 laptops and 4 phones.

I see. I can't speak to your experience, but Apple instituting a replacement program is as close as you can get them to admit that its a problem, or was a problem.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204551

Consider yourself an outlier. I've also never met someone who didn't have an issue with Apple's shit-tier cables when the topic came up.

I’ve never had one fray either and I’ve had every single iPhone, 4 laptops, a watch, and a bunch of extra cables.

I do know people that seem to have them fray constantly though. I have no idea what these people do to their cables.

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