iPhone 14 Pro USB 2 (released in 2000) on iPhone 14 Pro is a disappointment (Lightning speed)

[JPSaltzman]

Well, I've always wondered what the speed of the Lightning cable is ... and if you could tell if you were buying a newer one than the original one? Perhaps with a new logo on a Lightning 2 or Lightning 3 bolt on the end being inserted -- and it would help if that light grey logo were at least 60% darker!

The same question puzzles me when I buy a new Thunderbolt to Ethernet or Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter in 2022. Does it still have the original Thunderbolt specs from the ones I bought years ago (hello, "dongles" -- oy, what a word)?

I know these 3 adapters are Cash Cows for Apple, because if you buy any Apple laptop these days with its limited ports, you do need 1 or 2 or all 3 of these. But it rather's poor business in the long run to keep selling something from the days of the original MacBook Air at 2022 prices. (Well, poor for us, the end-user, but great for Tim Cook's Cooked Books & His Mighty Stockholders! /s )

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Well, I've always wondered what the speed of the Lightning cable is ... and if you could tell if you were buying a newer one than the original one? Perhaps with a new logo on a Lightning 2 or Lightning 3 bolt on the end being inserted -- and it would help if that light grey logo were at least 60% darker!

If you have to ask that, then is Lightning a good cable to begin with? Because both Lightning 2 and 3 are absolutely dated and slow compared to USB-C.

Problem is I'm now starting to believe that Apple might be going portless with the removal of the SIM tray, which will only make my nightmare even worse.

 

[ThomasJL]

There is another thread on this same topic:

Will iPhone 14 be USB 2.0? Probably, since Cook is mediocre.

Apple computers have had USB 3.0 since mid-2012. That is 10 years ago. Despite that, Tim Cook, being the mediocre beancounter MBA suit that he is, has still not done anything to upgrade the connectivity on the latest iPhones. The latest iPhones use the same USB 2.0 connectivity that shipped with...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[ian87w]

Lightning with USB 2 speeds, what a disappointing choice Apple.

Disappointing to who? It's so you will buy the iPhone 15 next year.

Apple won't stop being Apple if people who are "disappointed" of Apple still end up giving money to Apple anyway later. 😁

 

[Lwii2boo]

I still have hope that the 14PM has USB 3.0 Lightning. Please….

They would have mentioned it during the keynote. Having lighting in late 2022 in such an high end phone is a massive no go for me. It's even more ridiculous on the "Pro" models which require way higher bandwidth from the port...

 

[GuruZac]

I thought for sure Apple was going to wake up and add USB-C to iPhone. Good grief, Apple. The iPhone 14 series seems more like an incremental upgrade than an entirely new phone line. And Apple probably has a lot of their users believing that the notification bubble they're calling 'magical' really is some innovation.

The 14 Pro line has some notable upgrades over the 13 Pro. I'm still not going to upgrade, but I feel there is enough there to make the 14 Pro feel 'new'. Dynamic Island, 48mp wide angle, and always on display are worthwhile features.

 

[orionquest]

Interesting post, probably one of the better argued around here, instead of just wanting the new shiny.
Apple it seem's, have dropped the ball here.

 

[Fraserh02]

Agreed! It's also silly that on MacBooks and iPad's they ship with USB 2 cables in the box!

 

[Xand&Roby]

Lightning with USB 2 speeds, what a disappointing choice Apple.

USB 2.0 was released in the year 2000. 22 years ago, 7 years before iPhone 1 came out (!!)

Now we have 1 TB storage and ProRes recording.

For example, ProRes in 4K (10 bit) creates 6GB files for every minute recorded.
Let's record a 10 minute video, couple of takes, let's say 20 minutes of recordings in total.

Let's now transfer that 120 GB to my Mac through the Lighting port.

• USB 2.0 transfer speed = 37 minutes, 32 seconds

That's longer than it takes to create the recordings.
That destroys professional workflows.

Is this a high-end premium device that is marketed an 'Pro' and costs like $1,099 - $1,599 excluding taxes. (€1.459 - €2.129 including taxes in Europe) ? I'm confused.

The latest Macs supports Thunderbolt 4, 40 Gbps, (26 seconds for 120 GB) roughly 80 times faster than current Lightning implementation.
At least support 5Gbps on iPhone like iPad USB-C, its about 10 times faster than iPhone 14 Pro.
(With USB 3.0 speeds it would take 3 minutes, 31 seconds.)

How do people deal with this ridiculous limit?

What went wrong at Apple that this is the end result in a product?

Data sources used
speed calculator https://techinternets.com/copy_calc

This is Apple: lack of innovations for decades, for business.

In your opinion, how did they get to a dead end with PPCs, sell Mac X86, and then recover with ARMs? Thanks to the inability to plan the future, and following the acquisition of P.A. Semi.

Remember the “Can’t innovate anymore my ass”? That Mac Pro had several serious problems using it as a workstation.

How can people accept it?
People follow trends, they don't understand much about hardware and software.

 

[exoticSpice]

This is Apple: lack of innovations for decades, for business.

In your opinion, how did they get to a dead end with PPCs, sell Mac X86, and then recover with ARMs? Thanks to the inability to plan the future, and following the acquisition of P.A. Semi.

Remember the “Can’t innovate anymore my ass”? That Mac Pro had several serious problems using it as a workstation.

How can people accept it?
People follow trends, they don't understand much about hardware and software.

Here's another thing I don't get why not sell x86 Macs and ARM macs. They both have advantages. I really don't get why Apple went all in on ARM.

