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Lightning is/was actually pretty great. Also remember that it was introduced before USB-C even existed.
Yeah alternative was MicroUSB which is dogshit.
I’m using my wife’s old android for YouTube. It has a microusb port and I really hate it.
Lighting was leaps better than that, but usb-c is really the king of ports at the moment.
This is the only valid opinion.
Perhaps one day we get a magnetic replacement for USB-C.
Why a replacement? You can already buy usb c cables with detachable magnetic heads if you fancy that
Would be a nice thing to have in the spec for the cable, as those ones aren’t compliant with the spec, and can in some cases cause problems, like on disconnect it might be possible for one of the PD pins to short against one of the data pins before the side delivering power has had time to process the disconnect.
It’s a pretty specific edge case and I’m sure not a problem most people have had or will run into, but would be nice if it could be part of the spec.
Fair enough, an officially sanctioned extension would also be fine!
We can call it the USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Magnets, How Do They Work Edition
Because it is usb-c, the magnetised version is also officially sanctioned.
It’s the king of ports at the moment but I have concerns about the fact there’s that “prong” in the middle of the female connector. It seems like it could be something to break. I did like the fact there wasn’t anything in the middle of the lightning port, made it seem more durable to me over time (at least the port side, but that’s what you want with these things…)
Nevermind that the same connector could be USB 3.1 Gen X fuckton-gigabit, USB4, Thunderbolt 3 or 4… USB needs to learn from the WiFi groups recent rename scheme…
Lightening cables have easy to clean contacts and a hard to break jack, I have broken many many usb-c cables just stepping on them or rolling over them with an office chair or getting filled with lint on the inside of the jack.
No hate, but I cannot fathom feeling the way you do about Micro USB and not spending $200 on some of the very solid Android phones that have come out in the 9 years since USB C has been the standard.
I only started using it like a month ago and I’m already looking at a used galaxy s10e. They are like $140 where I live. But I will get a new iPhone first.
Fun fact: Apple was part of the group that designed USB-C
Also why is it awesome on iPad Pros since years but no good on iPhones? The marketing was always contradicting itself.
The reason is money.
It’s more complicated than that. There are lots of people that will be very annoyed when they unbox their iPhone and their plug that they don’t think about at all doesn’t work in the 7 places they’ve left them.
Just wait.
I already did this moving from micro to USB-C and it wasn’t that bad. Plus if they’re apple people and have MacBooks/iPads they already got a few.
Oh well
I’d wager part of it was because of the outrage when they switched from the 30 pin was significant
When was that? Was Obama already president? Move on, people.
I think they did promise to (it suggest they would?) support the lightning connector for a decade when they changed it from their original big connector.
I’m not naive enough to think that takes precedence over “money” as an answer, but maybe it was a factor?
That was really weird, actually. Apple was frustrated that the USB consortium wasn’t making progress. So they developed Lightning. Then sent people there to help develop USB-C, when they already had a competing connector…
They should’ve been more patient, and sent people there directly, before developing a competitor, and adopted USB-C from the start.
With that move, they isolated themselves and their customers. It’s this arrogant “we’re smarter than anybody else” attitude they show sometimes, that irks a lot of people and end up being detrimental for their image. (And I say this as a long time Apple customer).
Nah it was a great move, earned them a couple billions in licensing fees
To the disadvantage of literally everyone
Capitalism in a nutshell.
Connection technology was good, but materials used in cable and design of strain release was horrible. Never seen a cable disintegrate without any reason after couple of years.
It cost tens of millions of dollars to engineer a product that disintegrates on their own
Truly revolutionary
Funnily enough my first ever Lightning cable that came with my iPod Touch 5G is so worn out you can see the 4 wires in it. Insulation and shield are completely gone at one end but it still works fine.
Thats how fires start.
Incidentally, I have a micro USB cable that came with my Nokia N97 (must be 2012 or something).
It’s flawless still and even after more than 10 years of service (now charging my xbox controller) it’s working fine.
I’ve tried purchasing identical “original” cables of same kind since then, but they all last a few months before getting lose our stop connecting.
5v are not going to start a fire 😅
Depends on the components you attach.
Something rated for 3v will start smoking, and if it is touching something flammable, it can start a fire.
