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European iPhones are more fun now
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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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the stupidest thing is iPad had USB-C since 2018! and yet on iPhones they latched on to lightning for another 6 years before EU forced them to standardize
That’s because they’ve been pushing the iPad as a sort of Mac Lite, but they can’t do that unless you can plug peripherals or a thumb drive into it. You can 100% plug a USB-C laptop dock into an iPad, and it’ll work. You can even use a mouse with it if you really want to.
But they wanted to keep Lightning around as long as possible, because they made a commission on every single lighting cable that was sold; Companies had to license the rights to use the connector, and had to pay Apple for every one they used. That’s why Lightning cables were always a few bucks more expensive than a comparable USB-C cable. That extra few bucks was going straight into Apple’s pocket. It was a huge source of passive income for the company, which they were reluctant to let go of.
They were keeping their promise of 10 years of Lightning ecosystem support. Dropping the old iPod connector was highly controversial.
They were earning millions from lightning royalities
And they promised to do so for at least 10 years.
we promise we'll use the inferior, proprietary connector
Honestly Lightning wasn’t inferior when it launched in 2012, two years before the design of USB-C was even published. And in some ways I actually prefer it physically (though obviously I would much rather all my devices use USB-C now as it is a much superior connector).
Lightning was reversible where Micro-USB was not, and Lightning’s female port is entirely a hole that the entirely-a-prong male plug goes into, whereas with USB (like with most connectors) the female side has something sticking up inside it that slots into the male plug. This means Lightning is much easier to clean, which becomes necessary because phones in people’s pockets collect lint.
I’m thrilled that iPhone has moved to USB-C, but people forget how much better Lightning was than both the 30-pin iPod connector AND Micro-USB.
Absolutely it was better. But it’s hard to believe that Apple, who was a part of the USB-IF, didn’t know USB-C was in the works. My conspiracy theory is they knew an open standard was imminent and launched lightning to keep getting those MFI licensing checks and purposely made that long of a commitment strictly so, when regulators asked why they hadn’t switched to the new standard yet, they could say it was to “help the environment.”
Oh probably. We know that by the time they finally dropped Lightning, MFi certification was earning them like $4b per year.
There was even rumor they were going to limit charging speeds over USB-C unless they were detectably “MFi” USB-C cables. Ostensibly to prevent damage to the phone from bad cables, but obviously an attempt to maintain MFi income. I don’t remember if they went through with it.
The two are not mutually exclusive. The downvote button is not an "I don't like this" button.
"We promise to keep increasing our profit by overcharging customers for awful cables they can't get anywhere else"
What a dumb promise
Phones used to have a round charger socket, a USB socket that could also be used to charge, plus the headphone socket and SD card slot. I'm sure they could have found room for both USB C and Lightning, with all the other things that were removed.