Apple still limiting iPhone 16 to embarrassingly slow 24-year-old USB 2.0 speeds

Product line pricing + moat. Nothing mysterious in it.

Customers really want faster USB have two options: buy an Android phone or Pro-model. They calculate that the people pay the price difference instead of moving to Android.

Apple product lineup clearly uses symmetrical dominance effect (aka decoy pricing) to influence consumer choice towards a more expensive or profitable option. Once people choose Apple and exclude alternatives, the drift is contentiously upward unless you really don't have money, or are rational consumer who adheres to independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom (not a big group of people).

My guess is they don't want peripherals and they don't want complex software. Not having these things means their hardware is powerful and impressive at running 14th-gen cooking timers and the like with no loftier goals to aim for, and they never have to worry about backwards compatibility either. You can pass devices down to your kids knowing they'll be able to run 15th and 16th-gen cooking timers just fine, even 17th and 18th-gen cooking timers. Maybe not 19th or 20th-gen cooking timers, as there are limits to their generosity.

The limitations are just a way to sell the pro version.

They need to carefully see what to cut off the REAL flagship to justify the price.

Honestly i don't get it.

Like, why they don't have a single line of phones with the best they can do? Is this strategy that much nore profitable?

Do they want to have a cheaper smaller phone or do they want a justification to sell the Pro at that price?

Samsung unified the Note and Galaxy line a while ago and no one misses having 3 more models to choose from.

The 60 Hz display is much worse, IMO. High refresh rates are not a particularly new or expensive feature, so I would definitely expect that on a $1000 phone.

Does anyone use the physical port to transfer data? I can’t remember doing that since OTA became a thing like 10 years ago.