I think the problem is that between lightning cables and USB-C, one is made by an asshole company who wants you to use it for your phone and literally nothing else, and one is useful for your phone and literally everything else.
Funnily enough, Apple co-developed USB, introduced it in their laptops and everyone complained.
They complained because they literally stripped away most or all the usb-a’s in that process, forcing people to have to use hubs.
Apple does this shit all the time, and people always hate it.
lightning suffered the same fate as FireWire before it: excellent protocol that would have benefited the users with mass adoption, hampered by Apple and their co-developers (in lightning’s case, Intel) charging too steep of licensing fees, rendering them niche
USB-C wasn’t really useful for anything when Lightning was introduced, on account of it not even existing as a spec, let alone actual hardware, until 2 years later.
At the time it came out, definitely, considering its main competitors for a standardised connector were Mini USB and Micro USB, which were serviceable but not that great…
Could be worse though, you could’ve been stuck with “superspeed” Micro USB like some folks were, those were just plain awful to use.
pretty sure my samsung Note had that
The problem with mini and micro was that they were asymmetrical and very small, imo. at least you could tell which side the indent was on without looking with superspeed. Good luck getting it in the hole without looking, though.
I’m pretty sure Samsung released a couple phones with it. The Note 3, S5, and I think the active that year had it. I worked in retail then and everyone in awhile people would come in looking for the specific cable and had no idea it would charge with standard micro USB.
I like the ATP discussion (First discussion - replacing Lightning with USB-C; and second discussion - usb rumour; and third discussion - “shameful” data speeds) on lightning vs USB-C (recorded a few days before the event). Broadly, they say lightning was a great connector (and I agree) but its time has come and it’s time to move on, and USB has welcome upgrades.
No
You can always tell the Apple fans, can’t you? This cable was hated by everyone when it came out because it broke everyones docks.
It also wasnt much faster, in fact, I’m almost positive the first phones were throttled, not unlike the new iPhone’s with type c.
Yeah, it’s amazing what people will stand up for. It’s quite odd.
Appledrone
Not fair. It was a great cable. It came out when everyone else was using mini and mico usb which both sucked hard ass. They weren’t reversible, and they broke easily.
It was a good cable when it came out, but as soon as USB-C became common it was obsolete. It was limited to USB2 speeds and did not support fast charging.
I still don’t understand the reason for the speed limit tbh. It just makes their product look like shit.
Faster USB chipset is more expensive and potentially also physically larger with more traces on the circuit board to deal with I imagine. And faster data speeds require more attention to how the traces are routed to prevent interference. I very much doubt this is anything other than to save a relatively small amount on materials and engineering costs, on an already overpriced phone, and/or to try and “encourage” you to use iCloud by making offline sync and backup painfully slow.
As someone involved in engineering boards with both USB 2.0 and 3.0 the costs are negligible. You’re not wrong about more traces or about it requiring more attention but per phone this cost less then a few cents.
I think it’s more about the upsell to the Pro line or as you suggested encouraging use of iCloud.
deleted by creator
USB-C is still not “common”. There are now all kinds of different cables with nothing in common except a form factor. Also, USB-C came out 2.5 years after lightning and didn’t match feature parity until the Thunderbolt spec and that was 5 years later. At that point, accessories and cables that used the Lightning port numbered in the millions, if not billions.
Also, what do you mean? The new phones support USB3…
How is USB-C not common? It’s the default for every remotely modern android phone I’ve seen, all the modern game consoles I’ve seen (eg, the Switch and PS5 controllers), and many other random electronics use it (I even had a covid tester that was plugged into USB-C). All my laptops these days use it (including two Chromebooks, a high end MacBook, and a Windows laptop) and of those, only the Windows laptop even had USB-A ports (ie, the other laptops only had USB-C).
I won’t pretend it’s perfectly ubiquitous. There’s lots of older electronics still using micro or mini USB (there’s been no reason for manufacturers to update older devices). But it’s definitely common in my book.
It’s not “common” in the sense that a USB-C connector can be all kinds of different implementations of the USB2/3 standards. To use your example, using a USB-C charger other than the default Nintendo one can short out a Switch completely and kill it. Compared to products that use Lightning, the number out there dwarves the current USB-C landscape. There are tons of devices that still use USB-A and USB-B and USB-C hubs don’t really exist.
