While the lightning cable was ahead of its time when it came out, mostly because the USB consortium couldn’t get its shit together, nowadays it’s woefully inferior.
Having said that, Apple has still managed to fuck their customers over by making so that only their overpriced “high speed” USB-C cables can work at anything better than USB 2.0 standard.
I doubt that 3rd parties won’t try to circumvent Apple’s BS, but goes to show even the EU couldn’t make Apple drop the act entirely.
Edit: And that’s not even talking about the wildly expensive lightning to USB-C converter they’re selling to anybody desperate enough to hold onto their lightning cables
In order to pass through the USB-IF Compliance Program, all USB-C® to USB-C cables categories must be labelled with either a power capability of 60W or 240W by using the appropriate power icon and/or logo. The USB-IF now requires that all cables must be labeled with the 60W or 240W logo prior to compliance testing so that testing can confirm the intended display of such icons/logos. The policy now extends to all USB-C to USB-C cables. These markings must be checked before compliance testing can begin.
In addition to the power markings, in order to pass through the USB-IF Compliance Program, all cables except for High-Speed USB (USB 2.0) USB-C to USB-C cables, are required to be marked with the appropriate data rate they can support. An example, a USB 20Gbps USB-C – USB-C cable that supports 20V at 3A must be marked with the Combined Performance and Power 20Gbps/60W logo.
The logo is useful for data transfer, but for power delivery you can usually find the outputs on the adapter. For example, my 65W USB-C charging cable supports 3A at 5V/9V/15V and 3.25A at 20V. It’s not very consumer friendly, sure, but at least it’s simple (higher is “better”).
As if 99% of cables aren’t bought at dollar stores and gas stations to charge phones for 2 weeks before being lost or damaged. And none of them bother with USB logos.
All I really care about it the durability of the phone port, and usb c looks far more inherently fragile than lightning. 1/4 of the USB Cs on my MacBook Pro have issues, and my phone gets plugged and unplugged far more often, and only has one port.
I feel the same way about durability but apparently usb-c is rated to 10,000 insertions. Idk though. The lightning port has been very solid in regular use but I can’t say the same about the usb-c ports I’ve known.
Eventually wireless charging will be the standard so it might not matter as much for phones.
I usually flex my cables a bit to figure out their types, if it’s stiff enough, chance that it supports PD. The only way to be sure is to plug it in though and pray the cable is not shitty enough to ruin your device.
Apple has still managed to fuck their customers over by making so that only their overpriced “high-speed” USB-C cables can work at anything better than USB 2.0 standard.
Not true. Be mad at Apple for legitimate things please, but manufacturing outrage is just silly and undermines actually shitty things they do. Apple has not nerfed their USB-C cables in any way.
One thing they have done is limit the USB-C PD charging speed in phones to not exceed 20W, which I imagine has more to do with long-term battery life than it does with upselling you, because there’s nothing for them to upsell to you there.
Regarding the adapter, don’t buy it if you don’t need it. As it turns out, many lightning accessories have been sold over the last 11 years. Chances are, someone out there will be happy buying an adapter before buying a new accessory.
I’m not suggesting that Apple is nerfing their USB-C cables. What I’m telling you is that they’re nerfing theircompetitor’s cables compatability in order to sell you a solution you wouldn’t need if they weren’t such dicks.
Also, I apologise. The USB 2.0 speed fuckery only applies to the pro series Iphones… the normal series ones are limited to USB 2.0 no matter what cable you use.
As for that lightning adaptor, even if you did need it I wouldn’t recommend buying that one, unless you’re desperate to give Apple even more profits. There are smaller form factor, significantly cheaper converters out there that will do the job just fine.
Bruh, those are for charging MACBOOKS. You can plug an iphone into that 240w charger all you want, it’s NOT going to use more than the 20w it’s allowed to. Period.
You’re misunderstanding entirely and are blinded by the emotional reaction of what you assume Apple to be doing.
iPhones do NOT exceed a charging rate for 20W, so using a 60W cable isn’t going to do shit. You’re upset because they’re selling USB-C cables capable of charging beyond that number so you assume they’re upselling iPhone owners rather than simply making cables rated to charge their laptops which also have USB-C. Honestly it sounds like you’re angrier at the clusterfuck that is USB-C spec than you are at anything apples done.
