For the vast majority of consumers, the usb-c ecosystem is fine. Buy name brand cables and chargers, they're fine.

That's not the greatest advice. I saw my mom charging her phone with a fat, meter long, USB-C cable. I asked her why she was using such a short cable. She admitted it was annoying to use. She said it was $35, but it was fast charging! It was a 100W 10Gbps cable.

I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of consumers do not buy name brand cables.

The majority of consumers don't do anything that needs more than 2.0 speeds and 30Wish charging. If they do, they can probably afford name brand cables.

In the next few years consumers will start getting laptops that need 60W, but most cables can do that now, and it won't be common for a few years now(Phones still had microUSB when I bought my laptop, many people have even older ones).

I know I’m in the minority but I preferred the smaller lightning cables to these USB-C cables that were designed to carry 100x the power that a phone would need.

Lots of compact USB-C cables out there. They won't provide 100W to your laptop, but they'll charge your phone just fine.

This is why the iPhone was nearly the last Apple device to switch to USB-C. Plenty of people will be irritated at having to buy bunch of new cables, and they've been accumulating Lightning cables for a decade. And unlike something like Micro USB, lightning cables don't often wear out.

But it is better to finally make the jump. I've never been unhappy with Lightning, but almost everything else I own has now switched to USB-C.

My brother has an iPad with the Lightning port on it, and has to get new cables every few years because they start fraying and breaking around the bottom of the connector.

And he isn't really rough or abusive with these cables either.

Where as I still have MicroUSB cables from 10 or 12yrs ago that still look and work like new.

That sounds like a “your brother problem”. Especially that an often touted negative of lightning cables is that the only movable part is inside the socket, which is harder to replace — so it makes even less sense why they could go wrong. My guess: he is buying cheap Chinese ones that have lower quality and you compare it to some higher quality ones.

As many people can vouch for: lighting cables can easily work for many many years without any trouble whatsoever.

I really don't think it is. It was a problem with the Apple one as well or else he wouldn't keep having to get new ones.

This definitely has to do with handling. I always wad my cables up and stuff them in bags, no care to careful winding or anything—but they last forever, as long as I’m the only one using them.

What I don’t do is hold them under tension for long periods, or use them stretched taught then bent 90° right next to the connector. My wife and kids ruin cables in a few months, and that’s how they do it. I didn’t get what people were talking about with apple cables being fragile, until I saw that.

I developed my habit because the same behavior is bad on ports, too. I’d developed an unconscious avoidance to doing those things before I ever owned an Apple device, or had one at work. So my Apple cables last forever unless my wife or kids get ahold of them.

Contributing to this anecdata, it's the same for me. My cables last forever, my spouse runs through them at an accelerated rate. Coincidentally, they use their phone in bed with it plugged in...

Plug in, move as far away as possible, turn port away from direction of the wall outlet, to use it. Bonus points for also resting it on the bent-at-the-port cable. Yep, that’s the maneuver my family members use to ruin all our cables. Similar with laptop and tablet power cables—get far from the outlet so the cable’s under tension, turn device so port’s not facing the outlet.

Sounds like they could use a christmas gift of extra long cables with 90 degree ends.

Yep. My replaced lightning and USB-C cables were all with the iPad, because in landscape I’ll have the connector at a tight bend.

Now I just use a usb-c cable with a 90 degree bend built in.

Mine last forever, except that one time I handled the Lightning connector with wet hands before plugging it in. Phone was fine, thankfully, but I cleaned some sooty deposits from the socket.

It's an old problem that was a real problem. I personally have never had any cables fray, except for every white Apple cord I had owned.

Up until a few years back when I noticed my replacement cord for yet another bad Apple cable felt different. Haven't had any issues with them after that. I assume they changed the manufacturing process.

Hmm, I've known several Apple users who have experienced the same thing. Both with branded Apple cables and third party ones. I seemed to notice lighting users having more dead cables than USB-C users seemed to, and it seems to me that lightning cables more frequently omit robust strain relief for aesthetic reasons.

