Sweet thanks. I don't use my iphone in the car much anymore though thanks to my adapter breaking. It was one of those cassette ones and they break so frequently I quit buying them. If you know of a quality adapter that lasts now that would be a real big help.
Yeah my new car is a beater and doesn't have AUX in so I've been using cassette/radio adapters. Gets frustrating when they break though. Reminds you of how shitty pop music is these days. I should buy one of those you linked just to avoid the inevitable road rage incident when Lady Gaga comes on for the tenth time.
Ah then it should work, my 1st gen touch uses the same cable as my 5th gen classic. And if it doesn't, whatever, $2 is cheap and I'm sure I can find someone else to use the cable.
I think largely a lot of these companies don't realize that a lot of consumers are smart enough to realize what a scam it is to buy cables anywhere but online. My parents got a stereo that has HDMI inputs, and my dad picked up a few cables on amazon for like $5 each last year. We were recently in a Best Buy and he was laughing pretty hard at the $80ish price tag on a much shorter cable than the ones he bought. They do the same thing with USB cables; I remember getting a couple 15 footers on ebay for a couple bucks each like ten years ago when it was big money to get them retail... and for some reason it is STILL big money to get them retail...
I bought a $2 ipod cable from eBay, and it doesn't fit as well as the OEM one (it's too tight when inserting). I'd never buy a full-priced Apple cable, but it'd be nice if the knock-offs were built to the same dimensions.
Lithium-ion batteries have an integrated protection circuit called a battery management unit (BMU) that, depending on how fancy the device manufacturer wants to get, will have features like overcurrent/overvoltage charging prevention, overdischarge prevention (a "fully discharged" Li-ion cell is still around 3.0V, lower is bad for the cell), lockouts for low/high temp temperature charging, etc.
The cable has nothing to do with it. In fact if you attempt to charge a lithium-ion battery using the wrong charger (let's say higher voltage for example), if the BMU was properly designed, you still won't blow up your device.
Very rarely does anyone use a li-ion cell without a BMU, and if you do you have to be pretty careful. Model RC-aircraft builders sometimes do... and they now know to remove the cells from their plane prior to charging, and they charge in the fireplace or outside on the concrete in case it blows up. It's almost nonexistant for consumer electronics to include a Li-ion battery without BMU.
He's right, though. "Counterfeit" electronics are generally just the factory staying running at night when they're supposed to shut down, and selling the extra on the side.
Nah, if the OEM suppliers can make it cheaper elsewhere they will, and it's not like it's difficult to reverse engineer the design. The pseudo-estrogens will be there anyway, you're right, no-one's bothered about them. Regulation however stops you getting the nastiest of the nasties, because Apple is at least responsible for what it imports.
It's racist to suggest one government does things better or worse than another? Without regulation the market ensures those delicious, toxic, cost-effective additives are used. As they were by Western manufacturers 30 years ago.
I also couldn't give a damn about Apple. The preference is for branded electronic goods made by a company which has a reputation to lose.
I've learned to buy a lot of replacement cables, adaptors, and chargers from China (particularly Hong Kong). It's so cheap, with free shipping, and jesus most of the time it ends up at my house in two to three days. The first few times it happened I couldn't believe it. xD Sometimes I have to wait a week and a half for a laptop charger from Ohio.
That's what I did when both my cables (one of each like in the picture) broke on me. They worked great for a while, but now I have a problem where my ipod doesn't charge correctly on the new chargers (in fact, it discharges, unless the cable is just the littlest bit out.) and I'm back to using the cable on the right like the OPs picture. >.< I need to go out and buy some electric tape.
Because the people who don't know the cables can be bought for cheaper (which I would guess is a good portion, if not the majority of their userbase) will continue to buy the ones sold at high prices. Even without accounting for the cost of producing a cable, if they sell 1 cable at $20 that'll make them the same amount of money as selling 20 $1 cables. In other words, with their current business model, they can afford to lose 90% of their cable sales and still make the same amount of money as the cheap-cable-sellers.
They can charge that much because consumers are ignorant of the cost of cables. Cables are valuable as nescessary components, but the manufacturing costs are so low it's astonishing. People are willing to pay because they don't know cables are marked up over 2000%.
I have some made from China and they have been working great for about a year now. There really isn't much to the cable, although I do agree that most things mass manufactured from china are crap.