In that case either the charger or the Switch was faulty, no matter the protocol in use, the devices should negotiate which charging profile to use. You can’t blame a non-spec implementation on the protocol, that’s on the manufacturer.
From what I’ve been able to see, that specific issue stems from a combination of cheap chargers/docking stations and Nintendo changing the USB-C port tolerances to allow smooth sliding in and out of the dock. Again, don’t blame the standard if the manufacturer decided to implement their own crappy version of it.
Only the Pro models, I believe. Funnily enough, typical Apple too, since they are bundling only a usb2.0 cable in the box for the Pro as well.
And technically the connector itself is way beter by clicking into place.
And they made sure no one else could develop a design with the same characteristics by patenting the fuck out of it. Thanks apple
What’s funny to me is that the solution to long term use was in their hands. They could have licensed it cheaply to other devices until it replaced the mini USB, then charged whatever they wanted for use once it was the defacto standard. Instead they clasped too tightly onto it and now it’s being forced into retirement
With how many cheap android phones have been produced, they’d be making money even if someone wasn’t buying an apple product, essentially taking a piece of the market share that wasn’t theirs.
But they did not see themselves as a utility supplier. They preferred having the superior charging cable over licensing it to others. This way they protected their market share on Iphones.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just in a minority but personally I don’t care enough about what port is on a phone that that’s my primary concern when choosing a new phone. Sure, if a similarly spec’d phone at a similar price point drops I might take it into account, but for the most part I buy the best phone I can with the budget I have
And then bundled it with a 5W charger?
No, if the clamp-mechanism breaks, you habe to replace the connector on the phone while with UsbC you only have to use a different cable.
I like USB type C, it’s a great connector and lightyears better than micro-b, or even micro-b 3.0 but the biggest issue I’ve come across is that it’s so easy to get dirt in the phone connector.
In fact a couple months back I had to sit there with a super thin safety pin and clean all the compacted shmutz that had gotten in my phone connector, bexause it was so bad the clamp wasn’t engaging at all, and cables were getting more and more unreliable. Once I got it cleaned every cable I’ve ever bought worked perfectly.
Ive never seen the dirt issue or the clamp mechanism breaking on a lightning connector before - neither on my parents phones, or on the spare phone we keep as one of those old backup phones if someone’s phone gets smashed or drowned. But it’s not really saying much as I never kept the backup phone for long, as I hate apple and iPhones, so it’s entirely possible that under longer term use with me specifically that it could’ve got broken or dirty due to my uniquely rough way of handling things .
my current pixel 3a has a thick protective case, which has kept it mostly undamaged over the years I’ve had it, despite many drop events. The only thing that has stopped working on it was the NFC reader, and so far I’ve managed to avoid breaking the screen. I’ll probably keep using it till it stops functioning at this rate, as options for new phones don’t really fit my needs or wants.
I used to run a repair shop. USB-C is definitely a dust magnet. Lightning is no better though. I cleaned just as many Lightning ports as I did C ports. They were slightly easier to clean though, without that fragile central post getting in the way.
I’ve also worked on literally tens of thousands of iPhones, and have never seen the clamp break on a lightning port, so idk what that dude is talking about. The actual clamp is on the cable, it just sits in a hole inside the port along either wall.
I’ve cleaned out plenty of Lightning ports over the years. Filled with gunk. Most of the time the connector would still work, but in some cases intermittently or not at all.
Huh, I guess you’ve proved me wrong with that one. I will say though I wonder which one is easier to clean out. Can someone whose done both comment?
I am on my third usb-module on my phone. Luckily it is replaceable. I would really like the concept of sticking a . in a o (as it is with lightning) than to have an . in a O and fiddling a o between both (as in USB-C). I have never lost a cable through wear and tear so far though…
Yeah if… the rest of your comment is nonsense. If a usb-c connector breaks on the phone a new cable is just as useless.
It was a piece of shit, always. Doesn’t matter if it was technically better, it was not standardized so fuck lightning cables forever. Good riddance to seriously awful bullshit rubbish
As someone who has had 2 small fires started in their cup holder with that so called “technically better” cable I will never understand how apple was ever able to market an exposed contact charging cable in the first place.
Wow, hadn’t heard about that but it makes sense. Yeah this thread is way weird. So many people simping for a cable.
