I would like to see a good macrumors article involving tear downs of chargers and cables.
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Apple's Anti-Counterfeit Team Has Targeted Over 1 Million Listings on Instagram and Other Marketplaces in the Past Year
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The rule with chargers: Small, safe, cheap: Choose two. You can actually build safe chargers cheaply if you don’t mind them being big and ugly. A safe charger in a small space, that’s the difficult bit.
I went to an Apple store, told them, I am connecting a USB 3.1 drive and need a Type-C cable. I mentioned to the sales guy that I was fed up with bad cables that didn't work, and that I am here to buy a cable that I know will work. They proceeded to sell me a $30 white apple branded cable. When I brought it home and hooked it up, it transferred at USB 2.0 speeds. I looked at the connector and found that they didn't even have all the pins for USB SS. Apple is just as shady and make non-compliant, cheap cables too.
I'm curious what they make off of repairs for damaged devices using these counterfeit accessories. Or money they lose, fixing things they can't prove were damaged due to counterfeit accessories.
Think a bit deeper. Apple has done this in the past when chargers were included with their products.
It's about harm that comes to Apple customers when a fake Apple charger catches on fire, and then harm to Apple's brand reputation as a result.
Many years ago, I had an original MagSafe charger and I noticed this burning smell. The charging connector got incredibly hot resulting in it melting and charing the plastic around the charging port on the laptop, and also frying the charging port.
I was out of warranty but called customer service who triple checked no one was injured and nothing was damaged beyond the charger and laptop (i.e. could there be a lawsuit). After that was confirmed, he just said Apple wouldn't do anything and that was the end of the call. I don't know that I would necessarily expect anything different, but nothing is completely failure-proof, including official Apple chargers.
I was out of warranty but called customer service who triple checked no one was injured and nothing was damaged beyond the charger and laptop (i.e. could there be a lawsuit). After that was confirmed, he just said Apple wouldn't do anything and that was the end of the call. I don't know that I would necessarily expect anything different, but nothing is completely failure-proof, including official Apple chargers.
One would think that would have put the same type of effort into cleaning-up the App Store, but that's probably asking too much from a Tim Cook-led Apple !
the problem with apple cables is that they break so easily. Anker used to be good but the quality has dropped considerably but still break later than apple.
Nowadays, i use amazonbasics and all are working for years now so just enjoying them until they decide to degrade quality as well
for bricks, i always use apple
Yep. The easiest safety hazard to see when opening these third-party chargers up is insufficient physical distance between the AC and the DC portions of the circuit.
They're not identical in every way. They're identical on the outside, very different on the outside.
Yes I am sure Apple would prefer everyone only buy OEM or MFI-certified product from a revenue standpoint, but Apple also benefits from not having their customers' health and safety being put at risk and the bad PR and lawsuits ensuing from such incidents. 
Maybe they shouldn't have stopped selling phones without chargers. What did they think a ton of people were going to do? You don't hear stories about how Android phones are being damaged by crappy chargers, because they're all ubiquitous USB-C, like how the iPhone should be. But then again, you can't sell 1m USB-C cables for $20...
As long as it hurts their bottom line they will defend against it as "counterfeit parts"...
How about defending us against those counterfeit game ads? How many times will people get conned into an Age of Empires ad posing for another re-hash of the same pay-to-play territory "survival" game rigged by overseas credit card swipers.
How about defending us against those counterfeit game ads? How many times will people get conned into an Age of Empires ad posing for another re-hash of the same pay-to-play territory "survival" game rigged by overseas credit card swipers.
If they didn’t charge $30 for a ~cable~, maybe there wouldn’t be a market for cheap crap like this.
But those ****** games bring in cash. It's like ads on YouTube. regular videos get censored and taken down for certain things, but if you do the same in ads, it's fine (somehow).
My original „Fake“ iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands for 2 bucks a piece have a higher durability than my original versions, ironically. Leather band fell apart and the corners of the silicon case have chipped off while the volume button on my leather case was sort of stuck and didn’t work properly anymore
Not specifically an Apple product, but just to give a real-world example of where this kind of thing matters:
At work I was cutting open a standard 3-prong computer AC power cable (the thick black ones with the D connector on the other end) to put a plug on something hardwired. When I stripped back the wires, it was immediately obvious something was wrong with it.
After finding a proper cable for the job, we investigated a bit. Turns out that this cable (and a couple others that had come from the same batch of sketchy Chinese products), which was stamped UL listed and rated for 10A--so should have been at least 16ga stranded copper inside--was not only made from copper-plated steel wire (it was magnetic!), but was probably 22ga.
These cables had shipped with products that had extremely low current draw, so they were going to (barely) work with the item they were shipped with. But had you thrown one in a box with 50 other similar cables--like we did!--and then plugged it into something the label indicated it was usable with, it would either have not functioned due to low voltage or overheated, melted, and set your house on fire.
That was the moment I realized on a visceral level that counterfeit products weren't just a "well, it probably works the same" issue, but something that could have very serious safety impacts.
Because "not tested" means who knows what's actually inside.
At work I was cutting open a standard 3-prong computer AC power cable (the thick black ones with the D connector on the other end) to put a plug on something hardwired. When I stripped back the wires, it was immediately obvious something was wrong with it.
After finding a proper cable for the job, we investigated a bit. Turns out that this cable (and a couple others that had come from the same batch of sketchy Chinese products), which was stamped UL listed and rated for 10A--so should have been at least 16ga stranded copper inside--was not only made from copper-plated steel wire (it was magnetic!), but was probably 22ga.
These cables had shipped with products that had extremely low current draw, so they were going to (barely) work with the item they were shipped with. But had you thrown one in a box with 50 other similar cables--like we did!--and then plugged it into something the label indicated it was usable with, it would either have not functioned due to low voltage or overheated, melted, and set your house on fire.
That was the moment I realized on a visceral level that counterfeit products weren't just a "well, it probably works the same" issue, but something that could have very serious safety impacts.
Because "not tested" means who knows what's actually inside.
They should focus completely with Amazon, they will sell you counterfeit items at full retail pricing but you wouldn’t know until it arrives!!!
That happens literally everywhere. People buy expensive gear and cheap out on accessories and consumable parts.
While some people will always do that, Companies also got pretty greedy and sometimes charge ridiculous amounts for accessories.
While some people will always do that, Companies also got pretty greedy and sometimes charge ridiculous amounts for accessories.
