iPhone 15’s shift to USB-C
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485290
As much as I like to see such a feature, I don’t think Apple will ever give it to us.
For some users (e.g. elderly) an iPad with its large screen would make a better phone. They don't walk around talking (anymore). Also when wearing headphones, there is no need to lift the phone to the ear. Same goes talking to the watch.
no, it's not cannibalization to upsell existing customers to higher margin items
Is that the case, though.
Their product lines overlap significantly in several areas. Yes, you cannot use the Phone app in an iPad, but you can do many of the things a Macbook does, and I would argue that many people would be sufficiently served with an iPad and a keyboard, rather than a Macbook.
Pretty much the only other app that you can use with an iPhone but not with an iPad (and neither a Macbook), for technical reasons, is Wallet.
I think that Apple does not offer either of those apps in iPads because they are not believed to be practical, given the form factor.
It just makes me sad that I have so much computing power in such a small form factor, and software just gimps it, both in capability and experience.
This might be even more interesting with Samsung TVs which allow wireless DeX. Have not seen this in action though.
I actually use it to run citrix receiver and connect to the corporate network. hardly ever bring my work laptop home anymore.
You also still get to use the phone/tablet at the same time while it's driving the desktop.
Of course you're still using Android apps, just inside of resizable, movable windows, and not all apps behave well or work as well with mouse/keyboard as you might like.
But you can install linux shells, remote desktop apps, etc, and basically just use it as a thin-client.
There's also a way you can use Dex inside of a window on Windows and it let you drive your phone without actually touching it or doing some weird remote access stuff to your phone.
Dex is kind of a hidden gem of the Samsung devices. Once you hook up a dock with some I/O it's basically just turns your Android device into a desktop computer.
https://www.theverge.com/23787477/apple-ipados-17-stage-mana...
I think you're a bit out of touch with Apple's design approach. Giving an ability to make phone calls from iPad, like taking photos from it, was already not ridiculous enough. Also, you'd need to have a bag with yourself all the time to carry that slap size device.
I suspect they don't feel iPhone apps (at as they are coded by developers today) as a "KVM-style" desktop experience is 'making something better' than the Mac - or even really worth doing.
Cannibalising a public company's most successful product and profit source is extremely risky, especially for management. There is a reason this is so rare. It goes against many of our ingrained behaviours as humans.
So I don't think it's as obvious as you make out.
That means even then, the phone market was 1 billion devices a year. That was a much larger market than the stand alone music player market.
It was also clear that’s where the market was headed. Phone makers were already starting to sell music capable phones
Weird take.
You do, however, need an iPhone to initially setup an Apple Watch, even the cellular version.
Although, interesting to know you had it on the series 4. I thought it was only on the newer series 8 and ultra, but I also just got my first apple watch about 4 months ago.
I think it's too much of a gimmick for Apple to even try, plus Apple is really not known for giving a damn about making their products work well with third-party peripherals.
Now we’re saying “hey, let’s take a slower device with even slower pieces of shit applications on a foundation that worse at multi-window multitasking and make it what people use”
I’d probably blow my own brains out if this actually happened.
The technology is there for this to be usable. The dogshit development practice of “well, the hardware will catch up to my dogshit eventually” is meaning that “the technology isn’t there”.
Edit:
Case in point. This very laptop just spent 15 MINUTES cold boot till it allowed me to join my Teams meeting.
Granted the phone will stay on, so wouldn’t run in to cold boot issues. But also, I don’t want my work phone on all the time. That’s just letting work invade my personal time.
But it'd always have the unavoidable downside of meaning that your phone was effectively tethered (even if just wirelessly) to your desktop. And at that point, why not just have a decent CPU in the desktop?
I guess it'd work well in a world where you constantly traveled between workstations and also couldn't bring your laptop. I've never lived in that world.
For instance, I'm forced to use CapCut on mobile device because the grown-up version is missing half the features.
They've removed Type A while Type C peripherals were basically non-existent, I still can't have reverse scroll direction on my mouse and my touchpad (without using a third-party app), I can't create workspaces with a four finger swipe on an external monitor (but I can on the internal monitor)... My point being that they do the barest of the minimums on a Macbook, so I find the idea of them going all-in on supporting peripherals on an iPhone rather silly.
They didn’t. They waited until the EU made them switch to USB-C.
There will almost certainly be some laptops that attempt to charge themselves from the iPhone battery depending on which of the 10 versions of USB-C are being implemented.
Will all the counterfeit usb-c cables also cause a bunch of confusion when features don’t work?
Will plugging in your phone at the airport be less of a risk?
It’s not like there are 100s of phones out there with a USB-C connector we can try this on already? ;)
So any crappy USB cable will ´work’ for charging, and it’s transparent enough that you won’t really notice in most case.
