Comment by hot_gril
3 years ago
Not very well, but you can buy decent cables from a variety of manufacturers for cheap, and there isn't this one license-holder (Apple) out there trying to take a big cut from that. If someone wants to make a good Lightning cable for cheap, first they have to break the law by skipping the licensing deal, then they have to get around Apple's own mechanisms.
It doesn’t prevent “ewaste” if phone makers (mostly low end Android phone makers) still bundle shoddy cables, stores are still allowed to sell shoddy cables, etc.
And USB C is not free of licensing requirements
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/450494/are-u...
A “good” USB C cable that supports all of the things I said - high speed data, video over USB, etc - costs around $15. The same price as an Anker Lightning cable.
A random USB C cable doesn’t support video over USB - something I need for my portable secondary display.
The iPads with USB C already support this. I have no reason to believe that the next iPhone won’t.
> A “good” USB C cable that supports all of the things I said - high speed data, video over USB, etc - costs around $15. The same price as an Anker Lightning cable.
But the Lightning cable won't support high speed data. And if you want video over Lightning you can't just use a cable, you need an adapter with an embedded computer to decompress the output.
A USB C cable that has the same capabilities as that Lightning cable is 2-3 dollars.
The EU is suppose to be mandating a “standard”. What good is a “standard” that doesn’t support the “standard”?
USB C cables that come with the iPad supports all of those standards. What are the chances that unsuspecting users in the EU dancing in the streets go in an buy a “standard USB C” and find out that it doesn’t work when they get ready to plug their phone to the TVs or when they find out the promise of “USB3 speeds” because it was the “standard” is a lie because the EU didn’t mandate that as part of the standard?
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It's not free, but it's cheap. A good USB-C cable costs less than $5, not $15. You hardly ever need a good one either, just one for charging.
Re ewaste, that's a different topic. I'm just talking about licensing fees.
Can that $5 USB C cable support data transfers at USB3 speeds and video over USB C?
USB C also has licensing fees. The stated reason was to prevent “ewaste” and yes you can buy a $5 lightning cable.
Here is a 3 pack for $10
https://a.co/d/8FB2naZ
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