Cables are not easy going

Nothing is ever as it seems.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a cable is a cable. It is a long string of plastic with plugs on either end that charges or  connects your device to the computer and it transfers data. It’s very straight forward right? Well, as it turns out, no!

Service stations, supermarkets and even Officeworks are manky with third party cables that promise to connect your iPhone to the car stereo or cigarette lighter plug. All of them offer to charge the phone, some to split the connection between all different kinds of plugs ranging from Lightening, Thunderbolt USBC.

Well, it is not as easy as that and there is a good chance your device is not charging or working as well as it could be because you are using a $4 cable.

I will admit I have been rather relaxed about cables over the years. If I plugged my phone into a cable and it started charging then for me, this was all the proof I needed that it was doing what was supposed to do. But recently I was given a very clear example of how wrong I could be.

I am a huge fan of CarPlay and use it everyday… I would be (quite literally) lost without it – I am famous for not being able to find my arse without a map and if there is a wrong way to go…I will go there.

Anyway, I digress. My car is older (or maybe just privative) so I need a cable to plug my iPhone into the info system of my car to get my iPhone to interact with it. For this used a braided cable purchased from Officeworks. It looked premium and natty and I was very happy.

It worked for a while and then, without warning, the iPhone would disconnect from the info system 10-15 times a day. I tried rebooting the phone, the car system and was on the verge of taking the car in for service convinced, as I might be, that VW’s stereo system was on the blink.

Then, luckily for me, I came upon a YouTube video that claimed the #1 issue with CarPlay connectivity was the cable. Not my braided cable? Surely not!

“Psst” said I but, as I had tried everything else, I thought I’d find a genuine Apple cable and try that for a day.

Not only did the issue disappear completely but the time CarPlay took to come up on screen was halved. That was several weeks ago and it has been faultless ever since. 

So my advise is, pay the extra money and use a genuine Apple cable and, for the love of God, don’t ever buy a cheap cables from a service station the next time you are waiting behind the person who is paying for their petrol with 5 cent pieces.