And after going "all USB-C, all the time" on their laptops Apple still can't figure out how to put USB-C on a phone.
At some point you have to conclude Apple is fucking with us all on purpose, just because they can.
At some point you have to conclude Apple is fucking with us all on purpose, just because they can.
The socket is the most expensive part of the connection and when it breaks, it’s bad news. If you’re lucky and the bean counters didn’t overrule engineering over a microcent saving, the socket is on a daughter card otherwise you’re stuck with a one-port-down device, or an expensive motherboard replacement.
Instead, the Lightning connector is as stupid as it gets, worst issue is pocket lint you can easily remove with a toothpick
USB C on the other hand has all the pins cable-side so there isn't anything to worry about ramming whatever you fancy into your phone or laptop since it's just a PCB with pads on rather than anything you can bend.
Instead all the lint collects around a hair-thin port insert which has all the pins on and can be just easily broken while trying to clean the lint.
I've removed tons of lint from my two iPhones for years, and both lightning ports work like they've worked as in day one.
I do have to say that USB-C seems to be much more lint-prone than micro- or mini-USB. I have never needed to dig out any lint on my previous phones, but have had to do so a fair few times on my latest phone.
I don't remember digging lint out of any previous USB generations either. Only a couple of USB-A connectors, which were integrated to some smaller MP3 players (yes, I remember them!).
It's just I'm carrying my phone in a jeans pocket, and I use an iPhone for 7 years or so. :)
I guess only a mechanical engineer can settle the argument. Anyone?
As for pins vs pads, you can make pads almost arbitrarily more durable by increasing the gold plating thickness, whereas it's really hard to make pins not bend.
Not sure if it's measured as significant, but it's the sort of thing that RF engineering concerns itself with (preventing anything from detuning antennas or otherwise raising the noise floor).
Given that literally every other smartphone on the market has a USB-C port, i'd say this is not the reason why Apple used a non-standard connector, failing (voluntarily) to comply with European interoperability laws/standards.
Sep 2012 for lightning shipped, and USB-C not ratified as a standard until Aug 2014.
Apple was not exactly unaware of these developments, as they have repeatedly signed the memorandums of understanding surrounding charger interoperability, according to wikipedia.
... or because Lightning has a commercial "preferable profile" - it's another form of lock-in, and at the hardware level no less; such an extremely desirable feature, from a commercial perspective, is very, very hard to give up. It would open the door to a world where phone accessories are effectively universal, and surely we can't have that.
whereas USB micro-A is 6.85*1.8mm².
The difference might not be very noticeable, but USB-C is has around 3 times the area of USB micro-A.
So no idea about RF engineer comparisons, but Apple seems to have stopped waiting for consensus on what USB-C would be, in wanting to ship something thin before Samsung and Google and LG could even design something thin, by almost 2 years.
Aug 2014: usb-c standard written, so no devices yet.
this ordering keeps being overlooked in comments.
I wonder if some research suggests a port change would stall phone upgrades among enough users of earlier models, and that phone upgrades are lucrative.
USB has to go on devices where the port already represent a sizable fraction of the cost, and there is a race to the bottom to whoever will produce the least expensive parts, and of course, it is shit. If lightning was standard, we would probably see a lot more failures, simply because not everyone has the same quality requirements as Apple.
Of course, USB doesn't have te be terrible, but when you compare USB to lightning, you compare a mixed bag of good and bad parts to only good parts. To be fair, you should only compare USB implementations from reputable, expensive brands against lightning.
In this context USB-C has failed hilariously, given how much do reliable full-featured USB4 cables cost.
Of course, Apple could pull it off if they really wanted. They’ve done it it with iPads. But please don’t frame it as customer trolling. We’re better than that here.
According to European regulations, Apple's actions are strictly illegal, but if any law enforcement actually cared to protect people from wealthy corporations, we probably wouldn't have any climate change, tax evasion, planned obsolescence, science-denial smoking ads, corporate land grabs, companies stealing water supplies from local populations... As always, laws that protect the weak from the powerful are betrayed, while laws that protect the powerful from the weak are strongly enforced.
That is false. The EUC program was about PSUs, not device ports, and Apple was compliant by providing PSUs with detachable cables. Furthermore the EUC never legislated on the subject, they considered that the voluntary covenant worked well enough and no legislation was necessary.
> Apple has changed its connectors since socket interoperability became effective and they could have adopted the standard.
They were already complying and the “standard” at the time (micro-usb) was bad, not using it was a good thing.
> They just purposefully ignored the consumer-respecting standards in order to keep their 40$-connector business flowing.
At this point you’re just outright lying.
> According to European regulations, Apple's actions are strictly illegal
You are, and I want to make it clear that this is an objective affirmation, high as a kite.
Are we talking about the same thing? You seem to reference this memorandum of understanding [0] promoted by the European Commission (and signed by Apple), whereas i reference further developments such as this vote [1] which was widely advertised in the press at the time.
I am unaware whether that vote was actually turned into a regulation, but i am fully aware that the European Commission is not the entity deciding on regulations in the EU (although it has way too much power to overrun the EU parliament).
> the “standard” at the time (micro-usb) was bad, not using it was a good thing
OK micro-USB was not the best. Still much better than using custom proprietary connectors overall. Just look at how much money/resources was saved by reusing existing cables: do you remember the hot mess we were in in the early 2000s when a phone charger broke, to find a spare compatible one?! Now i can't remember the last time i had to buy a phone charger, because there's an abundance of standard cables. It's a net win for me and my wallet, and a net win for the environment.
