“Shoddily made.”
“Complete disgrace.”
“I hate this thing with a passion of 100 suns.”
“Who knew an iPhone cable could engender this much animosity?” Sam Grobart reports for Businessweek. “Well, it would appear that Apple’s ‘Lightning to USB Cable (1 m)’ can.”
“Sold as a $19 accessory, it is the same cable that ships with new iPhone 5S and 5C models, and boy, do people hate the dickens out of this thing,” Grobart reports. “Of all the products Apple makes, it is far and away the worst-reviewed, with an average rating of two stars.”
“The vast majority of reviewers are cheesed because, they say, the cable just plain breaks,” Grobart reports. ” Frayed ends, broken connectors, and unexplained failure to charge are some of the common complaints made about the product.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We treat our cables as if they have delicate metal wires within and keep them in Tom Bihn cable bags inside our Crumpler backpacks when traveling, so since we’ve never had an Apple cable fail, we’re probably the wrong ones to comment. Come to think of it, none of our iPhones have ever had a case, but they all somehow manage to look like new after their requisite year of use (they only go into pants pockets and center condoles that are devoid of change and keys; call us crazy, but that seems like a simple and good rule).
So, do you treat your electronic equipment and accessories like a gorilla? If so, how could Apple make their Lightning to USB Cable indestructible in your hands/feet?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
A dozen iPhones later my household has experienced one cable that is showing the colored insulated wires at one end but working fine. Plenty of travel and teenager abuse.
I have had 3 lightning cables fail. I simply call Apple Care and get them replaced: Fo Free
I’m sure part of it is user error, i.e. ends dropped into open water container in Ford truck, but hey, (only down vote me if you’ve never done the same) I figured with as much Apple stuff that I buy they can, ‘Take one for the team’.
Right. Took one in to an Apple Sto’ and they just gave me a new one. Case solved. Good god people.
Case Solved.
You might have the makin’s of an iPhone accessory there.
Or, Good God People.
Good church name too.
A cable? A frickin’ cable?????
How about the first gen Apple TV?
The one that would lose ALL content if iTunes went down for a moment?
The one with a 40 GB hard drive that was Hell to sync?
The one that even Apple gave up on and quit updating before its 5 year run? (less than 3 actually)
Yes, I know I can spoof a new hard drive and jail break it.
So what? It was LESS than a hobby!
It was having to mow the lawn on Friday evening instead of going to the dance!!!!!!
What a $300.00 POS it was compared to a $20 CABLE!!!!!!!!!!
Same here. Actually, the only cable I’ve had fall apart was a cheap, ebay, 3rd party one.
This is a terrible article.
How about the Apple digital camera? They, um, forgot the flash. Thats right, a point-and-shoot digital camera with no flash.
Ohh, isn’t MDN special with his Tom Bihn cable bag?
Tom Bihn bags are the pinnacle of ugly.
Best use ever for those toiletries bags you get when you fly at the pointy end.
Jeez I love the Lightning connector. Way better than the cable it replaced. No giant snagging head to confound your untangling efforts. No wondering which way it has to go.
People just love to complain; that’s my diagnosis.
Or maybe… just maybe… not everything that comes out of Cupertino is a piece of perfection designed and built by the gods.
This wouldn’t be the first time people have had issues with Apple cables… remember the first MacBook Mag connectors? Apple did re-design those for a reason, and it wasn’t because of a quality control issue… or because people were whining.
Something as elementary as power/data/sync cable should be as well designed/manufactured as anything a company builds and prides itself on.
A cable shouldn’t be so fragile it risks breakage through normal everyday use. It shouldn’t have to be treated like it’s made of glass.
That’s true…Apple does sometimes produce a poor accessory cable. But it also true that people abuse the heck out of them. I have used the same set of earbuds for a few years. But my kids break them after a few months. Granted, they wear them 24/7. But they also cram them in pockets, absently twirl them around their fingers, and leave them on beds, couches, and the floor to be sat or stepped upon. The Apple lightning/USB cable may be susceptible to damage and probably should be ruggedized, but users have to bear some responsibility.
Naw …. Everything is perfection and they really are gods.
If your lightening cable is broken, frayed or not in perfect shape, your mother is a cow that raised you in a barn.
Never had 1 cable break. Never.
Cables naturally go through stress from being plugged and unplugged. I charge my iPhone nightly, and I have one lightning cable that only charges if I plug it in with a particular orientation. Given the prices of the cables, the “pointy end” should be more reinforced.
Lightning cable is awesome. I love not having to figure out which way is up when I plug my iPhone in after I’ve turned off the lights to go to sleep.
