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Apple Phases Out Lightning Port in iPhone Lineup With iPhone 16e Launch
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Probably you are living in a bubble. It is already possible to charge all the devices with only one port… welcome to USB.
Were you able to charge a shaver with your port?
…but fast charging, or running laptops etc. with USB-A was a crapshoot - the EU rules also require USB PD compatibility.
Also, USB-A can’t do 4 lanes of data for DisplayPort, TB - or even USB 3 without restrictions. Not required for EU, but the reason Apple was eventually going to need to move to USB-C for iPad Pro anyway - at which point it makes no sense to keep Lightning on a few devices.
(And who knows what possessed Apple to ever use Lightning on Magic accessories first released *after* Apple had started rolling out USB-C on Macs)
To be honest, I hardly ever use the USB-C cable to transfer data to/from my 16PM. When I do, it's a picture of a person for work.
Having one type of charger (USB-C) to charge all my stuff is much more convenient and I thought it would be. Even more so when I lament the fact that my SO won't upgrade their iPhone 11. If we both were using a newer phone, I wouldn't have to be toting extra cables around, Etc. Not that an extra cable is a hardship, but it is a PITA to have to remember the extra cable when everything else is USB-C.
I will say, the way the EU forced Apple to all USB-C was not to my liking. I also didn't like that Apple refused to leave lighting behind when it was clear the rest of the world was going USB-C.
USB-C is THE standard now, and will be for the foreseeable future. I'm not a fan of how we got there, but overall I prefer the USB-C world to the lightning world.
Having one type of charger (USB-C) to charge all my stuff is much more convenient and I thought it would be. Even more so when I lament the fact that my SO won't upgrade their iPhone 11. If we both were using a newer phone, I wouldn't have to be toting extra cables around, Etc. Not that an extra cable is a hardship, but it is a PITA to have to remember the extra cable when everything else is USB-C.
I will say, the way the EU forced Apple to all USB-C was not to my liking. I also didn't like that Apple refused to leave lighting behind when it was clear the rest of the world was going USB-C.
USB-C is THE standard now, and will be for the foreseeable future. I'm not a fan of how we got there, but overall I prefer the USB-C world to the lightning world.
To be fair, USB 2.0 is still present on non pro iPhones, disguised as USB-C. It's a sheep in wolf's clothing really 😉
Never worked at McDonald's. Obviously a different plug, number of connections, etc. than Lightning specifically were required for USB-C--it's the basic male plug/female socket arrangement, without a small circuit board inside the socket, that I think should have been adopted from Lightning, since on average it seems sturdier. Anyone can find examples, or might have experienced it themselves, in which a Lightning plug or socket broke, but I'm skeptical about the comparative sturdiness of USB-C plugs and sockets.
I didn't try to go through the purchase process for obvious reasons, but it said it was available for pickup at my local Apple Store. I did see the "sold out" for delivery, though.(Not the OP but...) Are you sure they actually sell it?
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(But, yes, I'm sure accessories will be around for a while from Apple and even longer from third parties; to that last point, I can still find some 30-pin cables on Amazon that claim to be MFi-certified.)
Billions of USB-C ports are in active use, many for several years or longer. I think if there was a serious, fundamental concern other than "seems" regarding the sturdiness of USB-C it's safe to assume we'd have heard about it by now.
Unsure if this is sarcasm, but if its real can you please explain where the tyranny is ? A government body that we elect to do our bidding, in all its imperfection is by definition THE opposite of tyranny. We elect them, again, I repeat - it's OUR choice.
Why is it when an organisation makes a decision on a design or a technology, its tyranny when the organisation is "governmental" and ironically made up of freely, democratically elected representatives of us. But when Apple impose a slow, proprietary, expensive connector called "Lightning" many years ago - that's not tyranny. Even when more universal, cheaper, non proprietary connector types were available at that time. Pick your tyranny please - private, closed, unelected corporate tyranny OR democratically elected, open tyranny (which isn't tyranny). I know which I prefer.
The EU is singly responsible for forcing Apple to phase out Lightning, because of legislation that says you must use USB-C as a universal charging port and cable. Apple would not have phased out Lighting if it wasn't for the EU, and even tries to gaslight and bitch about it being an attack on innovation... when they haven't innovated in 12 years on the connector department, and STILL won't upgrade from USB-2 to screw over their clientele.
Everything you need is in the headline, you don't even need to read the articles. Problem solved.
Apple could have changed the Lightning plug head to support USB3 while still maintaining Lightning's design. Lightning 2 wouldn't have bothered me in the same way that Mac-MagSafe 1/2/3 or FW400/FW800 plug differences didn't bother me.
Do you have any idea how thick the Thunderbolt 1 port was compared to the 30 pin port? Lightning? USB-C?
HM! That’s a good point. If they have to have a thicker section for the cameras anyway (and some of that space IS just for looks/balanced visually anyway) they could charge from there.
