Tell your kids to buy their own damn cables if they’re not going to respect things they get for free.
You could try Monoprice. A set of 3 MFI-Certified Lightning cables for $19.99.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=112&cp_id=11213&cs_id=1083101&p_id=13225&seq=1&format=2
Better. Don’t give them new cables. Give them a soldering iron. You broke it, you fix it.
(I do this to myself. It works.)
The kids are alright… It’s my cats! One of them (I don’t know which, and they don’t snitch) has been chewing through those thin cables. Replacing the USB ones is bad enough, but I’ve also had to shell out Apple’s insane $80 price for new MagSafe cables a few times. As a result, we have a room that’s off limits to cats, where the charging can be unmolested. (Fortunately, there are fatter USB cables that don’t seem to be as tasty.)
The MagSafe cable can be modded. The connector itself is quite robust, the cable from the power supply is only two-wire, the rest is a bit of mechanical engineering.
One choice is using a thicker, more cat-resistant cable. Another is putting some suitable connector to each side, and replacing the cable with some cheap generic. Yet another is using an adapter between magsafe and something standard, and having the option of using common 19V power supplies.
Pet supply stores have a spray that makes cables &c. extremely unpalatable to cats. You wouldn’t want to use it on anything you regularly touch or put in your bag though, it’s not very pleasant for humans to get on their skins either.
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In my experience the Amazon ones don’t last any better- the one I had packed up at just over a year old and Amazon wouldn’t replace it.
There is a ton of money to be made by someone who invents or designs a seriously cat proof cable. Cats have really sharp teeth, really strong jaws, and nothing but time. (don’t ask me how I know this.)
I have fantasized about a cable with stainless steel shielding. I hereby give you this idea since you are the man to do the work to make it real. Believe me when I tell you that cat owners will line up to buy them and thank you from the depths of their wallets.
See you on Shark Tank in a couple of years.
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not if they want to sell it in the EU
As a writer, it’s always been small consolation to revisit past work and discover that there always seems to be a steadily advancing point in the past before which I wish I could just burn everything associated with my name. That this temporal boundary always seems to be steadily advancing gives me hope that if I continue writing I’ll be less and less of an embarrassment to my future self, despite this very inference having already been betrayed by experience several times.
How would you feel if your old work weren’t embarrassing or at best not up to snuff? The fact that you didn’t peak twenty years ago is a sign that you’re still improving.
Somewhere there are still naïve crayon drawings you did when you were six. They’re nothing to be ashamed of, they were a step along the way.
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Oh, I agree— that’s why I couldn’t stop smiling at Mark’s comment. I don’t think I could feel embarrassment for my childhood self. The drawings, paintings, and stories are just too earnest, too fearless for me to feel anything but gratitude while revisiting them. Like most adults, I sometimes wonder if I knew something then that I’ve forgotten since.
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