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Apple's premium products are not even that expensive.
Actually I have to disagree with you, back when I purchased my ThinkPad, I compared that and the then current MBP, and for around 2,200 I got a great machine, where if I bought a similarly configured MBP, it would have been in the 4,600 dollar range.
 
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That is not true. I own few of both the Belkin AND CableMatters 2m TB3 (active) cables, both cost ~$60 USD. I use them as "bench ties" and both function as TB3 OR USB-C for various needs.

My cables work with the iPad Pro as well, but only when hooked to the computer. I am not sure why but the TB3 cable will not charge my iPad Pro from a power brick. It must be the USB-C PD standard - maybe its not not implemented in TB3 yet. I digress.

The only reason I would pay the Apple Tax on these cables is if the connection is very secure. I have found that the Belkin and CM cables don't "click" as securely into the port as I would like. But since I use them at my workstation/desk its not a huge deal. But with my laptop I actually purchased Apple's .8m cable because I found it could be jiggled a little and not lose connection, an issue I have had with the others.

Not sure what's ''not true'' about my statement but that's pretty nice that they work with USB C and TB3.
 
...because so many forum users here have Caviar taste and McNugget budgets.

I take it you have never had your McNuggets served with a caviar dipping sauce?



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Using the CalDigit 2m active cable for $50 for a year now for my eGPU without any issues.
 
The fact that T-Bolt requires "active" cables means the cable ends contain required circuitry that, for some reason, is excluded from the "expensive" computers or devices and shifted to what might otherwise be "inexpensive" cables.

T-Bolt is a scam and Apple is one of the scammers.
 
The fact that T-Bolt requires "active" cables means the cable ends contain required circuitry that, for some reason, is excluded from the "expensive" computers or devices and shifted to what might otherwise be "inexpensive" cables.

Yeah, why IS that the case?
 
Apple are really trying to ram it up our backsides!


€24.99 or US$28 for you guys across the pond.


That's 0.8m. You can do that over simple copper. Copper's problem with signal degradation scales rapidly with length.

Is this an optical cable? Those are seen more and more for Thunderbolt and HDMI. Cosemi is one manufacturer I've seen. Photonic cables don't have the signal-dispersion and -corruption issues that copper does.
 
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Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. In order to test a 40 Gbps Thunderbolt cable, you need a $10,200 software application to run on an oscilloscope. The oscilloscope itself costs $405,681. So for the equipment you need to test each cable coming off the line, you've spent close to a half million dollars per station.

This is production test, we're not even talking about the software and hardware you need to design the cable.
Yeah, sure.
With that reasoning each ****** BLE module on the market would cost your 129,- instead of a couple of cents.
The Rohde&Schwarz test equipment, the EMC chambers needed to test the RF characteristics, the amplifiers, antennas etc. cost a couple of million dollars in sum.
The mistake here is that you do not take into account what the desired sales volume (in pcs.) is for the cable. The manufacturer clearly aims to sell a couple of them, right?
The second mistake is that most of the test equipment is already there in the lab or on the engineering office desks, so the costs can not be dumped on the sole purpose of designing/testing this specific cable.
But yeah, as an electronics engineer I do not have a glimpse of what you´re writing here... sure.
 
So why is this cable have a very high price?

We’ll have to wait for a tear down to see. My thoughts are a better kind of wiring technology (fiber optics maybe?) combined with complicated circuitry to also support USB C. Both of which have R&D costs that need to be offset, plus Apple tax, plus low expected volume of sales drives price up.

e.g. The silicon / sand materials cost of processors actually costs pennies. Processors are $100-$1,000 for consumers though, most of which goes to pay the engineer’s salaries to design the chips. Server processors take (almost) the same amount of effort to design but simply because less will be sold, the price needs to be higher.

Consumer CPUs: $1,000,000,000 to design, expecting to sell 10,000,000 —> price of $100 to offset design cost.

Server CPUs: $1,000,000,000 to design, expecting to sell 1,000,000 —> $1,000 per chip

same with cables
 
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I was waiting for this cable, now it looks way too expensive. I do like its capabilities, I've yet to see any other cable do every protocol without sacrificing cable length, but for this price it's not worth it to me.

I think what happened here with the price is it's an active cable but it's a special chip inside that switches between active and passive modes, so that it works with non-Thunderbolt protocols in passive mode and full TB3 speeds in active mode. I think no one else is doing that, but maybe I'm wrong. Every other cable before has had to sacrifice length to be a passive cable, or data rates with TB3 protocol, or had to sacrifice other protocols by using an active cable.

Also I don't think it's fiber optic. Fiber optic has special considerations that Apple would have to warn users about, like that you can't bend the cable in a tight radius because fiber optics aren't amenable to bending and lose the signal.
 
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