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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
Try to buy a legit Sony Playstation 3 controller from Amazon. Go ahead, I'll wait.
It would be nice to be able to buy real reputable chargers and batteries for laptops/phones on Amazon but, as Apple is now proving, thats essentially impossible. Its a better bet to go with something amazon basics branded than the actual OEM equipment, because at least Amazon will stand behind their own branded stuff. I bought a "Real, made by lenovo" charger laptop off Amazon for my T450s and it didn't have a serial number on it and it had odd markings that the real one didn't have. Counterfeit, for sure - theres no reason Lenovo would sell you a charger without a distinct serial number on it.
Doesn't Amazon have any power to stop sellers from selling counterfeit equipment? They don't have to vet the quality of every product they sell, but selling a new OEM product should require additional vetting. I don't care if they don't test a product thats clearly not OEM, then at least its a buyer beware scenario.
I recently bought a couple of "genuine Apple" headphones from Woot (owned by Amazon) thinking that with all the fakes around I should get them from someone legit. The first pair failed within a couple of weeks. I'm going to guess they were not, in fact, genuine. It does make it a pain when it seems that the apple store is about the only place you can be sure you're not getting a knockoff. I'm happy to buy knockoffs for certain things, but I like to know what I'm getting.
Maybe if Apple didn't sell their cables for such obscene prices, there would be less market demand for Chinese knockoffs. If I can buy 10 cables on eBay at $0.50 each, I don't care if 5 go out in less than a month. Also, I've NEVER seen or heard first hand if one of the knock offs catching fire.
Maybe if Apple actually took the time to make a decent power supply cable then this wouldn't be a problem. Honestly I love apple products but why do the power cords only last for about a year before coming apart? I hate shelling out $79 for a new power supply ever year or so. I don't know any other computer where the power chord comes apart. Apple has claimed
"You aren't supposed to move the chords."
"Don't wrap them up like the pictures or when they new"
"You must be transporting it improperly."
Why is it that every other computer company can make a chord that doesn't fray and come apart after a year? Why have they made a product that can't be used as it is designed. Honestly somebody should ask them at a conference why they are incapable of designing power cable that works for the life of their product.
Can't we have a micro-USB to lightning connector adaptor, so that anybody w/ a common microUSB cable can just plug it into that, and the combination can be used to charge iPhones, iPads and the like? Apple can make that as well, just like they made the microUSB to 32-pin adaptor
In the case of cheap chargers, that's a possibility.
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/...
http://www.righto.com/2014/05/...
This isn't an issue of DRM. This is an issue of crooks in China making very low-quality fakes that are dangerous to use because they cut corners on safety features.
... and more often than not want to have their cake and eat it too.
the singular reason that cheap chinese counterfeit products are flooding the US today.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Are they angry because after forcing manufacturers to pay for the right to produce cables?
Are other business producing said cables for less because they are not paying apple for the privilege?
Are we really sad for poor apple that it cannot 100% monetize this as well?
Fuck apple. Fuck them in their overpriced iThing.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
then there would not be problems like this.
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.
O'rly?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
A German computer magazine called C't was checking on Amazon products a year or two ago, I'm pretty sure it was Samsung batteries they were testing. They bought a selection of batteries from a selection of third-party sellers and were expecting some of them to be fakes. What they were not expecting was that every single battery was a fake, it was just that some of the fakes were better (in terms of product quality) than others.
They reported this to Amazon.
Nothing changed - the same vendors were selling the same products weeks later.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Right. Because this is such a uniquely Apple issue. That whole brouhaha about crappy USB C cables and the damage they cause, or all those fly-by-night USB multi-port chargers that overheat and catch fire, those must have been some sort of fever dream I had.
But this did give you an opportunity to be smug, so at least some good came out of it.
I would love it if Amazon would do more to vet suppliers and eliminate the counterfeit crap.
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.
This is why I've resorted to buying licensed third party, such as Anker brand. That way you know it isn't Apple, but you know it is certified by Apple, and often half the price and better designed. I love the braided lightning cable I use now. And I know it isn't a knock-off.
> 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.
Seriously, dude, it was in the fucking summary. I guess you were blinded by hate.
Amazon, eBay, alibaba, hobby king. Same shit, buyer beware. Amazon is pretty good about refunds, but you won't get your time back.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's Apple's proprietary practices that keep you from using anything other than what's sold by them and at their premium prices. For crying out loud, just look at iTunes.
The fake Apple charger and cable is probably just as terrible as the genuine one.