Doesn’t matter if it was technically better
Do you approach your life with such black and white emotional reactions? Fuck nuance, details, and critical evaluations, amirite? Bad guy good guy hurrdurr.
I’m not going to argue why standards are good, that’s self evident. Sorry you’re blind to this.
How’s this for nuance? Apple made billions of dollars by just choosing to be dicks. That’s the honest truth here. Simp all you want.
Standards can be good, it’s not black and white, and dismissing the technical merit outright is batshit insane. You lack critical thinking. It has nothing to do with any other meaningless term you want to throw around.
Right the person looking to advance society with standards can’t think critically but the person who sucks off apple against logic is a brain master.
sucks off apple against logic
Your lack of assessment is even more evident. I never one mentioned the company. You did.
Lol yeah that’s how it works
Doesn’t matter how great the cable is, when it is proprietary it stinks.
Yeah, I still think it’s a great mechanical interface, if not the best. Would’ve been great if rather than killing it, regulatory bodies had forced USB to adopt the lightning design for the C type.
Lightning doesn’t have near the capabilities of USB C. Lightning had its time but it’s pretty clear that USB C is superior.
Lightning doesn’t have near the capabilities of USB C. … pretty clear that USB C is superior.
Are you talking about the capabilities of the USB protocol 3.x, or the mechanical design like I was? I don’t know a single property where the mechanical design of USB is superior to Lightning, but I’m ready to be enlightened.
For example having 3x the pins is a big plus. I don’t know why you are so focused on not including the protocols a port can use. Apple will most likely use USB to make connections between PCs and their Phones possible. And you have to have connectors capable of carrying the signals for those protocols.
The huge speeds of USB 3.0 (USB 3.2 Gen 1x1) and up are because of added twisted pairs carrying the signals in duplex (Plus a new USB A connector). Anything above USB 3.2 (USB 3.2 Gen 1x2 and USB 3.2 Gen 3 2x2) needs to use USB-C because the older USB-A Connector doesn’t have enough pins to allow a connection to a cable with 4 twisted pairs (plus one for backwards compatibility).
I think the lighting connector is enough to allow for a USB 3.0 connection, but you would have to switch the signals after it comes out of the port somehow, as the 3rd pair is not used during FullSpeed (I think there’s an adapter that does this)
Even if they don’t use USB and develope their own protocol, it’s gonna benefit from more parralel connections
The mechanical design was patented by apple, THEY decided that others were not allowed to use it (unless they pay).
One area where that is the case is the clamping mechanism. With USB-C, the moving parts/springs, which are the part of a connector that is most prone to failute are in the cable, which is both easier and significantly cheaper to replace than the charging port/device.
I don’t think this design could have work for USB 3.1 and more, even apple put USB -c as PD on there MacBook because it can deliver more watt (I think)
but yeah it was much better design than micro usb
Holy fuck I thought this was a joke
Wouldn’t that be a Lightning to USB C adapter? That naming doesn’t make sense.
The usb-c is at the top in the picture so I’ll have to disagree with you
Wait doesn’t that mean it’s a Lightning to USB C if the top is USB-C and the bottom is Lightning?
No, the USB-C port becomes a Lightning port.
Who is this for? Looking at the Apple Store, they sell an official USB-C cable for less ($19, but you can obviously find good quality third-party cables for much less).
This is 100% made for uninformed people in how that insurance will make money.
People so engraved into the Apple Ecosystem, they only have lightning cables/devices and not a single usb-c cable
It’s probably for accessories
I can get an usb c cable cheaper than that
We all know about monoprice it’s cool
Lightning was significantly ahead of the competition when it came out in 2012. Micro-USB is a terrible collection of ports. C came out two years later though, and quickly surpassed Lightning in almost every way.
The amount of USB type ports I’ve seen where the ‘tongue’ has been absolutely mangled is mind boggling — an issue that Lightning completely bypassed.
For example, I’m repairing some kids PS5 and both back USB ports have had their pins twisted and the plastic snapped off. The HDMI port pins are lifting from the mainboard and the front of the unit is scratched to high hell. I see some of the worst treated tech at my job, and those plastic bits get damaged a lot. While Apple needed to move to USB-C six years ago with the iPhone X, I will respect Lightning for this one thing.
