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Comment by rstat1 | Hacker News Reader

My brother has an iPad with the Lightning port on it, and has to get new cables every few years because they start fraying and breaking around the bottom of the connector.

And he isn't really rough or abusive with these cables either.

Where as I still have MicroUSB cables from 10 or 12yrs ago that still look and work like new.

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That sounds like a “your brother problem”. Especially that an often touted negative of lightning cables is that the only movable part is inside the socket, which is harder to replace — so it makes even less sense why they could go wrong. My guess: he is buying cheap Chinese ones that have lower quality and you compare it to some higher quality ones.

As many people can vouch for: lighting cables can easily work for many many years without any trouble whatsoever.

This definitely has to do with handling. I always wad my cables up and stuff them in bags, no care to careful winding or anything—but they last forever, as long as I’m the only one using them.

What I don’t do is hold them under tension for long periods, or use them stretched taught then bent 90° right next to the connector. My wife and kids ruin cables in a few months, and that’s how they do it. I didn’t get what people were talking about with apple cables being fragile, until I saw that.

I developed my habit because the same behavior is bad on ports, too. I’d developed an unconscious avoidance to doing those things before I ever owned an Apple device, or had one at work. So my Apple cables last forever unless my wife or kids get ahold of them.

Contributing to this anecdata, it's the same for me. My cables last forever, my spouse runs through them at an accelerated rate. Coincidentally, they use their phone in bed with it plugged in...

Plug in, move as far away as possible, turn port away from direction of the wall outlet, to use it. Bonus points for also resting it on the bent-at-the-port cable. Yep, that’s the maneuver my family members use to ruin all our cables. Similar with laptop and tablet power cables—get far from the outlet so the cable’s under tension, turn device so port’s not facing the outlet.

Sounds like they could use a christmas gift of extra long cables with 90 degree ends.

Mine last forever, except that one time I handled the Lightning connector with wet hands before plugging it in. Phone was fine, thankfully, but I cleaned some sooty deposits from the socket.

Yep. My replaced lightning and USB-C cables were all with the iPad, because in landscape I’ll have the connector at a tight bend.

Now I just use a usb-c cable with a 90 degree bend built in.

Hmm, I've known several Apple users who have experienced the same thing. Both with branded Apple cables and third party ones. I seemed to notice lighting users having more dead cables than USB-C users seemed to, and it seems to me that lightning cables more frequently omit robust strain relief for aesthetic reasons.

The most frequent tendency I notice among people who have their cables fray is they use their phones while charging, but if you do certain things on your phone like long gaming sessions, you are almost forced to use your phone while it charges. So blaming the user feels a little bit like "you're holding it wrong" to me.

Where I did notice a difference between USB-C and lightning is that the lightning PORT seemed more durable than USB-C ports. I own multiple phones with flaky USB-C ports, whereas lighting ports seem much more durable.

I suspect they're more durable too. We're about to find out, I suppose.

It's an old problem that was a real problem. I personally have never had any cables fray, except for every white Apple cord I had owned.

Up until a few years back when I noticed my replacement cord for yet another bad Apple cable felt different. Haven't had any issues with them after that. I assume they changed the manufacturing process.

In my experience, it's actually Apple cables that break pretty easily. It usually doesn't happen at the Lightning side, but at or near the strain relief, i.e. close to where the cable meets the plug.

I've seen this happen for Apple MagSafe, Lightning, and I believe even USB-C.

Definitely not, Apple cables (not just Lightning, the old Magsafe ones and laptop USB-C ones too) are the worst for crumbling under stress at the point they bend near the plug. That rubbery coating just seems somehow worse for it than anything I've seen made/sold by anyone else.

I noticed (I don't have one) the new Magsafe ones for the current MacBooks have changed to a braided fabric looking coating/sleeve instead.

Throwing another data point into the ring. Of all the lightning cables I bought, the genuine ones from Apple always failed first.

I really don't think it is. It was a problem with the Apple one as well or else he wouldn't keep having to get new ones.

I guess there will always be someone who can damage any cable. I've never killed a lightning cable myself, and only ever seen someone else (my own mother) do it once -- and it wasn't the connector that broke, it was the cable at the strain relief. Hell, the cable still actually worked, but I was uncomfortable with the state of the cable and bought her a new one.

When I was doing Android phones, I was going through a new Micro USB cable about every month or two. Never long enough to fray the cable itself, it was always the connector flaking out and refusing to make a good enough connection to charge reliably.

Good riddance to Micro USB.

Absolutely not a Lightning-specific thing.

Flimsy cables are flimsy cables and they will break and fray. USB-C, Lightning, whatever.

The first-party Lightning cables from Apple have always been pretty flimsy so if Lightning cables have a bad rep in general, that's probably why. That's Apple's fault but not anything specific to Lightning.

I've had a lot of Anker Lightning cables and they're about as bulletproof as a cable can possibly be.

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