The only charging differences between cables are raising the current limit above the default 3 amps (which is only relevant at 60+ watts). Those differences won't confuse any devices.
Only if Apple adds MFi-style DRM like they did with Lightning. Otherwise, the only real "features" that could possibly break is data/charging, which is a problem on most serial cables (including Lightning).
For the majority of uses a majority of the time a standard connector is better than non-standard one. Let's just pop the champagne, toast the win, and move on.
The strangest thing has been all the people whining and claiming this stifles innovation. It doesn't.
Will a solo player be able to use their own tech instead of USB-C? No, but that’s the price to pay for interoperability. It’s a trade-off.
I don't.
Do you think it is likely now, based on the current state of connectors?
But they didn't force it.
And I thought you were arguing about the current law, not complaining about something that was ten years ago and didn't happen.
And you still didn't answer my question.
If you mean the EU rulemakers being slow, no I don't think there would have been a multiple year delay to implement the new USB port.
But now I'm done with your questions about a situation that never existed, if you don't think my question is worth acknowledging.
Ideally, the legislation gets amended to that there can be a review process every X amount of years.
I am so surprised that people are okay with letting slow moving legislators set technological directions.
So in theory someone can make an iPad sized touchscreen that connects to your iPhone via USB-C and you'd have no need for an iPad? Or course such a screen could be shared within a household, etc.
Desktop in my pocket would be fan-fn-tastic, obviously. But even a simple larger (than my phone) touchscreen would be a handy step forward.
I have a non touch screen monitor similar to this - power and video over a single USB C port. It works with both my personal Macbook and my work Windows computer.
It should work with an iPad Pro with USB C.
Otherwise I don’t see apple ever allowing a device to be a one stop. If they were going for that then it obsoletes stuff like handoff and universal control.
But really, why do people actually want this? If you’re using your phone for work then it’ll probably have to be domain joined. Then at that point your employer has eyes into the one device you use for everything
The change of plug shape is irrelevant to whether this paradigm shift happens inside Apple, but Apple is better positioned than any other device maker to accomplish it if they focused on it.
No, it wouldn't, because you'd need a display and input device(s) at your destination. So then we ended up with these laptop-style shells for Android and Windows Phone devices that supported this model and suddenly you can't use your phone separately while you're in laptop mode. It's easier to just bring a laptop/Chromebook with you.
There's no need for the device's local storage when you're already syncing important documents to the cloud anyway. This is a "cool" solution in search of a problem.
Maybe for you. For me, I rarely actually use my Macbook Pro in a laptop mode - it's docked at one location or another (but different locations and different Macs, including ones owned by different people). Being able to do that with a phone and not carting around an extra screen and extra keyboard would be pretty nice, as it happens!
Syncing to the cloud is a pain, requires an internet connection, etc. If I could just carry everything around on a personal device and leave the cloud as backup only I would love that.
The fact that they haven’t done is good argument that it isn’t wanted. Partly cause the subset of people who work on planes and don’t pay for Internet is pretty small.
Important personal stuff’s all on my phone. Hell, I basically bought my last house entirely from my phone, including the paperwork, and that was a few years ago. Adding a laptop to the mix wouldn’t have helped. House projects? Phone is several tools for those, laptop’s useless. Banking? Family photos and videos? Notes, alarms, shopping lists, timers, calendar, email, messaging? Document scanning, sending stuff to the printer? Shopping? Ride hailing? Reservations and tickets? Phone. There’s little room or need for a laptop. And I grew up pre-smartphone (hell, didn’t have the Internet at all until I was like 12) so I was well-accustomed to using desktop computers in the before-time.
What a ridiculous and privileged thing to say. Most people do not, in fact, have a computer provided by their employer.
We will have one cable for so many things. Finally....
I mean, yes, hard, shiny, expensive... but just seems so wasteful.
As far as wasteful - sort of. Titanium metal isn’t particularly rare, it’s just bound up in ore that takes an extremely energy intensive process to convert to usable material. That’s the Kroll method, invented 80 years ago to refine titanium. There’s actually a new process called the Armstrong method which is way simpler and less capital and energy intensive. In a very real sense, Apple investing in titanium is exactly what we need to push down the cost of refining and fabricating with the metal.
Aluminum used to be more precious than gold, and then 150 years ago scientists figured out how to cheaply refine aluminum. Now we use aluminum for everything from cheap bottle openers and bike frames to disposable containers and Martian rover parts.
I learned about all of the above over the last 10 years as an engineering nerd. I’ve long been awaiting the day when the Armstrong process is the norm and titanium costs are super low. However that process creates powder, so this might also require low cost titanium 3D printers. All I know is investment can bring down these costs, and I’m glad to see apple doing it!
Bonus: these department of energy videos on the comically complex Kroll process[1] and the super simple Armstrong process[2]:
Just checked - it’s under “camera - formats - most compatible”.