hey, fwiw, I don’t regret your raising it, and I appreciate that you’ve been engaging with me :)
I would love for this thread to accomplish something other than meta rifraff, so — I’ve never worked as an Apple Store floor sales person, but:
> In the 90's, a USB cable was just four braided wires – literal copper wires which link copper pins in your [computer] with your [printer]. Two of them carried the data, and the other carried power and ground. This worked, and it was an affordable, easy-to-implement standard which spread like dandelion seeds on the wind.
> Now in the 2020's, we have USB-C. Have you ever had a kind of “friend” who tries to be “everything to everyone“? Well, that‘s USB-C.
> We fixed some things with USB A and mini – er, micro – B, like how hard they were to plug in, and how you invariably seemed to find yourself holding them upside down more than 50% of the time!
> And, well, engineers being engineers, and USB standing for universal serial bus, we tried to also solve all other problems at the same time. Like you couldn’t use a USB cable for video, or to power an air fryer.
> So, these days, USB cables are more than braids of copper wire. They are “active” cables! meaning they have a microchip inside. Even our cables became little computers.
> And we kept backwards compatibility with USB, so that if you use a plug adapter, you can take an original 90’s USB mouse and plug it right into your brand new iPhone n±1!
> Or nowadays, you might grab the wrong cable in your kitchen, and plug your toaster oven into your iPhone. yikes! I know you came in to the store today with a simple-seeming question, and we’ve been standing here now for minutes, and I apologize – but now I hope I can answer your question about why this cable isn’t recognized by your new phone.
> When an active cable is plugged in, the chip inside the cable “negotiates” with the chip inside the device. For a device you hold in your hand and use without thinking about it, like your phone, we have made the negotiator more stringent than we did in our tablet. :)