I would have to vote for Apple’s headphones. I have had several of those have cables come out of the headphone and even had headphones split apart, and I don’t treat them harshly at all. But I just accepted that as par for the course for headphones, since virtually no brand of headphone seems to last very long. They’re one of the few products I’ll buy a replacement policy for from Best Buy, etc.
Good point. But the EarPods seem better than the previous design.
Amen. The original earpods were a ghastly joke.
What a bullshit article ! Totally made up crap by a hit-whore.
I vote for the hockey puck mouse, my goodness that was an awful design. When the fist iMac came out I was working for apple and when we got our first iMac we all couldn’t believe such a stupid design could have come from apple. Every customer winged about it so intensely that we threw in a standard 2 button Kensington mouse for free.
Actually, the hockey puck mouse works very well … if you’re in fifth grade or younger. Not so well for adults.
We ended up with a half-dozen of the device at work when we got several early iMacs (buy a seat license for a particular 3D animation application, they threw in an iMac. For some reason, all of the ones we got were Tangerine), found a clip-on device that made the mouse more normally sized, and they worked just fine until we surplused the iMacs three years later and donated them to an elementary school.
Actually, the hockey-puck mouse was arguably reasonable (once they added the little groove so you could feel which way was up), even for average-sized hands like mine. The problem was plopping your hand on it as if it was a hand-rest. If you held the mouse between your thumb and ring finger, it was fairly comfortable, and holding your hand up is better than resting it, if you’re trying to avoid tendonitis.
So, I think a lot of people would have been OK with it if they changed how they held it. Or, to quote Steve Jobs: “You’re holding it wrong.” 😀
The new EarPods are the best ear buds I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a lot of them. Comfortable and sound awesome. If they break, I will buy another pair in a second…
I like mine, they are almost perfect..
A little rubber/silicone/etc around the cone to hold them in the ear a little better and then i’d say perfect.
thats about all I can’t bad about them, sound is good, feel is good. But they do come out easier than pretty much all other earbud types.
As far as the Lightning cable goes..
I have one in my car, one hooked up to my iMac, one plugged into the wall in my bedroom, and one coiled up with a portable battery. Not once has any of the cables ever had a problem.
I see other people’s cables are always frayed, broken.. IMO it’s due to people not taking care of their stuff.
So much easier to use than the old cable. What is the problem. Had one cable go bad and it was the old one. Plug it in either works for me. If a cable is all he can complain about then I guess Apple is doing good.
I keep my phone caseless and also have a few locations where I store that I am sure will be free of anything that could harm it. I only use some of the apple made cases because they look good but I use them infrequently.
However, MDN, the idea of having a case for a charging cord is absurd and I expect nobody to do that. It’s just plain true that Apple’s cords fall to shambles after a year or so; they really are quite terrible.
That being said, charging cords for the iPhone are a dime a dozen, and on some sites they’re actually pretty close to that price, lol. So it’s a small inconvenience but the complaint holds true.
Just curious. Who votes 4 stars? Umm … I mostly agree with this … but not totally … I’ll go 3 stars … oh, hell … It’s Friday, I’ll go 4.
Five stars is perfect or above and beyond expectation. No one is perfect so my max is 4 stars. If you really humor me or add a unique perspective to the conversation then 5 stars for you.
What if i throw in am In-App Purchase valued at .99 cents? What then. Haha! There are no 6 stars.
5 stars for you. Awesome link!!
Never had an Apple cable fail, or for that matter neither have my Belkin iDevice cables. I am careful with them but I use my iPhone without a case as well.
The only cables I have ever had a problem with are the Lightning cables made by Belkin. Two of three cables separated where the cable sheath joints the tip.
I have found that you can repair these cables by dipping them in rubberized plastic coating…
http://www.plastidip.com/industrial_solutions/Plasti_Dip
Don’t forget to tape the metal tip BEFORE dipping!
Sorry to be redundant!
I vote for Configurator. Although it’s gotten better. When it first cane out it was an abomination.
Very surprising to read about this. I have never had an official apple brand cable fail on me since my first iPod from 2003.
In fact one of my several lightning cables was chewed up by my pet animals and it still works! but maybe i should wrap the bitten parts with electric tape
Tom Bihn cable bag? I bet MDN has an outboard motor cozy to go with that.
Looks line Samsung’s army of posters have been working overtime.
Here too. 😉
It’s stupid to choose this “nominee” for worst product based on customer reviews for it on the Apple Store.
Most iPhone, iPad, and iPod owners will not buy one separately, so there is no feedback from the vast majority who have no problems with the cable that came with their device. Of the customers who bought one separately as a spare, most are not going to bother writing a review for a stupid cable if it’s working fine.
