Apple Testing iPhones That Ditch Lightning Ports in Favor of USB-C | Hacker News Reader

Apple Testing iPhones That Ditch Lightning Ports in Favor of USB-C

bloomberg.com

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I can’t be the only person who much prefers the Lightning port for a phone. Reasons are:

1. There’s no breakable bits in the phone side of the port

2. The charging speed is fine

3. It’s smaller

4. I like the way it clicks in better than USB-C

5. When it gets full of lint I can dig around in it with whatever mildly soft pointy object I can find (see 1.)

Yeah, the Apple lightning cords have issues for some people. Get a good cord with good strain relief if you’re rough on cables.

Yeah, this tracks with my experience. I get why people would rather just have one cord for everything, but in practice, I've never found having a lightning connector in the phone to be a problem.

I’m just annoyed Apple didn’t open source the Lightning spec and push for it as the USC-C standard. They’re on the consortium after all.

They may not have anticipated that governments would try to force them off their own spec onto an inferior one.

That’s somewhat beside the point.

Universal, even slightly suboptimal standards, are better than non universal optimal ones.

Apple could have pushed for a better industry standard, to the benefit of everyone, including themselves, but they chose not to.

> That’s somewhat beside the point.

It isn't, because that's 100% why they didn't share....they wanted to be Different™.

Well yes, we all know that’s why they did what they did. I said it was beside the point because it’s still annoying despite their motivation.

1) Lightning is USB2 only. USB-C supports USB3/4 and DisplayPort, which have much higher signal integrity requirements which the Lightning connector wouldn't be able to meet.

2) Lightning is relatively limited in its power handling. USB-C handles up to 120W (!) -- if you tried pushing that much current through the little contacts in Lightning, the connector would melt.

Note for point 1, lightning could support USB 3.0. It was done for the 2015 iPad Pro

100%, I believe Lightning to be superior to USB-C.

I wish they had open-sourced the spec to allow for broad adoption. I really think the typical egoistic perspective messed up a gigantic chance for them.

the best part of a lightning port is that you know for certain if what you're plugging in will work.

The same can't be true of the million different USB-C cables/accessories out there.

Welcome move from my opinion. I was hoping to have USB-C everything, but the Lightning port has been a stickler there. Looking forward to people complaining about having to use adapters with Lightning ports and how we should go back to Lightning or that Apple should ship the iPhone with both USB-C and Lightning. I also didn't like the addition of HDMI and SD back to the Macbook Pro but it's not a huge deal.

I think the lightning connector is still easier to use and more durable than USB-C, but don't care either way now that wireless charging has really taken over. It's very, very rare I plug my phone into anything for months at a time. No one is more surprised about that than I am too.

"I also didn't like the addition of HDMI and SD back to the Macbook Pro but it's not a huge deal."

Johnny, is that you?

I use the HDMI port daily and think it's asinine they didn't also add back at least one USB-A connection too, but thank god they did at least put a few of the more commonly used ports back. I have handfuls of USB-C to USB-A connectors sprinkled around and it's annoying to have to constantly look for them but at least I can ditch all the other dongles and adapters so there is some progress towards Apple coming down off their idealized vision of the world and recognizing that most of us live in a mixed, non-idealized world. And will be continuing to do so for some time still.

Also it was amazing they brought Magsafe back - yes! The worst thing I HATED when I had my M1 MacBook Air was it's deletion. I was resigned to never see it again but then was pleasantly surprised with its glorious return with the M1 MacBook Pro.

Yea I agree about MagSafe. I thought that made sense to have and was a very nice feature. I always hated the HDMI/USB-A/SD ports because you never knew what you'd run into and you'd wind up having to carry or look around for adapters and all that. Would have been nice to just transition to straight USB-C everything. Yes that would have taken time, but I strongly believe it would have been an improvement.

I agree that Lightning is actually not a bad little port at all, but I'd sacrifice that to just have USB-C to USB-C everywhere and not have to have more than one cord.

Is USB-A too thick/tall for the MBPs? I would like to have one also; I just don't know if it would fit.

Considering lightning came way before USB-C, I understand why Apple is reluctant to change over. It's not just the cable e-waste, think of all the lightning accessories that won't work anymore. (Same as when they went 30-pin -> Lightning)

I can't wait to use random mystery USB-C cables that provide unknown features and charging speeds to my devices.

I just wish they'd add a 2nd port to iPad on the opposite side of the first. My cable/power is more accessable on the left but with the keyboard attached I have to put it on the right.

What the heck is there to test? iPads have already switched - this isn't unknown technology with some huge risk :p

It isn’t just a matter of hardware. There has to be a huge number of ‘ifdef lightning’ or equivalent constructs all over iOS and its apps.

> There has to be a huge number of ‘ifdef lightning’

Why would that be the case? Why would apps need to know what kind of port is used for charging?

Not for usual apps, but iOS for iPhone might need to know. USB is a fairly complex standard to implement correctly and now Apple tries to bring this to billions rather than millions. So the bar is much higher.

The lightning port is not just for charging. It can be used for audio, data and possibly other things.

* What does USB-C do to the thickness of a phone that wouldn't be a problem in a tablet?

* How does the phone react to the differences USB-C offers - does faster charging heat the phone inexcusably?

* What happens to the phone if the USB-C male end breaks, arguably one of my favorite parts of Lightning. I can replace a cable much easier than I can replace a port on a phone.

* How will consumers react to changing the standard? A lot of people had a lot of 30-pin accessories.

To name a few.

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