The dehydrated water looks pretty real to me https://www.amazon.com/Future-...
but i've heard it's not as good as real dehydrated water http://www.edietshop.com/dehyd...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
It seems like a lot of these knock-offs are directly cutting into the sale of Amazon's Basics brand as well. I've bought several of their cables and adapters over the years and had very good experiences with them. They aren't the cheapest cables, but frequently they are the cheapest cables that seem trustworthy.
If I want cheap knock-offs, I'll go to eBay. I expect a little more from Amazon.
ProTip: Even the real genuine ones are fake in the sense that they're cheap-as-dirt sold for gold-plated prices.
Apple; pushing the bounds of clipboard functionality since 2009.
Requiem for the American Dream
I purchased a genuine 12w apple charger from an Australian eBay seller. It failed within a week. I pulled it apart and it was clearly a Chinese knockoff. The creepage between primary and secondary was almost non existent. I told the seller and they were 'shocked'. I pulled apart the replacement they sent, and it too was a knockoff, albeit with better creepage. I told the supplier they needed to take down their Ad as they had sold over 300 of these things. Well after many back and forth emails, they start getting abusive. They just couldn't comprehend that that had broken Australian electrical safety laws, consumer seller laws and violated apples copyright.
The sad thing is, as I did more research, I find out: eBay doesn't give a toss; unless someone has died, the government regulators don't give a toss. So I reported them to Apple,but to be honest, I don't think Apple care that much either.
So this means, if you really want a genuine charger that won't kill anyone, you need pay the Apple tax.
46137
I have very little insight into the world of fashion, but I do know that since there are no laws against creating the exact same dress, shirt, purse, or whatever, luxury brands tend to plaster their name or logo all over their products. You can't copy the name because that's trademarked.
As a result, you have folks seeing the popularity of an item making knockoffs. These vary in quality, of course, but in some cases, they're made from the exact same materials, in the exact same plant that the originals are made. The only difference is they have to print a different brand name on them or risk criminal activities, so a Coach bag becomes a "Loach" bag, with the mark spelled out in the same font with an extra curvy 'L'. Sure, technological devices are usually protected by more than trademark - patents and such which are often ignored by certain eastern markets - but since a piece of paper half a world a way isn't an actual barrier to producing a physical product, so it often comes down to the same thing.
The funny thing here is that even with off brands that may exceed the quality of the item, the original brand is still much more highly prized. Why? Because of marketing generating a social expectation that a 'genuine' object affords prestige. It could just be that it's expensive, or that it's advertisements paradoxically indicate that you must both be beautiful enough to wear it and simultaneously that you must wear it to be beautiful (like Abercrombie & Fitch, for example). It says, "Even if it's not as high quality, I both went through the trouble to find it AND paid more, and I passed through the filter that says I'm worth owning this, and that says something positive about me as a person!"
Sound like any company you know? Starts with an A, ends with A -pple, nothing in the middle?
This is just Apple selling it's product not as a piece of technology, but as a lifestyle accessory, as they've done ever since they realized that was the way to success. The claims of technological merit are just fluff, but necessary fluff to keep up their brand pretension and justify their walled garden environments.
In which case, you wouldn't be shopping for a 'genuine Apple part': you'd buy any of the knockoffs. Which usually work fine for charging, but if one tries using them as data cables, where they need to transfer data b/w a computer and an iToy, they'll be SOL
Uh, no, you can get a microUSB to 32-pin or lightning adaptor, and then use your generic microUSB connector w/ the combo
So, because Apple is involved, it's ok to pass off shoddy untested and unverified products at the same time as ripping off a company's trade dress and defrauding customers.
These aren't just generic USB chargers you plug into the wall - these are made and advertised to look like genuine Apple products, using Apple logos and everything. Except that they aren't.
Good to know that irrationality still wins the day with both Apple's fans, and detractors.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Apple is doing absolutely nothing to prevent you from buying any charger that you would like. Buy a Belkin, buy a whatever. As long as it puts out actual 5VDC and enough amps to activate the charging circuit, you'll be perfectly fine.
But if you buy some cheap piece of shit that spikes voltage and blows out your phone, Apple is going to say that you used a cheap piece of shit that voids your warranty, just like any other device manufacturer would, regardless of if it's a phone or not.
Oh, but it's Apple, so clearly they are monopolistic shitheads all of a sudden, even if this has been the case for literally decades of portable electronics.
Is there any proof the counterfeits are prone to catching fire or anything like that? They didn't go through consumer testing, but that doesn't by itself mean it's unsafe. Granted I wouldn't trust it with a ten foot fireproof pole and they should be taken off the market.
