Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | sowuttho's commentslogin

FWIW personally fine with Apple MITM the verification process.

USB cables available online from any arbitrary retailer could be so wildly out of spec they burn out gadgets, or include some phone home thing.

Of course technologists will scoff as of course they’re the only people on the planet.


The whole Apple playbook these days: charge everyone a troll toll in the name of safety


And consumers are fine with that proposal because they end up with stuff that actually works.


If consumers are fine then the vast majority of cables I’d see people owning would be Apple cables. That’s rarely the case. Most people are buying 3rd party cables even to use with Apple devices and I doubt any but a small minority even know what MFI is, never mind basing their purchasing decision on it.

Edit: To add to the anecdata, here’s a Reddit thread on the iPhone subreddit where the majority of folks are responding by saying they’re buying non Apple chargers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/b4k8j2/do_you_guys_...


From a cursory look at that thread, everybody is using Anker or Belkin, all MFI-certified, or a variety of Qi chargers which are also fully supported.

I guess I'm not sure what your point is.


rhaway84773 conflated Apple cables with MFI cables. The Apple tax is high, the MFI tax not so much.


But they are fine with it only because those safety mechanisms are not enforced by goverments already, and of course Apple is more than happy to be the one in charge of enforcing it.


For things with actual safety issues like batteries and power bricks, the government should be regulating them more. For things like "does this usb-c cable meet the required specs to provide consistent video and high speed data transfers?", this seems like exactly the kind of thing private companies can validate.


Finish the thought. If governments did the enforcement, Apple wouldn’t have to do so.


The customers that buy Apple don't flinch at 40 bucks for a cable, no.

There's a reason that Apple is not that big in lower income countries like here in Spain.


Please point me to the iPhone cables you're buying.


Here's Apple's own; 40 smackaroos for USB 2.0 (eg 2002-era) transfer speed: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HN5S2ZM/A/native-union-ni...

The future, everyone!

God forbid you buy one of those "cheaper" $20 rubber cables and live in a house with pets. No joke, I have went through more than a half dozen of those cables from regular wear-and-tear.


I wouldn't call that "Apple's own" cable. That's a third-party cable that they sell in their store, and is notably more expensive than their own officially-branded cables.

(That said, I do agree that their branded cables are generally overpriced for their level of durability.)


While their accessories are quite overpriced, it's not just "in the name of". It's in reality, too: there are quite a few teardowns comparing the insides of e.g. Apple chargers vs. generic chargers. Whatever issues you may have with Apple accessories, cheaper ones are often much worse.


these days?


>USB cables available online from any arbitrary retailer could be so wildly out of spec they burn out gadgets, or include some phone home thing.

Apple's tristar (or whatever they call it now on new models) should reject anything out of spec, I don't think a cable should be ultimately trusted that it will work due to very real world wear scenarios.

Phone home is probably tin foil hat thinking.


> Phone home is probably tin foil hat thinking.

Probably, but also be careful which cable you're using! https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable

This one is physically exactly the same as an Apple Lighting cable, but contains a WiFi Server and a bunch of other doodads


Wow, that's a really good price for such a neat hack.


You have it backwards. Charging will be permitted with any cable - only data communication will be blocked unless you pay the Apple tax.

This helps exactly no one - except Apple of course.


None of my Lightning cables are “Apple certified”. They all transfer data find.

These are my “universal charging cables”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092ZT8CJ9

- USB A/USB C on one end

- USB C/Lightning on the other

They transfer data at USB 2 speeds

But my truly universal cables are these

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

- USB A/USB C on one end

- lightning/USB C/MicroUSB on the other end

- 10 Gbps data

- 100W charging

- video over USB C for my portable display that gets power and video over 1 cable

These are thicker and less convenient than the first ones.


A random teacher in any school across the US has done more for society in real terms than you have in a decade.

You could be part of the open data movement and a researcher in your spare time not stocking grocery store shelves.

Yes I’m suggesting your credentials are worthless. Why do we need full time university researcher role play when millions the world over are “researching” software engineering?

There are far fewer teachers. Sounds like a pay rebalancing given market realities is in order. Coders are everywhere. Minimum wage for them!


How dare we reap privilege on babysitters freeing devops engineers to copy-paste off stackoverflow


Enablers, just like in the US, are complicit.


Who are enablers, people who live their daily lives, go to work, have hobbies? What should they do not to be enablers, take a rifle and go die for a fine cause?


> Who are enablers, people who live their daily lives, go to work, have hobbies?

Yes. No one can force you act against you own comfort for the good of other people. But we can at least remind you that you should feel ashamed for it.


People will say whatever the status quo says or they’ll be booted off the island.

All that’s been proven is we can apply patterns of discovery well defined by info theorists a century ago to electron state in a machine.

We’ve hardly upended immutable law established by physical experiment. Discovery of human ability to capture natures energy in its machines is also not so new; trebuchets and arrows leveraged gravity.

Only 14% of the adult public has more than a bachelors. Religion proved it is not that hard to convince the majority in titillating nonsense.

Individually none of the specific discoveries that go into SpaceX or Google were invented there. Iterating on well known ideas with well known technology is what humans do. It’s fascinating and interesting.

The figurative gibberish about a minority is to serve nation state propaganda about how amazing it is here. But inside the gulag we all defer to the minority needed to sell the illusion.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: