After buying a recent macbook (not the touch bar version, ugh) I suspect the real reason is fashion related. One port is more sleek, more stylish than two or three ports. Functionality sacrificed in the name of a sleeker look...well, I appreciate the intent, even as I recognise I am not the target audience.

This could be true, but they choose to stick with the lightning connector. Which gives them licencing rights. Getting money from licencing is the only reason I can see for them having only the lightning connector.

They could have switched to USB-C, became standard, and then switched to one port. Then at least the head phones you but would also work on your shiny new MacBook.

Switching to USB-C on the iPhone would have been a hugely shitty decision given their ultimate goal is clearly to build a phone without any ports at all within a few years.

Consider what would happen in that case: right now there are hundreds of millions of iPhone accessories out there that rely on the Lightning port - everything from headphones to cars to health devices and more. If Apple removed the Lightning port all of those accessories would become obsolete overnight and people would be up in arms about it (just look at the removal of the headphone jack and the storm in a teacup that became.) Manufacturers would bring out USB-C accessories for the iPhone, people would buy them to replace their Lightning accessories, the furore would die down and things would go back to normal, and then boom - Apple removes the USB-C port too.

In the space of a few years they'd have fucked over hundreds of millions of people who wasted money on replacing their accessories and the outrage would be overwhelming. People would be accusing Apple of doing it on purpose just to sell more accessories (which is what they're accusing Apple of right now because of the aforementioned removal of the headphone jack) when in reality Apple has been telegraphing the transition to wireless for a while now.

I don't think this is going to happen any time remotely soon, even if apple wants it to.

Going completely wireless would also destroy the current accessories market. No dongle or converter to fix it either.

Also apple already did change the connector for the iPhone once.

The iPhone will go USB-C because the rest of their products have. They can stay dumb and alienate their consumers, or finally start integrating with the world.

Exactly. Users can't even use their lightning headphones on a new Mac. The move to remove was a mistake, but there is no going back now. That would be admitting to a design flaw.

Not only was it not a mistake, ten years from now people will refer to the outrage over the removal of the headphone jack in the same way we currently refer to the outrage over the removal of the floppy drive.

> there is no going back now. That would be admitting to a design flaw.

What's wrong with admitting that you took a bet and it didn't work out?

People do that all the time. Reasonable people, at least.

I am surprised nobody has responded to this comment with the USB-3 male to female Lightning adapter solution.

Apple made $230 BILLION in revenue last year, of which less than one fifth of one percent came from MFI licensing fees.

Removing the headphone jack had absolutely nothing to do with selling dongles and everything to do with Apple doing what it always does: seeing which way the wind is blowing and dragging everyone kicking and screaming into their vision of the future.

They did the exact same thing with the floppy drive and optical drive, they're now doing the same thing with USB and the headphone jack, and within five years you can be sure that every single one of their competitors will have made the same decision.

That's terrible to read. I'd hoped that Apple had just happened upon a streak of decisions that were inconvenient to users, and might reverse the trajectory. At less than 1/5 of $230B (more than 1/6?), and obviously at an extremely high profit margin, there's essentially no way.

I had been really optimistic about the adoption of USB-C, since it is as an open standard, but the discovery of such enormous licensing revenues that are essentially without expense to Apple, makes it almost inevitable that they will begin insisting peripherals get permission from Apple, too.

I think you may have misread what I wrote: one fifth of one percent, i.e, 0.2%. It's a minuscule drop in the ocean for Apple, such a small number it doesn't even show up on their financial reports. There's no way in hell they made a massive change like removing the headphone jack just to sell more accessories when their entire accessories revenue is little more than a rounding error.

That's much better! Something approaching 1/5 made me think of movie theater concessions.

Apple has been wrong about this sort of thing way more times than it has been right.

Here's where people pile on and say [citation needed]

Maybe I'm just forgetting things today, but i'm not thinking of any.

ADB? FireWire? Which ones?