*insert Mr. Krabs Money meme here* - Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 cable is as long as it gets… at 159 USD and 3m

[Lightwreather]

Summary

As spotted by The Verge today, Apple has listed a 9.8-foot-long (3 meters for the rest of the sane world) Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable on its online store, saying the product is "coming soon." That length offers greater flexibility than the longest Thunderbolt 4 offerings from cable makers like Belkin (6.6 feet), Cable Matters (6.6 feet), and Plugable (6.4 feet).

Credit: Apple

 

Quotes

Quote

As with any product from Apple, the 9.8-foot Thunderbolt 4 cable comes at a premium. Apple is selling the cable for $159, or about $16.22 per foot. For comparison, Belkin's longest Thunderbolt 4 cable is $10.61 per foot, Cable Matters' is $9.09 per foot, and Plugable's is around $10.94 per foot.

You could argue that Apple's extra-long cable comes with a small comparative discount, however, since Apple is charging less per foot than it does for its 5.9-foot alternative. Apple's 5.9-foot Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable is $129, or $21.86 per foot.

Apple’s 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 cable won’t have much, if any, competition when it arrives. Whether it’s Belkin, Caldigit, CableMatters, or Plugable, no major cable manufacturer (that I’ve found) sells a Thunderbolt 4 cable over 2-meters in length. For a very specific kind of user, Apple’s $159 cable might genuinely be the best option.

 

My thoughts

In yet another case of apple selling something extraordinarily expensive item after an apple event (cf. 20USD cloth), we have a, and I quote, 3m Thunderbolt cable. At 159USd or $53/m (I refuse to use inferior units. /s). Well, one can explain this away as them being the sole entity selling a product that can do this, but eh……… it's fun to put this down to corporate greed.

 

Sources

ArsTechnica

TheVerge

Apple.com

[WereCat]

It's made from the recycled monitor stands. IMO, the price is appropriate.

[leadeater]

Time for @LinusTechto buy 10-20 of them and cable test them? haha

 

They better be damn good, damn good, and zero faulty or under-spec ones in the test samples.

[Skiiwee29]

30 minutes ago, WereCat said:

It's made from the recycled monitor stands. IMO, the price is appropriate.

Do they use the Mac Pro cheese grater to recycle it down?

[Forbidden Wafer]

Looks stupid and is priced accordingly. At this price point, I would expect optical fiber cable.

[lewdicrous]

Let's hope this doesn't happen.

Spoiler

[Rauten]

At that price point, they better be audiophile-certified! /s

[Dreckssackblase]

14 minutes ago, Rauten said:

At that price point, they better be audiophile-certified! /s

Contacts aren't gold plated and it's missing at least 12 useless capacitors for it to get my audiophile seal of approval. /s

 

[WereCat]

2 hours ago, Dreckssackblase said:

Contacts aren't gold plated and it's missing at least 12 useless capacitors for it to get my audiophile seal of approval. /s

 

Also the copper inside was not made during a night time when the noise floor is a lot lower

[Stahlmann]

Apple just knows they can charge what they want because even though there is a lot of competition there will be enough people to buy the Apple product no matter what. That's how their business model works.

[jasonvp]

Bitch all you want about the price.  I'll betcha that when the rest of the manufacturers catch up with their own 10ft Thunderbolt-4 cables, they'll all cost about the same.  Maybe slightly less expensive, but the money saved won't buy you a cup of sludge from Starbucks.

 

Thunderbolt cables are fucking expensive, kiddies.  That's just how it goes.  Being able to carry 40Gbits/sec in a non-fiber cable ain't cheap.

[starsmine]

28 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

Bitch all you want about the price.  I'll betcha that when the rest of the manufacturers catch up with their own 10ft Thunderbolt-4 cables, they'll all cost about the same.  Maybe slightly less expensive, but the money saved won't buy you a cup of sludge from Starbucks.

 

Thunderbolt cables are fucking expensive, kiddies.  That's just how it goes.  Being able to carry 40Gbits/sec in a non-fiber cable ain't cheap.

HDMI 2.1 with its 48GBits/Sec over here looking all sus for being a reasonable price

[jasonvp]

1 minute ago, starsmine said:

HDMI 2.1 with its 48GBits/Sec over here looking all sus for being a reasonable price

And when we can get all those different types of data streams, concurrently, over an HDMI 2.1 cable, lemme know.

[RejZoR]

3m is a very long cable for high speed connections. If it'll actually live up to its specs, people will be willing to pay this much. Especially since there is so many trash cables around that are cheap and may or may not work. $160 isn't much if you can plug it and get max speed guaranteed when you're building a 4000€ Mac Studio setup and then earn money with it every single day from that point. Or constantly curse and complain over stupid issues caused by sketchy cables.

 

People act like clowns when they see Apple's prices. It's like people who buy used BMW that used to cost 80.000€ and then wonder why rather basic spare parts cost a fortune compared to spare parts for 20k Toyota...

[Dracarris]

So the series of "one thread per every fart ripped in Cupertino" continues. We now have like 4 threads for the last Apple event already. Will there now be one for literally every new accessory released by Apple?

 

Seriously guys, it's getting ridiculous. These threads are opened solely for the "omg Apple look expensive" lols, clicks and reactions.

 

If @J-from-Nucleon actually would've liked to contribute sth, he could've compared this solution against features and pricing of competing optical solutions. As others have already said, TB cables, carrying general-purpose data lanes worth dozens of Gbit/s (essentially PCIe on a cable), are one of the hardest cable types to manufacture. If I remember correctly, they also require to be active (having a chipset in each ends connector).

