Apple obviously uses some jiggery pokery in their cables which means they are nigh on impossible to replicate. I say this as a result of some tests that I did on my Shuffle 3 USB charging cable which revealed the following:-
Pin 1 (tip) connects to USB pin 2 (white) which is D- (Left Channel).
Pin 2 connects to USB pin 3 (green) which is D+ (Right Channel).
Pin 3 connects to USB pin 4 (black) which is Ground.
Pin 4 & USB pin 1 mysteriously don't appear to connect to anything!
However when the cable is plugged into a USB socket there is a voltage of 3V between pin 3 (ground) and pin 4 i.e. pin 4 is getting +3V from somewhere!!!
Obviously it's not directly from USB pin 1 (VCC) is this would be +5V and as I said there is an open circuit between this & pin 4.
Therefore I can only conclude that there is some kind of internal high resistance connection between the pins in the official Apple Cable which somehow gets the voltage from the data lines. I cannot confirm this due to not having a good enough meter to test it & am not prepared to take the cable to bits to look what is inside.
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Perhaps if someone has access to a spare cable then they could disassemble it to crack this problem.
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Or maybe the fact alone that Pin 4 & USB pin 1 aren't connected somehow allows the Shuffle to draw power from the data lines of it's own accord? Perhaps someone could test this!
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Otherwise if someone has access to a spare cable that they don't mind damaging then they could disassemble it to crack this problem.
Until then it seems the only solution to the lost cable problem is to pay Apples prices for a replacement!
Apple obviously uses some jiggery pokery in their cables which means they are nigh on impossible to replicate. I say this as a result of some tests that I did on my Shuffle 3 USB charging cable which revealed the following:-
Pin 1 (tip) connects to USB pin 2 (white) which is D- (Left Channel).
Pin 2 connects to USB pin 3 (green) which is D+ (Right Channel).
Pin 3 connects to USB pin 4 (black) which is Ground.
Pin 4 & USB pin 1 mysteriously don't appear to connect to anything!
However when the cable is plugged into a USB socket there is a voltage of 3V between pin 3 (ground) and pin 4 i.e. pin 4 is getting +3V from somewhere!!!
Obviously it's not directly from USB pin 1 (VCC) is this would be +5V and as I said there is an open circuit between this & pin 4.
Therefore I can only conclude that there is some kind of internal high resistance connection between the pins in the official Apple Cable which somehow gets the voltage from the data lines. I cannot confirm this due to not having a good enough meter to test it & am not prepared to take the cable to bits to look what is inside.
Perhaps if someone has access to a spare cable then they could disassemble it to crack this problem.
Until then it seems the only solution to the lost cable problem is to pay Apples prices for a replacement!