How dare they make charging cables for your laptop, right? And how dare your iPhone be limited to charge slower than a laptop. /s
What competitor usb-c cables are being nerfed by Apple? Where are you getting this information? I heard lots of rumors about this prior to the keynote this week, but so far there’s no evidence of this happening. Are you still outraged over a rumor?
The non-pro phones are limited to USB 2 speeds for several reasons:
They’re re-using parts from the iPhone 14 Pro, which had lightning, which was USB2.
Most people do not transfer data to/from their phones using a cable anymore. Those that do are usually pros moving large files, and should be getting an iPhone pro for that workload.
most people who fall into the tiny camp of transferring data to/from their phones with a cable and aren’t pros aren’t transferring large enough files for it to matter much anyway.
non-pro iPhones will probably be brought up to USB 3 speeds in the next year or two, at which point you’re going to have to find something else to be outraged about.
Nobody is being forced to buy an adapter, why are you still so upset at its existence?
@ribboo I think most people nowadays use cables for charging to be fair, lol. I doubt anyone still bothers connecting a cable to a PC, browse a filesystem only to find their vacation photos or whatever. Most just hit share, select the app they want to share them all through and off they go.
This year it makes sense on the pros, if you take a lot of video because the port can do USB3 speeds, meaning you can now record to an external SSD.
Beyond that I don’t see much of a reason to. Maybe in a pinch to download something to your phone then move to a flash drive when you don’t have another computer around? Either way it’s awesome we at least get it in the pros.
I use the USB-C Port of my phone regularly to connect it to my PC and move images from my Phone to my PC and copy music files from my PC to my phone’s Micro-SD card. I wouldn’t consider myself a “pro” in either of these fields, yet I have moved hundreds of Gigabytes of data this way.
I also use my phone’s 3.5 millimeter audio port with headphones, IEMs or speakers all the time.
In general, I trust cables way more than I trust any wireless solutions.
I have a Micro-SD-Card slot, a 3.5 mil connector and a USB-C-Connector and I find all of those essential (would never buy a phone without one of these).
My phone is a Motorola Moto G31. Costs 170€. Served me well for over a year now, I’m hoping it will for some more years. It’s not particularly “fancy”, but it’s a good product that does everything I need it to.
It even has a quite nice battery life :)
Now, to I-Phones. I think it would be fair for a 1000! Dollar Device to include USB3 Speeds. If the pro can do it, why can’t the non-pro?
First, the base model is $699, the pro is $999. Just to clear up as it sounds like you might have thought the $999 model was the base with USB2 speeds.
To answer your question shortly, it’s for the reasons above. You may not think you’re “a pro”, but moving hundreds of GBs of content by wire is absolutely a “pro” workflow. The more accurate term would be “prosumer”. Most people don’t do what you’re doing and don’t need to, therefore your use case would be better suited for professional hardware, rather than base model consumer hardware.
I fully expect the base model to get USB3 speeds over the next couple of years as usb-c on iPhones progresses. Apple does what a lot of manufacturers do, and bring their features from the previous flagship model to their lower end models over time. They also will often reuse parts in the base model from the previous year’s flagship. This is not exclusively an Apple thing. Strategically it’s a great way to funnel features and utilize premade hardware.
Other times Apple has done this:
iPhone 5c (same internals as iPhone 5 with a bigger battery)
all iPhone/ Apple Watch SE models (newer chipset in an older style enclosure)
Thanks for the response, I understand your points better now.
I still think that 699$ is a lot of money for a device that doesn’t support USB3 speeds, but then again, that’s just “apple tax”.
Which doesn’t mean I’m against the “feature-funneling” method you described, that definetely has a lot of advantages.
I can’t believe you just linked laptop charging cables that use USB-C as “proof” Apple is upselling iPhone users hahahaha.
I’m curious, are you just mad because iPhones are listed as “compatible”? Because that’s literally a benefit of moving to USB-C. The cables are compatible because they use the same physical connector. Would you rather Apple arbitrarily restrict which USB-C cable of theirs your iPhone works with? Or are you mad your phone can’t charge as fast as your laptop?
