Every year it's a new camera, new whatever, but USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables.
Not increasing the price is nice, I guess. Will have to buy more USB-C cables, though. (Technically the low highest end phone is higher, but higher spec, too).
It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
Pre-order Friday, delivery 22 Sept. Probably going to move on it just to get that USB-C, need to see what carrier deals I can find.
It's funny how they show USB-C as a giant leap forward while they were literally forced to use that port and were never interested in doing it otherwise. All that transfer speed bump they're now advertising with USB-C, would they admit that they were keeping their customers away from it just so that they could use their custom port and create an entire accessory ecosystem around it?
Lightning was a very good connector when it first came around. Ever notice how the phones are showcased standing up on just the connector? Try that with micro USB.
Apple co-invented/contributed to USB-C to address their own needs, and were the first vendor to shove it down on unsuspecting Macbook users, getting rid of each and every single other kind of port.
Meanwhile they kept Lightning relevant and useful for a very long time, which I think is a good thing for a "de facto" standard. Should they have switched to USB-C earlier? Probably yes. But now is better than never (even if it's somewhat forced).
To be fair for charging purposes I find wireless charging so good I never use the cable to charge my phone these days. After moving to the Belkin MagSafe stand it got even better, I think Apple could have easily just stuck with lightning until they killed the charging port altogether.
Apple where always good at lying err scratch that marketing i meant, snark fully intended. Steve sold many Apple inventions that actually came from other companies. Even accounting for his less than nice parts of his personality, he was still one of the best CEOs ever. Why? He thought about the products from the customer perspective.
That's awesome this is the first I am hearing of this. I wish Apple would produce their own home automation products. I trust them vastly more than logitech & co...
My home is currently all ZigBee/Z-Wave, but Thread/Matter is an open protocol that can be used entirely locally. I'm cautiously excited about the industry standardizing on it; hopefully this will mean that over time more and more mainstream smart-home devices will be compatible with my local-only HomeAssistant setup.
(I honestly don't know and was thinking Matter and Thread were somehow related and the were both good and I hope someone can confirm or explain what I am missing.)
Thread is a radio protocol. It's basically next-generation Zigbee, using the same radio protocol (IEEE 802.15.4) but with higher performance, lower latency, IPv6 addressing and AES encryption.
Matter is a network protocol which provides a standard API for how smart devices talk to home hubs. By making devices truly platform agnostic, it will end the dark "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer" direction which smart devices have been going down.
I'm not sure. ZigBee is available and works great. I heard negative rumblings about Thread/Matter but I'm not sure if the criticisms are valid, or just anti-change curmudgeonry.
Agree - I’ve been using a set of Eve (from memory) power plugs that are thread enabled - my understanding is it doesn’t connect directly to the internet (ie you don’t connect it to your wifi) but you connect to a border hub (ie an Apple TV, or maybe now an iPhone 15.)
So I guess if you trust apple, you can sorta trust these devices as their access to the outside world would be through an apple device.
> It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
The USB-C charging cables can also carry data at USB2 speeds. I'm pretty sure thats the limit of what the iphone 15 usb-c port can handle. (Since they explicitly called out the iphone 15 pro as having hardware support for usb3).
The people who are buying iPhone 15 don’t care about USB-C data speeds. Most people never connect a physical cable from their phone to anything but a charger.
Those people that do care are probably already getting a Pro anyway.
> Most people never connect a physical cable from their phone to anything but a charger.
This is probably more typical for iOS than Android users, because the former restricts very severely what can be accessed from the connected computer; copying data is much faster via cable.
Exactly. If you look at YouTube bitrate for a 1080p video, it's 8mbps, which is 1.67% of the theoretical max data rate of USB2 (480mbps), so there's more than enough bandwidth for CarPlay.
My Prius has wired carplay (which makes the Qi charger seem absurd, although as it turns out the Qi charger doesn’t work most of the time), so I bought a $50 box that plugs into the USB port and gives me wireless carplay.
I got a generic "ATOTO" one that was on sale. I had to upgrade the firmware since there was some audio stutter after about 15 minutes, but after that it's been just as stable as wired CarPlay for me.