As far as cables go, the cables from Belkin and others work just fine for charging. However, if one tries using them as data cables to move files b/w a computer and iPhone or iPad or iPod, one would be SOL, and that's when having Apple becomes important
Anytime you buy a cable somewhere besides monoprice, you are probably messing up.
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?
I wish people would quit repeating that nonsense about the counterfeits being just as good as (or sometimes better than!) the item they are counterfeiting. Just think for a minute: what incentive is there for the counterfeiter to do a great job on the product? If it falls apart after a week, it's not the counterfeiter whose reputation will suffer. It's not his brand on the product! Once he has taken your money, he doesn't give a toss. He is, after all, a crook.
USB Type C - think it will take a while before we have the sort of variety in USB Type C cables that we have in micro-USB cables
It's not FUD. From all accounts, these things fail with alarming regularity. When you have insufficient distance between high-voltage and low-voltage traces, when you get some extra moisture in the air that condenses in the wrong place, it can easily trigger an electrical arc that delivers 110VAC to your 5V line. In addition to roasting any device that's attached to it, such an extreme over-voltage event will give you a nasty shock if you're holding the device at the time even under the best of circumstances, and that is enough voltage to kill you under the worst of circumstances.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is damaging to Apple's reputation, when Chinese manufacturers intentionally deceive customers that they're buying an Apple-made product,
and the Chinese product turns out to be of extremely low quality and missing vital features and design characteristics of the Apple charger.
The requirements are well documented by third-party teardown, and dozens of companies make chargers that include the necessary pull-up resistors. So as the GP said, Apple is doing nothing to prevent third-party chargers, and apart from the existence of the cable authentication, is doing nothing to prevent third-party cables, either.
The problem is that there seems to be a strong correlation between willingness to pretend that your products are genuine Apple products and willingness to cut corners in the design that result in dangerous products. Legitimate third-party chargers from known brands generally work very well. Fake chargers that try to look like Apple products are a different story. It is legitimately hard to squeeze the necessary electronics into such a small package, much less to do so safely. As a result, Apple knock-offs tend to be significantly less safe than chargers made by people who aren't trying to pass their products off as Apple hardware.
And the knock-off fake Apple cables tend to be low-quality junk that fails after a couple of weeks of light use, unlike more legitimate third-party cables (e.g. Amazon Basics), which tend to be at least as reliable as Apple's cables, if not more so.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Why bother? This isn't exactly rocket science, pretty much anyone can design a safe charger, etc. They just cost more to build, and why would you bother when you're fraudulently selling it under false trademark anyway, and could put that extra $0.25/unit into your bank account instead?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
The 2006 generation of MacBookPros shipped with self-destructing batteries - Apple managed to recall them with less loss of face than Samsung is going through now, by far.
Knockoff items are poorly made, badly insulated, and are a fire hazard. They often don't meet spec, so they don't perform as well.
If you want to make a knockoff item, Apple can't stop you, but they DO want to stop people from thinking they're buying Apple cables, which ARE tested and manufactured to a higher standard. Apple is presumably willing to stand behind their products and take the flak if they're bad (I had a laptop charger replaced under a recall), but they can't be expected to stand behind the product of someone else using their branding.
So the problem really is on Amazon's end, because they're the ones giving worldwide distribution and implicit authenticity to these fake products.
I've bought cables from Anker that were MFi certified, and they were cheaper than Apple's and just as good (maybe better? Time will tell). It's not that Apple doesn't let other people make cables, but they're expected to meet spec.
Anyway, your post is basically garbage. Yes, we all know that Apple is in some respects a Veblen good, but their products *do* actually have sufficient merit that ordinary people are willing to buy them.
If Apple was truly concerned they would issue a spec for free.
Why bother releasing a spec for what is essentially a glorified rectifier? Fuck sakes, any *competent* EE student can make a clone-off charger from a working genuine one.
The problem arises when you get cheap fly-by-night little Chinese "shops" that pop up on Alibaba selling untested and shoddily-produced (and barely 'designed') crap for like $1/lb. Sure, occasionally someone shuts one down, but three more will await you the next morning. Buy a big box of the ones that look passably genuine, sell them on Amazon for $20/ea... profit!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Some do, some don't. The ones that do usually don't have adequate insulation somewhere in it, or was never burned-in/tested.
It's not proof that all counterfeits will catch fire, but the odds go way up under such conditions.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"They also want the court to order the seizure and destruction" - shock therapy has never been more fitting, eh?
