>This is the point of standards
Except apple doesn't use standards. They use their own proprietary ports.
Except apple doesn't use standards. They use their own proprietary ports.
Actually Apple is pretty standards compliant, sometimes excessively so. I have no illusion that they are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, but the idea that they "don't use standards" is a canard.
For video they long used open standards (DVI, Displayport, HDMI, now standard DisplayPort over Type C); they were one of the first to adoptt USB (much to the gnashing of teeth on the part of previous apple owners), the iPod originally used firewire; and lightning when it came out was the only insert-either-way connector (apple was on the USB board that designed Type C, but lightning predates type C) and now they use Type C (much to the gnashing of teeth of various parties). Their wireless chargers are Qi compatible, though their devices aren't :-(. Their USB implementations long required quite compliant devices rather than windows' "just install a flaky driver" leading to "hey this USB thingie doesn't work on Apple".
I had hoped this year they'd ditch lightning for type C on at least the high end phones but no luck.
On the software side, especially when they were the underdog they were quite standards compliant (image, music, video files, PDF, RTF etc) and are responsible for removing DRM from their music store. They didn't roll out their own formats until they were in a stronger position but have retained support for most of these old formats.
The original iPod was FireWire-only. The 30-pin dock connector was developed to enable USB and FireWire connectivity as well as docking.
* I refuse to follow Apples pretentious (proprietary?) refusal to use the article “the” with the iPod and the iPhone.
It's surprisingly hard to find photos of the old connector; here's one: https://regmedia.co.uk/2011/09/27/ipod_1.jpg
(I do still own an original iPad too, and use it)
On the other side the 30pin device connectors and the active thunderbolt 2 cables are pretty crap and play in to the proprietary and expensive meme.
Some reviewers are guessing that iPhones will drop the wired charge port entirely at some point, so will become a moot point.
And as for squeezing customers, switching away from the Lightning port would "squeeze" quite a few iPhone customers with lightning cables and docks and such strewn around their house.
I just wish Apple had included a puck-type Qi charger and cable in the box. Could have kept the box pretty slim.
Apple has been pushing for the interoperable USB standard for as long as it has existed. The original iPhone was either the first phone to charge from USB, or at minimum the first successful mass-market phone to do so.
The Galaxy Note 5, released in August of 2015, used a MicroUSB port. I think we'd both agree that is a premium Android device, and clearly, "standardized on" USB-C did not happen "long before".
In fact, Android only introduced support for USB-C in 6.0, officially released in October 2015:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Software_support
So I'm quite sure your memory is faulty, on that one.
Given that the specification for USB-C was only finalized in August of 2014, I'm confident your statement about Windows laptops is equally off base.
However, how am I supposed to use a laptop with _two ports_, one of which will be consumed any time I am charging.
I go over that on my laptop all the time.