The last time they changed their connector (to lightning) they invalidated a lot of third party accessories designed around the old connector. Not simple stuff, like cables, but docks galore; many in expensive long-term purchases like luxury cars and stereo equipment. It stressed a lot of partnerships that define Apple's luxury brand status.
I remember there used to be a huge number of these speakers where you would sit the phone or ipod on the connector/stand. And all of those got obsoleted by the switch to lightning, but I don't think I've seen a single design like that since the 30 pin connector was dropped. It's all bluetooth now. And with the more even split between iphones and android these days, no hardware maker would put a fixed lightning stand on a device now.
I think between Bluetooth for data and Qi for power delivery, many consumer use-cases have been able to avoid the same trap as last time. But there's still a fair amount of devices in the point of sale space that dock directly to the lightning port. You'll see them if you look for them at the farmers market. So Apple isn't fully out of this bind yet.
I agree that switching creates waste, not switching creates other waste. If they wanted to minimize waste, they should have released lighting and usb-c iphones years ago and slowly phased out the lighting. Maybe even just update lightning to support USBC speeds. But alas we are stuck with this local optimum when there was a better global optimum that we missed for profit.
If they wanted to minimize waste they would have contributed to developing USB-C, which would have been in the pipeline when they were working on Lightning. Or failing that, making Lightning an open standard that other gadget makers could adopt. But that doesn't make as much money as vendor lock-in.
Apple is the only one who should be concerned about its 'luxury' brand status, we users have completely different priorities then tax-evading mega corporations milking its users base with high margins.
And Apple a luxury in 2023, really? Competition phones are more expensive and loaded with better hardware, some look significantly better (cough notch cough), Apple also has budget phones... I don't think you understand the term luxury if you include current Apple into it. Louis Vuitton is an example of luxury brand. Apple is alternative to Android or Windows for laptops, thats it.
Apple can easily afford this. The real reasons for their foot-dragging are their need to differentiate their products, and their need (driven by their organisational culture) to feel that they are in control.
But I've always struggled to believe that revenue from licencing or direct sales of Lightning connectors is that big a deal to Apple. I think their insistence on using their own connector is more about product differentiation and lock-in than about revenue and performance.
What accessory makers? The only thing lightning is used for these days is charging. I can’t imagine that charging cables is a huge money spinner for apple.
It is not the charging cables, but the actual chargers itself. They are eye watering expensive if you buy them from Apple directly.
Amazon and eBay are flooded with fakes that can be life threateningly dangerous. I can see why some people prefer to buy from Apple rather than figuring out what brands are actually not going to burn your house down.
Good point re dangerous fakes, but I wonder how persuasive it is in practice. Ive occasionally seen teardowns of fire-risk power blocks on hn, but (genuine question, because idk) is that a mainstream concern?
I bought a 100W Apple MacBook charger from Amazon. After using it for a few hours, it has a burnt smell. I can't be the only one that experienced this.
I don't think this is the main reason. How many millions in licensing fee profit are they really earning? It seems like a drop in the bucket comparative to their total profit. And if that's the reason, why does the iPad have USB-C?
The bad press was because it was a proprietary-connector-against-a-newer-proprietary-connector.
Had Apple changed for USB-C at the time, or USB mini, it would have made the same positive press as when the Macbook Pro got back to normal (ie not “Here’s a single port for everything, go buy an Apple dongle if you want to plug a screen”).
The USB-C spec wasn't finalised until the following year and only fully standardised in 2016. The USC-C port, which Apple contributed to considerably first appeared in 2015. Micro USB, which superseded Mini USB, was and remains to be complete and utter shite. Lightning was actually well received by the tech press of the time for being significantly better than Micro USB. The "bad press" was users on this site, among others, whining about their other 30-pin gadgets.
Apple supposedly has the superior technology of the elite people, as opposed to the unwashed masses who use Android. So it's embarrassing for them to adopt pleb technology.