As far as "not very polished UX", after connecting it's been nothing but the standard CarPlay interface. The instructions say there's a web UI accessible via wifi where you can install updates or change configuration but I had no need to use it. Just connect with Bluetooth, wait a second, and accept the "Connect to CarPlay" popup.
I was in that camp, but a recent iOS update regressed bluetooth yet again (it skips sometimes in all my cars), so now I’m using the USB iPod support when possible.
This is the first time I’ve ever used data over USB on this phone though. I wish Apple had better testing for their bluetooth stack.
Hell, professional audio interfaces from major brands like RME, with full support for 16+ channels simultaneous in/out high rate audio work fine at USB 2.0 speeds.
I was arguing against having any data connection at all (and just fixing the bluetooth stack).
The only port I want at all is a headphone jack, and that’s easily waterproofed. Since we can’t have that, I was hoping they’d remove the charge port entirely.
I’m a part of general public and I agree. I’d never thought connecting my iphone to pc through a cable because it’s such pita to do so and speeds are absurd for that type of device. All connectivity goes through telegram (thanks to creators for amazing data limits, opposed to email’s 20mb no-exec nonsense).
Considering pretty much the only use case for USB data transfer on the iphone is copying pro res video to an SSD, which can only be recorded on the pro, this seems like a good tradeoff. No point raising the cost for casual users who will never use this feature.
My bad, I was thinking about the Pro models' 10Gbps maximum and was looking for comparisons at that speed. I replaced what you wrote with the phone I had in my head!
For determining whether it's USB 2 or not maybe (and even then it might not be so clear cut).
For actual use the actual practical max speed is far more important. It would be useless if you wanted something better than USB 2.0 and it only did 1.1 times the USB 2 limit for example.
He's saying you're an extreme edge case that's <0.01% of the population and shouldn't expect gargantuan corps to cater for your edge case as it doesn't make financial sense.
I am sick of this "extreme edge case" bullshit when there is 20+ years of historical precedent. We did not go away and this shit did not come out of nowhere. The tech is already there and its maintenance is minimal. Just because some young shits running the numbers in the bay area are obsessed with and surrounded by the latest and greatest doesn't mean the rest of the world marches to their bullshit drumbeat. Especially when we keep seeing the things we used to own turn into rentals.
Stop shitting on the long tail!
And fuckin stand up for your rights and privacy as a consumer!
No, but people not satisfied with what Spotify has are like a tiny percentage of non-mainstream music listeners (whether one can point to X major artist not being on Spotify does not really change that. Even if it still didn't have the Beatles most users could not care less).
It isn't about "major artists". Fuck them, their music universally sucks. It's about underground artists, unsigned, or anyone locked out the bullshit distribution model that is shoved down artists' and the public's throats. It is a very large community.
While I don’t use iTunes anymore and don’t plug my phone in to transfer, I’ve uploaded 400+ GB of Phish to Apple, and I’m able to download and stream it just as well as the latest Taylor Swift album. If I wanted to load my phone up with the whole catalog (still thinking about doing it), I’d probably plug my phone in. But I’m also more than happy to stream those shows and download my favorites. It really is my favorite service/product Apple offers full stop!
If you use Apple Music, you can upload mp3s (preferably ALAC to avoid lossy transcoding because it always converts to AAC) to their servers and stream them from any of your devices. For me it's the killer app for Apple Music. It's the reason I switched to it from Spotify.
actually, in finder, you may enable “show this device on wifi” and…no more needing cables for syncing! :)
…
this probably is not available on windows itunes though.
But it really puzzles me how that feature needs wifi. Regular TCP/IP has everything you need to discover devices on the network and connect to them. What exactly is 802.11x adding here?
I would say it's referring to WiFi on the phone side, rather than the Mac/PC side. Though you can plug an Ethernet adaptor into an iPhone it's very rarely done and so most people would understand they want to sync with their phone over WiFi, as opposed to USB cable.
Apple seems to mostly use Bonjour (mDNS) for these whether using a local network (and indeed that is the case for this wifi sync feature), but they also have a few features/frameworks that can also be setup over an Apple specific "peer to peer wifi" connection which is bootstrapped with bluetooth and switches to peer to peer wifi for fast data transfer, similar but not the same protocol as WiFi direct (according to https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/12885). This is what AirPlay2 does for example. That is one way WiFi could matter for such a feature versus Ethernet.
