Other See, Apple can be wrong (USB-C). What else needs a rethink?

[digitalcuriosity]

The new USB-C has been a great stept forward i hated the old lighting device that failed in two phones rendering them unable to be charged.

Now if Apple would just allow the use of the micro memory cards to be used in their phones and iPads that would be a game changer for me and many others.

To be able to just quickly plug your phone or iPad direct to your computer and transfer files that would be great.

 

[SalisburySam]

…the old lighting device that failed in two phones rendering them unable to be charged.

I had the same on my iPhone7 that was only a little over a year old at the time. I took it into the local AT&T store (company store, not a franchise) and the tech immediately knew the issue. She got an opened safety pin and scraped out about a pound of dirt and gunk from the iPhone charging port, then blew it out with quick squirt from a can of compressed air. Worked flawlessly until it happened again in another year or so. This time I knew the fix, applied same, and it worked again.

 

[digitalcuriosity]

I had the same on my iPhone7 that was only a little over a year old at the time. I took it into the local AT&T store (company store, not a franchise) and the tech immediately knew the issue. She got an opened safety pin and scraped out about a pound of dirt and gunk from the iPhone charging port, then blew it out with quick squirt from a can of compressed air. Worked flawlessly until it happened again in another year or so. This time I knew the fix, applied same, and it worked again.

The problem i had with the lighting ports was not a dirt item that a simple cleaning woud fix it was the failure of the conection to make contact the female port had failed.

 

[ab2c4]

Flat sides on phones is just wrong. Hopefully they realize this soon and give us phones with rounded sides again like the iphone 11. The phones with flat sides are just too uncomfortable to hold for those of us that use our phones A LOT.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Flat sides on phones is just wrong. Hopefully they realize this soon and give us phones with rounded sides again like the iphone 11. The phones with flat sides are just too uncomfortable to hold for those of us that use our phones A LOT.

Have you tried one of the 15s? The subtly rounded corners fixed my only complaint with flat edges. Feel great in the hand now.

 

[theluggage]

Yup, they’re on the USB consortium.

...and they were actively involved in the development of USB-C (or, if you believe some rumours, they actually invented it).

Bear in mind apple had a mechanically superior port already (lightning) that pre-dates USB-C by years

...and which was developed when there was no other viable "standard" replacement for the old 30-pin iDevice connector. (microUSB? Bletch!)

But Lightning is falling behind on bandwidth and features. Lightning is still good enough for lower-end iPhones, but it doesn't have enough physical lanes to fully support USB 3 (there's limited support with an active dongle) let alone 5k displays, USB 4, Thunderbolt etc. which is becoming important as Apple tries to position high-end iPhones and iPad Pros as pro "media creation" tools. So they'd probably have needed a "Lightning 2" by now - but developing that would be silly when there was a suitable "industry standard" in which Apple already had a stake. Once the iPad had gone USB-C it really didn't make sense to keep it on the iPhone.

As you say - any change to the iPhone connector was bound to cause a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from the masses of lower-end iPhone users who just want to charge. just as there was when the old 30 pin connector was dropped. So I think to an extent Apple have been using "blame the EU" tactics to make a change that was inevitable anyhow. Although they will be losing some revenue from chargers and cables, I'm sure they'll be able to FUD plenty of people into sticking with "original" chargers.

Apple adopted type C exclusively on the mac before anyone else.

...possibly because they needed to move to Thunderbolt 3 (there was the 12" MacBook, but I suspect the plan was for that to get TB3 when Intel released a suitable CPU with it integrated). The decision to go "all in" on USB-C and drop every other port, even from the MBP, was the problematic bit.

What's so great that I can't use any of all my old cables anymore? Talk about bad for the environment.

Short term, yeah, there are going to be some old cables and chargers (or at least their plastic bits if someone recycles the copper) heading for landfill. That said, cables wear out and a lot of old chargers simply don't provide enough power to be re-used with modern devices - although if they have USB sockets in them they should at least trickle charge a new device.

Longer term, the EU is forcing most rechargeable devices - from laptops to electric toothbrushes - to not just adopt USB-C but the USB power delivery standards and "unbundle" the charger, so in the future you'll just need a few higher power, multi-port USB-C chargers and standard USB-C cables rather than every new gadget coming with proprietary wall-warts.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Longer term, the EU is forcing most rechargeable devices - from laptops to electric toothbrushes - to not just adopt USB-C but the USB power delivery standards and "unbundle" the charger, so in the future you'll just need a few higher power, multi-port USB-C chargers and standard USB-C cables rather than every new gadget coming with proprietary wall-warts.

Toothbrushes too? Damn, I need to look into importing a euro spec toothbrush and shaver...

