The Octopus's Garden Beneath Your Desk: In Search of the Perfect Cable

Your day was going fine until the internet stopped working and the tech support person just asked you to crawl under your desk to unplug your modem. Your yoga skills are what they are, and this is not going to be fun, especially when you realize the octopus's garden you have created under your desk has been gradually progressing into something resembling a Gordian knot.  

I previously blogged how Apple makes a pretty good cable for charging laptops and better than average cable for iPhones. The fact is, even in our wireless world, we are still cable-bound to the walls.  If you don't believe me, look at the floor under your desk, or beside your entertainment system. What a freaking mess!

The mess is worse because the cables are poorly designed.  Ever tried to trouble shoot a modem issue or figure out how to plug 14 devices into 10 outlets?  Plugging, unplugging, and pulling cables through the massive entanglements is a chore that is exacerbated by cable ends that don't play nice.

What would it take to make a perfect cable? Wireless of course. However, that is not possible for some things, so good cable design is still necessary. Here is my list:

Adequate length for the purpose.

You've seen people sitting on the floor in the airports or malls charging their phone while talking or texting. They are tethered, trapped, and tied to their devices until they get enough juice to be mobile again. Apple seems bent on (a) producing short cables, and (b) preventing us from using longer ones. The MacBook Pro chargers meet this criteria as do some Windows machines.  Phone chargers, not so much.

No fishhooks. 

When you are pulling cables, so many of them have ends that are uniquely designed to catch other wires on the way through. You know the ones I'm talking about with the ends that have two screws on them (bad idea). They couldn't be much worse if they had fishhooks mounted on each side.  More yoga skills will be required to meticulously guide the cable end through the maze. Phone jack designers are so guilty here. I've cursed them many times during tech support induced contortionist routines. A smooth, contoured end would allow the cable to pull easily.

Bi-directional and extendable.

Ideally cables should be bidirectional with identical ends - it shouldn't matter which end plugs into what.  However, extendable cables are the next best thing. Specifically, cables should be able to be patched together to form longer cables, like electrical extension cords, without requiring a connecting device. Some types of data cannot be maintained reliably over longer distances so there are limits to how extensible a cable can be. This should be considered by engineers when choosing data formats. Whenever possible, pick formats that allow for longer cables. The problem is, you probably can't have extendable and bidirectional, unless you were really clever, in which case, maybe you could.

No "right-side-up".

The best cables are easy to plug in with no "up" or "down".  The iPhone charger end that plugs into the phone is a good example. The USB end that plugs into the wall wart is a poor example (it has to be right-side-up).  Nothing makes a flashlight session of swapping cables around corners under a desk more fun than a guessing game about "which way is up?"

Self-guiding.

When you insert a cable end into a device, it should slide in naturally and then fit snugly. Apple excels at this in some instances. The magnetic MacBookPro charger ends are the king of the hill in this regard. The iPhone charger ends (phone end) are quite good. The circular variety used by many devices perform reasonably well except some of the cheaper varieties which don't pass the snug test. Electrical cables, phone cables and other computer device cables often fail this test.

Tangle resistant.

Tough one here, and Apple has done a pretty good job on some cables by making the rubber casing thick and springy. It helps. Ear buds on the other hand seem hopeless, short of the pricey new wireless models.

I dream of a Utopia in which there are only three types of cables to handle all data and electrical transmissions. They are smooth, non-directional, and easy to plug in. It's a fantasy, I know. No one has the political will to pull off such a thing, even though it would revolutionize our landfill situation and save countless hours shopping for the right cables, etc. As a wise man once said, "The great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from."