All cables have issues. One thing I see often only with iPhone cables are they’re always falling apart, especially the outer parts near the end.
My household all has iPhones but me. They go through at minimum 3 a year
I’m still on the same USB C cable I kept from my pixel 1, and I use it on my 7, still use the same car charging cord from 7 years ago too
I’m a fan of iPhones, Apple Watches, and iPads, but most of Apple’s accessories are terrible. MagSafe is fine because of how it’s used, and their wall adapters are fine. But Apple brand cables, phone cases, watch bands, etc. are all garbage. I mean, they will literally be in the garbage in under a year. Never fails.
Doesn’t matter how “environmentally friendly” a product is - if you need to replace it frequently, it’s bad for the planet and for your wallet. Just exclusively buy 3rd party cables and accessories that are cheaper and higher quality.
This is a bit anecdotal. It could simply be you’re more tech savvy and/or just care for your electronics better.
Lightning cables are very thin and flimsy, even the third party cables.
At least with USB-C you have a lot of options. I like the Anker fabric cables the best since they allow more bending without breaking.
I recall the same issue on the cables for my old 30-pin connector, and Apple earbuds / in-ear headphones. Don’t think it’s related to Lightning, just Apple cables
Little tip - it’s usually because of pocket lint. Take a small piece of plastic or a toothpick and clean it out. 9 times out of 10, that’s all you need.
Alternatively, get yourself a bulk pack of compressed air cans and solve this and many other problems in life without needing to jam shit into the port. If you use it often enough, invest in a powered air duster.
Just invest in the Data Vac or one of the millions of off brands on Amazon. Less waste that way. I use off brand more frequently but the data vac feels like it’s built to last and has more power.
Data Vac is my plan once I finish this 12-pack of cans. But at this rate, that’ll take me another 2 years. It was $26 when I bought it, but now I see they’re $45 - that’s half the cost of a Data Vac. So there’s no point in getting disposables at that price.
Oh no, I’m talking outright wrecked — you can see damaged pins upon observation.
(To be clear to the downvoters, I see this in my job where I repair consumer tech. I’ve clarified in my original post since some people seem to think I’m arguing exclusively in favour of lightning, or maybe think I’ve seen this on my own devices?)
I clean out densely compacted pocket lint frequently out of customer devices. One needle nose tweezer end for extracting the bulk, then isopropyl on a thin lint free cloth pushed in with a small piece of plastic to determine what’s left inside that isn’t easily visible. Typically makes the port look as good as new.
And yet I never have USBC problems, but had multiple I phones that started failing to charge via the wired port.
i havent had a usb-c cable go bad from anything but a cat chewing on it. The ports on the other hand…
C came out 4 years later. Not two. And C has tons of problems with it still.
Ahh i wasn’t certain, I must have used the developed date instead of the release date on the wiki when I double checked. Thanks for the correction. C isn’t perfect, but it’s a pretty damn versatile panda convenient port in my experience.
3? phones started using them in 2015
1+2 came in mid 2015
USB-C has less problems than Lightning
The problems with type C cables have to do with overloading it to work with very high bandwidth applications like thunderbolt docks (which is mostly to do with the cable itself rather than the connector). Nobody has any issues with charging and basic data transfer on type-C (no more than any other cable).
The problems with type c cables come from the spec that allows every cable to work differently. Did you know type c cables are allowed to work in only one direction? Yeah, they can have data directionality. There are a ton of other issues but I seriously doubt anyone that is downvoting has ever soldered their own type c cable or even read the spec for them so it’s pretty clear they don’t realize all the issues.
They never would if switched if it wasn’t forced on them. I’m glad they were forced no matter how apple spins it
would if
They took it further than the incorrect “would of” just to fuck with us.
Boneappletea
There is no God
would if is the new would of
Wake up babe, new torture method just dropped
Good. Apple’s whole ecosystem can go.
Wanna know how I know you’re poor
Imagine feeling like your phone’s brand defines if you’re poor or not lol
It sometimes does. But not in this case.
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I didn’t make this world, I’m just describing it.
What’s the logic here?
Saving money doesn’t make you poor, it makes you smart.
…the battlecry of poor people…
Wow you seem like a cool and interesting individual!
