Comment by brookst
8 days ago
The EU did not force the matter. They trotted out in front of the parade and pretended to lead it.
Apple switched a year before required, and not coincidentally, ten years after promising that Lightning would be the connector “for the next decade” so as to reduce fears from those who were angry about being “forced” to replace their 30-pin peripherals.
I don’t know why tech enthusiasts tend toward conspiratorial thinking, but certainly if Apple had obsoleted Lightning after only 8 years, many of these same people would be professing outrage and demanding class action lawsuits over such a greedy deceit.
I think you need a pretty good amount of willful naivety to think that Apple didn’t make the switch with such coincidental timing to EU law changes purely out of the love of their customers.
Let’s not forget the very same year they stopped including the charging brick they started including USB-C to lightning cables in the box, so that their supposedly environmentally friendly practice forced their users to buy a new brick unless they saved previous cables. Why didn’t they switch to USB-C back then? To make users do another transition a few short years later?
They’re aren’t exactly a company with a track record of maintaining standards for the convenience and backward compatibility for their customers. This idea that they kept lightning around to maintain legacy standards doesn’t really track with the rest of their behavior.
They have a 20+ year old reputation for abruptly dropping and replacing ports.
> Let’s not forget the very same year they stopped including the charging brick they started including USB-C to lightning cables in the box, so that their supposedly environmentally friendly practice forced their users to buy a new brick unless they saved previous cable
There are countries which put pressure on removing both the charger and the cable with regulations related to e-waste. France I believe requires a product to be available for purchase without a charger. Ironically, Apple at least used to bundle EarPods with the iPhone in France due to some electromagnetic radiation regulation.
> Let’s not forget the very same year they stopped including the charging brick they started including USB-C to lightning cables in the box, so that their supposedly environmentally friendly practice forced their users to buy a new brick unless they saved previous cables. Why didn’t they switch to USB-C back then? To make users do another transition a few short years later?
Maybe I'm missing something here but how does a transition from having a charging brick to not having one relate to the transition on the other end of the cable going from one port to another?
I’ll explain:
The status quo is that I have an iPhone with the included USB-A 5W charger. On the other end is a lightning connector.
Next iPhone comes out and Apple stops including the charging brick, but the included cable is now USB-C to lightning.
So I can’t keep the brick that I already own and actually use the new cable that Apple includes in the box. If I want to sell my phone with all accessories then I’m left with a cable and nothing to plug it into. If I want to keep using my old cable and brick I now have a spare USB-C to lighting cable that does nothing for me.
Basically Apple created a situation that doesn’t really make sense for any hypothetical user. Someone somewhere is buying a new brick or cable or has an extra wasted cable because of it.
> I think you need a pretty good amount of willful naivety to think that Apple didn’t make the switch with such coincidental timing to EU law changes purely out of the love of their customers.
The designs are finalized years in advance. Apple would have made the choice to ship USB-C before the EU mandate was even proposed.
“Years in advance” but a new phone design comes out every year. Doesn’t pass the smell test.
If an individual hacker can change the lightning port to USB-C in the phone (this really happened) then Apple can definitely make the design change within a short timeframe like a month.
> those who were angry about being “forced” to replace their 30-pin peripherals
> many of these same people would be professing outrage and demanding
As you may have guessed I'm pretty critical of Apple (despite giving them a ton of money) but I'd classify the above critics as idiots (and given the media loves a story like that, a lot of that outrage is entirely made up for clicks). To the extent Apple cares what anyone thinks (and I doubt they do), they surely know that any decision they make will be attacked by this type of knee-jerk silliness.
Media: Apple keeping their proprietary Lightning connector for MFi revenue reasons and because they don't want to be compatible or make it easier to switch to Android.
Also Media: Apple forcing everyone to switch from Lightning to USB to force them to buy all new expensive accessories! Greed!
Apple would have eventually moved the iPhone to USB C. It had already started moving the iPads to USB years before the mandate. The EU hastened it.
haven't seen this kind of Apple glazing in a long time