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You can use flat-flex cables instead of wires without these issues, for example all of the Nintendo folding handhelds use them. And those are durable enough to stand up to children abusing them for years on end.

They have the flat flex make a loop to allow the flex strain to be spread out, rather than bending it at one specific point.



I think the difference is that Nintendo roll up their flex cables so that there's plenty of slack, which is fine if you've got the space. From the looks of these pictures, the macbook just passes the flex cable straight through which put stress on the cable.

The Nintendo cable are definitely not indestructible. There's a hell of a lot of broken DSs out there.


From my limited experience, I've never seen the ribbon cables fail from opening/closing the console. The failures I've seen (and fixed) are the bottom case breaking where it holds the hinge spring detent thing.


> The Nintendo cable are definitely not indestructible. There's a hell of a lot of broken DSs out there.

They may not be indestructible but the replacement flex cables can be bought for next to nothing and replacing them is trivial for anyone with basic electronics skills.


Those cables add quite a bit of weight though.


The cables themselves don't add basically any weight, you're only adding a centimeter or two of it, just make a loop so the cable doesn't strain.

The 3DS actually has four cables running through its hinge: the LCD ribbon, the camera ribbon, the speaker ribbon, and the wifi antenna cable.

The problem is you need to make the hinge physically larger, which apparently Apple is unwilling to do.


What cables are you referring to? The comment you replied to said that Apple and Nintendo use the same type of cable but with Nintendo having more slack to eat up strain.


The DS is much much thicker than the Macbook. The larger bend radius no doubt helps the cables not fatigue as quickly, in addition to having more slack.


The cables don't look like they weigh more than a few grams.




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