The most frequent tendency I notice among people who have their cables fray is they use their phones while charging, but if you do certain things on your phone like long gaming sessions, you are almost forced to use your phone while it charges. So blaming the user feels a little bit like "you're holding it wrong" to me.

Where I did notice a difference between USB-C and lightning is that the lightning PORT seemed more durable than USB-C ports. I own multiple phones with flaky USB-C ports, whereas lighting ports seem much more durable.

I suspect they're more durable too. We're about to find out, I suppose.

In my experience, it's actually Apple cables that break pretty easily. It usually doesn't happen at the Lightning side, but at or near the strain relief, i.e. close to where the cable meets the plug.

I've seen this happen for Apple MagSafe, Lightning, and I believe even USB-C.

Throwing another data point into the ring. Of all the lightning cables I bought, the genuine ones from Apple always failed first.

Definitely not, Apple cables (not just Lightning, the old Magsafe ones and laptop USB-C ones too) are the worst for crumbling under stress at the point they bend near the plug. That rubbery coating just seems somehow worse for it than anything I've seen made/sold by anyone else.

I noticed (I don't have one) the new Magsafe ones for the current MacBooks have changed to a braided fabric looking coating/sleeve instead.

I guess there will always be someone who can damage any cable. I've never killed a lightning cable myself, and only ever seen someone else (my own mother) do it once -- and it wasn't the connector that broke, it was the cable at the strain relief. Hell, the cable still actually worked, but I was uncomfortable with the state of the cable and bought her a new one.

When I was doing Android phones, I was going through a new Micro USB cable about every month or two. Never long enough to fray the cable itself, it was always the connector flaking out and refusing to make a good enough connection to charge reliably.

Good riddance to Micro USB.

Absolutely not a Lightning-specific thing.

Flimsy cables are flimsy cables and they will break and fray. USB-C, Lightning, whatever.

The first-party Lightning cables from Apple have always been pretty flimsy so if Lightning cables have a bad rep in general, that's probably why. That's Apple's fault but not anything specific to Lightning.

I've had a lot of Anker Lightning cables and they're about as bulletproof as a cable can possibly be.

> and they've been accumulating Lightning cables for a decade.

This is why I don't think Apple's electronic waste argument makes much sense. All devices I've bought in the last 5 years have been USB-C, while iPhone users were stuck on Lightning. If Apple had switched back then all those users would've been buying 5 years worth of cables that work with everything, rather than cables that work for only a few devices from a single manufacturer.

That makse sense: USB micro-B has the part that wears out (i.e. the spring making the connection) in the cable; Lightning has it in the port.

Although I haven't really had a Lightning port fail on me yet, having the component more likely to eventually break in the cable rather than the device makes a lot of sense to me.

Didn’t they just switch the MacBooks back to some version of MagSafe? Universal Apple cables seems like their ultimate thing to avoid

The brick is still USB-c and the macbooks still charge on all usb-c ports. The magsafe cable is just a nice to have. Also frees up one of your USB ports for use.

My MagSafe MBP still accepts charge via USB-C. In fact I don't know that I've used MagSafe at all with it other than a handful of times borrowing someone else's charger.

got a 100W desktop charger and a proper cable, works great. magsafe charger is collecting dust and is used only when travelling.

Lightning cables wear out and break all the time for me.

>lightning cables don't often wear out.

Look closely at the lightning cables in your house, calling it now at least one of them has a burnt pin (4th pin from the left most likely)

> the usb-c ecosystem seems like a nightmare to me from what I have seen.

Compared to lighting it only has advantages, faster charging, more universal.

It's only a nightmare because you can carry almost anything over USB C incl. DisplayPort etc. which is not always clear if it's supported or not

Agreed. Any compliant USB-C cable supports all the features lightning does, aka. power and USB 2.0 data.

It also supports HDMI but that's used with an adapter anyway, so it's not a consideration if it works for a user.

Most USB-C devices really only support DisplayPort for video output.

