— Pissing off your customers will make them MORE likely to continue buying your products? I must have missed that course in business school.

Apple has a long history of doing this, like iMessage lockin. They purposely make their phones more difficult to communicate with 3rd party devices. The iPhone is worse because of it. . . But they don't care cause it locks you into their ecosystem. Apple just makes good products so people stay loyal irregardless of these moves that piss a lot of power users off.

— In the specific example given (Apple slowing data transfer speeds on non-MFi-certified cables), the argument here is that Apple is so desperate to get some $1 licensing fees for MFi cables that they are going cripple functionality and risk the 50% profit margins on their $1200 phones?

"Argument here" is that they want you in their ecosystem. You are missing the point; they want you buying their hardware and buying software through their distribution channels. the MFi cable is just another small push to fence you in.

— If an iPhone owner has a problem with charging or data transfer using a cheap cable, are they more likely to blame (and call for tech support) Apple or some no-name cable manufacturer out of China? And what would be the cost of paying that tech support person to assist that customer?

Blame the cable. . . If a phone is charging slowly, the first thing I do is get another cable or try another wireless charger. I have never once blamed Apple, OnePlus, Samsung, or Google for slow charging. But I have experienced that on each device at some point.


TL;DR You are not a crying fanboy. . . But I disagree with your assessment of my post.