I don’t really know much about hardware and never bothered looking at transfer speeds and such, but why is lightning inferior? I like it because it’s reversible and the prong doesn’t seem like it could snap or get damaged that easily.
Not that matters much because in the three years I’ve had the phone I’ve plugged it in like five times.
USB-C has for years now supported higher wattage power delivery, and higher data transfer speeds than lightning.
I can’t speak to your experience, but from mine, the build of quality of Apple’s own lightning cables was terrible. I owned two IPod Touch’s over the course of about 6 years, and I basically went through one cable a year because they’d just disintegrate towards the ends of the cable or internally decapitate themselves. Didn’t even need to break them, they’d break themselves.
Whereas in the 6+ years I’ve used phones with USB-C, only two of them have broken. One was because the cable got snagged under a chair and I pulled the USB-C end off not realising it was stuck, and the other one was my Mum breaking the USB-A end shoving it into a plug the wrong way. Both things that had nothing to do with the build quality of the cables. I still have every other one of my USB-C cables.
Yeah I’ve seen so many broken Apple cables. At my old work I had a MacBook for testing things, and the MagSafe charger (a MBP ca 2014) was bare by the connector. I mended it because it terrified me.
My mother also had an iPad and went through like four cables. Absolutely nuts.
I myself don’t really use cables though. My roomie is excited for USBC support because the Android based PDAs he uses for work are USBC, so of he ever forgets a cable he can still charge his phone.
I have a similar issue with headphone cables failing, often far too soon, but I get that too. It’s wear and tear from being yanked and moved. They’re also often cheap headphones. But I’ve had apple cables disintigrate when stored in a cupboard and not moved at all. It’s like they’re biodegradeable.
I suspect they’re using a softner which degrades the plastic over time. Their cables are softer/more bendy than cheaper/stiffer plastic cables.
But for the price they charge, I don’t see why they couldn’t make them fabric covered. You can buy fabric covered cables for really cheap online, and they ship them half away across the world and still make a profit. Why can’t apple do the same?
The plastic on the cord for the charger for my 2010 MacBook completely peeled off on both sides for 2-3 feet when it was about a year and a half old. Just bare twisted metal coating… it seemed dangerous or something. I took it to an Apple Store hoping for any sort of discount on a new one, and some snotty guy with a septum piercing angrily insisted that I must have habitually rolled over it with a chair. He said my only option was to buy a new one for full price (around $150). I didn’t even own a chair with wheels. All I had ever done was coil it up 3-4 times a day going between my house and coffee shops.
I ended up calling and complaining and a manager said I could get a 50% discount. Great! So I went there 2 weeks later and some guy angrily insisted HE was the manager on duty and HE didn’t approve that. So they looked at my charger and angrily insisted that I’d rolled over it with a chair and my only option was to buy a new one for full price.
Anyway, Apple was trying a lot of different coverings back then to avoid BPA or something. They ended up paying a class action settlement for some of their charging cables.
They use the excuse of it having a “sleak design” to not make the cables more shielded and rigid. Since they would sell less overpriced cables if the cables lasted longer.
You also throw away the supposed superior connector when the cable frays.
I just swapped out the one that came with the phone I got in 2016. I’ve used it to charge every night since then and it just failed like 2 weeks ago. That’s the only one I’ve ever had fail and it was absolutely beat to hell.
For one, USB-C can (if implemented) transfer data at 40Gbps vs lightning’s 0.5Gbps. USB-C also charges a lot faster.
USB-C is also reversable like lightning, and the connectors are internal.
Android phones used to use USB-B micro, which wasn’t reversable, but a long time go exeryone switched to USB-C which feels like at was invented to be a better version of lightning and has had many advances while being backwards compatible with early USB-C hardware.
While the lightning cable was ahead of its time when it came out, mostly because the USB consortium couldn’t get its shit together, nowadays it’s woefully inferior.
Having said that, Apple has still managed to fuck their customers over by making so that only their overpriced “high speed” USB-C cables can work at anything better than USB 2.0 standard.
I doubt that 3rd parties won’t try to circumvent Apple’s BS, but goes to show even the EU couldn’t make Apple drop the act entirely.