This wifi sync definitely works with Ethernet on the Mac side (personal experience)
Define "everything you need". Are we talking about finding out other hosts on a LAN? Or modern devices and their capabilities?
There are lots of added protocols (e.g. Bonjour) because TCP/IP alone is not about discovery.
And of course here we're talking about syncing over wi-fi. How would TCP/IP alone, without Wi-Fi enabled, cut it? It would sync wirelessly over ...cable ethernet?
All you need for discovery is broadcast access, and TCP/IP grants that. The discoverer broadcasts, "I'm looking for devices!" And the discoveree replies "Here I am!" Boom, connection is made. This is how game server browsers worked for LAN play back in the day.
Is it really so inconceivable that a phone is connected to a wi-fi gateway on a regular LAN?
Because that is how my network is set up here at home.
Why do you hate capitalism? Not engaging in monthly services, consuming additional ads, or letting Apple sniff your data in the cloud.
I too am saddened by what feels like a deliberate tactic to further cripple the already locked down cable interface. On Android, I could trivially upload and download all of my data without an intermediary.
I take it you're exclusively an apple iphone/airpod pro interpersonal relationship person.
No kids with android. No wife, husband, whatever with android. No friends with android. Just that trusty ole iphone and airpods.
Plus no iPad, no laptops with USB-C chargers, no battery banks with USB-C inputs/outputs, no other ereaders with usb-c, no USB-C desk fan, no USB-C headphones...
Like they said, they keep a Lightning cable in their car. They didn't say that it's a USB-A to Lightning cable. I own USB-C power banks and so forth, and use a USB-C to Lightning cable to plug my iPhone into them.
And with a phone having USB-C I can just use the same to power my phone when I want. Or power my phone from a powerbank without another cable specially made for this brand of phone.
The USB-C is tempting. The only other Apple devices I own are all USB-C - Macbook Pros and an iPad Air. Maybe this will finally get me to switch from my aging Pixel 3A. The idea of dropping $800 on it is still a bit much though.
If you are looking for an alternative because the 3A is getting a little long in the tooth, I would say look at the SE. It doesn't have USB-C, but its a damn good phone for ~$400 (with probably 7-ish years of support). When I was looking to upgrade from my 3A, its what I went to.
Exactly. The really screwy thing with it is the naming scheme. SE 2016, 2020, and 2022. But I love still having a physical button on it. The battery life is better with the 2022, but still not anything compared to the regular iPhone or most flagship phones.
The 2020 or 2016? Yes stupid naming scheme. I’m super happy with my 2020 especially for the price. It’s plenty fast, not obnoxiously big, just a basic iPhone
Yea, the naming scheme is really screwed. They also have the 2022 now. I had the 2020 and got a free upgrade to the 2022. The only big difference between the two is the 2022 does have a slightly better battery life. But I love having the physical button.
I was thinking about the price because $800-1200 seems like a lot for a "phone", but you're really getting something that's awful close to a Macbook in power and display quality, but with a great camera and many times more compact (which usually command a hefty price premium), for less money than a Macbook. It's actually not a bad deal?
I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
Looking at it from $/min you use the device or utility/$ that you get, these phones and laptops are far cheaper than many, many other luxury purchases people buy, such as restaurants, alcohol, or movie tickets.
It packs lot of power, likely enough to replace MacBook, except you can't really do anything other than what Apple thinks you should do with the device. It's far more constrained system than MacBook.
iPad is more or less same, except it lets you extend to a screen (not just mirror with wrong aspect-ratio), but the window management and everything else is still shit.
Neither of those devices adapt to keyboard/mouse yet, and primarily touch only. It does makes sense that they are touch only, but "its powerful" argument becomes less and less useful every release. It may mean different to someone else who plays games, or benefits from Machine Learning things that the phone can perform more each release just because of added power.
> I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
I did drop $3.5k on my M1 Max MBP though and have zero regrets. And I plan on keeping it for 8-10 years. My previous laptop was a 2011 MacBook Pro which lasted about that long.