 

[digitalcuriosity]

Well I went and bought a MagSafe charger so won’t be worrying about the usb-c phone port wearing out from being used.

 

[winxmac]

For those that still use data transfer using cable, Apple needs to switch to USB 3.0 for non-Pro and USB 3.2 for Pro

I don't know what is the current maximum speed of AirDrop but if they can have it reach 10Gbps or higher then we may not need to use cable for data transfer...

 

[CTHarrryH]

I wonder if the EUC is forcing sites to change to USB-C ports. I have seen no place that doesn't have USB-A (hotel, bus, gym, train, etc).

 

[johannnn]

Longer term, the EU is forcing most rechargeable devices - from laptops to electric toothbrushes - to not just adopt USB-C but the USB power delivery standards and "unbundle" the charger, so in the future you'll just need a few higher power, multi-port USB-C chargers and standard USB-C cables rather than every new gadget coming with proprietary wall-warts.

And at the same time there will be no innovation because every company is stuck shipping USB-C thanks to EU.

 

[theluggage]

I wonder if the EUC is forcing sites to change to USB-C ports. I have seen no place that doesn't have USB-A (hotel, bus, gym, train, etc).

They're certainly not going to force sites to strip out existing ports, and anybody plan a refit or new build now would be dumb to install new USB-A ports that can only supply < 10W rather than USB-C ports that will be able to run most laptops.

In the meantime, worst case is you'll need to carry a USB A to C charge cable or adapter. Apple (and most other phone makers) switched to USB-C sockets on the charger years ago, so you already need a C-to-A adapter to charge on the train.

I think the divide is between people living in an Apple-only ecosystem and those of us who have a mix of devices. In the past I've travelled with cables for at least 3 out of miniUSB, microUSB, USB-C, Lightning and a whole separate captive-cable charger for MagSafe 1/2. Going forward I'll just need one C-to-C cable and one A-to-C cable... both of which I already have more than one of.

Apple's main jerk move was not switching to USB-C at the same time as dropping the 3.5mm audio jack from the iPhone & forcing many people to get new headphones. Even the Airpods were only released in late 2016 - after Apple had switched to USB-C on the Mac, and could have used USB-C from the start.

And at the same time there will be no innovation because every company is stuck shipping USB-C thanks to EU.

The EU rules only affect devices that (a) can be charged with a cable and (b) have power requirements within the current range of the USB-C power distribution protocol (which can be extended in the future, since its a smart connector that can signal its power requirements to the charger).

It doesn't affect wireless charging (except, maybe, the base will need USB-C) and it doesn't even block something like Magsafe 3 as an alternative (the MBP can already be charged via USB-C as well). If someone produces an "innovative" device that runs solely off solar energy, alcohol fuel cells or ambient good intentions then its not affected.

What other innovations were you expecting? If the EU had done this 30 years ago and locked the world into 3.5mm barrel connectors delivering 100mW then it would have been a problem.

Let's not forget that 8 years ago Apple decided that USB-C - which they'd played a major role in developing - was good enough to become the only connector for the MacBook series (and, apparently, worth ditching MagSafe 2 for). The bizarre bit is that they pushed it on the Mac (where it caused a lot of hassle for people who had perfectly good peripherals with HDMI/DisplayPort/USB 3 etc. not to mention extra chargers and Cinema Displays with captive magsafe - I worked out it would have cost me £500 in hubs, bricks and adapters at the time) rather than on the iDevices where the vast majority of users would have just needed a new charge/sync cable or two. Ironically, the point at which Apple brought back HDMI, SD and Magsafe to the MBP was probably about the point where USB-C-only Macs (just replacing the TB2 ports with TB3/USB-C was never the problem) started to make sense.

This "evil EU" kerfuffle is all about forcing Apple to finish eating their own dog food and do what other manufacturers have just got on with because it makes sense. Even then, I suspect that Apple are just briar-patching so they can blame the EU for any transient inconvenience.

 

[Jackbequickly]

Been happy with everything on USB-C! About time!

 

[tkaravou]

Apple revealed the Lightning connector and said that it would be used on their phones for the next 10 years.

At the end of those 10 years, Apple switched to USB-C.

 

[ab2c4]

Have you tried one of the 15s? The subtly rounded corners fixed my only complaint with flat edges. Feel great in the hand now.

I have a 15 Plus and I don’t think it’s any better in this regard than my previous 13.

 

[backstreetboy]

USB-C has been one of the best ‘moves’ Apple has made in recent times.

Only issue is, it revealed how their stubbornness has set them back because they were made to convert.

Where else has Apple missed the mark on for a long time now & needs immediate fixing in order to make the every day user experience much better (not a petty little feature that only a minority of people use, I mean a major aspect of the iPhone that everyone uses & needs to improve the device in a significant way)?