Rich people didn’t get rich by frivolously spending money.
Exploitation mostly, but also by not wasting money on status symbols.
Restricting yourself is being called rich? Wtf?
The most expensive iPhone is $1600, and the Galaxy Fold 5 with the same storage option is $2160, disliking Apple has nothing to do with poverty.
Even if I were a billionaire, I wouldn’t want an iPhone. You can’t sideload apps, that’s an automatic disqualifier in my mind for a smartphone.
Edit: Also, you’ve edited your comment from “Wanna know how I know you’re poor” to “Wanna know how I know you’re cool” without indicating it, which is a dick move.
So you wanna get hacked on purpose (re: side loading)?
I’d hardly call F-Droid dangerous, these apps are generally safer than many apps on Google’s Play Store. Sure, if you get some apk files from some shady website for the purpose of piracy, you are likely to get malware, but stop acting like installing apps outside of the default appstore is some dangerous and irresponsible thing. Your phone is a computer that lives in your pocket, treat it like you would treat a PC and you’ll be fine.
Tbh, I sometimes don’t care and just throw them into the Workspace environment. As I am using Graphene OS, there shouldn’t be a purpose for the workspace as every app is inside a heavy sandbox on default.
Open Source apps tend to be more secure because you can see, change and audit the code.
There were too many hacking Attacks for normal apps that contain mostly adware or Malware… As many are greedy and need to have some purpose to pay 100€ for just showing up on the store.
With sideloading Open Source apps, you can enjoy a life many people call as the only free life you can have. Richard Stallman makes nearly a religion out of it with GNU.
OSS has its own attack vectors which closed doesn’t, i.e. malicious code snuck into upstream libraries and going unnoticed for weeks, or outright buying popular oss code from devs to abuse.
Neither is more secure.
People can figure out what happens on OSS while for closed source, it will be after 5 years still unnoticed
Tell me you don’t understand technology without saying you don’t understand technology.
You are just perpetuating Apple’s excuses to keep charging you.
Also: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-app-store-malware-click-fraud/
Now I’m interested to hear what you think that proves…
Wanna know how I know you’re insufferable
You like Coldplay?
Would dismissing someone’s preference in favor of your own do that?
I dislike the Apple ecosystem a lot and the laptop I have on order is more expensive than a MacBook Pro 14 with M2 Pro
Oh so it’s all about money for you!
Nah, performance.
Which you can get in spades if you don’t suck on Apples ecosystem like it’s your mother’s tit.
If the performance of a modern Mac isn’t enough for you, you’re probably installing a million background bloatware apps and run them all in the background without knowing, like a boomer.
You’re just not using computers right
No, I was denying the fact that “If you don’t use Apple you’re poor”.
I am paying top dollar for a laptop that has the specifications I want, an exposed PCIE port for arbitrary PCIE devices to be dropped on the bus at any given time, perfect Linux support, and every part designed to be able to upgraded and repaired at will. Yes, if I ever need to, I want to be able to have 96 GB of RAM and 6 TB of storage installed. Apple simply does not allow this. In my case, my total configuration will be 32 GB of RAM and 3 TB of storage with a 8 core / 16 threads CPU with enough onboard graphical compute units to be usable even for some graphically intensive tasks with the eGPU unplugged. Even with its most expensive option, Apple does not sell a laptop that can be specced this far. I want to be able to connect Oculink eGPUs and not be bound by Thunderbolt’s max transfer speed as well - and Apple does not offer this feature.
Apple doesn’t offer this. It would be cheaper to buy Apple in my situation, but it simply doesn’t offer the features I ask for.
Now the small challenge is: guess what laptop I have on order? ;)
Yes, Lightning was better than MicroUSB but by now I hope we can all agree, that it has overstayed its welcome
When apple changed to lightning it was in the middle of the accessory hype where there were loads of accessories using the 30-pin. People where outraged because they could no longer use any of their accessories. Apple then commited to lightning for 10 years in order to sooth the public image. This was 11 years ago, and they didn’t switch last year to cut costs, but I’d argue it only overstayed it’s welcome for a year.
It was technically batter, but they limited it on the iPhone 5. Nobody wants to remember that, do they?
Maybe it got faster in later models, but within just two years usb-c had come out.
