Huh. Apple seemed to have finally completed their conversion to USB-C. And then they came up with yet another proprietary connector for the battery pack? That's frustrating.
However, given that this is a device you use while standing and walking about, it would be dangerous to have it suddenly turn into a high tech blindfold just because you snagged the cable on something.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/documents/usb_type-c...
It not only holds the cord safely, it rotates into an orientation guiding it the right direction for the cord.
It would be better to have no cord, but the design is worth a close look.
They’re not trying to force a new connector on anyone - they don’t even sell anything that uses it that part.
It’s the way one proprietary part talks to another proprietary part.
If you want to charge the system through USB-C, it has a port for that on the battery pack.
That link is for sending it back to Apple for warranty service.
My point was that as far as I can tell, they aren’t expecting you to swap battery packs or change anything that uses that cable.
They don’t sell extra batteries so it’s not like they’re trying to upsell on a proprietary connector.
Anyway, I do agree that it would be better if it used a regular USB connection — and better still if it didn’t need an external battery pack at all.
Isn't this exactly what people are complaining about though? Yes, you can design this to not be consumer replaceable, but would it be that much more effort to just use a more standard connector instead?
Plain old USB-C cables are simply not suited for this kind of device. That’s why USB-C is only used to charge the battery. Hopefully you’re not too blinded by political agendas to see the engineering that went into this.