The non-proprietary Qi2 version of this technology came out multiple years after Apple already sold millions of proprietary MagSafe accessories and built up a brand name around it.

Maybe for people new to the ecosystem. Most existing users have had their existing inventory of cables suddenly rendered useless for future phones. When I eventually upgrade, I will have to buy at least 2-3 additional cables (I am not a fan of dongles). I will spend this money even though there is no tangible benefit to me as the only USB-C device I have is a Kindle.

My non USB-C device is: eBook reader

I do have a bunch of Lightning cables, but I also have more than enough USB-C cables because literally everything else uses it, and I'm looking forward to not needing to bother with carrying a special cable around for one device anymore.

The eBook reader is a minor nuisance with micro USB charging, but battery life is long enough that for short trips I don't even bother bringing a cord for it. And around the house I can unplug my Qi pad and use its micro USB cable.

EDIT: forgot one more USB-C device, it's also on my Ryobi battery bidirectional charger. Don't use that frequently, picked it up for power outages. But it means the Ryobi provided charger in the garage which I sometimes use for headphones will be able to charge my next phone as well.

- standalone speaker

- charging stand

- AirPods case

- and of course all the cables

I don't know how common/rare my use case is, but I can say that this switch is basically all downside for me.

My alteration of your comment brings it in line with the status quo prior to the USB-C which, keep in mind, Apple fought tooth and nail against. It is a stupid idea, but Apple did it anyway. The world runs on stupid ideas daily; either because they are more profitable, or are too entrenched, or both.

for everything you can say about apple, they have at least been consistent on connectors, some would say to a fault. when they deprecated the 30-pin they promised that iphone (not ipad, not laptop) would remain on lightning for 10 years.

You: “I don’t buy it, cables wouldn’t last 10 years”

It’s a non-sequitur.

As for profit motives, if that were the case then they wouldn’t voluntarily switch their iPad line over to USB-C.

This isn't a formal debate, I am allowed to have different reasoning from the rest of the group.

Do those 2016 Pixels still have unpatched USB exploits?

The A17 is the first Apple A series SoC with USB3 controller built while previous chips only had USB2 on the SoC.

Is a fast controller only needed for specific types of data?

This reeks of segmentation

What you're suggesting just doesn't make sense.

And now that they are switching to USB-C, they are going to lose all that revenue.

The Lightning connector was superior in many ways. I have no idea why everyone is celebrating this downgrade.

Now no one is ever able to improve on the connector reliability because the EU has frozen the design forever by enshrining it into law?

Apple had plenty of opportunities to be involved in the development of USB C (they are on the forum). They also could have opened up lightning as an option for USB C. Fighting against using common standards for so long has left them to the whims of others. Be part of the global tech stack instead of a dead end.

Find me a connector that does everything USB-C can do. High speeds. High power charging. Alt modes. Mobile friendly size.

Lightning is good for the meager feature set that iPhones support. It is absolutely awful for everyone else that is used to a vast, feature rich ecosystem.

The advantage of USB-C that can use the same connector for your headphones, phone, to computer. You can use one charger and cables. The cables and adapters have multiple sources instead of just Apple.

I understand the advantage, thank you for mansplaining that it to me. I, too, will enjoy not having to have a mess of different cables to charge all my devices. I just wish that Apple wasn't such a bunch of proprietary dick heads about the lightning connector and their participation in defining the USB-C connector spec. We could have standardized on a receptacle that is easier to clean out, and harder to break with common household tools.

Power? How much?

Data? How much?

Alternate mode?

How long is it? How flexible is it?

Can I charge my car with it?

Use it to connect my Cisco router to my Juniper router in my IPX?

What does the cable itself report it is capable of, vs what is it actually capable of?

Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy that we're standardizing on something. I, too, have that box of old chargers "just in case" I have something that matches. I'm so happy that most of the laptops around me can be charged over usb-c.

But they fucked up parts of implementation of it; it's jack of all trades, master of none.

USB-C is an unambiguous downgrade for me, and I wish they had just welded an adapter into the port for EU customers.

No, it is absolutely not. The lightning physical port is noticeably superior for many.