So, the negative comments (which will be most of the comments) come from the people who experienced a bad cable, either because it was broken or defective. As usual, people are motivated to complain about something, not say that it’s working fine. This is especially true for something mundane, like a USB docking cable.
Why would anyone even bother to post a review for a cable, unless it was to complain? “I just wanted to log in and write this review to say that my USB cable for my iPhone has been working perfectly. FIVE STARS!” Yeah, that’s going to happen… 🙂 There are 10’s of millions of customers with iPhones, iPads, and iPods that have a Lightning connector. When there are that many customers out there, even a tiny fractional percentage of defective or broken cables results in many negative reviews.
I would tend to agree, but I happened to be researching cables earlier this week and ran across the complaints about the Lightning connector and was taken aback by the intensity of owner comments. It’s one thing for a cable or two fail, but three times? If three Airport Extremes in a row were failing new owners, that would be an enormous issue.
I was especially interested in the owner who dissected his failed cable and found that the connections were pressed together, not soldered. He went to the trouble of soldering them.
Here is my theory: with millions of cables needed for original equipment and replacement, the production is farmed out to who knows show many companies, some of which cut every corner they can. Presumably, once Apple traces failures to those firms, they will never get a contract again. Maybe they just take the money and run. In any case, the story would have value only if Apple wasn’t replacing failed cables. And I bet that is happening.
> It’s one thing for a cable or two fail, but three times?
While it is highly unlikely that any ONE customer would get three consecutive bad USB cable, with 10’s of millions of iPhone, iPads, and iPods out there with Lightning connectors, it is statistically likely that there would be SOME cases where one person got three bad cables. All it takes is ONE report, and people who do keyword searches (“researching” like you) find that one report and assume the problem must be widespread, because “WOW, one person got three bad ones; it must be common.”
Plus, these reports are not verified to be real, so we don’t even know which ones are actual customer experiences and which ones are fakes planted by the competition and Apple haters.
Think out it… If even 1-in-1000 REAL customers experienced this problem, and there are (conservatively) 50 million customers out there with iPhones, iPads, and iPods using Lightning connectors, that’s 50,000 customers. We would hear about this problem in a big way, and it would NOT be because of a few dozen or a few hundred or even a few thousand “customer reviews.” There would be real (observable) lines at Apple Store Genius Bars worldwide, with customers exchanging USB docking cables.
And that’s if its 1-in-1000, which is already close to zero. Let’s say these cables are actually as shoddy as described in these “reviews.” If 10% of the cables failed, that’s more than five million failures. Obviously, there is no real-world evidence that 10% of these cables are failing, or that it is even a 0.1% failure rate.
All true, and what is certain is that only Apple has an idea of the failure rate of any of its products. But what about the customers who have had three cable failures but DON’T complain? I am one of them. Three cables for my 3G began separating, so I photographed them and sent a letter to Apple, They sent me three new ones. I never wrote a review. Your analysis has merit but can still understate the problem. Some users will not complain. Others will live with a flawed product, such as a failed cable cover that exposes wires but still functions. I have two 4S cables that are in just that condition, although I am tempted to blame my cat. Your example of long lines of customers waiting for cables exaggerates what would be required to supply new ones. Dozens and dozens of customers could visit a typical Apple store over time to get a new cable and be lost in the crush of crowds that people every store. Others, like me, would get them by mail. Others would buy from another manufacturer.
Yes, some reports might be fake. But would a liar waste time on a $19 CABLE when he could go directly for the 5S? And yes again, people are more likely to complain about a failed product than wax enthusiastic about a cable that is fine. But if you assume that customers are as likely to gripe about any one Apple product as another, then the Lightning cable’s lowest rating still bears noting. Somewhere in this mess is the truth. What is a given is that I will be buying four iPads in November to keep two 5Ss company, and just might not be able to resist the new Mac Pro.
OK, It probably should be pointed out just how incredibly overstated your example of huge customers lines is. I’ll stack the odds enormously in your favor.
Assume 10 million cable failures out of 50 million devices, to use your devices figure. This would be a stunning failure rate. I make no assertion it is that high.
Apple has more than 400 stores worldwide. To really help you out let’s say just 250 received the brunt of ALL those customer returns. That’s 40,000 customers per store. The iPhone 5 has been available more than a year, but let’s say 12 months to further help you out. That’s 3,333 customers per year per store needing a cable exchange. Assuming just 20 business days a month and 10 business hours per day…that amounts to FEWER THAN 1.5 CUSTOMERS AN HOUR per store to fulfill a huge failure rate. And that’s with every single element of the analysis biased in your favor. Your “customer lines” are nonexistent. Any questions?
Let’s put your numbers more in perspective…
There have been *over* 90 million iPhone 5 versions SOLD. There have been, so far, *over* 15 million iPhone 5S and 5C versions sold (over 9 million in just the first three days).
