I agree with what you're saying, yes Apple is a terrible value; but Apple customer's don't seem to care about that and I'm not sure if it's really cause for outrage. I also doubt that most customers will even notice the difference. It is quite rare that I connect a cable to a phone for data transfer, and when I do, if I have a 2.0 cable nearby I wouldn't bother reaching any further for a 3.0 cable, even if the phone supports the faster speeds. Even if I'm loading up some movies for a flight or something, practically speaking it's such a rare event that I would just initiate the transfer and grab a snack or something. It's pretty obvious why they did this, I'm not sure it's such a bad engineering decision really, to make the best of the silicon they already have. And for users who actually do care, the ones who are lurking on HN, they are compelled to spend more for the speed.