For me, it’s Siri. How this company has persisted with a subpar voice assistant for so long is pretty puzzling. Europe needs to intervene again.

Around 10 years each. What stubbornness are you on about?

 

[Paddle1]

You have zero basis to claim that Apple was "made" to convert to USB-C.

Apple pioneered the move to USB-C with MacBook and did not hesitate to add it to iPad either. Both of these are relatively low volume markets (compared to iPhone) that would not be dramatically upset by the move to USB-C.

iPhone, on the other hand, is a much larger and more diverse market, that cannot so whimsically change connectors without disrupting 1.5 billion people. Apple waited until USB-C grew up around iPhone so that the transition felt more like "finally" to the majority of the iPhone market instead of "WTF".

Next, iPhone models are planned 3 years in advance. iPhone 15 was already slated to have USB-C before the E.U. even thought of the idea of mandating it.

And lastly, if Apple were doing this because they were made to, they wouldn't have had to ship anything until iPhone 17. They transitioned 2 model years sooner than "required".

Absolutely zero evidence or data points agree with the idea of Apple being "forced" to.

I understand where you're coming from. That video of the VP is mostly just marketing as Apple was opposed to forcing a specific connector, and not about them having a problem with USB-C itself. The truth is that they have voluntarily put USB-C on everything that has it to date. They were a part of the group that created USB-C and its design was more than likely inspired by Lightning. They pushed it hard on the Mac to get adoption going and have continued to gradually transition all their products.

But I've given up on arguing that they weren't "forced" to switch as they've made zero effort to disprove that. If Apple wants to hide behind the EU and let them take all the blame and the credit, then so be it.

 

[JPack]

I understand where you're coming from. That video of the VP is mostly just marketing as Apple was opposed to forcing a specific connector, and not about them having a problem with USB-C itself. The truth is that they have voluntarily put USB-C on everything that has it to date. They were a part of the group that created USB-C and its design was more than likely inspired by Lightning. They pushed it hard on the Mac to get adoption going and have continued to gradually transition all their products.

But I've given up on arguing that they weren't "forced" to switch as they've made zero effort to disprove that. If Apple wants to hide behind the EU and let them take all the blame and the credit, then so be it.

If it were marketing, then the VP would have simply said, "USB-C is a great technology. That's why we implemented it on MacBook and iPad. But I can't comment on future products."

It makes zero sense for the VP to spend two minutes to disparage the EU law and then comment on the environmental cost of the transition to USB-C. Clearly, Apple had no intention to move iPhone 15 to USB-C.

The idea that Apple "waited" for the iPhone market to be ready for USB-C is just silly. Did Apple wait for the market to be ready for Lightning in 2012? Did they wait to transition to USB-C on MacBook? What about iPad Pro? The products where the walled garden is the lowest, Apple will transition. Lightning has always served as a barrier, similar to iMessage.

 

[Paddle1]

If it were marketing, then the VP would have simply said, "USB-C is a great technology. That's why we implemented it on MacBook and iPad. But I can't comment on future products."

It makes zero sense for the VP to spend two minutes to disparage the EU law and then comment on the environmental cost of the transition to USB-C. Clearly, Apple had no intention to move iPhone 15 to USB-C.

The idea that Apple "waited" for the iPhone market to be ready for USB-C is just silly. Did Apple wait for the market to be ready for Lightning in 2012? Did they wait to transition to USB-C on MacBook? What about iPad Pro? The products where the walled garden is the lowest, Apple will transition. Lightning has always served as a barrier, similar to iMessage.

Yeah, marketing is probably not the right word... but trying to make a statement.

It makes sense to me to comment on environmental cost to strengthen the point of being opposed to a mandated switch. Rumors indicated over a year in advance that the iPhone 15 was going to have USB-C before the EU had even passed their ruling. It could have been them trying to get ahead of the EU, but there was nothing stopping them from planning the switch from the start. https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/11/iphone-15-ditch-lightning-for-usb-c/

We also saw that when Apple gets forced to do something they don't want to they may wait until the very last minute, like with the 3rd party app stores. A little different with hardware, but shows they certainly weren't afraid to ruffle the EU's feathers.

I don't know about waiting, but that is the logic they used at iPhone 15 unveiling. I remember during the presentation something along the lines of "Now that USB-C has become commonplace we've decided to switch the iPhone over."

Either way I'm just speculating possibilities, you very well may be totally right. Like I said, I'm not going to argue against what Apple themselves has put out.

 

[JPack]

Yeah, marketing is probably not the right word... but trying to make a statement.

