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Comment by hot_gril

3 years ago

You care when it stops working one day because Apple changed something (maybe intentionally). Out of a combination of spite and cheapness, I've only ever bought unlicensed cables for several years, and this is the price I've paid over time.

So how well are the USB C cables going to work that follow the minimum “mandate” that doesn’t require cables to support data at all? How well are they going to work when people pick up a “USB C” cable and wonder why they aren’t seeing video when they connect their phone to their TV?

  • Not very well, but you can buy decent cables from a variety of manufacturers for cheap, and there isn't this one license-holder (Apple) out there trying to take a big cut from that. If someone wants to make a good Lightning cable for cheap, first they have to break the law by skipping the licensing deal, then they have to get around Apple's own mechanisms.

    • It doesn’t prevent “ewaste” if phone makers (mostly low end Android phone makers) still bundle shoddy cables, stores are still allowed to sell shoddy cables, etc.

      And USB C is not free of licensing requirements

      https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/450494/are-u...

      A “good” USB C cable that supports all of the things I said - high speed data, video over USB, etc - costs around $15. The same price as an Anker Lightning cable.

      A random USB C cable doesn’t support video over USB - something I need for my portable secondary display.

      The iPads with USB C already support this. I have no reason to believe that the next iPhone won’t.

      17 replies →

  • > So how well are the USB C cables going to work that follow the minimum “mandate” that doesn’t require cables to support data at all?

    Citation needed? I think those are below the minimum.

    > How well are they going to work when people pick up a “USB C” cable and wonder why they aren’t seeing video when they connect their phone to their TV?

    They probably feel similar to people with lightning cables.

    • > They probably feel similar to people with lightning cables.

      Lightning supports video. Or were you just making a joke about how unreliable it is? Cause man, I can't even charge my phone sometimes.

      2 replies →