> Find me a connector that does everything USB-C can do. High speeds. High power charging. Alt modes. Mobile friendly size.

That is not a function of the connector, that is a function of USB 3.0 (or 4.0) and USB-PD. The connector is a USB Type-C connector, which is a related but wholly independent standard. You are mistaking the USB protocol and USB power delivery standards for the design of one particular connector which supports those standards.

Even if USB2.0 was the highest supported standard on the USB-C, it is on par with lightning at least.

> This [USB-C] is unquestionably the best physical port.

It is not.

USB 3.0 is unquestionably better than the USB 2.0 supported by Lightning devices, and you’ll get no argument from me there. But that is completely independent of the design of the physical port.

This has happened with my cheap iPhone cables and the OEM ones that come with it. If you want to blame the cheap cables, then fine, but no cheap cables have ruined my USB-C devices.

It is easy to clean with a tweezer though. Having a single cable for everything it still the best. Apple has some blame, as they played a big role in the USB-C standard. Also, they could have made lightning an open standard. But now even my electric toothbrush charges with USB-C.

USB lobbying won over the EU. Nothing to celebrate indeed.

I don't trust any of these companies as far as I could throw them. Circumstantially, I'd rather USB-IF hold Apple accountable, since Apple holding themselves accountable just leads to DRM for serial data.

Apple was greedy when it came to something that didn't matter, and they ended up losing out in the long run as a result. An old tale, oft told.

Turning Lightning over to the USB Forum could have prevented this. Lightning is good enough to supplant the mediocre USB C connector, but it's not good enough on its own to sell phones.

Hmm, going to have to put a [citation needed] on that. I do not believe that is true at all.

Organizations that wish to use the USB logo and have a vendor ID will likely pay an annual fee and devices must undergo certification[0], but not on a per-device or per-connector basis.

I've never heard of USB charging a fee per connector.

[0]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/450497

They are actively involved. That's how Thunderbolt 3 and 4 exist and use USB-C connectors

You say it's a downgrade, but the only issues I've had with cables in this context are lightning connectors where the cable connector broke off into the device and required a good amount of work to get all the pieces out.

And that's with only a single device using a lightning cable and many other devices that are USB-C.

So would a cable side USB-C connector - but in agreement with the grandparent comment that tab in the center port is pretty flimsy… and the ports themselves seem pretty wear happy, similar to how micro usb tended to break the port first after repeated insertion vs. a more easily replaceable cable.

Not that much force. Just a two year old who grabs something before you can stop them unfortunately.

Or alternatively, that 2 year old sticks something in that port and breaks that little tab.

Also: Apple does not attach the lightning port to the mainboard of an iPhone, and thus it is easily replaced unlike damn near every Android phone where the connector is soldered onto the mainboard, purposefully, along with extremely fine pitch SMD components very close to the connector, to make it difficult to impossible to repair (the tiny SMD components will blow off the board if you use a hot air rework gun.)

Because now all the cables you use are the same (well in most cases is the thought). It's just convenient.

I have never experienced a faulty or broken usb c, but that says nothing off course. Android user for years now so I have have had it for years.

I'd rather see the tech continue to improve and let the marketplace decide what tech is superior.

You can still easily add your "technologically superior" port to your devices alongside the standard.

The only reason lightning connectors don't break as often is because cable relief falls apart before it.

In a perfect fantasy world, it would have been open sourced so others companies could use it, and been upgraded to higher speeds too.

My battery health is reported at 81%, though I've seen some speculation that iOS 17 betas changed how this is calculated because people see lower numbers than they did before. Regardless, looking at previous 10 days history my peak battery use was about 60% last Sunday.

I can imagine just removing the connectors entirely, for Qi charging, and thereby reducing one port and its consequences on RF noise -> RF desensifying for cellular.

Always thought they should have done a small spring loaded door that the connector pushes out of the way when inserted.

USB-C has even smaller space to stick something in to clean out lint since the pins are in the middle, also looks more delicate so would be worried to do that anyway, and a cover door looks out of the question too due to the pins in middle board.