At least this thing should be clear. Apple's motto has always been "Think different". They were selling personal computers but wanted them to be different from PCs. In order to do that, they would introduce many changes that were presented as superior. And in fact, many (if not most) were actually excellent. Some, such as removal of ports, gluing parts together and making devices hard to repair, were plain user-hostile. In this case, it's mostly about the money though.
Removing ports is ironic as, other than headphone jacks from phones, USB type A being dropped from MacBooks (iMacs and Minis have always had USB Type A) in favour of USB-C is the port HN loves to moan about, and here we are, arguing for USB-C on an Apple device. The money, as others point out is a rounding error.
> USB type A being dropped from MacBooks (iMacs and Minis have always had USB Type A) in favour of USB-C is the port HN loves to moan about.
The switch to USB C wasn't the primary issue. The main complaint was that the laptop only had two ports: a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a single USB C for everything else. The previous iteration had 6.
People were angry that they were being forced to buy a hub if they fell into the ultra niche use case of wanting to charge while using any kind of peripheral at all.
Thinking about it, most USB hubs came with USB-A ports. I wonder if we'd have seen USB-A die off more rapidly if Apple had included a sensible number of ports on the Macbook.
What you linked is the MacBook, not the MacBook Air. The MacBook Air has never had one USB-C port. The one-port MacBook was unique, relevant to a specific niche, and never the only laptop option from Apple.
On what? This article is pure speculation, and Apple has been slowly moving more and more of their ecosystem to USB-C over time anyway. It sounds like good for the consumer that they don't have to throw out all of their existing cables at once.
.... and as far as I can tell USB-C is a shitshow of an ecosystem anyway. This entire article could just be saying that Apple devices could charge "slower" on random USB-C cables and only guarantee fast charging on Apple-branded cables....
... which sounds like Apple being anticompetitive if you know nothing about the state of the USB-C ecosystem.
If Apple just sticks to the specification to the letter they achieve exactly what they want and what HackerNews hates, only proper power supplies work and cheap inferior crap charges slowly. They can just put a logo on cables and chargers that work to the specification instead of cutting corners left and right in the race to the bottom. And there is no way for the EU to appear credible and restrict this.
> Europe actually has some teeth. Playing dumb when Europe tells you "try me" is a sure way to be banned out of the common market.
It all remains to be seen, some EU Joe random hotshot issuing warnings is no more than that, warnings. If any action is to come from the EU side, it’ll be after years and years of legal wrangling and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Apples lawyers end up outsmarting some pompous EU councilman.
Ah, yes, Thierry Breton, current European Commissioner for Internal Market who pushed for the Digital Markets Acts (that has Apple currently yielding and tucking its tail between its legs with 0 years of legal wrangling, allowing external app stores but just for Europe because it clearly doesn't care about its US customers) is a Pompous Councilman Joe Random Hotshot that gets outsmarted by Apple's US lawyers.
At the end of the day, if Apple needs to have a slightly modified design to accommodate EU regulations, that's a drop in the bucket. And if it's slightly inferior in some way, that's between EU citizens and their governments.
Apple has a single production line. If they drop Lightning for the EU, they drop Lightning for the whole world. Their entire margin strategy is based on having as few SKUs as possible. In the same way that GDPR made every single major US tech player comply and offer more or less the same tools for the rest of the world.
Of course Apple has more SKUs than they need to have. Different product generations, sizes, storage options, colors, etc. Adding a different connector on some subset of models for some number of countries is perfectly doable.
It's probably moot because Apple seems to be moving to USB-C over all their product lines anyway. But if the EU were to mandate something that Apple felt was a materially inferior choice, I'd fully expect them to comply where they had to and implement a different option everywhere else.
GDPR is simply a case of, if a company doesn't have a compelling reason for not following GDPR where possible, it's just easier to follow mostly uniform rules worldwide.
GDPR is actually an excellent example, all tough talk with strict rules, yet basically nobody follows the rules and nothing happens. The government itself runs websites that say ‘you can’t visit this site unless you agree to our use of cookies!’
