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Comment by hobbitstan | Hacker News Reader

I often wonder how much money Apple makes from the fact that lightning cables all seem to die after a few months. I have usb cables that are decades old that still work, but lightning…

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I can't remember the last time I had a legit lightning cable break. At least not for any other reason than "kids kept yanking it out by the cord and finally ripped the end off." I still have cables from at least 5 years ago, for sure.

Micro USB cables used to last anywhere from a few days to a few months for me. USB-C is much better, but I still find they fail in less than a year. Not sure exactly why, it looks like it ought to be a sturdy design.

And I just threw two Anker USB-C charging cables away in the last four weeks as both broke internally.

Anker has been great about replacing in my experience.

I've only had 1 lightning cable die on me in over 10 years of owning iPhones, and it was a heavily abused cable.

Yes because it’s impossible to buy third party Lightning cables…

Apple takes a cut from every licensed Lightning cable sold.

I doubt that Apple is getting a “cut” of the $5 cables you can buy from Amazon or your local bodega.

They do from MFi certified cables. You have to pay apple a licensing fee. and the non licensed cables will sometimes give you an error.

I’ve bought dozens of cords over the past decade that weren’t MFI certified and not have any issues. Do you think the top selling Lightning cables on Amazon or at your local bodega or convenience store paid Apple a fee?

Lightning is a trademark. As far as i know you can't make a lightning cable an sell it as one without paying apple

Why is this even an argument? Lightning is not something obscure. You can go on Amazon now and find hundreds of cables that are not “MFI certified”. You can’t believe all of these Chinese cables are bothering with certification.

I have a few of these:

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

And these

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092ZT8CJ9?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...

Not a certification anywhere.

I’ve replaced all of my regular Lightning cables with these

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