What are they gonna do, fit such cables in someone's brain and turn the power on?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
There is a specification. There are minimum requirements for separation between low-voltage and high-voltage sections that are part of various electrical codes and safety standards. These knock-offs don't meet those safety standards. They should not even be legal to import into the United States, much less sell.
The fact that Apple's designs greatly exceed the standards to the point of being exceptionally paranoid is nice and all, but not strictly necessary. But failing to meet the standards is very bad.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Having worked with a chinese company that did this sort of thing before, the 'easiest' way to do it is just use the same assembly line, machinery, and workers to roll off a duplicate version with the exact same materials from the exact same material providers.
That's not always the way, but it is the easiest.
But when I have.. which is maybe 2 or 3 times, it was the 12w iPad charger. I made double sure I selected the "sold by and ships from Amazon" option, no matter how hard it was buried.
The rest of the times I've needed anything Apple related i got it at Worst Buy.
Why do people not make sure that the seller is Amazon and not some shady 3rd party? Yes yes yes, I @#!$% know Amazon many times sets the default to "some random chinese faker".. but really? People don't check it? I do. Every single time. For everything I buy. The rare exceptions are when it says "sold by blah and Fulfilled by Amazon"
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I agree, it's a genuine possibility. I've ordered enough things off Amazon to be genuinely concerned about the state of cheap Chinese chargers being sold through there. There's no good reason to allow a vendor to sell a product that is unsafe, uses counterfeit labeling to bypass US electrical safety inspections and regulations, and easily threatens the safety and welfare of consumers. We can hang Samsung out to dry when its batteries catch fire, but we can't do the same to Amazon for selling us this junk?
My own anecdote: Our school district ordered 10 HDMI-to-VGA adapters recently from Amazon. They were Chinese-direct w/ Engrish instructions and the like, but I knew I was going to get that. What I didn't know I was going to get were incredibly, incredibly cheap 5V 1A chargers, only one of which was spot-on 5V, three more were within +/- 5% of 5V, five were about 5.5V (which still worked, but is not as safe and out-of-spec), and one that would start at 5V for about a minute, then float up to about 20V, before floating back down to 5V. Needless to say, the video adapter paired with the one that floated up to 20V had its display glitch out every-so-often, and even after I tried using a good 5V power adapter, the video adapter was permanently glitchy at that point.
About a month prior, I bought some other video adapters that also were powered by 5V 1A power adapters, but the stickers on the power adapters said they were 9V 1A adapters, even though my multimeter said they were running at 5V. (Sticker also said they were UL listed. Probably just as truthful as the 9V spec was.) I didn't trust those adapters worth a dime, but I wanted to see what was inside them. Unlike the wall-warts of yore, most cheap adapters now (including these) can be opened with a single screw. Inside was a little PCB stuck to the inside plastic cavity with simple double-sided tape. Most shocking to me: The PCB boards were hand-soldered, as evidenced by two of them having etches scraped into the board where solder appears to have overflowed onto other joints, plus that some joints were cold, some were gigantic blobs, and it was generally very sloppy solder work. Also concerning: the wires connecting the plug to the PCB were also hand-soldered on both ends, and more-than-half the joints were cold. One of those wires was also rusted out, and broke off the plug as the device was opened. (There was no tugging on the wire; just twisting it snapped the wire off.) Finally, one of the transistors had leads about 1/2" long off the PCB, and the transistor was bent so hard that one of its leads was dangerously close to a capacitor lead, all on the high-voltage side of the PCB.
This explains why Amazon can make a profit selling 5V USB adapters for $1.50 each, or 5V power adapters for $2.50.
While there is no doubt that amazon has a problem, so does Apple. Look at the reviews on their own website for power adapters. The average rating for a laptop power adapter is 1.5 start out of 5 stars on their own store website.
<URL:http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC461LL/A/apple-60w-magsafe-power-adapter-for-macbook-and-13-inch-macbook-pro/>
The problem is that the cords that apple uses always come apart. They are able to make a good charger but the problem is that they refuse to make the cord in between the charger and laptop durable enough to last. I would buy a third part charger in a heart beat if it was more durable then the apple charger. This is probably why people are willing to buy cheaper chargers that might be counterfeits, because even the new expensive ones are terrible. There are ways to extend the life of the chargers such as electrical tape around where it is fraying or dipping it in silicone, but has anybody ever had to do that with a dell laptop cord?
