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Images Suggest Some iPhone 15 Models Could Feature Thunderbolt Data Transfer Speeds
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Apple’s Thunderbolt cables have the lightning mark while their regular USB-C cables don’t.
As the iPhone is being used for professional film workflows these days, this is will be well received in certain niches. Maybe greater implications for the iPad which will be able to support more advanced docks.
They seemed to give up on USB's labelling when the original battery charging spec (pre power delivery) broke compatibility with over half a decade of shipped iPods, iPhones and iPads.
Interestingly while they try to limit first party options for cabling (e.g. only 100W C-to-C charging cables), they still sell thunderbolt 3 and 4 cabling with just the 'thunderbolt' icon on the plugs. They'll have to figure out what to do when Thunderbolt 5 cabling requires 160 Gbps support (across the two directions)
Apple doesn’t have to figure anything out. The USB consortium will standardize an icon and Apple can print that.
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TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
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iPhone 15 USB C & iPhone 14 Lightning ports compared 🤫 🤐 👀
Credit: Majin Bu
Update: Close up shot added.
Credit: Majin Bu
Update: Close up shot added.
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Physically speaking Lightning is a far more robust and smaller footprint. Almost criminal Apple never bumped the speed up on it.
I mean, they were first to ship a USB-C computer, they might as well be the first to use USB-IF branding for cables.
They would need to add more contacts or give up reversibility. Lightning does not have what it takes. Nothing criminal at all.
They upgraded Lightning on the last of the home-button iPad Pros, but they never brought the USB 3.0, 16-pin Lightning port to the iPhones.
My understanding is that that iPad USB 3.0 was only possible with a particular adaptor that didn’t allow reversability of the lightning connector as it used connectors on both sides at one time. Plugging in a regular Lightning cable only gave you USB 2.0 speeds again. It was a hack.
Many advancements though like this are "hacks". Just some are more elegant than others. 😉
With a proper redesign we could have had the best of both worlds. Faster speeds and backwards compatibility.
Not as far as I know. What Apple did for the 2015 iPad Pro was more of a one-off hack than a true upgrade of Lightning.
Only the Lightning to USB 3 camera adapter was built that used 16 connectors to do faster USB but using both sides of the Lightning plug at once. It was very limited and would never have been worthwhile as an upgrade path for lightning on other devices.