I just haven't ever spent more than ~$450 on a phone so far. The lag and the battery life on my current phone is starting to get pretty annoying. I might end up buying if it is a significantly better experience.
I went from 3a to a pixel 5 on backmarket, it's a great upgrade and doesn't really sacrifice anything. I am still waiting now for a new pixel, but even the 7/8 don't look interesting enough.
I object, sir! The Magic Trackpad is an outstanding peripheral and I will not have its honour besmirched on this fine platform.
The Magic Keyboard is what it is, which is a perfectly decent keyboard for mainstream users. I like it because it keeps the typing feel consistent between desktop and laptop. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was writing a novel or into competitive gaming, but I don't, so I like it.
The Magic Mouse is an abomination. Not because the charging port location, sure it looks funny, but it's actually not an issue in real life. The actual problem is it's an ergonomic catastrophe. (Which is par for the course with Apple. In its 40+ year history, Apple has never once made a legitimately good mouse.)
Good sir, I withdraw my complaint of the "Magic Trackpad" because I feel no true animosity toward it. I have one of them, but have struggled to find a use for it.
But the "Magic Keyboard" is trash because the "butterfly" keyboard is trash, visited by the hack Jony Ive upon Apple customers for five inexcusable years. Sure, it's consistent with Apple laptops of the era, but if I could wade through shit all day every day for the sake of consistency... I wouldn't.
Even the current Apple keyboards don't approach the quality of the aluminum era; the time when the little Bluetooth one had the curved back edge where the batteries went. I'm typing on a full-sized aluminum desktop Apple keyboard of that era right now. These were the peak of modern Apple (and, I think, chiclet) keyboards in general.
It's sad what people accept for keyboard quality now. I totally understand the resurgence of mechanical keyboards, which are nothing but normal-quality keyboards of yesteryear.
Anyway, we're mostly in agreement here. I just think Apple should give up on the peripherals game, because they're singularly bad at it.
Oh yeah, we didn't even mention the Pencil that you were (are?) supposed to recharge by jamming it endwise into a port and have it sticking out the whole time...
I agree that the aluminium wired extended keyboard (A1243) is peak Apple keyboard and for over 15 years I used them on every device I owned, including Windows PCs. The Magic Keyboard isn't as good, but honestly I perform authentications often enough that integrated Touch ID is worth the marginal (IMHO) downgrade in key travel.
I have a post-butterfly MBP and I too find the built-in Touch ID great. I thought it would be a gimmick, but I use it all the time. Touch ID is one of the big reasons I won't get rid of my original iPhone SE (with the headphone jack right behind it).
But the continued lack of a real Delete key on Apple's laptops is annoying as shit. It has always been stupid, because everybody else manages to put a Delete key on their keyboards no matter how small. But when the Eject key became obsolete, the failure to put a Delete key on every keyboard just proved that Apple hasn't abandoned the infantile pettiness that has marked a lot of its history.
Thanks! But actually... you can't. Apple put a HARDWARE delay on the Eject button. Another WTF move from Apple. Were people being killed by accidental CD ejections?
Regardless of the reason, Apple (per its M.O.) implemented a ridiculously complicated and crippling "solution" instead of simply making Eject a secondary function on some other key... like a Delete key.
So I have always had to use F12 for Delete (via Karabiner).
That's insane. And it's indicative of the Apple approach to computing: do things exactly the way Apple wants and you'll have a brilliant time. (This is my approach when it comes to providing tech support for family. I steer them towards being model Apple citizens and they get great outcomes.)
I like the gestures on the magic mouse, especially the left/right scrolling. I use a Logitech MX Master at home and scrolling side to side never works well for me.
For ergonomics, both are seem to be fine for the way I hold my mouse.
God damn, it’s amazing they get away selling those. They spend so much effort on their software ux but their components for humans to interact with it are dark age’s torture devices from an ergonomics perspective. From a QoL perspective few things are more important.
Seriously. I joined Apple after they acquired our company, and our product required a three-button mouse. They wanted to show their acquisition off immediately at a trade show, but the fact that we brought proper third-party mice to our demo stations set off a minor storm of consternation and knitted brows among management. There was little they could do, however, and we ran the show with Logitech mice.
