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Greg Joswiak: Apple Will Have to Comply With the EU and Switch iPhone to USB-C
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A more robust connector that transfer data at USB 2.0 speed. No, airdrop is way worse for sustained transfer.
Except free market rarely do what people hoped them to do. Government regulation makes sure free market functions as it should be, and (try to) protect Smaller players from being priced out of the market.
Had Apple not restricted the shape design of lightning for other use, USB-C might take that physical shape instead of what we have now. And we would end up with a better USB-C port designed for durability.
My 2015 MacBook still works fine with its one USB-C connector. So what? I don't think the issue here is anything but anecdotal and/or build quality based on the devices.
...but the body of the car is too wide to use the MagSafe charger. another dilemma. Apple says to take off the body before charging. um, I see a pattern.
Apple can make Lightning connections at USB 3.0 speeds, they already have. My wife's 2017 10.5" iPad Pro supports this.
But Apple knows this wired speed requirement is an ever-descreasing use case. I realize there are people that want to transfer 1000's of photos or songs to/from their iPhone to Mac. But the number of people doing this gets smaller every year.
They were bound to ditch Lightning at some point. Their decision to wait another year to implement means that there will be tens of millions more Lightning cables and accessories manufactured which will be incompatible with future devices.
Sucks that Apple made users pay for overpriced cables for a decade which are functionally outdated. They could have fixed it sooner.
In US maybe, in other parts of the world I am not sure. Nevertheless, the amount of people that still hold and maintain a media library is getting smaller I’d reckon, and I am one of those who still do so (and valiantly refuse to use any music streaming services long term) and benefit from it.
If they actually BOTHER to make USB3 speed lightning on iPad, I seriously doubt why they don’t just implement it on iPhone at the same time, giving people one less reason to hate lightning today.
I feel bad for people who spend lots of $$ over the years on lightning cables. Realistically Apple should have changed to USB C when rest of the world adopted to it.
Yeah that's true. Two USB-C cables might look the same and have the same connectors on each end... but they could have different capabilities.
However... as long as the cables can handle charging... I think most people will be happy with that.
"I need to charge my iPhone" will be said way more often than "I need to hook my iPhone to a DisplayPort 1.4 monitor"
But for those who do want to connect their phones to a computer... I hope these new iPhones have USB 3.0 speeds at minimum. Thunderbolt will be even better.
Fingers crossed!
I guess we'll see in two years' time.
The number of iPhone users happy that they can transfer ProRes faster, vs. the number of people starting threads here about how their iPhone USB-C female connector has worn out, and they can't charge or transfer any data.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-c-power-cable-noticeably-looser-than-others.2055160/
Are your USB-C ports loose and repeatedly disconnect / stop charging? (MBP 2016)
All four of the USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro 2016 are loose. No cables 'click' into place, like they do on other devices (including the actual power brick, which never comes undone). This is a really frustrating issue, as I'll find my computer not charging, or hard drives will unsafely...
forums.macrumors.com
This. If it was about technology the rest of their devices wouldn't have already made the transition.
Do they? I charge my laptop every night. I charge my phone every night. (I charge my phone and my watch from my charging laptop, so that's even more in and out.) Even if you wanna go down the road that laptops connect less often, they're also replaced less often in most cases.
And I'm not sure the reintroduction of MagSafe acknowledged anything except fan service (the same reason we got a friggin' HDMI port instead of a 4th Thunderbolt port). It also allows Apple to play outside the power limitations of USB-C in its current state, but because of the dynamic nature of the underlying protocols, that's also being addressed. (Honestly, MagSafe still puzzles me. Who charges their laptop in a high foot traffic area in the age of 20 hours of battery life? This was more of a necessity when battery life was 1/4 - 1/5 what it is today.)
I have yet to have a charge failure on any of my MacBook ports and I was pretty much a day 1 adopter. I realize this is anecdotal but... sorry... Lightning needed to go. It already went on iPads. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with accessory licensing.
I don't think this legislation is going to create a material reduction in the amount of e-waste we produce. I agree with you it could make things even worse since most government programs have the opposite effect of what they're intended to do.
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This is easily the worst thing about USB-C. (Although for charging mobile devices it's pretty much a non-issue.)
Thunderbolt is the worst offender too. I do not understand "active" cables at all. And to make matters worse there isn't even one premium cable to rule them all. If you wanna connect between everything you need both a high speed UCB-C cable and and active Thunderbolt cable. I made the early mistake of presuming the latter would work for everything. Nope.
