After banishing billions of earphones to the dustbin of history with its new AirPods, Apple finds itself at a crossroads. Clearly, the corporation hates cables. But which cables should it destroy next? Here are some suggestions.
Charging cables
For a company that prides itself on quality, its iPhone charging cables are laughably awful. Three-centimetres long and able to fray after a nanosecond of use, they are the epitome of crumminess. The world’s best smartphones charge wirelessly; maybe it’s time for the iPhone to follow suit.
USB-C cables
When Apple announced its new 12-inch MacBook in 2015, it came without any external ports at all, save for one; an irregularly shaped USB-C port. If you want to connect it to anything else, you need to pile up an ugly stack of wonky adapters like some sort of crap zen cairn. Just ditch USB-C cables altogether, Apple, and save everyone a lot of bother.
Ethernet cables
Many Apple devices still have ethernet ports. What’s the point? If people can’t connect to the internet wirelessly, then they don’t deserve to connect to the internet at all. We need to create a two-tier internet system, where people with flash new Apple goods can surf the web effortlessly, and those without can’t.
3-Core cable
Now, with keyboard, mouse, headphone, charging, USB-C and ethernet cables destroyed for ever, Apple can invoke its masterplan – getting rid of normal 3-core round flex electrical cables, the sort that electricians use every day to provide power to thousands of homes. Apple will replace this with a new wireless power called AirLectricity that costs a thousand times more than regular cables and isn’t compatible with any other sort of cable, because that’s the sort of thing it does now.
That drawer of obsolete cables in my house
Then Apple will provide its first genuinely useful update in a generation; getting rid of that rat-king of useless Apple cables I insist on keeping in my desk in case I need them one day. Goodbye, FireWire cables. Goodbye USB to 30-pin charging cable. Goodbye cable I used to hook my MacBook up to an external webcam in 2004. Goodbye expensive headphones for which I saved and saved because I assumed no company would ever be dickish enough make them obsolete. Please enjoy your new life clogging up a Chinese landfill site, or whatever.
Kettles
For too long, consumers have been tethered to their kitchen countertops whenever they have wanted to boil water. Wouldn’t it be better if water just reached boiling point automatically? Fear no more, for Apple has created AirBoil: a wireless wand that instantaneously transforms any mass of water into a hissing, steaming, scalding-hot deathtrap. Coffee? You got it! Bathtubs? Not a problem! Goldfish bowls? Easy! Entire oceans? We’re working on it!
Petrol pumps
Nothing in the whole world is as tedious as getting out of your car, picking up a petrol nozzle, carrying it back to your car, putting the nozzle in the car, carrying it back to the pump, walking back to your car and driving away. Wouldn’t everything be better without tubes? That’s why Apple has invented AirSquirt; a pressurised jet of petrol that shoots across the forecourt through the open air, directly into your car’s tank. You never have to lift a finger, or light a match, ever again. Seriously, do not light a match.
Vince Cable
And then Apple will finally render Vince Cable obsolete, replacing him with a new model called Vince AirBud that’s 10 times more expensive and a thousand times easier to lose. That’s right, this is where this entire piece was going all along. A cheap Vince Cable joke. I am sorry.