MS and the rest of the PC industry will reply on both x86 and ARM where it sees fit.

 

[Ashbash75]

Wait til next year when the port will totally vanish. I can see this happening

 

[AppliedMicro]

The latest Macs supports Thunderbolt 4, 40 Gbps, (26 seconds for 120 GB) roughly 80 times faster than current Lightning implementation.

Theoretical protocol bandwidth is just that.

In reality, NAND-based flash storage in phones won’t even fully utilise 5 Gbps maximum USB 3.0 bandwidth today. And yes, there’s probably very good reason to not use faster flash memory in phones (namely power consumption).

From an engineering point, you’ll want to use the least energy-consuming flash storage in a phone that can still reliably support the necessary speeds for your highest-bandwidth targeted application. Which surely is video recording on mobile phones. And least energy-consuming will probably turn out to be among the slowest of viable choices.

Remember how you need at least 256GB storage to record ProRes? I don’t think the reason was just filling up storage (I mean… tease people with ProRes recordings and then sell them a larger-capacity phone, right?). I would be surprised if it weren’t the speed of the storage device.

 

[OnawaAfrica]

Lightning with USB 2 speeds, what a disappointing choice Apple.

USB 2.0 was released in the year 2000. 22 years ago, 7 years before iPhone 1 came out (!!)

Now we have 1 TB storage and ProRes recording.

For example, ProRes in 4K (10 bit) creates 6GB files for every minute recorded.
Let's record a 10 minute video, couple of takes, let's say 20 minutes of recordings in total.

Let's now transfer that 120 GB to my Mac through the Lighting port.

• USB 2.0 transfer speed = 37 minutes, 32 seconds

That's longer than it takes to create the recordings.
That destroys professional workflows.

Is this a high-end premium device that is marketed an 'Pro' and costs like $1,099 - $1,599 excluding taxes. (€1.459 - €2.129 including taxes in Europe) ? I'm confused.

The latest Macs supports Thunderbolt 4, 40 Gbps, (26 seconds for 120 GB) roughly 80 times faster than current Lightning implementation.
At least support 5Gbps on iPhone like iPad USB-C, its about 10 times faster than iPhone 14 Pro.
(With USB 3.0 speeds it would take 3 minutes, 31 seconds.)

How do people deal with this ridiculous limit?

What went wrong at Apple that this is the end result in a product?

Data sources used
speed calculator https://techinternets.com/copy_calc

lol u know its already synced to ur mac via icloud right?

 

[magbarn]

Theoretical protocol bandwidth is just that.

In reality, NAND-based flash storage in phones won’t even fully utilise 5 Gbps maximum USB 3.0 bandwidth today. And yes, there’s probably very good reason to not use faster flash memory in phones (namely power consumption).

From an engineering point, you’ll want to use the least energy-consuming flash storage in a phone that can still reliably support the necessary speeds for your highest-bandwidth targeted application. Which surely is video recording on mobile phones. And least energy-consuming will probably turn out to be among the slowest of viable choices.

Remember how you need at least 256GB storage to record ProRes? I don’t think the reason was just filling up storage (I mean… tease people with ProRes recordings and then sell them a larger-capacity phone, right?). I would be surprised if it weren’t the speed of the storage device.

Even if the NAND is kinda slow on the iphone, I really doubt it's slower than 100MB/sec. There's still a world of a difference between the anemic USB 2.0 speed and 3.0
Even if we just tripled the transfer speed from the pathetic max 30mb/sec speed of USB 2.0 it would already save a ton of time moving files.
Airdrop is barely faster than USB 2.0 BTW

 

[vpr611]

I assume USB-C will be one of the major selling points next year.

Part of my thinks that USB-C will be on the iPhone 15, with USB-C/Thunderbolt making its debut on the Pro models since the iPad Pro models already support this.

 

[KOTN91]

Do people still use cables for data transfer though? iCloud was released in what, like 2011 or so

 

[profcutter]

It's the whole "pro" moniker that's tripping people up. Yes, people still use cables for transfer, it's more reliable and it has the potential to be much faster. I'd agree that putting ProRes on a phone seems pointless if you're not going to allow fast transfers. No one cares how low your compression rate is if all you can do is look at the video on the photos app.

 

[magbarn]

Do people still use cables for data transfer though? iCloud was released in what, like 2011 or so

When you're moving gigabytes of video off your iphone, airdrop and icloud don't cut it.

 

[Starscape]

When Apple does eventually switch to USB-C on iPhones, that will be the perfect excuse for them to not include a charging cable anymore. You know, because it saves the planet.

 

[AppliedMicro]

with USB-C/Thunderbolt making its debut on the Pro models since the iPad Pro models already support this.

Doubt that even the Pro models will be getting Thunderbolt anytime soon. It’s basically a waste of transistors and power consumption. The internal flash storage doesn’t support such transfer speeds and there‘s no usage scenario that takes advantage of Thunderbolt the internal flash.

Unless Apple tries to shoehorn iPad-/Stage-manager style „desktop workstation“ functionality into their phones. I doubt that - they would rather sell you an iPad in addition to your phone.

 

[hans1972]

How do people deal with this ridiculous limit?

I don't transfer by wire, only wireless.

 

[Bigbanng]

Sure.
I do a test here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-3-lightning-speed-test-on-ipad-pro-10-5.2361226/

iPad Pro 10.5, which is released 5 years ago, is over 10 times faster than usb 2.0 iPhone when using external USB drive. Wish Apple can put usb 3 support on 2023 iPhone.