In classic Apple style, when they finally capitulated and added secondary buttons to their mice, they hid them. Actually, that was the second stupid move. The first was making the entire mouse body the button... so you couldn't keep the "button" pressed and then scroll, lift, scroll some more (because when you lifted the mouse, the button was released). So Apple's workaround wasn't to fix that stupid design, but rather to add little "wings" on the sides of the mouse that you could pinch with two fingers while somehow keeping the mouse mashed down with other fingers, in order to do multi-swipe scrolling.
The "Magic" mouse was an attempt to one-up legit mice by adding a touchpad to the back of the mouse... which you were somehow supposed to swipe sideways across with some fingers, while using other fingers to hold the mouse in place. It's just so gallingly dumb. There's not much else to say.
Oh... except the one where the charging wire goes into the BOTTOM of the mouse! I mean... you can't make this stuff up. Actually, you could, but "Polish" jokes aren't really PC anymore.
If you want a desktop trackpad, the Apple one is about the best you're going to get. The keyboard is, IMO, perfectly fine, and certainly one of the nicer-feeling non-mechanical keyboards around these days.
Yeah, I take it back about the trackpad. It's fine.
That stands in contrast to the ones on their computers, which are too big and cause spurious right-clicks and your cursor to jump to other parts of the screen while you're typing. Ridiculous.
What makes it worse is that the Pencil doesn't work on the giant computer trackpads. WHY? I would've bought that on day one. Talk about utter failure on Apple's part, year after year.
I find the trackpad isn’t necessary because the standard Mac desktop now is a laptop with external mouse keyboard and monitor. If I need the trackpad, there’s one built into the laptop.
You could go to the gaming mouse subreddit and find the latest cutting edge tech, but honestly pretty much any modern mouse will be an improvement from an ergo perspective. Finding one with a decent aesthetic is more of a challenge though.
There are always a lot of comments about ergonomics when the Magic Mouse is mentioned, but never a single citation. Been using one for 12+ years. The utility and ergonomics are great for me. The idea that something has to be shaped for a body part to be 'ergonomic' is pervasive, but I suspect it belongs with pseudoscientific claims such as using 10% of the brain.
Ergonomics is probably the wrong word to use but the magic mouse isn't a comfortable shape for most people. Less subjectively though it's sensor and tracking are terrible compared to modern sensors. All of this can be ignored for most typical work uses I suppose but what can't be ignored is the insanity of placing the charging port on the bottom of the mouse so you cant use it while charging.
Deadmau5 charging is a straight up swing and a miss but scrolling left and right hasn’t felt right on any other mouse on MacOS, and it’s something I seem to do a lot.
It's really short compared to other mice, even other ambidextrous ones. I can't really rest my hand on the magic mouse, it has to hover because of how short it is. This to me is uncomfortable long term. It also just has bad tracking and bad feet that make it bad to use.
I have big hands, the Magic Mouse is simply too small for me to hold naturally and quickly makes my hand cramp. I buy those things you stick to the sides to enlarge them, but they come unstuck within a couple of months.
As far as Logitech's quality has fallen, I'd still say they're better. I'm using a '90s wired Logitech plugged into a full-sized Apple aluminum keyboard right now, and this is pretty much the peak of Apple HID thus far.
The integration of two USB ports into the Apple keyboards of this era was an excellent innovation, which I use daily. Mouse on one side, thumbdrive on the other.
Even more innovative would be having the ports on a WIRELESS keyboard. Instead, we have various proprietary attempts at solving the mouse+keyboard problem.
I haven’t owned an an iPhone or iPad since they dropped the 30 pin connector and headset jack to proprietary lightning instead of USB-C. I bought my first iPad once Apple finally adopted USB-C and I look forward to switching back to iPhone one the iPhone SE has USB-C. I refuse to give any company money when they are being egregious. It was a pure profit play, and I’m not interested in wasting my money on high margin, proprietary, lightning accessories that I knew would be sent to the landfill in due time. Apple held out a lot longer than I thought they would. It’s shameful really.
