Serious point here. I like the Apple Watch charger EXCEPT that you have to select the correct side of it to connect to your watch. After Lightning this seems a step backward! I hope that our future wireless charging devices can avoid this orientation issue.
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Apple Developing iPhone With Extended Range Wireless Charging for as Soon as 2017
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Serious point here. I like the Apple Watch charger EXCEPT that you have to select the correct side of it to connect to your watch. After Lightning this seems a step backward! I hope that our future wireless charging devices can avoid this orientation issue.
According to the article:
The range probably will be limited to about foot at the most, so the solution won't allow you to use the phone as freely as the lightning cable. But I assume iPhone will still have lightning port for those niche cases.
Well, I don't understand it, because every single charger and lightning cable I have owned are still in perfect condition. In my experience the connector is quite sturdy. For chargers, I still have my original magsafe charger from my 2006 macbook pro. Absolutely no sign of fraying and still works perfectly. So, yeah. I am going to question what you do with your cables. They don't end up like that by themselves.
And I agree, like Mr Buzzcut says I think the shroud is too flimsy.
These cables seem to be superior in build quality to the ones Apple ships.
Well, yes and no. If I take a rock and a glass jar and store them safely, they'll still be unchanged in 100 years. If I throw them on the ground, the glass jar will break, and the rock won't. The existence of something in 100 years tells you very little about whether something is fragile, but the ease of breaking it in a shorter time tells you a lot. So large numbers of anecdotes about early failures are a much better indicator of fragility than large numbers of anecdotes about 5+-year-old cables that still work.
One problem with Lightning is that Apple's lightning connectors are so physically small that it is hard to get a good grip on them. This causes people to eventually give up and start yanking the cables out by the wire, and because the wire is so small, it breaks easily when you do that. This is why I buy Amazon's lightning cables—the connector is larger, and thus easier to grip, and the cable is also thicker and (at least in my experience) more robust.
The problem is, battery capacity is the main limiting factor on CPU speed even now. As battery capacity increases, we'll just see faster CPUs that take advantage of the increased density to provide a faster, smoother user experience.
And although ostensibly if the software stays the same, a faster CPU improves battery life by letting the CPU go to sleep more quickly/often, in practice, CPU performance is a limiting factor on what you can do in software, so the software won't stay the same.
In my experience, without explicit intervention, at no point in the evolution of technology does the actual number of usable hours increase in any meaningful way, and it never has. My PowerBook Pismo (2000), with its dual battery bays, gave me up to 10 hours of battery life (without switching in a third battery), with a real-world life expectancy of 6 hours while running Finale (music notation software). My 2014 MacBook Pro while running current versions of Finale gives me up to 10 hours of battery life, with a real-world life expectancy of just over 3 hours while running the current version of Finale. Admittedly, the sound is more realistic, but that doesn't change the fact that I pretty much have to stay plugged into a wall whenever I'm composing music. Neither of those numbers is acceptable. Even more problematic is the realization that the numbers have gotten so much worse over time, rather than getting better.
The core problem is that faster CPUs rely much more heavily on CPU power management tricks to keep their battery life numbers up. And because the devices have gotten lighter and thinner, the battery capacity itself is 14% lower in the Retina MBP than the capacity in a PowerBook Pismo (with two OEM Apple batteries installed). If you used third-party batteries on the Pismo, the current Retina MBPs have less than half the battery capacity of those older models. And although it is amazing that a 14% reduction in capacity resulted in no loss of battery life while doing simple things like web browsing, the whopping 50% reduction in usable hours under load is a big problem for many people.
And cell phones are getting just as bad—so much so that external battery sales are a booming business, and many airports have kiosks where you can trade external battery packs for fully charged batteries. The fact that this industry even exists is almost undeniable proof that battery capacity isn't sufficient, has gotten worse over time, and isn't likely to improve on its own without drastic changes in the way Apple and other companies design their products.
That makes no sense whatsoever. From the charger's perspective, it is still putting out the same amount of power whether 100% of that power is being used to charge the battery or some of it is getting siphoned off to power the CPU in the device.
...unless you're saying that the physical act of moving the device around while it is plugged in stresses the cable because Apple's cables are too thin, in which case I would agree....
I've seen cables that look like they're broken internally after just a few uses while being carried around in a backpack (with other cords, not with books). I've seen other cables that still work fine after years of daily use. IMO, poor/inconsistent quality control is the best explanation.
The only people I've heard saying this are people who use a case and carry the phones in their pockets. However, if you're carrying it around in a case, even Apple got the actual device down to 0mm, it would still only make the cases slightly thinner, because you'd still need the cases to be thick enough to not let the phone bend in your pocket. By contrast, if they made the phones thicker, with nearly flat side faces and a rubberized exterior, you might not even need to use a case, because they wouldn't be so easy to drop. Food for thought.
That's a bit like saying that you're happy that a car manufacturer stopped selling tow packages, because they were used by only about 1% of car owners, and now you think that they should also stop selling back seats, because 5% of car owners never use them, and the 90% who only sometimes use them can always tow a trailer with extra seats for their passengers or tie them to the roof....
