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Apple forced to ditch iPhone lightning charger
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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They first started using USB c on the macbooks in 2015. There's no way that it took 8 years to get it ready for the iPhone. In that time they've also released several other devices and accessories which have used lightning.
To me this doesn't point to a planned gradual shift over to USB c but one that was forced by neccesity on the macbook then by regulation on the iPhone.
The narrative around Lightning was always that they’d keep it for 10 years and then move to something new, Schiller even called it “a modern connector for the next decade” when it was announced, and at the time it was better than anything else on the market.
No one who’s been paying attention is surprised that Apple switched this year and not next. I’d love to go dig up my years old comments on Reddit about this but like many of us I deleted my whole history. I had hoped they’d advance the timeline and release the 14 with USBC because of the EU regs, but I’m convinced this was the plan because they waited for the lighting to fulfill its 10 year target (just like with the 30 pin connector) and not until the EU regs actually forced them in 2024.
When the iPad switched to USBC in 2018 it was a foregone conclusion that iPhone would too, and the assumption was always for it to happen in 2023.
How does it take 5 years to integrate the world's most popular and standardised connector?
Call me a cynic, but maybe they just wanted another five years of selling over priced cables and another five years of controlling another part of the "ecosystem".
I’m saying it was a choice to ride out the full 10 years with lightning, not a limitation. They tooled up for 10 years of lightning and they stuck to the plan.
Apple produces hardware at a scale not imaginable to mortal people. When they want to use a chip in their phone, they just buy up the chip's factory's entire production run for the next few years.
Apple was the only company that had no shortages during the chip troubles of 2020/21/22. That’s because they plan ahead. They have a logistics person at the helm, and it’s very visible.
All of this naturally leads to ridiculous planning cycles.
How does it taste?
Starfuckers, Inc
I think it's interesting that you see this as USB-C's fault.
If Apple had stuck to a standard connector they would have been on usb-c in a year or two anyway and none of that e-waste would exist.
Or if they went back on their word and switched to usb-c from lightning after a couple years, there would also be way less Lightning e-waste. What do you think happens to all those Lightning accessories when someone switches from iPhone to a different device?
Apple's proprietary Lightning connector is responsible for the e-waste, not USB-C or regulators.
These regulations will stop companies like Apple making proprietary connectors purely for profit that generate all the e-waste in the first place.
Lol, a cable is barely e waste. The power Adapter is where the e waste is, and those usb A blocks can easily still be used, even if you only have usb-C cables lying around. For very little money, you can buy an Adapter from usb-A to C and you can still use them. I don’t get the eWaste argument on copper cables…
USB-C was finalized 2 years later so the decade of Lighting e-waste is still on Apple for holding out as long as they did.
Maybe instead of designing a whole new Lightning connector they should have been pioneers and been one of the first to make a USB-C phone.
No it wasn’t. The very first version of USB-C was standardized 2 years later. It didn’t get to feature parity with lightning until Thunderbolt support was added at the 5 year mark.
Lightning has been and still is USB 2.0 (I don't remember any products with faster speeds)
If they kept the 30-pin for another year or two they could have been one of the first with USB-C and it would have been good for two decades or more and we wouldn't be having this discussion
Are you seriously complaining that they didn’t wait for a tech that hadn’t even been announced or released yet? Do they have a time machine or crystal balls now in Cupertino?
They were well aware of it, even contributed to the design
Again, this was after Lightning was already designed, released, and had millions of accessories made for it. It doesn’t change the point at all.
You mean exactly like Micro USB? And Mini USB?
If only they had the foresight to predict the needs of their customers a year or two in the future.
Or maybe they just went with Lightning because they could take a cut of every product using their proprietary connector.
Buddy, standard connectors are in the works way earlier than you think. Manufacturers know about the next standard ahead of time and often give feedback. It's all on Apple wanting to sell you a proprietary connector so you can only buy from them, or you can't switch phones to android and still use your accessories.
Apple literally contributed to the design of USB-C, it's not as if they had no idea it existed or it was some sort of reactionary design in response to Lightning
Your downvote count is insane, because you’re right. People on lemmy, just like on reddit, use android and like to feel superior for hating on Apple. That’s basically all it comes down to. Apple introduced a new connector a decade ago, called their shot, and usb-c caught up during that time. Now that Apple is fulfilling their plans everyone who was never going to buy an iPhone anyway is shouting “what took you so long?”
This isn't about IOS being superior to Android. This is about Apple doing anti-consumer practices and getting called out for it.
The downvote count is insane because they are talking out of their arse and drinking the Apple propaganda.
USB-C "caught up" with lightning a decade ago.
If it was such an awesome connector, they would still also use it in their MacBooks.
If Apple really cared about their customers getting the better connector, they would have changed it on the Iphone at the same time they did on the MacBooks.
But they didn't, because Iphone is their cash cow, so they wanted to scrape as much money from their users as possible, until the EU forced them to change.
"Hence the removal of the headphone jack."
What does that have to do with USB vs Lightning? Besides, Lightning to Headphone Jack adapters as well as lightning airpods use a DAC inside the cable.
Boy, some of you are really drinking the Apple koolaid.
As far as I know the fastest charging over lightning even now is 20 Watts which is far too slow for a laptop with a large battery. I suspect that they couldn't use lightning on the macbooks for that reason.
If their intention was to limit waste then they wouldn't have continued to produce lightning accessories if the plan was to transition in just a few years
Laptops were never charged with lightning and it makes zero sense that they ever would. It was never necessary and they received a LOT of hate over using USB-C on the laptops because they were extremely early to the party. The exact same hate was heaped on them when they implemented USB before everyone else.
You apparently don’t remember (or care) about how they faced a lot of backlash when they moved from the 30-pin to Lightning on iPhone. They promised accessory manufacturers that they wouldn’t change the iPhone port again for at least 10 years, and we are right at that mark. Other products have been transitioning to USB-C in a somewhat logical order. All of the products that charge with lightning now are iPhone accessories and there is little reason to have different charge ports on products that are meant to be used together.
The only argument that isn’t just pure ignorance seems to boil down to “Apple evil”
They have a magsafe port and come with a MagSafe cable (which is USB -> MagSafe) but they charge just fine with usb-c. I can't remember when I last used my MagSafe cable (I think it's in a box somewhere) because it normally charges while docked and it makes more sense to carry an USB cable on the go.