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Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

Is the USB2 speed a limitation of the Lightning connector, or is it that Apple just doesn't care to improve this?

Because if it's the latter, as you say, there's no guarantee we'll see improved speeds because of the port change.

The Lightning connector has 8 pins: 2 for power, 2 for ID/control, and 4 for 2 differential lanes of anything. Those 2 differential lines are used for all data transfer, and, IIRC, are bidirectional. So, in theory, the Lightning connector could carry USB 3.0's differential RX/TX lanes no problem.

My guess as to why Apple hasn't implemented that is a lack of demand. Syncing/backup is expected to be handled on the device now, and USB 2.0 gives enough bandwidth for the majority of the other cases. And on iPads where more bandwidth might be required (eg. external data storage), they already have USB-C connectors supporting the higher speeds.

Except the free tier on iCloud is miniscule so you're forced to stump up cash if you actually want to backup.

Plus iCloud is stubbornly not E2EE.

You need to fork up all of $0.99 a month for 50GB.

It does seem petty. “I just paid for a $1000 phone with a massive markup and you mean I have to pay an extra $12 to get a decent amount of storage?” It’s not like the 99¢ gets you a terabyte; you only get 50 GB. They could just swallow the cost, but they don’t.

Continuous services are taxed and accounted differently from one-time costs.

They hook you in with the $1 option, you see how useful iCloud is and then you'll fork up even more. Then you notice that your whole family can share the subscription and soon you'll be paying $10 for the 2TB option and are an Apple One subscriber.

That's just good business nowadays. All companies _could_ just sell stuff with an one-time fee and provide a service forever, but it's not fiscally responsible in the long run.

It's still an extra cost, and 50GB when you've got 30GB of message history, 60 GB of photos and other data doesn't cut it.

Then you can pay the immense cost of $3/mo for 200GB.

Subscriptions are what guarantees quality, you are paying for the service so you can expect a certain level of quality.

The lightning connector supports USB3 and it is implemented on some models of iPad Pro when used with the Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter:

https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MK0W2ZM/A/lightning-to...

Apple never made a USB3 to lightning cable.

I wonder whether you could achieve USB3 transfer speeds from a computer to a usb3 iPad Pro with the Camera Adapter and a usb A to A cable like this:

https://amzn.eu/d/37zSB6e

That adapter acts like usb host IIRC. So does your computer. Connecting two hosts with a A-to-A cable is not going to do anything good (and might cause harm). This is why A-to-A cables aren't supposed to exist as per usb spec.

Apple wants to do away with all external connectors on that phone. My guess is that they won't have any ports once they get rid of the lightning connector.

Not so sure about that, they already added USB-C to many devices, and there are still plenty of use cases where wireless charging is tricky.

I really need a cable to charge my phone while driving, for example.

Additionally, charging wirelessly is much slower, sometimes you just need to be able to charge quickly.

> I really need a cable to charge my phone while driving, for example.

Am I to understand you're having issues with wireless charging while driving?

I was having high hopes for this for riding my motorbike because plugging everything in and routing cables is quite the pain...

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