If you assume an omnidirectional radiator and an omnidirectional antenna, sure. I would assume that any wireless charging system would use something similar to beamforming. Much as 802.11ac creates a dramatic increase in signal-to-noise by using multiple antennas to create an approximation of a more directional antenna, you could presumably do something similar to direct most of the power source's output towards the device, and then you don't get nearly as much falloff with distance.
Short of the laws of physics changing, I think you can drop the "for the foreseeable future" part. Well, I suppose Apple could remove the ability to charge by wire, or could deliberately cripple it in some way, but short of that....
Must mean there aren't issues. Same with any recalled product out there. So long as your product doesn't exhibit faults, the probelm isn't real.
Now this exactly shows why Apple always seems to be behind with several technologies: they just take their time to make it better. Current wireless charging solutions are... Well, they're OK, but that's it. I'm sure Apple knows how to do it better and I am really looking forward to what they might bring in the future.
So in a way it's like a symbiotic relationship. The other companies invent or come up with new ideas to force Apple's hand to learn about these new ideas and come up with a better implementation. When that happens, then those other companies that came up with the original ideas would look to Apple and alter their designs to match Apple.
Google Wallet made way for Apple Pay, which made way for Android Pay
Samsung Gear watches made way for Apple Watch, which made way for new similar Samsung gear watch
Qualcomm wireless charging made way for iPhone 7 Wireless charging tech, which will make way for new similar QC wireless charging
Oculus Rift made way for Apple VR tech research, which will make way for Samsung next-gen headset
Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said, "that the company wasn't sure of how convenient wireless charging is as most wireless charging systems still have to be plugged into a wall."
Thank goodness Apple still has Phil. The "Voice of Reality."
Thank goodness Apple still has Phil. The "Voice of Reality."
Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said, "that the company wasn't sure of how convenient wireless charging is as most wireless charging systems still have to be plugged into a wall."
Thank goodness Apple still has Phil. The "Voice of Reality."
I'm waiting to see how Apple can make a wireless charging system that doesn't have to be plugged in. At least at some point to charge the internal batteries. Maybe they will put a cold fusion generator in each phone.
I wonder if they are going to buy into Ossia Cota. Makes sense if they did, they have charging from 30 feet, albeit quite small charge from that far away (if what the company says is true).
To be honest, I hope Apple doesn't wait till 2017. The macbook pro doesn't make sense only having one port either.
To be honest, I hope Apple doesn't wait till 2017. The macbook pro doesn't make sense only having one port either.
Wireless charging is just one more area Apple is behind the times with. I've been enjoying the convenience of fast _wireless_charging_ with three Android phones for just over two years now.
I've heard that the newer cables don't have PVC in them for environmental reasons which makes them less strong. I don't know how true that is. The only Apple cable I've had fail was a MagSafe charger for our 2008 MacBook, but that lasted for about 6 years. None of my Apple 30 pin or Lightning cables have failed but they do get kinda mushroomed at the ends cause I use them plugged in a lot. I did have a 6ft Lightning cable from Walmart fail and it wasn't even abused. It just stayed right beside the bed but it was super stiff and in literally two months started to come apart at the end. By 5-6 months it would only work half the time but hey.... Walmart go figure.
isn't that the goal? Physical inputs are slowly becoming redundant. Things like passcodes/passwords are slowly becoming a thing of the past. As daunting as that is, Apple's goal seems to be about making its tech discrete and subtle at the same time. Watch the interview with Tim Cook about wearables before the Apple Watch was announced.
I'd like it for charging my phone in my car without having to connect a cable - I have a magnetic mount.
If they can make a water bottle that fills itself with water out of thin air (http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/01/bottle-turns-air-into-water/), they should be able to make a phone that charges itself out of thin air no matter where you're at! It's what Tesla would have wanted! And for FREE at that!
It works well if you actually have to use the phone while the battery is depleted?
I think his point is that the problem likely lies with both parties. People seem to be pinning the blame entirely on Apple, without considering if their usage habits might have contributed to the lightning cables' deterioration at all.
I have been using the cables shipped with the iPhones for many years now, and they are still in perfect condition. Could they be made more durable? Possibly. I ordered some extra cables from Anker and they do feel thicker and more sturdy, especially at the ends. Is this issue as widespread and commonplace as the posters are making it out to be? That still remains to be seen, IMO.
I feel like this is alsmot a given. Place the charger near the Apple logo on the back and it snaps in place. Leaves the lightning port for data only, which is becoming largely unecessary with Bluetooth, wifi, and LTE. I only plug my phone in to charge it. Occasionally I will transfer movies into it using the camera kit and an SD card when traveling, or play movies out of it using the HDMI adapter. The Watch charger would make the latter even easier than the rather clumsy daisy-chaining of the current dongle to keep the phone powered during a long movie, not to mention using Lightning headphones. And imagine this -- a battery pack that simply snaps onto the back of the phone. No cords to carry around. Just a puck, or brick that sticks to the phone and charges it. No cumbersome case that won't fit in all docks.