 

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

HDMI 2.1 with its 48GBits/Sec over here looking all sus for being a reasonable price

TB4 can do much more:

Quote

DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0: USB4 supports DisplayPort 2.0 over its alternative mode. DisplayPort 2.0 can support higher than 8K resolution at 60 Hz losslessly due to new UHBR 10, 13.5, and 20 signaling standards (DSC 1.2 used in DisplayPort 1.4 for that resolution is not lossless) in 8 bit and 8K 60 Hz with 10 bit color and use up to 80 Gbit/s (effective bandwidth 77.37 Gbit/s), which is double the amount available to USB data, because (just as previously in DisplayPort 1.4) it sends almost all the data in one direction (to the monitor) and can thus use all four data lanes at once.^[88] Resolutions up to 16K (15360×8640) 60 Hz display with 10 bit Y'CbCr 4:4:4 or RGB are possible.

 

[Video Beagle]

17 hours ago, Dracarris said:

These threads are opened solely for the "omg Apple look expensive" lols, clicks and reactions.

The owner of the site literaly changed a news video title from "Double the Apple Silicon" to "Oh, Come on Apple!".

The focus on his mac channel's review of announcements was that prices are going up...after pointing out that everyone's prices are going up, but then the video harps on it somehow being an Apple issue.

The title of his main channel's review was "Apple makes my head hurt" which was never said or addressed in the video featuring the most credible person on his staff.

 

Don't complain about forum members doing similar...they're just following the community's leader desire for negative apple coverage for the clicks and to show his displeasure at cupertino not acknowledging his existence.

[Paul Thexton]

On 3/10/2022 at 12:13 PM, Dreckssackblase said:

Contacts aren't gold plated and it's missing at least 12 useless capacitors for it to get my audiophile seal of approval. /s

 

Needs another 0 on the price too for genuine audiophile credentials 

[Blademaster91]

21 hours ago, RejZoR said:

3m is a very long cable for high speed connections. If it'll actually live up to its specs, people will be willing to pay this much. Especially since there is so many trash cables around that are cheap and may or may not work. $160 isn't much if you can plug it and get max speed guaranteed when you're building a 4000€ Mac Studio setup and then earn money with it every single day from that point. Or constantly curse and complain over stupid issues caused by sketchy cables.

 

People act like clowns when they see Apple's prices. It's like people who buy used BMW that used to cost 80.000€ and then wonder why rather basic spare parts cost a fortune compared to spare parts for 20k Toyota...

Except its 2x more expensive than other good TB4 cables, people willing to pay that much are buying it because it has the Apple logo on it.

It's the same reason why people buy a used BMW, buying because of the brand image and getting ripped off on parts.

20 hours ago, Dracarris said:

If @J-from-Nucleon actually would've liked to contribute sth, he could've compared this solution against features and pricing of competing optical solutions. As others have already said, TB cables, carrying general-purpose data lanes worth dozens of Gbit/s (essentially PCIe on a cable), are one of the hardest cable types to manufacture. If I remember correctly, they also require to be active (having a chipset in each ends connector).

If you would've read the OP you would see they are contributing, the price is a downside no matter how much some people never want to see any downsides about their brand, the pricing is about as dumb as a $20 cleaning cloth, the tax on getting more ram or storage, or the $1000 monitor stand, they could have at least gold plated the connectors to make it look high end lol.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Blademaster91

[Vishera]

Why would anyone buy a USB cable for $160?!

They can keep the cables for themselves,

[Dracarris]

21 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Except its 2x more expensive than other good TB4 cables, people willing to pay that much are buying it because it has the Apple logo on it.

No it's not, at least if correctly compared per length or for the same length. And even if this popular, utter BS "ppl only buy bcs Apple logo" would be true: The cable doesn't have one. Bravo to you.

21 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

It's the same reason why people buy a used BMW, buying because of the brand image and getting ripped off on parts.

If you think BMWs only have to offer a brand image and no other advantages/characteristics over other car brands, you are free to have this... special, subjective opinion. Don't sell it as an objective fact, though.

21 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

If you would've read the OP you would see they are contributing, the price is a downside no matter how much some people never want to see any downsides about their brand, the pricing is about as dumb as a $20 cleaning cloth, the tax on getting more ram or storage, or the $1000 monitor stand, they could have at least gold plated the connectors to make it look high end lol.

No they are not, as they do not compare to other solutions that offer the same BW over the same length. As I said, it is just here for the pure lols and clicks.

 

And if you think the tax on this cable is comparable to the other things listed, you've shown once again that you are poorly informed about the general sophistication and price level of TB(4) cables.

 

6 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Why would anyone buy a USB cable for $160?!

Another misinformed. This is not a USB cable.

[Vishera]

7 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Another misinformed. This is not a USB cable.

It's just a glorified USB 4 cable...

[Dracarris]

Just now, Vishera said:

It's just a glorified USB 4 cable...

Maybe do yourself the favor of doing some research about the technical background and internals of TB cables.

[CephDigital]

Never had to use a TB cable before so I looked up some prices for them. Turns out, 3m TB4 cables are pretty rare here in the UK. Closest I've seen is an Intel-verified 2m one for £54. Let's assume that a 3m cable is 50% more (cause it's 50% more cable) and that still ends up at £81. Still cheaper than the 1.8m cable that apple sells (£129) and the 3m is £159 soooo.... Apple tax? Still couldn't find a verified 3m TB4 cable in the first place though...

[jasonvp]

1 hour ago, CephDigital said:

Still couldn't find a verified 3m TB4 cable in the first place though...

I could be mistaken, but I believe this is the first full bandwidth Thunderbolt [3|4] cable at that length.  The previous "hard" limit was 2M.

 

 

[Quackers101]

when you get 6.9 feet for 69.99