"Seem". Until they don't. I've had multiple instances of Airpods stopping to connect with phones until I charged them at least once with original Apple cables. They might work fine for months, then stop ehaving unless connected through an all-Apple power pipeline (cable and charger). It's probably firmware updates requiring some sort of validation every now and then.

Sounds like you have a flaky / damaged device or bad cables. If there really was some kind of conspiratorial timer requiring you to use 1P cables it would certainly be documented. Can’t hide that stuff. Loads of people use Apple devices with 3P cables all the time and they work just fine, as long as the cables aren’t junk. There really are quality and capability differences in USB C cables. Just because it looks right and physically connects doesn’t mean it can electrically do all the things.

I think this is a problem with USB-C. The cables all look the same, but they don't actually always work for every device, at least in my experience.

I know that Apple MFI certified Lightning cables work well with iDevices, but I found that third-party non-MFI-certified Lightning cables to be finicky with iDevices. But I never faced such problem with USB cables for non-Apple devices (Android phones, cameras, etc.).

Apple MFI certifies USB-C cables also, so I'm not sure if it is throttling its iDevices to be finicky with non-MFI USB-C cables.

I know for a fact that Apple did software updates to older iPhones to make them sluggish and drain battery quickly. I realised this when I went to Apple Genius Bar to get my iPhone 7 Plus battery replaced after it started draining too quickly daily, but even with new battery same problem persisted. The friendly staff member unofficially told me it is because of the recent software updates by Apple for older iPhones, and advised not to hold out hope that any future software update will fix the problem. Even a year later, his warning remained true. I gave away the iPhone to my nephew as a backup device for his studies, but he sold it soon, as it was a nightmare to keep charging it frequently.

Apple has faced multiple fines for deliberately slowing down older iPhones without informing users, including a €25 million fine in France and a $41 million fine for deceptive marketing practices. The company admitted to slowing down devices to prevent unexpected shutdowns due to aging batteries, but critics argued it was misleading.

These days, I wouldn't trust Apple with a barge pole, let alone the money from my wallet.

>Apple has faced multiple fines for deliberately slowing down older iPhones without informing users, including a €25 million fine in France and a $41 million fine for deceptive marketing practices. The company admitted to slowing down devices to prevent unexpected shutdowns due to aging batteries, but critics argued it was misleading.

These cases are much less convincing than they may seem if you just take a moment to read about them. iDevices would throttle the cpu to make the battery last longer as it's capacity falls, this kind of throttling is not uncommon and not malicious.

This wasn't misleading, and isn't something that warrants any genuine criticism.

In my experience, the only 2 mobile phone companies whose phones drain battery too fast are Apple and Samsung. Apple does this deliberately for older phones, whereas Samsung has this problem even for new phones.

You will not find this quick battery drain problem in Motorola, Nokia, Oppo, Sony, etc. Their phones last several years even with ageing batteries. An 10+ years old Oppo phone I have, still holds almost full charge at idle, throughout the day.

As batteries get older, their capacity to hold charge reduces, but if a phone battery is draining too fast even in idle mode, it is likely due to software, not hardware. And if it is due to software, then the manufacturer company is to blame.

I don't think you can find any evidence of a Apple actually deliberately doing things to make batteries drain faster on older models.

That would either require hurting the battery life on all models or require distinguishable behaviours that only occur on specific models and would be relatively simple to prove through reverse engineering.

Apple has been fined for the throttling, but hasn't ever been credibly accused of actually deliberately taking steps to reduce battery life on older devices.