Beats’ New Colored USB-C Cables Illustrate that Color is more than Merely Cosmetic

My pal Chance Miller reported for 9to5 Mac earlier this week about Beats announcing its first-ever line of USB-C cables. The company bills the new cables as “[a] collection of reinforced charging cables in an assortment of lengths and colors,” according to Miller. A single cable costs $19, while a 2-pack costs $35. The cables are available now.

According to Miller, Beats’ colorful new cables come in several varieties: USB-C to USB-C, USB-A to USB-C, and USB-C to Lightning. The color choices are Bolt Black, Surge Stone, Nitro Navy, and Rapid Red. Notably, the red variety USB-A to USB-C (1.5 m) and USB-C to Lightning (1.5 m) aren’t available until “this summer,” according to Beats.

Beats has shared an introductory video for the new accessories.

What’s most interesting to me about this development is not merely that there now exists Beats-branded cables—not exactly billboard-worthy products—it’s that these cables are colorful. From an accessibility standpoint, that the cables are colored means they have very real potential to be an accessibility aid in helping someone distinguish which cables go to what. For instance, someone with certain cognitive conditions—or anyone, really—might plausibly decide the aforementioned red USB-C cable is to be used strictly for their iPhone charging. Likewise, that same person could decide the blue cable is for charging their Apple TV’s Siri Remote. The permutations are endless, but the salient point is only that the colorful nature of these cables could very well be a de-facto accessibility feature for identifying the devices to which they’re attached. In this sense, the colors are far more impactful in actual use than sheer stylistic symbols.

As other illustrations of this concept, consider color-coded HDMI cables on Amazon. The whole point of making them colorful is more about pragmatism than prettiness. For those who have lots of devices hooked up to their TV, these colored HDMI cables can go a long way in knowing, for instance, that the Apple TV 4K is connected via the yellow cable while the PlayStation 5 is running through the blue one. Similarly, colored ethernet cables do the same job. I recently tore apart our home theater setup, then summarily rebuilt it, on a quest for simplification and to conquer a massive rat’s nest of unused cables. I have a gigabit Ethernet switch running off the back of our Eero system, which runs cables to the Apple TV, Starling Home Hub, and HDHomeRun. Everything works with aplomb, but the trouble is I sometimes can’t tell which cable connects to what device. Ergo, color-coded Ethernet cables would make that more accessible.

As one last example, my keychain is colored for accessibility’s sake. It’s an official AirTag Leather Key Ring in the California Poppy color. This product has long been discontinued, and yellow isn’t even my favorite color, but I specifically chose it because it’s bold and bright—both attributes which would make grabbing my keys more visually accessible as someone with low vision. (Apple replaced the Leather Key Ring with a FineWoven version that’s both visually and functionally nigh identical to what I have.)

Beyond colors, Miller reports Beats’ cables feature an “anti-fray design” engineered by Apple. He notes the cables have undergone what is described by Apple as “thousands of hours of testing.” The cables are designed for charging, syncing, data transfer, audio, and CarPlay. Of note, fast charging is supported on select iPhone and iPad models.

I’m compelled to point out Beats’ cables are a bit of a double-edged sword. As I’ve written innumerable times, USB-C cables, however standardized, are fairly inaccessible in terms of hand-eye coordination. The nerds all clamor for One Cable To Rule Them All, but they fail to realize—because they take it for granted—that cable oneness is only truly meaningful if you can manipulate the cable in the first place. Not everyone can easily do this; it would be more innovative to, say, fuse MagSafe with USB-C. And lest anyone cries proprietary, as someone who’s chosen the Apple ecosystem, I’ll take a USB-C cable slathered with the company’s special sauce if it means the cables are more inclusive of my needs. Miss me with the precious pearl-clutching over standards.

The news of Beats-branded cables comes months after the company surprisingly released branded cases (made out of plastic) for the then-new iPhone 16 lineup.