I imagine most people - especially those not using the Pro models - only care about universal charging. I think I’ve connected my iPhone to my PC for data transfer maybe two or three times since I switched ~six years ago, and even on Android I used network shares and such more often than not.

I’d agree most people can happily just use WiFi speeds for most tasks, but I’m just shocked that apple would aim to save money or force a product differentiation by using usb2. It’s fairly ancient now.

I wonder if the base A16 simply doesn’t support USB 3 and they weren’t motivated to change that - the 14 Pro/Max last year was still limited to USB 2 after all.

I feel like Qi is really the universal charging standard, but USBC is good too

USB C is definitely more universal, it is used for laptops and peripherals and other random devices. Qi charging is mostly limited to phones and certain phone accessories, which usually also have USB C.

And pro should be usb4

It’s no coincidence that Intel just released info on thunderbolt 5 spec yesterday. How much money could it really add to goto the next usb? Is there some kind of hardware design he’ll going on behind the scenes

"USB4" is really thunderbolt 3 with a few compatibility tweaks. As such, it's a very different beast from USB3 (which is much closer to the USBs that preceded it): more like "external PCIe" than "USB".

Maybe it matters to you, but I can't remember the last time I used cabled data transfer capabilities on any phone. As long as fast charging is supported (which, I'm sure it does), 99.9% of users won't care at all.

I am a bit surprised there isn't a Thunderbolt controller in the Pro, though. Seems like they already have the IP since it's part of the iPads already.

might be more popular with that crowd that doesn't backup on icloud but to their local desktop. For that non icloud folks I wonder how many use cable vs wifi.

I’m using WiFi 6 (not even 6E) for that and the limiting speed factor for me seems to be the SSD that I am writing the data to. I could throw money at that to make it faster, but I also don’t really care because I’m asleep while it’s backing up anyways, just like how you probably couldn’t tell me how long your iCloud backup takes.

that's very weird, what's the BOM savings here? Seems like a custom part regardless, is it the controller chip that's cheaper? USB C for 2.0 seems baffling I agree.

Its not about the BOM or the cost, its about creating a more clear "this is the trash one" image of the base model, so more people will buy the Pro.

ouch, yah without some alternate explanation it kind of reeks of a deliberate caste system being created in the Apple ecosystem. Only certain folks would get it.

I had my first taste of this with the macro support only showing up on the Pro model. It's such an old feature I was baffled the other device we bought didn't have that capability. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/453470/is-there-a-...

Actually BOM will differ because lightning can do USB2 so it’s probably reusing the same chip. USB-C needs a different chip and is harder to route too so I’m not surprised.