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Apple to Limit iPhone 15 USB-C Cables to USB 2.0 Speeds: Report
(www.extremetech.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Why?
Not that I use the junk this company ships to stores but a part of me would like to hear the meeting where someone proposed this and the rationale to support it.
Easy. Because then it means that the easiest way to get files off your phone to your computer (definitely a Mac, right? RIGHT?) is via an iCloud subscription. Why sell a cable for $10 when you can sell a monthly subscription for $3?
And this is nothing new at all for Apple. I still remember how infuriating it was having to deal with iTunes for moving files to and from my iPod Touch. Jailbreaking so I didn't have to deal with iTunes was such a relief
Android obviously having no issues with you just having direct access to the file system makes it so much easier
nothing about using a USB-C cable inherently means it has to support USB3.
framing it as "limits it to USB 3 Speeds" is misleading. iPhone has only ever supported USB 2, all they're doing here is continuing to not upgrade to USB 3. the meeting where somebody proposed it went like this:
Why pay for a better component when the sheep will gladly pay inflated prices for the same old crap?
How many people do you honestly think transfer data by cable? I haven't done it in years, and I have friends with iphones that don't even own a computer!
It ruins displayport alternative mode
USB 3 is significantly faster than wifi so I frequently use it for larger file transfers. But I guess with iphone's crippled filesystem you would never have reason to transfer anything.
Everybody is thinking about storage speeds but what I want to know is charging speed. We see Android phones using USBC with more then 100w that can charge to 100% in under 30 minutes. Knowing Apple it will probably be limited to like 5w so that you buy a shitty 15w wireless MagSafe charger instead that they get money from. It will probably still get to 100% in under 2 hours, but only because Apple batteries are ridiculously small (3200mah on most recent iPhones, 5000mah is the budget Android phone standard that you can find on $60 phones, some even going up to 6000mah like the Samsung m54).
Minor gripe: the amp hours of the battery don't tell you anything about actual battery life. I worked for a phone manufacturer for a while and saw devices with 3000mAh batteries that couldn't last a day of idling and I saw devices with 1400mAh batteries that would go a week if you just left it sitting in on the table and didn't touch it. It's all about the efficiency of the SoC before the battery amperage comes into play
Another interesting thing is that charging speeds will vary depending more on the protocol used than the wattage of the charger. A 15w Qualcomm Quick Charge charger will charge a nearly dead phone up to 100% in about an hour, or to 78% in 20-30 minutes, but an old 5v 3Amp charger will take a good 2 hours or more to charge the same phone
My current job has me provisioning iPads into our MDM to send out to the field and holy crap am I sick of plugging 6 iPads into a mess of chargers and waiting hours for them to get up to 50%ish, so i do agree 100% that apple needs to get with the times
Spite. They hate the fact they are made to use USB-C so they're in a strop.
I'm not 100% sure this is why, because their current lighting cable only transfers at USB 2.0 speeds as well (480Mbit/s max)
This is the main reason. People are confusing the protocol (USB 2.0/3.0) with the connector (USB C/Lightning). Apple slapping a different connector on the phone isn't changing the underlying technology inside the phone. People claiming that USB-C must mean 3.0 are just spreading FUD in order to shit on Apple again.
And, as others in this thread have pointed out, high speed transfers by cable are low priority for phone users, there are much better tools to do that, like maybe an external hard drive.
The current implementation uses the same electrical wiring as USB 2.0 and they used it because at the time USB-C 2.0 hadn't been released yet. Fair enough, but that was a decade ago, so there's no reason that they haven't upgraded in that time except they realised that it let them sell an inferior cable for more money and tell everyone it was better than USB-C standard. The thing is, if you're moving over to USB-C now anyway why not also take the opportunity to upgrade to 3.0 speeds?
It would cost them literally nothing to do that, and they're still not doing it. Well at the same time they're going on and on about how amazingly fast their wireless charger is. Seems suspicious.