There's an HDMI "alt mode", but almost no device uses that directly; most USB-C-to-HDMI adapters and cables are accordingly really combined USB-C to DisplayPort and DisplayPort to HDMI converters and translate one protocol to the other at the electrical and logical level.

it's not "almost", it's literally no device: there are no hosts and there are no cables. And it was killed officially this year, too.

It's overblown how much of a nightmare USB-C is. Yes there are many problems with the ecosystem, but it's still really not as bad as using both lightning and USB-C like Apple does, nor is it as bad as micro-usb.

At my desk I have a laptop, keyboard, and mouse which typically all typically get charged off a single thunderbolt 4 cable. You can have anything from games controllers to bicycle lights to remote controls sharing a single charger. No need to fuss with adapters, or having a rats nest of different cables, or charge-only cables with microusb/usb-c/lightning at the end. C to C cables are also very nice since they're usable in more places than usb-A to lightning or USB-C to lightning or USB-A to USB-C.

The technology itself is great. It's the flawed implementations, the lack of standards enforcement, and the very gradual and slow death of lightning/micro-usb/USB-A that's really holds things back. Once you figure out what you need to buy, and finish buying the appropriate products that you need, it is nice to be able to use one charger and one cable with several different things.

> Yes there are many problems with the ecosystem, but it's still really not as bad as using both lightning and USB-C like Apple does[…]

People underestimate just how stable lightning cables are. After 11 years they have two types of certified cables in terms of data and charging capabilities, and you can tell them apart by whether the other end is USB-A or USB-C

While there are different kinds of USB-C cable, they all support at least as much as a lightning cable. So while it's annoying when they're badly labeled, it's hard for me to see this as a downside in comparison to lightning.

this is only true if you accept the circular definition of "well, if it does less than lightning then it's not a true USB-C cable".

in practice there are lots of usb-c cables that don't do data, which all lightning cables do. they're just not officially certified ones. which means they're not "real" usb-c cables.

again, the problem is it turns out in practice virtually nobody is using "real" usb-c cables, and if you want to stand on the formal definition, then we can formally say the standard has no real market penetration and can reasonably be disregarded until it catches traction.

if you can walk into a bodega and be assured that the lightning cable sitting on the shelf is going to be a certified and approved cable with data transfer, and the usb-c cable probably won't, then that's kinda all that really matters.

(and thus, we can see why certification programs like lightning exist. the $2 lightning cable on the bodega counter probably has better capabilities than the $5 usb-c cable on the counter because of the certification process.)

I've seen a bunch of uncertified lightning cables on Amazon, but not any power-only USB-C cables, despite looking through a lot more USB-C listings.

I have no idea what fraction of the USB-C cables are certified, but they're not broken. They have the wires because people want the wires. For such a basic feature, this is more effective than certification.

Just about any USB-C cable you buy that isn't a "data" cable just means its not rated for the ultra high 3.0+ speeds. It's incredibly rare to come across a USB-C cable that has absolutely no data connection, they practically all support at least USB 2.0. I've never come across a cable that didn't support at least USB 2.0 speeds that wasn't just otherwise broken, or was some weird one like USB-C to a barrel adapter or something.

There are some sold for privacy which do not have the data pins.

However, I believe this prevents negotiation for power delivery. Even if not, you need the CEC pins for the cable to function and that is a data channel as well (there are firmware update specs over CEC)

> which all lightning cables do

This is not true at all.

I've bought lightning cables at the dollar store that are single-sided (one side has "UPSIDE" written on it, you can't flip it over), power only

edit: I buy a lot of cheap USB gadgets (fans, flashlights etc) so I checked my cables. Not one of my USB-C to C cables are missing data. Plenty of USB-A to C cables are, though. So as long as you avoid USB-A you may be fine.

Nothing is really changing.

Currently:

- 70% of people have been buying the absolute cheapest lightning conforming cable they could find on amazon. They buy them in 3 packs, use them until they inevitably catch fire or fray within a few months and then throw them out and use the next one.

- 25% of people buy the cheapest lightning cable they can find on amazon that is rated for MFI. They've been burned enough by the bad cable and are just savvy enough to know there is a made-for-iphone program of "approved" lightning cables that actually conform to standards

- 5% of people buy OEM first-party cables from Apple

...

