Out of all the hundreds of cables I've used, only the white iPhone cables tend to fail in this manner. In fact, not a single white iPhone cable has been spared from this insidious fault.
This is a direct unarguable observation for me - how come so many other cables I own and use in similar manner don't fray?
I brought Anker PowerLine II and III ( Not the + version ) for my family and friends and so far apart from one connector failure ( Not the cable ), all of them have survived the years of usage with no signs of cable damage. It is such a relieve knowing your cable should last years if not decades.
We used to joke apart Apple made the cable so bad because they expect us to buy a new iPhone every two years anyway, which is when all of our lightning cables somehow failed.
I am also wondering, if it is really that environmental friendly to make your cable free of certain material but they break 10 times easier and end up so much more in landfill. Compare to make one that last literally forever. Lightning Cables are sold in hundreds of millions unit a year. And Apple earns money and commission from lightning chips, connector and MFi.
But I've also recently started buying braided cables to replace the Apple/apple-like varieties. The fabric braided ones from Monoprice look nice and seem a bit more durable - likely because the sleeving is also thicker and you can't bend them at sharp angles without feeling like you're doing something obviously wrong.
The only unarguable thing is the disparity between what we're doing.