With that said, within Apple's ecosystem it's been mostly excellent. MacBooks don't have 3 different USB-C ports. Some PCs... "this one allows charging and this other one does DisplayPort alt mode and this other one over here is Thunderbolt." USB 4 seems to be kinda fixing this but it's still messy. (Active cables should die. There's no reason the devices that need the capabilities of the higher bandwidth don't just handle the "active" part instead of putting it in some ridiculously overpriced cable. I wonder if that's Intel's licensing nonsense at work.)
LOL if you think this is good news. The fact that Greg is commenting about this is suspicious to me. "Oh well, guess we'll have to comply" and confirming the move to USB-C so far in advance is very unlike Apple, almost like he's saying this tongue in cheek. They're gonna move to full wireless (hell) or make a dozen different models:
Brazil gets lightning, the charger in the box, and a sim tray.
USA gets lighting, no charger, and no sim tray.
China gets lightning, no charger, and a dual sim tray.
Europe gets USB-C, no charger, and a sim tray.
UK gets a box with a rations kit in it because by next year their country and currency would have fallen apart.
Brazil gets lightning, the charger in the box, and a sim tray.
USA gets lighting, no charger, and no sim tray.
China gets lightning, no charger, and a dual sim tray.
Europe gets USB-C, no charger, and a sim tray.
UK gets a box with a rations kit in it because by next year their country and currency would have fallen apart.
Sounds like you and I have similar charging patterns.
But my wife is the total opposite. She'll run her MacBook until it shuts itself down, then proceeds to charge it (while still working on it) in the most inconvenient place where a kid or animal is guaranteed to stumble over the cord. MagSafe was invented for people like her.
She's never worn out a Lightning port, but she's moved to >50% wireless iPhone charging. She killed the USB-C port (too loose) on her work-issued Dell laptop in about 6 months. Her personal 2018 MBP had the top case replaced under warranty earlier this year, so we'll see how long before (or if) the USB-C ports start giving us trouble.
Do you think there is potentially any way that Apple can “remaster”/rework the port for added durability and strength (and roll it out across their product lineup once iPhone 15/16 debuts) without infringing on any patents?I guess we'll see in two years' time.
The number of iPhone users happy that they can transfer ProRes faster, vs. the number of people starting threads here about how their iPhone USB-C female connector has worn out, and they can't charge or transfer any data.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-c-power-cable-noticeably-looser-than-others.2055160/
Are your USB-C ports loose and repeatedly disconnect / stop charging? (MBP 2016)
All four of the USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro 2016 are loose. No cables 'click' into place, like they do on other devices (including the actual power brick, which never comes undone). This is a really frustrating issue, as I'll find my computer not charging, or hard drives will unsafely...
To be fair, you are counting one bank of 8 pins for lightning and two banks of 12 pins for USB-C.
USB-C is very inefficient in its pin assignment - it uses four of those pins for ground, and four for power. It dedicates four for USB 2.0 compatibility and two for directional sensing. It uses one for sensing active cabling and two more for negotiating alt modes.
IIRC it only uses eight pins for actual high-speed data.
USB-C is designed for a diverse market - from cheap and dumb phone charging cables with limited wattage and only USB 2.0 speed, to negotiation of a full active 80 gbps cable with chips in each side to do transmission over a fiber optic run, to 240V laptop charging cables. There's a lot of parties pushing for using pins that _could_ have exchanged data to instead save on the cost to manufacture cabling and adapters.
Apple could easily remap the data lanes needed onto the lightning port, and require active electronics in the lightning connector to negotiate the switchover to the various compatibility and alt modes. They had USB 3.0 support behind the lightning port on several iPad pros (although I've never seen a third party release information on how that operated).
However, Apple has instead switched devices over to USB-C as needed - for instance to support more diverse usage of the port (connecting to hard drives and monitors) on iPads sold as a PC alternative, or needed to charge at higher than a certain wattage (18W I think?)
Apple could solve (some) of this by having certified cables and tagging them with their overall purpose. Charging, USB speed, or Lightning speed ratings.
Not perfect, but better than what is out there. I have to put labels on my cables to know what they are good for. I pull RAW images off my cameras into my Macs / iPads and don't want to be stuck with the wrong one when out in the field.
They why Apple did introduce ProRes on iPhone. It's really unstable to transfer via AirDrop