The IT Nerd

This morning when I went down to the Mazda6 that I’m driving this week and plugged my iPhone 5 into the Apple branded Lighting cable that I had plugged in the center console. After starting the car, the phone would not charge nor would the Mazda6 see any of the songs on it. For the next 30 seconds, I said some things that were not suitable for a family audience. Then I composed myself and took the cable upstairs and tried it on my MacBook Pro. It didn’t work there either. Now the cable was not like the ones that I have written about previously that have frayed as there was no visible damage of any sort. Thus this was a different issue. So I took it to the Apple Store and the genius that I spoke to indicated that they had seen this before. In short, they “just stop working” but he gave me a new one instantly after taking the old cable off my hands.

Now while searching the Internet to see if what I had experienced was a fluke, I came across this story from the Boy Genius Report that indicates the cables corrode which causes them to stop working in exactly the manner that I experienced. I cannot say if that was my issue as I didn’t think to check the pins on the cable for corrosion or damage before I went to the Apple Store (and I cannot check now as Apple has my old cable). But it is plausible. What’s also plausible is the fact that these cables have a chip inside them that allows the iDevice in question to authorize it to be used for charging and syncing purposes. It is possible that that chip died for whatever reason. However, the only flaw with that theory is that I have seen iDevices tell you that you’re using an unauthorized cable if it doesn’t like the chip on the cable for whatever reason. In my case it didn’t. Either way I have no clear explanation for this latest cable failure.

Clearly, Apple has some issues with these Lightning cables that they need to address. It would be nice if they spoke up to say that they are working on a fix or at least acknowledge that there is an issue out there. Right now, the fact that you’re hearing nothing from Apple and people like me are complaining online isn’t good for Apple. That’s something they need to quickly deal with in my opinion.

This entry was posted on March 20, 2014 at 10:22 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.