Lightning has them on top/bottom, but I believe lightning is reversible in that the port is only looking for pins on one side (except for one iPad I believe) even though the connector has them on both sides, where USB-C has cables and ports that are capable of having for purpose lanes.
You DO realize that Apple said, in 2012, that Lightning would be the connector for the next decade AND that decade ended in 2022, right? First non-lightning iPhone shipped in 2023, on schedule.
And, what connector did they switch to? Unsurprisingly, USB-C as they had many employees on the team building the standard. Only Intel had more employees assigned to the task. As such, Apple had more FAR more say in what the next connector for tech would be back when the EU was still excited about micro-USB. Fortunately for us, the tech world ignored their burps about that as they all knew what the next big thing would be.
And, even if I wanted to ignore all that and still believe the EU had ANY teeth at all in this, if they were FORCED by the EU, then Apple would have been making the change in 2024, not a full year earlier (again on their timetable) in 2023. Almost like Apple made the change exactly when they said they would
I guess if I stretched my brain REALLY hard, I could see that as Apple being forced to switch a year early to a technology they had a big part in implementing on a timetable they defined ten years earlier, but I prefer reality. It makes a lot more sense and doesn’t require believing the implausible.
There’s nothing really wrong with how we got here though. In fact, we got here the same way as we have gotten here for lots of other changes of this type. A group of tech companies got together, hashed out what the solution would be, worked on making it robust enough for the industry, released a few products initially, with a number of products growing year-over-year.
In the end, the implementation was so successful, one of the companies that had switched to an interim connector and gave themselves 10 years to switch to USB-C, were able to keep to that timetable, almost down to the week.
The EU, initially behind a memorandum of understanding that micro-USB would be that connector eventually changed their tune to USB-C when they saw that’s what everyone was doing anyway. It’s like waiting to see who the winner is going to be in a competition then, as they’re standing on the podium with the number “1” under them, proclaiming, “I demand [/b]that[/b] one be named as the winner!”
Way to go, EU regulators! Came up with that idea all on your own didja? We’re so proud of you!
The Thunderbolt 1 port on Macs was the exact same size as the Mini DisplayPort. In fact, the Mini DisplayPort on some Macs also served as a Thunderbolt 1 port. Later, the Mini DisplayPort on some other Macs also served as a Thunderbolt 2 port. A Mini DisplayPort-sized connector is thin enough to fit on any iPhone that has ever been made. So there's no excuse for Tim Cook sticking to USB 2.0.
Thunderbolt 3 uses a USB-C connector, and USB-C connectors have been on Macs since 2015, and Thunderbolt 3 has been on Macs since 2016. So there's no excuse for Tim Crook waiting seven years later until 2023 to include USB-C, and when he did finally include it, limited it to the ultra-slow USB 2.0, which was first released on Macs 20 years earlier in 2003! How is that excusable?
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Er, the MicroUSB MOU was 2009 - It’s not like the EU swivelled to USB C overnight, MicroUSB had run its course by then.
So the EU took the emerging industry standard (including the power delivery spec which had been a problem with USB-A/MicroB) and made it a requirement. Just for good measure, Apple had been part of the development team for USB-C and - by 2015 - had already started using it in the MacBook. Should the EU have invented their own weird and wonderful connector and forced that on the industry instead?
USBC is a port shape, not a data speed, so USB2.0 is not being disguised as anything.
It kinda is when 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 shares that port shape. What is USB 2.0 doing on a $800 phone in 2025? A regular iPhone should go with 3.0 at the very, very least.
Yes it is, because Apple people don't know about stuff unless it's marketed to them, and people associate USB-C with faster speeds. Like USB-3 is faster, even as USB-A, so a new port (USB-C) with a new form factor that does everything HDMI, jack, USB-A, mini-display, VGA used to do, and also does fast charging, and is advertised as "thunderbolt" by Apple themselves, would be expected to be performant.
And yes, Apple has consistently substituted or superposed the terms "thunderbolt" and "USB-C" in their Mac ads.
This is Apple peddling outdated bad tech not for cost, but for CONTROL of the use their customers make of iPhone.
They don't want you to have a mini gaming machine that isn't the Apple TV. They don't want you to use it as a set-top or *gasp* an actual computer, although there is no difference with an iPad, beside the size of the screen.
They don't want you to use external storage efficiently.
This is about screwing YOU over, and yes, it IS a scam.
I guess the gospel according to Tim the cost-cutter would be that the majority of users will only use the cable for charging & use 5G or WiFi for data transfer, which don't require the phone to be tethered. If you're planning on doing a lot of photo/video work you're supposed to shell out for the iPhone 16 Pro and get USB 3 speeds, or an iPad Pro with Thunderbolt. The advantage of USB-C is really having the same charger and video cables across the range.
I've a bit more sympathy for that than other Apple nickel-and-diming (RAM and storage for example) - I eschewed the iPhone for a Pixel 7a which somehow manages to support USB 3 in a $400 phone - but the feature is pointless when it's easier to use the network for sync.