Comment by ricw
3 days ago
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.
> 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.
The unshielded Lightning center blade is on a $5 connector. If it breaks, I'm out $5 and it's reasonable to have spares.
The shielded USB-C center blade is part of an expensive device. If it breaks....
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My Pixel 8 certainly hasn't gone through 10k cycles and it barely holds on to any USB-C connector I put inside it. They all fall out even when laying still on a flat surface.
There's always outliers, of course, but I had this issue with USB Micro-B on at least one other device and never saw it with a Lightning connector.
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My own empirical evidence suggests that USB-C ports stop holding tightly onto cables after light to moderate use.
To be fair, Lightning ports were prone to being clogged with lint, but that was fixable in twenty seconds with a safety pin.
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The 10K cycle insertion rating for USB-C is an idealized metric that does not include lateral force, torque, device movement, or real-world wear patterns. These non-axial forces are a known cause of USB-C port failures and are explicitly not accounted for in the standard 10k-cycle durability claim.
USB-C center tongue female design means that the port will break before the cable. With lightning, the cable plug takes all the stress.
Apple doesn’t publish insertion cycles rating for Lightning connectors, so it’s impossible to provide empirical evidence of that.
In my personal experience, I’ve had two USB-C ports go bad on two MacBooks. I’ve yet to own a USB-C-charging phone, but I’ve never had a Lightning port fail.
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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.
Well sure, they're iterating between models. But in many cases they're quite literally copy/pasting designs. Any imagined separation between the hardware teams is fantasy based. The comment I replied to is nonsensical.
"They're different even between A19 Pro in an iPhone Air and the one in 17 Pros"
The SoC and I/O blocks are quite literally identical. An A19 Pro is an A19 Pro, aside from binning for core disables. The difference is in the wiring and physical connector on the device which puts a ceiling on the features supported, one of which is 10Gbps. The Air famously includes some new "3D printed" super thin Titanium USB-C port, using the 4 pins rather than the "pro" 9 pin 10Gbps capable connector. The SoC is identical, they just only wired it up for USB 2.0.