Comment by llm_nerd
3 days ago
Users all got to complain that the EU are the meanies responsible for their old wires and chargers and accessory no longer being compatible, but it seems infinitely more likely that Apple was going to adopt USB-C on largely the same schedule even if the EU didn't intercede.
To be clear, Apple had already moved their laptops and computers to USB-C -- long in advance of almost any one else -- and had moved their iPad Pros and Air to USB-C, building out the accessory set supporting the same, years before the EU decree. Pretty convenient when they get to blame the EU for their smartphones making the utterly inevitable move.
They had Macs on USB-C for like 7 years before the iPhone. It was going to stay like that. Mac on USB-C meant more dongles to sell, iPhone on Lightning meant cable fees and control.
You think Apple is going to make the user experience on iPhones – a product that makes them hundreds of billions of dollars a year – to sell more cables‽ How much profit do you think they can possibly make with those cables?
Apple came under fire when they moved from 30-pin connectors to Lightning because people wanted to keep their 30-pin connectors. At the time, Apple said that they wouldn’t make people switch for another decade. They switched to USB-C eleven years later.
Yes. They did it with the headphone jack too. Nobody will switch to Android for either of those, in fact the more Apple-specific stuff the more lockin.
> You think Apple is going to make the user experience on iPhones – a product that makes them hundreds of billions of dollars a year – to sell more cables?
Seems like it's more a matter of conveniently waiting until it's clearly some kind of explicit competitive disadvantage not to switch, or otherwise have their hand forced, rather than making their products worse.
That said, Apple makes their products worse all the time for a variety of reasons, it shouldn't be so hard to believe, and they also let their products stagnate until they may as well be discontinued, like someone who stops engaging in a relationship until you eventually break up with them.
> How much profit do you think they can possibly make with those cables?
A lot. I'd wager somewhere in the realm of a % of hundreds of billions
Yes of course. How much did the cables cost with replacements for fraing ones. Revenue is revenue, same as with consoles - main device is not the main income source, its the ecosystem and additional devices and services people buy and keep paying for.
This is business 101.
> “Apple came under fire … [for 30-pin]”
So freaking what? Since when does Apple care about what customers whine about? They didn’t actually give a flying fig when users moaned about 30-pin to Lightning, did they? Show me how they apologized or walked that back. Same for the headphone jack. Same for the one-port MacBook 12”. And the MacBook keyboard - until class action got them - they put that garbage in several generations of laptops! The point being, they could have adopted USB-C whenever they wanted to and let the whiners whine — they just didn’t want to.
Stop anthropomorphizing Tim Cook. Apple doesn’t do anything because they feel bad about customer complaints. Apple does things for profit. Profit only. If you disagree, may I point to their recent zeal to buddy up with DJT. Is that a principled embrace of that dude? Or are they just weighting anything that isn’t profit at zero and then making the rational decision from there.
> You think Apple is going to make the user experience on iPhones – a product that makes them hundreds of billions of dollars a year – to sell more cables‽
Uh yes, of course they would. They happily would do that.
There were hundreds of devices on Amazon that never paid Apple a fee to use Lightning.
And as far as USB C on Macs, are you complaining that Apple used an industry standard port?
USB-C wasn't exactly standard when Apple put it in Macs. Nothing else used it yet, and they didn't have any transition period. Its sole purpose for years was to get adapted to other ports. And if you wanted to use it as Lightning, you basically needed the Apple cable.
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No, there weren't. Lightning cable have an authentication chip, and while it was cloned towards the end of the lifecycle, most accessories still utilized official chips.
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>iPhone on Lightning meant cable fees and control.
Strange, then, that Apple already moved the iPad Pro and iPad Air to USB-C, right? Didn't they get the memo about "cable fees and control"? It's almost like they were incrementally moving all their platforms over.
The cable fees conspiracy has always been a weird one. At the absolute highest, MFi fees were estimated at some $80M per year. Do you know how utterly irrelevant that number is to Apple? It's like 0.02% of their revenue. Far more logically they literally intended it as a quality assurance given that the company was very focused on user satisfaction.
