Because you'd only buy one. They want you to buy many during your lifetime.

cheaping out?

You unplug and replug the top one more often than the bottom one. It's not a great comparison.

Take your usb cable, wrap it around something round of the size of curl you want and hit it with hot air, being careful not to melt it.

You will achieve the springy tangly mess in the picture. Your cable will now be 2/3 or less of the straight length

That's why I like the chinese brands because you need thick cables for their ultra fast charging tech. Although the fast charging are a bit proprietary so you have to find legitimate ones online when they do break.

If you want the actual answer it's because you can't. There is very little voltage going through those cables, and there is no data line at all.

If you wanted to recharge your phone through a cable like that it would take about 10 years.

You can get high quality armoured recharge cables, they're not even all that expensive, you just don't get them in the box. Apple don't even give you a charger these days, so is it really all that hard to believe that they would give you the cheapest version of the cable?

OK interesting discussion BUT NOT IF THE EXAMPLE IS A FUCKING LIGHTING CABEL!!!

Enshitification

Because then they couldn't sell you a new one for $15 every 3 months.

Berylium Copper, which holds its shape like a spring more than the usual annealed copper conductor, is probably not used because of berylioses or contact allergies. But, other than being a worse conductor than copper, it would probably be better cool as a coil.

If you want to pay for cables, go ahead and pay for cables.

I use these on all my cables both ends. This cable is 5 years old and still strong. Costed me 1 rupee per piece. Got a pack of 100 for 100rs (~1 us dollar)

Well, think of the data transfer rates. One carries voice, which can be in the kb/s

A lightning cable can carry a few gb/s.

All this extra data weighs down the cable, causing it to fail sooner.

You can solve this problem by switching to light-weight data, or by simply filling your cable with helium to counteract the extra weight!

I have Sennheiser HD 280 headphones. They have a telephone cord for a wire. So good. So worth it. Cable still going strong after 6 years. And get this... when it breaks? I can replace it. They make spare parts. Saved me a ton of money in the long run