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Here product reviewer Greg Wyatt Jr., founder of the Apple Explained YouTube channel, gives a succinct explanation of why the company's charging cables are so freaking fragile.
I'm hoping you will watch the 3-minute video because I'd like to support content creators like this, who use their platform to educate laypeople on how things are made, what goes into their products, and how those decisions are made.
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I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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Product Reviewer Explains Why Apple's Charging Cables Break So Easily
I have been a Mac user since 1988. A fan for sure. And I love their aesthetic values. But I've had to replace an Apple laptop charger in the past and now I always keep part of the charger lead wound on the pull out prongs to help protect the vulnerable part. I trained as a ceramicist, a discipline that aims to achieve a balance between form and function. The most beautiful vase in the world is no good if it doesn't hold water! I've been applying those principles to digital design for three decades: if a website doesn't function well, it doesn't matter how pretty it looks.
They completely failed to design a decent strain relief.
I’ve been putting poly- tubing on my lightning cables since I had an iPhone 5 and OtterBox case. There just wasn’t enough of the plug body you could grab onto once you plugged in..
This all makes an assumption that Apple doesn't want cables to be consumables. There are a dozen ways to do strain relief with the materials they use. The company excels at durability testing and has fantastic mechanical engineers.