There have been *over* 60 million iPad 4 and iPad mini versions sold.
The best number I can find is that there have been *over* 20 million iPod Touch versions sold with Lightning cables.
Adding up those minimum numbers, it’s at least 185 million Lightning cables sold with devices.
Even if 0.1% (one in a thousand) of those had failures then the number of returns would be 185,000 returns. Divide that by your 400 stores you get, on average, more than one per day, every day in each and every store that is open.
That’s still a huge rate of returns. No credible retail vendor would ignore a return of a defective item if they were getting one or more a day in each and every store. The issue cascades into what other customers see and what they hear. It affects other sales. It’s NOT just the replacement cost (which, including all secondary costs like shipping and warehousing) is probably less than $10 a cable. Apple does not want (and no credible retail vendor wants) customers to DAILY hear customers complaining about the same product.
My best guess — and let’s face it, we’re *ALL* just guessing here — is that there’s a subset of users that abuse their cables and are extremely vocal when they fail. (How many people out there pull on the cable itself to unplug it? For this subset, I’d expect them to fail routinely! Then those people loudly complain that the cable is not robust enough. As my great grandmother used to say, “Some people would complain if they were hanged with a brand new rope!”) Even if that subset is as high as 10,000 individuals, that’s only about 0.005% of the total number sold.
Besides, you *KNOW* that there is, on average, more than one lightning cable sold per compatible device. Hell, I know some people who have 5 (one in their bedroom for their night stand, one in their home office, one in their car, one in their work office, and one in their travel case just for travel) for just one iPhone 5! Even if it’s only 1.25 cables per device, on average, that pushes these numbers even further. You don’t think Apple would do something if they were seeing a return of a specific, defective item at a rate of almost two a day for each and every store?
It could be that the iPhone 5s cables are different from the cables sold before that. Maybe that is why there are more failures. Or perhaps there is just a bad batch that got out of the factory.
I’ve had good experiences with iPhone cables I’ve seen one 30 pin cable that exposed the inner wires but still worked.
Online reviews are typically skews towards unabashed enthusiasts or the extremely frustrated because they are the only ones who feel enough about a product to bother posting a review.
I bet this cable just worked for most people, it just didn’t inspire enough feelings to make people want to post an online review about it.
To be clear, they are talking about the cable, not the connection, right?
I did have problems with the old connecter, especially when using 3rd party cables.
Apple’s new connection is just plain awesome!!!
Out of 5 stars, I give it a 10!
They are better, as in faster, that the previous cable.
Dozens of devices with both cables and only one of us with any problems.
That would be the unemployed 43 something troll, ah stepson, living in the basement.
He has that annoying habit, well, he has many annoying habits but the worst one is wrapping the power cables tightly around the device when not in use. He goes through 2 or 3 cables per device.
The USB shank on this cable is shorter than on the USB-to-dock cable that it replaced. This makes it more difficult for me to remove from a USB port. That’s my only issue, and it’s an admittedly minor annoyance.
I take good care of all my stuff.
I just had my first lightning cable go bad last night. Rarely ever travel with it, mostly stays hooked up by my nightstand. All of a sudden stop charging my phone.
Holy Moly! $9 for a 4″x6″ nylon zipper pouch?! I’ll pass!
I use Glad zip bags. Cheap. When they wear out, I replace them with a new one. They keep my iOS gear nicely protected from the rest of the crud in my bag.
And still, I’ve had cables wear out, as I address below:
I completely sympathize with the Apple cable hate. Apple does as well. Here are a couple illustrations:
Recently I decided I had wrapped so much electric tape on my old-style iPod to USB cable that I should buy another in preparation for the thing to fail. Opening the box of the new cable, I noticed Apple had changed the plastic to something superior, thank goodness. The old stuff easily split open to reveal the wires within, never a good thing.
I can also point to the electric charger I had to return to Apple because the wire wrapping wore out to the point of shorting the wires, providing a nice puff of smoke and burn mark on the cheap plastic wrapping. This was accompanied of course with a loss of function. Apple happily gave me a replacement, which I again noticed had been upgraded to superior plastic.
IOW: Lousy cables are nothing new from Apple. You point out the crappiness to them, they improve the product, they give you a new one. I certainly hope replacing the crap Lightening to USB cables with an improved model is Apple’s intention.
I suspect a lot of the blame for cable problems is due to what ever firms Apple uses to create the cables. We all know perfectly well that CHINA is happy to poison us and our pets with nasty fake and infected foods if they can get away with it. China’s foisting of crap cables to Apple is obviously going to happen. It’s the price of slave wage labor.