So while Amazon may have a quality control issue for genuine products, in this case the genuine product is still terrible. What is more surprising is that there is not a genuine knock off product that works better then apples power adapter.
So has Apple removed the proprietary DRM IC's in the lightning cable?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Maybe you missed where I said, "apart from the existence of the cable authentication". Yes, they still require those ICs. What I meant was that AFAIK, Apple isn't going after companies that make fake Lightning cables with their own homebrew fake authentication chips unless they advertise them as being genuine Apple cables. Similarly, they're not going after third-party companies that wire up resistors to the two data lines to enable fast charging, so long as they aren't advertising them as being Apple chargers.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Apple is doing absolutely nothing to prevent you from buying any charger that you would like. Buy a Belkin, buy a whatever. As long as it puts out actual 5VDC and enough amps to activate the charging circuit, you'll be perfectly fine.
But if you buy some cheap piece of shit that spikes voltage and blows out your phone, Apple is going to say that you used a cheap piece of shit that voids your warranty, just like any other device manufacturer would, regardless of if it's a phone or not.
Oh, but it's Apple, so clearly they are monopolistic shitheads all of a sudden, even if this has been the case for literally decades of portable electronics.
Worse - they are being advertised as "genuine" Apple chargers
Shhh but there is a scam buried in all fast chargers. The hotter a lithium battery the shorter it's life, the shorter it's charge time, the more often you fast charge it and the faster it fails. So fast chargers are really kill you fixed in place battery and your phone along with it. Due to the nature of the failure, the decrease in performance starts of slow and then increases over time, you can pretty much design failure straight into the system, at the other end that final die off is going to be pretty fast and guaranteed.
Really legislation should come out to force specific battery sizes, shapes and safety features. This bullshit has to stop.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Sure, these devices might also explode in a thermo-nukular-fireball, but it is pretty damn unlikely. Mainly, Apple is miffed at losing revenue.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Shhh but there is a scam buried in all fast chargers.
Not at all.
USB officially supplies 2.5 Watt (might be slightly more nowadays). Apple devices with large batteries can use more than 2.5 Watt. Like an iPhone 6+ or 7, or an iPad. With a standard USB charger they take ages to charge. So an Apple charger for an iPad can supply more charge. It will detect an iPad, or an iPhone with high capacity, and will supply the right charge, and anythinge else it will supply 2.5 Watt. I'm quite sure Samsung does the same thing; unfortunately the detection is slightly different, so charging a Samsung table with an Apple iPad charger or an iPad with a Samsung tablet charger will take ages.
None of these chargers will charge any battery faster than they should.
Is there any proof the counterfeits are prone to catching fire or anything like that? They didn't go through consumer testing, but that doesn't by itself mean it's unsafe. Granted I wouldn't trust it with a ten foot fireproof pole and they should be taken off the market.
Well, from Apple's point of view, they quite rightfully don't want anyone to sell products calling themselves "genuine Apple" products when they are not.
:-(
If it's a fake, the manufacturer has already demonstrated that they are quite willing to break the law by violating Apple's trademarks and misleading their customers. I think this is different from fake Gucci handbags where the customer _knows_ they are buying a fake, and they just want something with Gucci printed on it - I don't want a charger that has "Apple" printed on it, I want one that is safe and works. I bet Samsung (ignoring their recent debacle) could make chargers that are 100% compatible with Apple devices and 100% safe, and if they were cheaper than Apple products they could sell a lot. If they did, they would probably be copied as well
So when this manufacturer is breaking the laws anywhere, why would they care if their charger is safe?
The actual problem is that making a charger that is small and safe is slightly difficult and slightly expensive. If I was in China, I'd build a charger that is big, safe, and works, and try to sell it for half the price of an Apple charger. And advertise it that way.
So, because Apple is involved, it's ok to pass off shoddy untested and unverified products at the same time as ripping off a company's trade dress and defrauding customers.
These aren't just generic USB chargers you plug into the wall - these are made and advertised to look like genuine Apple products, using Apple logos and everything. Except that they aren't.
Good to know that irrationality still wins the day with both Apple's fans, and detractors.
Speaking of irrational, which ignorant consumer thinks they're actually buying a "genuine" Apple cable from the most infamous fixed-price electronics vendor on the planet, at a fraction of what they charge everywhere else?
Give me a break. Yes, you have a point regarding counterfeiting, but when something is way too good to be true, it probably is.
It just makes me all that more certain that Apple is price gouging on all their products.
There is NOTHING in those cables that should make them cost 26 bucks.