[userbinator]

I don't know about you, but I think the strain reliefs that just about every other cable has are "sleek and well designed" enough to stop them from failing there. Apple's strain relief, which doesn't relieve strain particularly well, reminds me of those on very old equipment (pre-1940s): nothing more than a featureless tube surrounding the cable. The reinforced design with a flexible, radius-limiting boot that's popular today evolved over many decades and works very well. Apple's design provides only a minimal amount of reinforcement and doesn't offer much radius-limiting. You can see this when you bend it - the "boot" creases and wrinkles, separating from the cable, instead of smoothly controlling and limiting its bend radius as a good strain relief should.

[blackguardx]

I prefer other companies' strain reliefs, but I get why Apple uses the one they do.