It was almost 4 years before the first usb c phone was released and that was only in China. No clue where you’re getting 2 years from. And even then Apple helped design the USB C standard.
Ok, I have to take issue with this. I will never be an apple user, but until USB-C came out I was honestly jealous of the lightning cable. It is reversible and consistent, two things other phone chargers never were. Sure, for data transfer it’s outdated as hell now, but it is still good enough for most uses
It is reversible and consistent
consistent in what?
Consistent in frying pins and fraying cables.
Consistent in that they used the same type of charger for almost all their devices after they established it. Mini-USB outdoes them in ubiquity, but the connector is usually a piece of shit.
Mini-USB wasn’t very common. Micro-USB was common.
Right, that one. My point about micro-usb being good pretty much only because everyone uses it still stands. USB-C fixed all of my problems with it.
Consistent in connecting /charging on first try, compared to micro usb.
Lightning’s data transfer and charging are subpar, although I’m not sure if Apple is implementing PD fast charging on the new iPhone either.
I didnt say it was great, I said it was good enough for a very long time. And in all honesty i think its data transfer speeds were always subpar.
My personal pet theory is that it was designed the way it was in order to make a cost-cutting measure look fancy and luxurious.
Inb4 apple places a chip in the cable that only handshakes with apple devices?
Didn’t some early 2000s Mac USB cables have a bit sticking out and a notch on the computer so they could only be used with Macs?
incompatible monitor/printer cables… they all had ‘standards’. whatever happened to ISA or parallel
Compliance reasons. USB spec at the time didn’t really allow for extension cables because it added an unknown amount of resistance.
The notch was a workaround; they were within spec for the intended device both with and without that cable.
Oh interesting! I guess I should stop blaming apple then.
It’s the ports, they force USB2.0 speeds (same as lightning) unless you get the Pro (this is unverified)
As long as they don’t fuckup the charging speed, I doubt it would make a major difference. The number of people/occasions you need to use a physical cable to transfer data is much smaller now than in the past.
Oh they will fuck it. No doubt. Especially since charging wattage is controlled by software. Dell already does this thing with their laptops as 100W charging voltage over USB C is only available through Dell chargers
There isn’t necessarily a USB standard to compare with to that end, as type C supports a wide range of standards. Compared to lightning, both iPhone 14 and 15 seem to offer up to 20W charging with the wall adapter sold separately. So again, no improvement where it could most likely be provided easily (e.g. like any other phone manufacturer has), but charging rate isn’t solely determined by the port/cable in the same way as data, there’s ample room for Apple to argue that the charging is slower on the base model for some other reason related to production cost vs. Pro
Wait so if it’s not apple’s cable you’re throttled to usb 2.0 speeds?
Nothing to do with the cable, the port on the device is a USB-C port that is limited to USB2.0 speeds. Whereas the iPhone Pro has one that can do USB3.0 speeds. This seems to have been recently verified by the tech specs on Apple website btw
The bad SOC is the limit.
No, only the iPhone 15 pro has usb3. iPhone 15 is usb2. They have it listed that way on their site.
That’s forbidden in the EU with the same directive that forces USB-C, so that’d be very dumb of apple.
Well EU is not the only market for Apple.
it may not be but, 1/3 your market is a hefty margin
Apple is free to leave if they can’t hold themselves to the pro-consumer laws of the EU.
And we won’t be sad to see them go.
The EU said they would ban Apple out of EU if they even attempt.
welcome to 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C
I’m pro USB C all the way, but I definitely appreciated the lightning connector. It’s smaller, fewer things to go wrong with it, less delicate… so to speak… at least the female side seems to be from my experience. The male side isn’t half bad either, but the cables apple used for their USB to lightning wires was basically trash. Every time I witnessed someone with a bad iPhone charging cable, the connector was generally fine and the wire was torn to shreds.
The biggest weakness of the standard was that it was stuck on USB 2.0. Beyond that it was pretty good.
I still like USB C more, both for speed and for how ubiquitous it is; but, being fair to lightning here, the center area were the pins are is a failure point, one wrong move and it’s toast. Granted it’s nestled in there pretty good and the chances of that actually happening is pretty small, but lightning doesn’t have this issue.
