- they don't expect you to plug into a computer at all except in emergency
- can be plugged into the provided charger
- can be plugged into a computer you're statistically more likely to have than a new MBP with only USB-C ports
With regard to the Apple ecosystem, I think it's valid to complain that the cable included with the new iphone does not connect to the new macbook, when they were announced at the same time. Even if it's only supposed to be used in an emergency, does that mean in an emergency you should be punished for staying within the Apple ecosystem?
Next time there will be people who had a laptop but not the adapter, because you are never supposed to need it.
That's of course just an edge case, but the fact that it just happened shows that it can be important. And Apple used to be known to always deliver a great user experience, not just in 95% of the cases.
This may seem stupid, but do you use it when both devices haven't been connected to the internet recently? Seems like it works better if the laptop was recently able to access your iCloud account.
It turns out that when I plugged the phone into the laptop USB, it showed up as a USB ethernet device, which NetworkManager then happily auto-configured.
So clearly 2016 is the year of the Linux laptop.
I tether for internet access and backup the device.
That can be solved with an external battery, but using a short USB-Lightning cable has been easy and great. Now we'll just need to make sure we buy yet a different cable if we use a new-new laptop, which isn't that upsetting.
And Firewire to USB, and VGA to DVI to Displayport to HDMI, and...
I'm just surprised that apple did the thing everyone wanted: switch to a standard. And now bam, nope this is horrible. Its time for usb c, sucks now but it'll pass. Be more worried about usb c incompatibility more than usb c.