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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.
Which, seeing how Apple is still hellbent on continuing to only have USB2 speeds even with USB-C, plus lockout chips, their new connector is obsolete as well.
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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.
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
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 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.
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).
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
This was a crucial step in Apple’s journey into becoming a trillion dollar company. Dongles.
Wouldn’t that be a Lightning to USB C adapter? That naming doesn’t make sense.
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It’s probably for accessories
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.
Lighting was a good cable when apple made the switch from 30 pin connector and android was still trying to figure out whether they would use microUSB, miniUSB, and whatever the sam hell
is. And there was no interoperabilityOnce USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users
Lol what? Android used micro USB all across the board on flagships. They then went straight to usb-c.
I had USB-3 for a bit on my my Note.
I kinda liked it since you could still use a regular micro USB cable in a pinch.
I had one on a Samsung as well, I did enjoy how a regular micro USB was still usable, I just needed the one at home to be more powerful.
That is straight up not true. I have multiple flagship devices with mini-USB and, within those, some have mini-A while others have mini-B. Google’s own Nexus devices had mini-USB connectors.
The first “Google phone” was the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) with MiniUSB. Next was the Nexus One with MicroUSB. Everything after used MicroUSB until the Nexus 5X with USB-C.
It feels like you’re arguing semantics. Are you only counting Google-branded devices? What about other Android flagships made by Samsung? HTC?
Google’s own Nexus devices had mini-USB connectors.
I was addressing this point in particular. There were no “Nexus” devices with MiniUSB, so it was clear quite early that Google considered MicroUSB to “the right port” for Android.
That’s not true. I have a Nexus tablet with mini-USB. So either you only mean phones or you’re wrong.
Which tablet? I checked every device on https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sQuickSearch=yes&sName=nexus, and none have Mini USB. There were two Nexus 7 tablets with Micro USB.
This might be true for a very select few devices. Before usb-c I have never seen something else besides micro USB on an android device (besides the micro USB 3.0 connection, but you could put a normal micro USB cable in those)
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I had multiple phones with mini USB-B.
Well that and the made for iPhone program made them apparently 5 billion a year on the lightning cable alone. That’s not just first party. That’s also third party connectors.
That cable had one awesome feature.
You could just plug in a micro cable and get a charge, so old cables in the car or at the office worked fine (well…as fine as Micro-USB ever worked), just more slowly
Once USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users
Other than the fact that they promised when they switched to lightning they wouldn’t change connectors again for a decade.
Wow good guy EU, making them hold their word lmao. Lightning came out in 2012, so this would have been the 11th year.
Once USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users
Well if the lockout chip rumors are true, they’ve basically just made Lighting 2, Electric Boogaloo that just happens to be shaped like USB-C but is incompatible with all non-Apple approved connectors.
And is now illegal lol
I believe that is USB 3.0 Micro B.
The reason to hold onto it after USB-C was the literally millions of devices that had been released at the time that used it. There’s a reason people made a stink about moving away from the 30-pin despite Lightning being objectively better. It’s the same situation here.
At one point, after normal C came out, I gave up and threw out all the stuff I had that took the giant C connector. What an abomination.
That is for external hard drives, the same ones that plug into Macs…
That is micro-USB 3.0 and it’s an annoying connector that now is just as obsolete as micro-USB 2.0 and for some reason, around 2014, sone smartphone manufacturers thought it was a good idea adding it on their phones. Didn’t last long and got replaced by normal micro-USB again (which is much worse than lightning imo).
My Samsung S5 had one of those. You could just put a normal micro USB cable in them to charge.
It’s for devices that require more power usually, many external harddrive/ssd cases still use them.
Yea, and since usb-c there’s no reason why. Micro b 3 is worse in every way
Good. Apple’s whole ecosystem can go.
Wanna know how I know you’re cool
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.
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!
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? ;)
You don’t actually need those specs, you just like to brag that you have this and that. Meanwhile thousands of others run circles around whatever you do on lesser machines.
Lol you fucking loser
lol why so emotional
Hahaha what a joke
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
would if is the new would of
There is no God
Inb4 apple places a chip in the cable that only handshakes with apple devices?
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
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
No, only the iPhone 15 pro has usb3. iPhone 15 is usb2. They have it listed that way on their site.
The bad SOC is the limit.
The EU said they would ban Apple out of EU if they even attempt.
welcome to 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C
From 2012 to 2014. What a wild progress!
(Joke aside I believe the spec gets upgraded once in a while)
Prefacing this question with the fact I’m an Android user and have never owned an iPhone. Saying this in the hopes people won’t think I’m an Apple fanboi trying to make a point…
I haven’t been that interested in the EU legislation around this until now; I’m curious what happens when something comes out that is better than USB-C? Are companies stuck until new legislation is passed or is there some sort of auto update to the standard written in?
The law is ready for that. If and when the USB association agrees on a new standard thats not USB-C, then the new standard will be required after a transitional period. Right now it doesnt seem likely that this will happen in the near future, but in 10 years? Maybe
It is expected that the industry will continue the work already carried out on the standardised interface under the auspices of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) with a view to developing new interoperable, open and uncontroversial solutions.
Kinda how the web industry comes together in the W3C to set standards for the web, so websites work the same on all devices and browsers and there’s been LOTS of improvements.
It WAS a good cable about 6 years ago when even flagship phones still used micro USB. I would have killed for lightning on my old android phone. However, usb c just takes the cake, every cake. It has its own problems but the tradeoffs are miniscule compared to lightning.
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.
Possibly, but Apple’s shitty version of the cable basically made it break more on the actual cable than the connector. It seems that this may be fixed with usb c because of the thicker cable though.
I did mention that in my previous ramble. The connector is good, the cables that Apple used were basically trash.
It only took them 10 years or so!
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.
Edit: for people downvoting me, I’m not saying they are just cables, I’m just saying I don’t know what the difference is, and asking for an explanation. Please calm down.
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
Don’t worry, apple is still limiting data transfer to usb2 protocols except on the pro models
Oh I always expect them to find a loop hole to sell their ridiculously expensive peripherals. My best bet is a chip that forces you to use an apple usb c cable.
See it’s at this point I get lost haha, but I think I’m starting to understand the gist of it
There is zero technical reason to limit the speeds. Apple is just being an asshole and wants to misrepresent USB-C to their customers. Because again, Apple are assholes.
Apple is using the last year’s Pro chip in this year’s standard iPhone. That doesn’t have USB 3 support. They could have added a USB 3 chip for that but it’s Apple.
The newest a17 bionic chip has USB 3 support built in. It is only present in iPhone Pro hence USB 3 support for the cable.
Okay, so getting information and energy to and from the phone (what a cable does), how long it lasts, how many different types of cables you’d have to buy to work with similar devices you have, length and price are self explanatory, and whether or not apple is being apple.
I think I got it, thank you!
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
No 🤣
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