Edit: And that’s not even talking about the wildly expensive lightning to USB-C converter they’re selling to anybody desperate enough to hold onto their lightning cables
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Thankfully, they recently introduced logo requirements for this exact reason.
Here’s a table of the logos
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The logo is useful for data transfer, but for power delivery you can usually find the outputs on the adapter. For example, my 65W USB-C charging cable supports 3A at 5V/9V/15V and 3.25A at 20V. It’s not very consumer friendly, sure, but at least it’s simple (higher is “better”).
As if 99% of cables aren’t bought at dollar stores and gas stations to charge phones for 2 weeks before being lost or damaged. And none of them bother with USB logos.
All I really care about it the durability of the phone port, and usb c looks far more inherently fragile than lightning. 1/4 of the USB Cs on my MacBook Pro have issues, and my phone gets plugged and unplugged far more often, and only has one port.
I mean… That’s exactly why “unlabeled” is defaulted to USB 2 speeds and less than 60W. They’re already labeled correctly for this update.
Wait, you’re complaining that they’re standardizing logos so that the cables capabilities are clear?
I mean, what would your solution be other than bitching?
I feel the same way about durability but apparently usb-c is rated to 10,000 insertions. Idk though. The lightning port has been very solid in regular use but I can’t say the same about the usb-c ports I’ve known.
Eventually wireless charging will be the standard so it might not matter as much for phones.
I’d be curious to see how many of those cables without logos are actually USB certified as opposed to being compatible with the spec.
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2
A group of people thought that was a good name for the protocol. And as you were saying, with no marking to indicate the cable is compatible.
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I usually flex my cables a bit to figure out their types, if it’s stiff enough, chance that it supports PD. The only way to be sure is to plug it in though and pray the cable is not shitty enough to ruin your device.
Not true. Be mad at Apple for legitimate things please, but manufacturing outrage is just silly and undermines actually shitty things they do. Apple has not nerfed their USB-C cables in any way.
One thing they have done is limit the USB-C PD charging speed in phones to not exceed 20W, which I imagine has more to do with long-term battery life than it does with upselling you, because there’s nothing for them to upsell to you there.
Regarding the adapter, don’t buy it if you don’t need it. As it turns out, many lightning accessories have been sold over the last 11 years. Chances are, someone out there will be happy buying an adapter before buying a new accessory.
Ah, so Apple definitely wouldn’t sell you a 60W USB-C Charge Cable while limiting other cables to 20W?
Nor would Apple ever dream of selling you a cable capable of delivering up to 240W for their phones?
I’m not suggesting that Apple is nerfing their USB-C cables. What I’m telling you is that they’re nerfing their competitor’s cables compatability in order to sell you a solution you wouldn’t need if they weren’t such dicks.
Also, I apologise. The USB 2.0 speed fuckery only applies to the pro series Iphones… the normal series ones are limited to USB 2.0 no matter what cable you use.
As for that lightning adaptor, even if you did need it I wouldn’t recommend buying that one, unless you’re desperate to give Apple even more profits. There are smaller form factor, significantly cheaper converters out there that will do the job just fine.
Bruh, those are for charging MACBOOKS. You can plug an iphone into that 240w charger all you want, it’s NOT going to use more than the 20w it’s allowed to. Period.
I hate Apple too, but you’re just ignorant.
You’re misunderstanding entirely and are blinded by the emotional reaction of what you assume Apple to be doing.
iPhones do NOT exceed a charging rate for 20W, so using a 60W cable isn’t going to do shit. You’re upset because they’re selling USB-C cables capable of charging beyond that number so you assume they’re upselling iPhone owners rather than simply making cables rated to charge their laptops which also have USB-C. Honestly it sounds like you’re angrier at the clusterfuck that is USB-C spec than you are at anything apples done.
How dare they make charging cables for your laptop, right? And how dare your iPhone be limited to charge slower than a laptop. /s
What competitor usb-c cables are being nerfed by Apple? Where are you getting this information? I heard lots of rumors about this prior to the keynote this week, but so far there’s no evidence of this happening. Are you still outraged over a rumor?
The non-pro phones are limited to USB 2 speeds for several reasons:
They’re re-using parts from the iPhone 14 Pro, which had lightning, which was USB2.