The EU has made it clear that if the manufacturers get together and come up with a replacement, technically superior standard, then it will be permitted. However, there isn't one on the horizon anytime soon because USB-C doesn't really have any weaknesses requiring a new connector right now.

> The Lightning connector was superior in many ways. I have no idea why everyone is celebrating this downgrade.

Faster speeds, but primarily consistency with other devices. I can certify that when you travel with a MacBook, Nintendo Switch, iPad, Portable Soundbar, Battery Pack, and they all use USB-C... the iPhone that uses Lightning gets pretty annoying very quickly.

To be honest, part of me wondered if Apple could have gotten away (even though it would have caused shock) with 2 connectors on the iPhone. Lightning on the bottom where it had always been, USB-C on the left side with the volume switches and SIM card tray, just for the EU market. Would've been compliant but the EU would've been furious.

You can see how that is next to impossible, though. You need to test in millions of phones over several years to verify that something is good. Which means it has to get into production. But that isn't allowed. A Catch-22 situation.

If there's some other connector that looks compelling for charging and data, phone makers can get together and adopt it, too. We don't need phone-specific experience or to have done an A/B test with tons of statistical power.

USB-C ain't perfect. But it's pretty tough to beat. There's also room for incremental improvements in reliability and functionality within the standard, too.

At some point, just living with something as the standard is the way to go-- rather than hoping something new will be worth forklifting all the infrastructure and/or splitting the market.

In any connector of this sort, there are two pieces: the plug on the cable and the receptacle on the phone. Lightning has a very visually appealing and physically durable plug, and that’s the part that you see. But this hides several aspects of the connector that make a poor functionality tradeoff.

On a USB micro B or USB-C cable, the plug is retained in the socket by little spring-loaded clips on the plug. On micro, they’re on the outside and very obvious, and they stop working well if the plug gets a bit bent. On USB-C, they’re in the concealed portion of the plug. In both cases, they are components that can wear out, and, when they do, you replace the cable and you’re in good shape. These spring-loaded clips mate with fixed notches in the receptacle, and those notches are much longer lasting.

Lightning does this the other way around. The plug has notches, and the springs are concealed in the socket. If the springs wear out, replacing the cable doesn’t help.

Similarly, the electrical contacts are springy in the socket. They are very easy to damage with careless cleaning, and they have a tendency to accumulate lint, so they are likely to need cleaning.

Lightning has an additional defect involving arcing. If you look at a charging cable that’s been use for a while, you’ll see that one electrical pad on each side of the plug will be burnt. Presumably this is where the connection arcs every time it’s unplugged. I’m not sure how USB mitigates this, but it seems to be less of a problem. Maybe the contacts are simply thicker and more durable.

Sure, USB-C receptacles have a thin tongue, and it’s a weak point, but it’s much stronger than the 10 fragile moving parts inside a lightning receptacle.

I'm currently unsure which to believe, but I also kind of don't care anymore. There was never a future where Lightning was opened to the rest of the industry, and Apple never bumped it beyond USB 2.0 speeds, so I'm ready to just get on with it.

Except that Apple doesn't appear to be ready to make anymore iPhone Minis, so I'll be stuck with lighting for the next five years… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The conspiracy theories never made sense.

The iPad Pro has used M series SOCs with an integrated USB controller for years now.

M series being much larger and more power hungry would also have the same issues in a phone, hence the two different series, so my point still stands.

What are you talking about? Proprietary connectors I can think of…

- A bunch of ridiculous digital video ports, necessary because the whole industry couldn't agree on how to move on from VGA.

- The "dock connector" — literally nothing else in the industry, even after its introduction, could meet all the needs of that thing, up until…

- Lightning. USB-C was still years away, and the attempts at small USB were a garbage fire.

If anything, the fact that Android adds a soft-lock to the DisplayPort output on their USB-C port should be under scrutiny. There is absolutely no reason this should be blocked, and brands like Samsung enable it on their phones (DEX).

Do you mean just the iPhone 15 Pro models? I understood the base models are USB2 and wouldn't have the bandwidth for 4K60, right?

https://www.apple.com/iphone-15/specs/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-find...