EU kinda failed with it once before, they pushed for phone vendors to get to common standard https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/memo_1...
didn't work, apple still did their own thing so EU went "ok, fuck you, usb-c"
Apple probably wouldn’t have changed to usbc for their phones. Lightning was a mobile phone / other development, whilst usbc and its contributions came from their Mac department.
They did not like each others standards. I know Apple engineers working on the phone who dislike the change even up to this day…
USB-C is a worse mechanical connector for a device plugged in thousands of times over its lifetime. The female port of a USB-C connector has a relatively fragile center blade. Lightning's layout was the opposite which makes it more robust and easier to clean.
> USB-C is a worse mechanical connector for a device plugged in thousands of times over its lifetime.
USB-C connectors are usually rated for 10k cycles. Do you have any evidence that lighting connectors are rated for more cycles than that?
> The female port of a USB-C connector has a relatively fragile center blade. Lightning's layout was the opposite which makes it more robust and easier to clean.
This is very weak a priori arguing. I could just as well argue that USB-C has the center blade shielded instead of exposed and so is more durable.
Unless you have some empirical evidence on this I don't see a strong argument for better durability from either connector.
20 replies →
Incorrect. You want springy bits on part that is easily replaceable - the cable. USB-C does that, the springy bits are in the connector, not the socket.
My phone is now 6 years old, zero problems on usb-c connector
Did they give reasons for why they don't like the change?
"I know Apple engineers working on the phone"
Groan. Come on. Cite one. A single "Apple engineer" to support this ridiculous claim of insider knowledge. What year do you think it is?
You understand that the SoC and I/O blocks are largely shared between the Mac and the iPad / iPhone now, right? This invention of some big bifurcation is not reality based. The A14 SoC (which became the foundation for the Mac's M1) had I/O hardware to support USB-C all the ways back to the iPhone 12. Which makes sense as this chipset was used in iPads that came with USB-C.
Pretty weird for hardware that is largely the same to "not like each others standards".
The I/O blocks are similar, but very much not the same between the different Axy/Mz chips.
They're different even between A19 Pro in an iPhone Air and the one in 17 Pros! The Air one doesn't support 10Gbps USB-C.
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It's conceivably politically incorrect to use this reference, but Apple was begging the EU not to throw them into that briar patch.
Begging? Apple filed a couple of light objections -- basically a "don't regulate us, bro" -- and then moved on. Their resistance was laughably superficial
Look, Apple is a predatory, extraordinarily greedy company, but these sorts of "thanks EU!" discussions are a riot. Thanks EU, for making Apple support a clone of an Apple feature that didn't exist until Apple made it, and for "forcing" Apple to transition their line to USB-C, which they were already almost completely done doing.
>> which they were already almost completely done doing
Honest question - why did they stick with lighting on iphones for so long, given that usb-c has been ubiquitus on phones for years before that point. I mean we can sit here and say "duh apple was going to do it anyway" but like.....why didn't they? Why did samsung have usb-c phones long before apple?
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I think you missed GP’s point. The briar patch is a reference to the story of Br’er Rabbit, which involves pretending to object to a punishment that one really doesn’t mind at all (and might even prefer).
The GP is suggesting that Apple was more than happy to have this mandate. I tend to agree: they wanted to switch the iPhone to USB-C anyway, but there’s always people who are going to be upset that their Lightning accessories no longer work or need an adapter. But this way they can say that the EU forced their hand. They get what they wanted all along, but they also get a scapegoat who can take the blame for the remaining downsides.
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People spent a whole decade complaining about the iPod dock -> Lightning change.
I'd wait to blame the EU also.
> but it seems infinitely more likely that Apple was going to adopt USB-C on largely the same schedule even if the EU didn't intercede
There is no reason to believe this at all given how hard Apple fought the EU on this.
Apple likely didn't want the precedent or bad press of the EU mandating changes in their supply chain.
Do you have any sources that "Apple fought the EU" regarding USB-C?
Absolutely. It is excessively obvious and I don’t understand how not much more of a common take that is.
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What are you talking about? The iPhone has been using USB-C globally since the iPhone 15 in 2023.
Heh. Maybe I just haven't met anyone with such a new iPhone yet