Most people do not transfer data to/from their phones using a cable anymore. Those that do are usually pros moving large files, and should be getting an iPhone pro for that workload.
most people who fall into the tiny camp of transferring data to/from their phones with a cable and aren’t pros aren’t transferring large enough files for it to matter much anyway.
non-pro iPhones will probably be brought up to USB 3 speeds in the next year or two, at which point you’re going to have to find something else to be outraged about.
Nobody is being forced to buy an adapter, why are you still so upset at its existence?
Hadn’t I been on Lemmy I wouldn’t have known there are people still using cables to transfer stuff from/to their phone.
Haven’t done that in 10 years, and deeply hope I’ll never have to start doing that again either.
@ribboo I think most people nowadays use cables for charging to be fair, lol. I doubt anyone still bothers connecting a cable to a PC, browse a filesystem only to find their vacation photos or whatever. Most just hit share, select the app they want to share them all through and off they go.
@BobaFuttbucker
This year it makes sense on the pros, if you take a lot of video because the port can do USB3 speeds, meaning you can now record to an external SSD.
Beyond that I don’t see much of a reason to. Maybe in a pinch to download something to your phone then move to a flash drive when you don’t have another computer around? Either way it’s awesome we at least get it in the pros.
I use the USB-C Port of my phone regularly to connect it to my PC and move images from my Phone to my PC and copy music files from my PC to my phone’s Micro-SD card. I wouldn’t consider myself a “pro” in either of these fields, yet I have moved hundreds of Gigabytes of data this way. I also use my phone’s 3.5 millimeter audio port with headphones, IEMs or speakers all the time.
In general, I trust cables way more than I trust any wireless solutions.
I have a Micro-SD-Card slot, a 3.5 mil connector and a USB-C-Connector and I find all of those essential (would never buy a phone without one of these).
My phone is a Motorola Moto G31. Costs 170€. Served me well for over a year now, I’m hoping it will for some more years. It’s not particularly “fancy”, but it’s a good product that does everything I need it to. It even has a quite nice battery life :)
Now, to I-Phones. I think it would be fair for a 1000! Dollar Device to include USB3 Speeds. If the pro can do it, why can’t the non-pro?
First, the base model is $699, the pro is $999. Just to clear up as it sounds like you might have thought the $999 model was the base with USB2 speeds.
To answer your question shortly, it’s for the reasons above. You may not think you’re “a pro”, but moving hundreds of GBs of content by wire is absolutely a “pro” workflow. The more accurate term would be “prosumer”. Most people don’t do what you’re doing and don’t need to, therefore your use case would be better suited for professional hardware, rather than base model consumer hardware.
I fully expect the base model to get USB3 speeds over the next couple of years as usb-c on iPhones progresses. Apple does what a lot of manufacturers do, and bring their features from the previous flagship model to their lower end models over time. They also will often reuse parts in the base model from the previous year’s flagship. This is not exclusively an Apple thing. Strategically it’s a great way to funnel features and utilize premade hardware.
Other times Apple has done this:
iPhone 5c (same internals as iPhone 5 with a bigger battery)
all iPhone/ Apple Watch SE models (newer chipset in an older style enclosure)
Thanks for the response, I understand your points better now. I still think that 699$ is a lot of money for a device that doesn’t support USB3 speeds, but then again, that’s just “apple tax”. Which doesn’t mean I’m against the “feature-funneling” method you described, that definetely has a lot of advantages.
I can’t believe you just linked laptop charging cables that use USB-C as “proof” Apple is upselling iPhone users hahahaha.
I’m curious, are you just mad because iPhones are listed as “compatible”? Because that’s literally a benefit of moving to USB-C. The cables are compatible because they use the same physical connector. Would you rather Apple arbitrarily restrict which USB-C cable of theirs your iPhone works with? Or are you mad your phone can’t charge as fast as your laptop?
I don’t really know much about hardware and never bothered looking at transfer speeds and such, but why is lightning inferior? I like it because it’s reversible and the prong doesn’t seem like it could snap or get damaged that easily.
Not that matters much because in the three years I’ve had the phone I’ve plugged it in like five times.
USB-C has for years now supported higher wattage power delivery, and higher data transfer speeds than lightning.