Also, not going with a standard you deem bad is fine... if you're working to either improve the standard or replace it with another one. Which Apple never did, as they were happy to have their custom hardware which their fanatic customers would buy no matter the price.
> At this point you’re just outright lying.
I may be misinformed on specifics, but i'm for sure not lying. If you're impying that Apple (or any multinational corporation for that matter) are good faith, you have some research to do on how industrial capitalism operates and its actual consequences on people.
>> According to European regulations, Apple's actions are strictly illegal
> You are, and I want to make it clear that this is an objective affirmation, high as a kite.
OK i'm high as a kite, maybe? Does that make my message wrong on every aspect? Apple has been known to and condemned for breaking many european regulations already [2] [3] [4] [5], often engaging in actions they knew were illegal. I'm not a lawyer so i can't comment on the technical legality of their Lightning connectors, but i can for sure as a european citizen say that they knowingly and willingly violated the spirit of the law to further their profit.
And as a pseudonymous person on a random orange forum, i can say you should take more time to correct facts with actual sources, instead of defending evil corporations while accusing your peers of lying.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20130923IP...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/apple-fined-11-billion-in-france-for-p...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724
[4] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/18/apple-has-finished-paying-...
[5] https://www.politico.eu/article/apple-fined-in-italy-for-mis...
However, i'm fully aware these were not the arguments presented by Apple when they refused the USB standards. If Apple cared for durability, which they definitely don't [0], i'm sure a lot of people would appreciate that and maybe standards could be improved across the industry.
The fact that Apple never cared for any form of standard that i know of [1] does not give them a lot of credit.
[0] They pioneered making it very hard to replace your own battery and flipped the finger on everyone by using non-standard screws on purpose. Seriously, how can it be legal to sell a product which requires any form of tooling to change a battery?! Let's not even get started on software obsolescence on iOS/macOS...
[1] USB and VGA, sure, because they were forced on them. Maybe FireWire? But even then i'm not sure it was a standard back when Apple started using it... On the software side, apart from email, DNS and WWW clients they also don't respect any standard protocols: AirPlay, iCloud, etc.
I doubt the USB-C durability is a large scale problem. I follow smartphone world quite closely and have never heard/read about USB-C issues.
This isn't an effective point as the "smartphone world" is plagued by ephemeral devices which are either susceptible to programmed obsolescence or are caught in an upgrade treadmill due to a myriad of reasons (non-replaceable batteries failing, screen problems, camera issues, hardware failing due to wear, blocked software updates, fads, etc..)
And yet not only has Apple already done exactly that for iPhones (specifically: migrating from the iPod connector to Lightning), but so has virtually every Android vendor done exactly that for Android devices (specifically: migrating from USB micro-B to USB C).
That’s the point though is it not? Apple was just out of a connector switch, which required users to throw out all their old accessories and get new ones. They were not going to do that again within just a few years.
> so has virtually every Android vendor done exactly that for Android devices (specifically: migrating from USB micro-B to USB C).
Historically, Android had nowhere near the accessories ecosystem of Apple.
I believe that is why Apple is starting the switchover to USB-C, with the new iPad using USB-C:
* the dock connector lived for about 10 years, we’re approaching the 10th year of Lightning, that’s a pretty good lifecycle for a connector
* the universality of USB-C amongst Android manufacturers means there now is a large ecosystem of accessories and Apple won’t have to rebuild their ecosystem from scratch
I wouldn’t be surprised if the ipad was basically a warning shot, and Apple switched the rest of their mobile devices over to USB-C with the 2022 releases.
Not if you migrate to the standard that every other device uses. Isn’t that the exact advantage of a universal standard?
I feel that only confirms my point. The switch happened ten years ago, yet many people are still being mad at Apple today over it.
> but so has virtually every Android vendor done exactly that
I think I’m failing to see your point. None of those vendors has any amount of control over the USB accessory ecosystem, or do they?
It disproves your point from multiple directions:
1. It demonstrates that Apple has no qualms about abandoning proprietary connectors and leaving an entire connector ecosystem stranded overnight.
2. It demonstrates that said connector ecosystem has no qualms about adapting to a new proprietary connector - let alone a standardized one.
And no, I know of precisely zero people upset about switching away from the iPod connector. The only thing about which anyone is upset about is the fact that Apple chose a different proprietary connector instead of using that opportunity to standardize.
> I think I’m failing to see your point. None of those vendors has any amount of control over the USB accessory ecosystem, or do they?
The bigger players absolutely do manufacture their own accessories, but that's secondary to my point: that the accessory market readily adapted to phone manufacturers switching connectors on its own. Apple, if anything, would have an easier time for the exact reason you indicate: Apple has control over the Apple accessory ecosystem, and can use that control to put additional pressure on accessory makers.
What do people think they're saying by saying this? No, this has literally happened here by one of "us" so "we" are clearly not better than this. Heck, "we" have done and are continuously doing far worse than this.
Speaking of good faith, a good faith reading of their comment would be that they think Apple is intentionally maintaining a non-standard connector for their smartphone range despite knowing that switching to USB-C would be beneficial to their users.
Alleging that Apple acts in bad faith hardly seems like a violation of HN guidelines. If anything, the claim that they put the needs of the users first would seem the preposterous one as one would expect them to be beholden to their shareholders (and thus profit) above all, not their customers, and there are plenty of reasons why maintaining their own connector might be more profitable.
“Acting in bad faith” seems like the opposite tail end to me. There’s still a huge bell-shaped curve in between.
Ample evidence for “Apple […] fucking with us all on purpose, just because they can?” Please elaborate.