Redstone cables are pretty much like regular redstone wires, except they have some diffrences that make them all the better.
They can be place underwater.
They can be place on walls and in the air.
Blocks can be placed over them, letting you hide them more easily. Just place any block where the cable is and the cable is hidden inside the block.
They can transmit more than just simple on/off inputs. They can transmit data. For example, there could be a special block, that when hooked up to a jukebox with the cables, played the same song the jukebox was playing.
i think jeb recently tweeted that after the mod api he was going to look at redstone again, add some more stuff. This dosent sound to bad, i like the ability to have blocks on top of redstone especially, but i dont think they would do that. The other stuff sounds useful aswell.
They can be place underwater.
They can be place on walls and in the air.
Blocks can be placed over them, letting you hide them more easily. Just place any block where the cable is and the cable is hidden inside the block.
They can transmit more than just simple on/off inputs. They can transmit data. For example, there could be a special block, that when hooked up to a jukebox with the cables, played the same song the jukebox was playing.