> As someone who only has one or two of their peripherals, Lightning is the worst part of their products.
And as someone with a few things around that still take microUSB: that is by far the worst thing about those products. I also know that if I had bought those same products 5 years earlier than I had, each one of them would take a different cable standard from each other and none of it would be compatible with anything else in my house. So the worst thing here is an inconvenience now that was a solid upgrade at the time.
> It only becomes infuriating when you realize that Apple's omission of USB-C is entirely arbitrary and not held up by technical limitation.
By the time Type-C was a realistic consideration, Apple had already sold large quantities of Lightning connectors in their products to a customer base that was still complaining about the transition from the 30-pin Dock connector. Not immediately rushing to replace Lightning when there were still large numbers of products using 30-pin in-use was a good business decision, not an arbitrary one.
> Apple designed the Thunderbolt spec with their own two hands to ensure this isn't an issue.
Apple and Intel collaborated. Don’t give them too much credit. Also: Type-C != Thunderbolt != USB.
> Apple has always been on the forefront of technical adoption - their refusal to abandon Lightning is product negligence, plain and simple.
There’s a lot of things I can point to at Apple under Tim Cook’s tenure and call “product negligence”. This isn’t one of them. I think the negligent part is in not upgrading the transfer rates at some point in the last 10 years, but not immediately abandoning Lightning for Type-C isn’t one of them, and the e-waste concerns are way overblown. People will buy as many cables as they think they need. If you can swap cables around from other products, that’s actually pretty great, but it’s a fringe benefit because if you’re maintaining a ratio of cables to devices anyway, the most likely outcome isn’t that there will be fewer cables manufactured and thrown away, but that there will be more cables of a particular variety manufactured and thrown away. You might save on one or two cables, but the moment the ratio of devices that need a charge to cables tips too high, you’re just going to buy another cable. Which cable? Whichever one you need for whatever you want to use it for, but if its primary purpose is to deliver electricity and not bits (the most common application for even data cables), the shape of the connector is basically just a detail because the other end is probably going to be Type-C or Type-A USB, chosen based on what bricks you have available or are willing to purchase.
My only hope with an upcoming iPhone connector transition is that we’ll see transfer rates of at least 5 Gbps, and I dare not hope for more lest I be disappointed.
And as someone with a few things around that still take microUSB: that is by far the worst thing about those products. I also know that if I had bought those same products 5 years earlier than I had, each one of them would take a different cable standard from each other and none of it would be compatible with anything else in my house. So the worst thing here is an inconvenience now that was a solid upgrade at the time.
> It only becomes infuriating when you realize that Apple's omission of USB-C is entirely arbitrary and not held up by technical limitation.
By the time Type-C was a realistic consideration, Apple had already sold large quantities of Lightning connectors in their products to a customer base that was still complaining about the transition from the 30-pin Dock connector. Not immediately rushing to replace Lightning when there were still large numbers of products using 30-pin in-use was a good business decision, not an arbitrary one.
> Apple designed the Thunderbolt spec with their own two hands to ensure this isn't an issue.
Apple and Intel collaborated. Don’t give them too much credit. Also: Type-C != Thunderbolt != USB.
> Apple has always been on the forefront of technical adoption - their refusal to abandon Lightning is product negligence, plain and simple.
There’s a lot of things I can point to at Apple under Tim Cook’s tenure and call “product negligence”. This isn’t one of them. I think the negligent part is in not upgrading the transfer rates at some point in the last 10 years, but not immediately abandoning Lightning for Type-C isn’t one of them, and the e-waste concerns are way overblown. People will buy as many cables as they think they need. If you can swap cables around from other products, that’s actually pretty great, but it’s a fringe benefit because if you’re maintaining a ratio of cables to devices anyway, the most likely outcome isn’t that there will be fewer cables manufactured and thrown away, but that there will be more cables of a particular variety manufactured and thrown away. You might save on one or two cables, but the moment the ratio of devices that need a charge to cables tips too high, you’re just going to buy another cable. Which cable? Whichever one you need for whatever you want to use it for, but if its primary purpose is to deliver electricity and not bits (the most common application for even data cables), the shape of the connector is basically just a detail because the other end is probably going to be Type-C or Type-A USB, chosen based on what bricks you have available or are willing to purchase.
My only hope with an upcoming iPhone connector transition is that we’ll see transfer rates of at least 5 Gbps, and I dare not hope for more lest I be disappointed.