"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. The reality is that some bean counter made an intentional choice to make crap cables that increase total cost of ownership. Now that more of Apple's margins come from software, they've identified crap cables as a reason people leave the ecosystem. Instead, they've decided to focus on a whole new set of high lock in, no marginal cost software products."