Now you will see:

- 70% of people buying the absolute cheapest usb-c conforming cable they can find on amazon (which is not "really" usb-c but the plug fits so who cares). They will buy them in 3 packs, use them until they fray or catch fire and then throw it out and use the next one

- 20% of people will buy the cheapest certified usb-c cable they can find on amazon because they are just tech savvy enough to know there is a difference and that its worth finding a good one. But this cable will likely only be usb 2 speeds.

- 5% of people will buy a premium usb-c cable with usb 3 speeds for 10Gbs transfer because they actually use and care about it.

...

As you can see, on the low end nothing changes. Most people will still buy the absolute cheapest cable they can find and have no idea what they are buying or care that there is a difference. These people will still benefit from being able to use the same cable for everything because it fits in the hole and thats all they care or understand.

But at least now there are more options and power available to the tiny percent of the population that actually does care and understand the difference.

All in all, its only upsides. Everybody wins. The only real downside is throwing out whatever collection of lightning cables you might already have.

Remember that as cool as transfer speeds sound, almost nobody transfers stuff using a cable off their iPhone. 99% of people will airdrop a few photos off, download music from spotify/apple music, and stream or maybe download from netflix or disney plus for offline viewing. But really VERY VERY VERY few people are transferring using the cable. For the people that do, they are probably transferring huge video files they recorded off their device and they will know to get a good quality usb 3 compatible usb-c cable. But thats like 1 out of 100 people, if that.

> 20% of people will buy the cheapest certified usb-c cable they can find on amazon because they are just tech savvy enough to know there is a difference and that its worth finding a good one. But this cable will likely only be usb 2 speeds.

If you don't need data transfer, there are reasons like cost and cable thickness/flexibility to get a charging-only cable.

Most people need very few cables over USB 2.0 speeds, and they typically don't need those to be very long.

Unfortunately, there are a bunch of non-conforming USB-C implementations (original Switch models, Raspberry Pis, and tons of other charging-only gadgets) such that it is not possible at any cost to standardize on a stack of USB-C cables with the same properties.

The annoying part is that cables still tend to not be labelled with their properties, it is challenging to determine if a device properly supports power delivery and cables rated > 30W, and there aren't a lot of tools to diagnose issues or cable capabilities.

For phone users who only want to charge their phones, it's fine. It's hard to go too wrong.

For people who want to have e.g. 100W+ of power while feeding a signal to 4K60+ external monitors it's kind of a nightmare unless they know that "just use Thunderbolt 4" "trick".

While a bit of a tangent, I also love how Apple likes to make this EVEN MORE confusing by not supporting displayport MST in MacOS, causing most thunderbolt 4 docks on the market to be incapable of supporting multiple monitors when using MacOS.

So if you have say a 16" MacBook Pro, you need to get not only Thunderbolt 4 which is a rare spec, you want to ideally get ~85-140w PD not ~60w, AND you need to get an expensive dock that can split up the two HBR3 displayport channels instead of a regular MST Thunderbolt 4 dock.

Thankfully Apple has a solution to consumer confusion caused by all this. Buy a $1600 Apple studio display, connect it directly to your Mac, use the monitor itself as a dock, and everything will be compatible. Stay in the safe walled garden.

IF only USB had some sort of standard committee that could disallow that sort of thing…

It is true that Apple makes thunderbolt support more difficult. A 6 years old XPS 13 supports 3 monitors with TB3 while you meed an M1 Max to support that configuration.

Surprised Apple didn’t go with thunderbolt. I wonder if they are worried about Intel’s licensing or something. It seems more apple-like to go with the higher performance, more straightforward standard.

USB-C is a mess. Whoever decided to fix the annoying compatibility issues of USB mini/micro/blah blah by just solving the physical port problem should never be consulted on anything again.

EU compelled the USB C standard, apple had to switch. I for one am glad they did.

I mean... do you really need thunderbolt for a phone? Are you powering multiple 8k displays and daisey chaining a hub connected to an external raid storage array?