Lightning is far from perfect, but they did a good job… for the time. Right now the only benefit to lightning is twofold, it’s everywhere, and the connectors basically never broke with normal use. At the time micro-B was horribly fragile. C is way better than micro-B was, but I still think that lightning has the crown for durability IMO.
With all that being said, USB C all the things. Lightning was a shining example of a better way, and hopefully we learned from that. I don’t know what comes after USB C, but I hope the improvements are significant. It will be a while before C goes anywhere though.
Yes! I hope they can force apple (and others) into more interoperability and repairability (the two things apple hates the most), ruining their disgusting business model by re-enabling competition and benefitting users and environment.
It only took them 10 years or so!
I think the apple connector was a good one. Nothing wrong with it except that it was apple licensed. Whereas USB-C is a standard. Also, because of Power Delivery over USB-C I think that should make USB a standard connector on way more devices. It’s a one-stop shop for data and power needs.
I can also see PD becoming the power system used for all small devices, especially once there’s (if not already) some very low cost single chip (or very simple reference circuit) solutions for handling the negotiation. Also it will need more of the available PD chargers/supplies to support more voltages.
My work laptop already uses PD, and that was useful when I forgot to take the supply once. Just used my 45W PD charger that I DID pack, and it worked fine (it should have 65W, but it seemed not to discharge).
Who knows, maybe houses in the future will be built with some PD wiring too alongside the standard mains power.
Wall outlets exist with USB C ports built into them. It’s pretty neat, I’ve got one in my kitchen
Yeah, I’m thinking more a whole wiring solution for power delivery. Although you’d probably still need a chip per outlet to do the negotiation. So still pretty expensive I’d bet.
I may be stupid.
But I have no idea how people are comparing “better” or “worse” cables. I always just assumed they were just cables.
There is physical connections between devices. The pins that make electrical contact. There are 24 on UsbC and 8 on lightning making a lot more things possible.
Also there are structural benifits. Lightning connectors are held in by the device which makes replacing the clamp a lot more difficult than just switching the cable like UsbC, where that mechanism is inside the cable.
And last but not least is Usb an open protocol while you would have to pay Apple if you wanted to implement Lightning.
You just had me unplugging my cable to shine a flashlight down it to look for the pins haha. Thank you for the info!
Though lightning had 8 pins, for being reversible it is actually 2 pairs of 4 pins.
USB-C works around this by using cc1/2 pin which indicates the orientation of the connection.
I think the Lightning-Protocol was a little more difficult, because there were Display Adapters which probably need more than 4 lanes. And who could forget: some iPad actually had Usb 3 over Lightning.
There are different dimensions for this, balance of importance differs between users and application:
- data transfer rate
- power transfer rate
- durability
- reusability with other products
- length
- price
- someone made it white and engraved a pictogram of an incomplete apple on it
Usually it’s about the time it takes to charge the phone or transfer files. I have never used the lightning cable so I can’t personally compare but as USB C is compatible with USB 3.0 whereas lightning isn’t, I assumed USB C is faster
Well, they aren’t.
Yeah, I’m learning that, which is exactly why I asked the question
Lightning is more convenient to clean the port which I like. I fully admit usb c is better in every other way. I personally don’t need it though - I don’t want to kill my battery with uber fast charging and I never connect it to my computer these days. But I’m excited to see if this makes Apple Carplay faster.
Yeah, I recently made the switch from apple to Android after my second apple device in a row had a major internal hardware malfunction out of nowhere and the people at the store just went “yeah no I can’t fix this sorry, you need a new phone”, so I’m still figuring out the complex world of not apple. I didn’t even realize you had to clean the ports, but I guess it would make sense. I recently found out my android and my computer use the same port (usb-c) and I got really excited so that’s the level of “tech savvy” I’m on haha
I’m curious what Android phone you picked up
My dad gave me his old Razer 2 since he doesn’t use it anymore. It’s not in great condition, but it works
If you are afraid of hardware malfunctions, may I propose the Fairphone?
It is literally designed so you can replace the hardware yourself. USB-C port broken? 15€ and 10 minutes later you have a new port (even if you don’t know anything about phone repair). Screen broken? 80€ and you have a complete new one. Battery replacement is 30€ and that is just pop-and-go like in the old days.
They also give at least 5 year warranty, and you can still buy parts for the Fairphone 2, which is about 7 years old at this point.
