Slashdot Mirror
Most 'Genuine' Apple Chargers and Cables Sold on Amazon Are Fake, Apple Says (engadget.com)
Apple says it bought Apple chargers and cables labeled as genuine on Amazon.com and found that nearly 90 percent of them to be counterfeit. The revelation comes in a federal lawsuit the company filed against a New Jersey company over what Apple says are fake products that were sold on Amazon. Engadget reports: When Apple got in touch with Amazon about the issue, the website told the former that it got most of its chargers from Mobile Star LLC. The iPhone-maker stressed that since counterfeit cables and chargers don't go through consumer safety testing and could be poorly designed, they're prone to overheating and catching fire. They might even electrocute users. Tim Cook and co. are now asking the court to issue an injunction against the defendant. They also want the court to order the seizure and destruction of all the fake chargers in addition to asking for damage
last time i needed a lightning cable i just went to best buy and bought their house brand cable for like $15. a lot better than original apple cable too.
More specifically, why would Amazon buy 'genuine Apple cables' from anyone other than Apple? It's one thing if they were buying & selling obvious clones, like the cords colored blue or green or pink or grey or black (so that people who want to buy that for $5/pop can do it), but if they were also stocking the genuine whites, why would they entertain the latter from anyone other than Apple?
I don't care if five of them go out in a month, but I do care when one of them destroys my hardware.
I find the worst point with all of them is near the end of the cable where it hits the connector.
If I think a given cable will get used regularly, I now just grab a pack of Sugru and add my own strain relief at that point. I find it helps a lot, but on one cable (and I forget which of the 28934774 cables I own it was...) it just moved the fray point from where it would naturally occur near the connector to the point where the Sugru tapered off.
I think the only other thing a person could do is both add their own silicone strain relief and maybe dunk the cable a few times in dip-it vinyl coating to armor the cable further.
It would be nice if someone would figure out that high-quality cables were desirable and make USB versions of welding cable with thick, high-flex EPDM jackets. I could definitely use a couple of Ethernet cables like this.
This is why I bought Anker batteries instead. I trust their brand name more than the obviously fake Samsung batteries.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I dunno. This story just makes me feel better about not buying Apple products. I can buy any cable I like and not have to worry about this bullshit.
"OMG. You didn't buy a genuine monster cable! Quick, toss it out before it EXPLODES!"
Which bullshit? The bulishit of shoddy cables destroying your laptop?
Except, I got an iPad one, direct from Apple, sealed in the box. Used it for a few years and the (genuine, came in the box from Apple) charger cable had a strain relief failure. Took it to the Apple store to buy a replacement and had the "Genius" on duty harrangue me incessantly about how my cable was a shoddy knockoff and can you see the difference in how the genuine ones are made? Yeah, I see that Apple had really crappy strain relief on their charging cables, whether iPhone, iPad, or MacBookPro mag-lock, they were all crap from 2006 to (at least) 2010. "Genius" can go F himself and his attitude - as can the company that sold a $700 bullet-proof tablet and then proceeded to disable it through OS updates so that within 4 years it was completely worthless, and then they were selling $700 tablets that cracked and broke easier and easier with each passing generation.
My Apple chargers cost a hell of a lot of money. OTOH, they were fed generator power from Kenyan safari parks and behaved no differently from how they would in the lounge at Schiphol. It doesn't have to cost as much as the Apple stuff, but there's a lot more going on there than just the appearance, and the Apple gear is completely modular.