I get that it would be cool. For the ipad i think it makes sense to do that, but your phone...? Let's get real. Fast charging over a standardized cable with 10gbs transfer speeds is gonna be just fine.

the pro 14s and 15s are plenty fast and could be used as work horses for a lot (most office work I'd wager) with a KBM and an external display. the only issue is it'd be kinda hard to take calls without a headset, but that's a good reason to take your old iphone out of the drawer, right? ;)

The main use case I've heard is video transfers.

If you shoot videos longer than a few seconds on your iPhone, you will appreciate a way to get them off of your phone at a non-glacial pace.

For professionals shooting significant amounts of video, this is more than a convenience feature. Once your device's internal storage fills up with video, which does not take long at 4K60, now your "camera" is a paperweight until you can dump that footage.

Obviously, only a very small percentage of people are using their phones this way. But I think Apple really values that market.

Forcing people to buy $100 Thunderbolt cables just to charge their phones would not go over well

I have devices that only works with Usb a to c cables. I also have devices that doesn’t accept the same. ditto for e-marked cables, and passive charging cables. I now need to get a usb c cable tester and label each cable and device.

Same. I have a few “USB-C” devices they inexplicably won’t charge from some (mostly Apple) USB-C chargers. But they work fine with some other USB-C chargers and all USB-A chargers with an A-C cord.

But, with these phones, I can at least get rid of the dozens of Lightning cables I’ve accumulated. And only a few of my devices are still USB-A, so I imagine I’ll be all C soon enough (probably just in time for USB-D or something else).

USB C devices are supposed to have resistors on the CC pins to help negotiate power delivery with the port supplying power and to allow detection of pin orientation[1]. But to save a few pennies (or because no one read the USB C specs), many cheap devices don't have these resistors and USB-C chargers that implement PD are almost certainly configured to not supply any voltage at the VBUS pins until a connection is actually detected. As a result these devices won't charge from a spec compliant USB C charger. Cheap chargers on the other hand may be nothing more than a basic 5V 1A USB A charger with a C port instead and happily supply power on the pins regardless of the CC pin status. Likewise A-to-C cables would do the same thing, since A chargers just supply 5V continuously without any negotiation.

[1]:https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/00001914B.pd...

Yeah, but some of these aren't "cheap" devices (Wahoo fitness devices have this flaw). Wahoo actually calls out Apple chargers in their doc, which is super annoying because it's NOT an Apple problem, it's shit design/penny-pinching from Wahoo.

And there are USB-C chargers (provided with Google phones and Belkin USB-C car chargers) that will charge the devices. So, I guess they're ignoring the lack of negotiation and just providing 5v? No idea.

So, consumers are left guessing what will work or won't. And carrying at least two chargers (one "dumb" and one "smart/PD").

I don't mind people implementing things in this way to save money.

I have a problem with them advertising it as "USB-C" and USB-IF doing nothing to stop this false advertising.

Yeah I'm aware of this issue, and specifically check for c-to-c compatibility, this falls under the category of "flawed implementations" because these devices are NOT to spec.

It's common for rechargeable lights to not support c-to-c cables and require a usb a to usb c cable.

Also, having a portable M2 enclosure that you plug into USB-C that can transfer a terabyte in less than 10 minutes is pretty cool.

Not exactly my experience. I've owned a handful of USB-C devices, and there are devices from major manufacturers that will only charge from a USB-A to USB-C cable. No C-to-C cable convenience; you need to carry a Frankenstein C-to-A-to-C cable. Yes, Philips, this /is/ bullshit.

Such devices are not to spec, and check for this quality before purchase, and avoid products with fail to meet the spec. I've managed to avoid buying any products without C to C compatibilty.

This is largely what I'm talking about in the last paragraph of my post.

Sure, I'll check consumer goods are to spec before purchase, on that big list of USB C spec compliance that - checks notes - does not exist.

The USB-C ecosystem is so confusing because the port can do so much.

Worst case scenario, you get a cheap cable and you're stuck at the same charging speed and data speed as what lighting could do. It can only get better for you; lightning is an ancient port.