It makes sense to me to comment on environmental cost to strengthen the point of being opposed to a mandated switch. Rumors indicated over a year in advance that the iPhone 15 was going to have USB-C before the EU had even passed their ruling. It could have been them trying to get ahead of the EU, but there was nothing stopping them from planning the switch from the start. https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/11/iphone-15-ditch-lightning-for-usb-c/

We also saw that when Apple gets forced to do something they don't want to they may wait until the very last minute, like with the 3rd party app stores. A little different with hardware, but shows they certainly weren't afraid to ruffle the EU's feathers.

I don't know about waiting, but that is the logic they used at iPhone 15 unveiling. I remember during the presentation something along the lines of "Now that USB-C has become commonplace we've decided to switch the iPhone over."

Either way I'm just speculating possibilities, you very well may be totally right. Like I said, I'm not going to argue against what Apple themselves has put out.

EU established they were moving forward with a common charging connector law back in 2020. The only options on the table were Micro USB, Lightning, and USB-C. You don't need a crystal ball to figure out which one was going to be adopted. The only thing undetermined was the date.

Apple wasn't going to wait until the last minute to adopt USB-C. If Apple held until the last minute, December 2024, anything subsequent, such as a color or capacity refresh of iPhone 16 in Spring 2025 would be blocked from sale. If iPhone SE4 comes out in Spring 2025 as expected, Apple would be forced to launch it as the first iPhone with USB-C. So Apple wasn't going to wait until the last minute, especially since they need time to build an ecosystem of USB-C products, from AirPods to keyboards, to chargers.

Certainly Apple will position their adoption of USB-C as a spearheading effort. Would Apple ever say they're following the pack? Would Apple ever consider marketing their periscope lens, quick charging, or AI features as following the pack?

 

[Paddle1]

Apple wasn't going to wait until the last minute to adopt USB-C. If Apple held until the last minute, December 2024, anything subsequent, such as a color or capacity refresh of iPhone 16 in Spring 2025 would be blocked from sale. If iPhone SE4 comes out in Spring 2025 as expected, Apple would be forced to launch it as the first iPhone with USB-C. So Apple wasn't going to wait until the last minute, especially since they need time to build an ecosystem of USB-C products, from AirPods to keyboards, to chargers.

That is a good point, although the iPhone 16 being the first to have USB-C could've worked as well. I do find it strange that they have switched the AirPods Pro but not the regular version or the Max.

 

[masotime]

USB-C has been one of the best ‘moves’ Apple has made in recent times.

Only issue is, it revealed how their stubbornness has set them back because they were made to convert.

USB-C was developed by Apple (and Intel) as early as 2012 ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C

Design for the USB-C connector was initially developed in 2012 by Apple Inc. and Intel. Type-C Specification 1.0 was published by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) on August 11, 2014. In July 2016, it was adopted by the IEC as "IEC 62680-1-3".

Being only officially published in Aug 2014, Apple was also one of the first few to have devices that support it - the 12" MacBook ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_MacBook

It was introduced in March 2015. It was more compact than any other notebook in the MacBook family at the time and included a Retina display, fanless design, and a Butterfly keyboard with lower key travel. It only had a single USB-C port

I think that's important context that most people don't realize. While I agree Apple's rollout of USB-C on iPhone has been frustratingly slow, it is .... not accurate / not speaking to the whole truth to say they have been "stubborn" about it when they introduced some of the first mainstream USB-C devices.

 

[Ralfi]

What stubbornness are you on about?

not accurate / not speaking to the whole truth to say they have been "stubborn" about it

RE: smartphones, not other devices that had it years prior.

Competitors had USB-C on their phones for years. Apple lagged behind in this regard & would have continued to do so if not for Europe nudging them along.

 

[throAU]

Competitors had USB-C on their phones for years. Apple lagged behind in this regard & would have continued to do so if not for Europe nudging them along.

Pure Speculation. They adopted USB type C exclusively before any one else on the computer side.

Apple would have got there eventually, there was simply a large number of legacy peripherals using lightning.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Siri:

It has been a major part of the iOS experience since 2012 with the release of the iPhone 5 (I know it existed on iPhone as an app before), and has been pretty dreadful for over a decade. Even the likes of Google and Amazon have produced smart assistants on cheap products that are much better and actually produce the results the user requires.

Maps:

Outside of the United States this service is flakey at best. I tried it recently after a 10 year break and it is still unreliable. Nice interface but that is about it.

HomePod:

Not iPhone related but, Apple watched the competition release affordable home smart assistants and build up a userbase before releasing the HomePod which was an eye watering £319. It blocked non-Apple services initially in an attempt to force people to buy Apple services like Music and tempt them away from Spotify and Amazon. It didn't really work and finally they conceded to discontinue the original HomePod and focus on the HomePod Mini, albeit nearlt 4 years too late.