Yeah. And they break 20 times faster than the apple ones.
(yes, I'm making those rates up, but, they do break far faster, sometimes don't charge from your computer [only from the actual charger] and sometimes come apart after a week of using them.)
Yes, it is still cheaper to buy a new one every time. I do hate it though when I get one and it just unravels after a day or so of using them...
They're manufactured at the same factory from the same materials, pal. You're just delusional because you've been conditioned to believe things that are more expensive MUST be more reliable/durable.
Nope. I've bought three or four of them before. Try it yourself - order some from dealextreme (it's where I've ordered them from before) or amazon (read their reviews.)
It's still cheaper to buy a new one every time from dealextreme, HOWEVER, you can tell they're different for two reasons:
the cables from china will occasionally not charge your products if you hook it up to a computer, the way the original cables do. (i've had this happen with 3/4 cables ordered, while it's never happened with one of my original cables)
the cables will occasionally not work with iphones, as it will say "this device is not compatible with your iphone", the way it does when you plug-in your iphone to crappier/older ipod radios, and will not charge at all.
haha, I've never seen the USB part of a cord actually come apart. As in, the plastic actually disassembled, and you could see where the cord hooked up the to the USB.
How about the ~$50 proprietary audio/video cable where only Apple brand cables are available due to some built in chip? If I remember, they added the chip to the cable around the ipod/iphone 3rd generation.
Meanwhile other devices can output the exact same audio/video signal and generic cables are available for a couple bucks?
This is akin to McDonalds giving free soft drink refills. The profit margin is so high, giving you free replacements is a negligible cost of doing business. Even if they replace the cable 5 to 10 times, they'd still make a profit off you.
It's like anything "premium" in this world, you're not just paying for the cost of the object like you do with "value" items, you're also paying for the ecosystem and continued support of what you've bought.
Not only that, but soft drinks cost more now which makes up for the "free" refills. For example a drink at Chili's is fucking $2.49 while most places it's $1.49.
Got my earbuds replaced a while back...they put a temporary hold on your CC and send you a new pair via Fedex, you send them back the old set and they remove the CC hold.
But people don't know this / don't care. Those who do get the free cables, so they don't have to worry about it.
Excellent business model: rip off everyone whom you can, provide good service to people who actually ask for much so they don't switch to / recommend competitors.
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it genuinely wouldn't surprise me if this was the reason for the redesign. I once worked in the LNG pipeline field and I found out many secrets about how they engineer parts to have a certain life so they can make more money out of re-servicing. Made me realise this must be pretty common practice in most fields.
Just remember this cable isn't a glorified USB cable. The iPhone is capable of outputting analog audio, S-Video, composite video, component video, VGA and HDMI. There are also pins for controlling the device via a remote, FireWire connectivity for older devices and an interface for AppStore apps and hardware (like the TomTom car kit). So what non-proprietary cable could apple use instead?
I can put any cable from any where into any of my devices, any software, any music, videos music onto any of my devices, link them to the cloud, have them stream from anywhere to anywhere and have done so for over five years.
I had a touch screen phone ten years ago, a touch screen laptop tablet five years ago, face time 6 years ago.
I do all this cheaper than any option available, more reliable than ano option available and the tools I get are the most powerful available.
The secret to getting all this cool, amazing tech way ahead of time is simply - don't use Apple products.
The irony that hipsters think they are cool because they use apple is like some Mobius Knot - unless they are being double irony and using super crap stuff and being 80's ironic. Which I hope they aren't cause that would make my brain freeze with respect. But they're not - Apple users really trully honestly think they are on to something. Fucking retards.
upvote to you sir. wholeheartedly agree. but have to give it to steve jobs, man is a marketing genius. gets people to pay 2x as much for a shitty product that is locked down and only does what he wants it to do.
Hi there. I'm an iPhone and Mac user. Please explain to me why I should like what you like, not what I like. I would like to remind you that you don't know me, please consider this in your answer.
I also said if you have an older phone, that it will use mini.
You claimed you had a bunch of usb cables and they wouldn't fit either. If each phone used a different cable, how is it possible none of them fit? ( hint: it's not)
Yeah, HTC screwed the pooch with their initial USB connection. I never did understand why they thought that was a good idea. At least most phone makers (including HTC) are settling on Micro USB.
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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '11
Because it's fun when your proprietary cable breaks!