I can’t speak to your experience, but from mine, the build of quality of Apple’s own lightning cables was terrible. I owned two IPod Touch’s over the course of about 6 years, and I basically went through one cable a year because they’d just disintegrate towards the ends of the cable or internally decapitate themselves. Didn’t even need to break them, they’d break themselves.
Whereas in the 6+ years I’ve used phones with USB-C, only two of them have broken. One was because the cable got snagged under a chair and I pulled the USB-C end off not realising it was stuck, and the other one was my Mum breaking the USB-A end shoving it into a plug the wrong way. Both things that had nothing to do with the build quality of the cables. I still have every other one of my USB-C cables.
Yeah I’ve seen so many broken Apple cables. At my old work I had a MacBook for testing things, and the MagSafe charger (a MBP ca 2014) was bare by the connector. I mended it because it terrified me.
My mother also had an iPad and went through like four cables. Absolutely nuts.
I myself don’t really use cables though. My roomie is excited for USBC support because the Android based PDAs he uses for work are USBC, so of he ever forgets a cable he can still charge his phone.
I had constant issues with cables when I was still an apple user.
Loads of plastic rot and scarily browning cables.
I honestly don’t get it, given the cables on my commodore 64 are still good as new 40 years later.
Yeah. They’re not cheap either.
To be fair I had a fair few cables break in the six years I had my OnePlus One, but they just stopped working, they didn’t literally fall apart.
I have a similar issue with headphone cables failing, often far too soon, but I get that too. It’s wear and tear from being yanked and moved. They’re also often cheap headphones. But I’ve had apple cables disintigrate when stored in a cupboard and not moved at all. It’s like they’re biodegradeable.
I suspect they’re using a softner which degrades the plastic over time. Their cables are softer/more bendy than cheaper/stiffer plastic cables.
But for the price they charge, I don’t see why they couldn’t make them fabric covered. You can buy fabric covered cables for really cheap online, and they ship them half away across the world and still make a profit. Why can’t apple do the same?
I think Apple has learned their lesson. MacBooks charging cables seems to be braided with fabric-like material these days.
Yeah. I mean it’s Apple, they definitely have the means so it’s on purpose. With Apple you’ll always get a generous helping of bullshit.
The plastic on the cord for the charger for my 2010 MacBook completely peeled off on both sides for 2-3 feet when it was about a year and a half old. Just bare twisted metal coating… it seemed dangerous or something. I took it to an Apple Store hoping for any sort of discount on a new one, and some snotty guy with a septum piercing angrily insisted that I must have habitually rolled over it with a chair. He said my only option was to buy a new one for full price (around $150). I didn’t even own a chair with wheels. All I had ever done was coil it up 3-4 times a day going between my house and coffee shops.
I ended up calling and complaining and a manager said I could get a 50% discount. Great! So I went there 2 weeks later and some guy angrily insisted HE was the manager on duty and HE didn’t approve that. So they looked at my charger and angrily insisted that I’d rolled over it with a chair and my only option was to buy a new one for full price.
Anyway, Apple was trying a lot of different coverings back then to avoid BPA or something. They ended up paying a class action settlement for some of their charging cables.
They ended up losing me as a customer forever.
They use the excuse of it having a “sleak design” to not make the cables more shielded and rigid. Since they would sell less overpriced cables if the cables lasted longer.
You also throw away the supposed superior connector when the cable frays.
Apple makes self-obsoleting trash. That’s the detail you’re not getting.
Apple maintains their phones with OS and security updates for much longer than any Android manufacturers I’m aware of.
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I just swapped out the one that came with the phone I got in 2016. I’ve used it to charge every night since then and it just failed like 2 weeks ago. That’s the only one I’ve ever had fail and it was absolutely beat to hell.
I have Lightning cables that are five years old and still as good as they were in the first day.
For one, USB-C can (if implemented) transfer data at 40Gbps vs lightning’s 0.5Gbps. USB-C also charges a lot faster.
USB-C is also reversable like lightning, and the connectors are internal.
Android phones used to use USB-B micro, which wasn’t reversable, but a long time go exeryone switched to USB-C which feels like at was invented to be a better version of lightning and has had many advances while being backwards compatible with early USB-C hardware.
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