The main reason Apple’s cable is so expensive is because it is so long.
It’s fairly easy to make a reliable TB4 cable that’s only 1 foot long, making one that’s 6 feet long requires some fairly fancy noise-cancelling within the cable itself.
This is why a reliable 3-meter Ethernet 400 cable can cost you well over $1000 dollars.
Wow. I thought you were comparing the Apple cable with a shorter cable so I looked it up and you’re right. I’d be very curious to see what the Caldigit cable is like inside!