Nothing attracts downvotes like criticism of Apple. Their decisions are guided by the hand of the divine, so anyone that won’t follow is clearly an unworthy heathen.
An FYI, Lightning (released 2012) predates USB-C (1.0 specs published 2014) by a couple years. I'm unclear on how Apple was able to choose Lightning instead of USB-C given that timeline.
I agree that proprietary connectors are problematic but consider that Apple started selling Lightning devices almost 3 years before the first USB-C phone shipped. They couldn’t have chosen USB-C before it existed - and the industry accelerated that process due to how much better Lightning was than the older USB designs – but by the time USB-C was standardized and shipped, Apple had somewhere north of 300 million devices with Lightning connectors to support.
The USB-C port (even on the non-pro) supports Display Port though, which I think can be quite useful if you pair it with an external mouse and keyboard and have apps that support "extended screen" mode [0].
For example I know of https://shiftscreen.app which is like a fake desktop environment, and the Microsoft RDP client added it last week. I think Github Codespaces or any of those services could probably make a pretty usable experience. Just plugging in the phone in your usb-c monitor and get to coding, could be pretty sweet in some scenarios.
[0]: If you just mirror the screen you'll get black bars and the resolution won't be optimal etc, but apps can render directly to the external display customising the resolution for that monitor. Like how Photos.app behave, not showing the app chrome on the external display. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/windows_and_...
Yup - finally ready to ditch the 2020 SE which, TBH, is still good enough except the battery's toast and has been for half a year at least.
(Worry not though dear mr. Cook, I'll pass it down to one of my kids so the environment won't be hurting while the new toy shows me which gate my CO2-spewing flight departs from. ;))
USB-C is great, but honestly I'm not transmitting data via the port, nor do I care about charging speed. Then it becomes weird that I still have to carry a lightning cable for my Airpods.Would be a huge plus if I can just carry one cable while traveling someday.
I can’t believe they just released the Gen 2 AirPods without updating the charge port to USB-C, especially given the iPhone changeover has been telegraphed for over a year. It’s like they learnt nothing from the MacBook USB-C transition.
They used to sell the case, and each airpod separately (with the total for all three being the same as a new pair), but it looks like they stopped? It was very useful when I ran over my airpods case with my LandCruiser, and it got a bit wonky (but was amazingly still fully functional).
And I wish I could just trade the Type-C case with my lightning case (with at most a tiny refurbishing fee), there are a lot of people who just bought the Airpods pro 2 last or this year and not likely to purchase again in 2 yrs
And then you can't power the phone. Real good on your road trip, while you're draining the battery with navigation.
USB audio adapters are barely even a thing, and the Lightning dongles often suck ass. I mean nearly-unusable sound quality, with weird hiss blasting because of some defective automatic gain function (for example; that was a Belkin).
Getting rid of the headphone jack was indefensible, but people putting up with it was even worse. Worst of all is cheerleading for that anti-customer, anti-quality move.
If your phone has that. And if you run a wire to this in your car and keep it tidy.
Oh, then you need to run another wire for the audio. Whereas with the ancient 30-pin iPod port, you got an audio line out AND power in. And the cool thing about that one is that it was a true line-out: The volume control didn't affect it, so you didn't have to dick around with the volume on two devices (the player and the car radio).
I bought the Lightning-to-30-pin adapter from Apple, and it duplicates all of that. You get the audio line out and power in. A cheap Y cable with USB for power and 1/8" plug for audio solves everything. As far as I know, it's the only solution that Apple has ever sold for a problem it deliberately created. And I doubt anyone, statistically, is even aware of it.
I think the vast majority of people just use Bluetooth in their cars. My car is from 2016 so it has CarPlay. I bought a $50 wireless CarPlay adapter and pulled the cable for a MagSafe dongle through the dash and now I can just plop my phone down so it's held in place, it charges, connects to the car console, everything is super handy.
Lots of cars don't have Bluetooth for audio. For example, we have a 2013 Mini that (somewhat inexplicably) supports Bluetooth for phone calls but has no provision at all for music over Bluetooth. But it does have a auxiliary audio input.
Neither of the other two vehicles in our household have Bluetooth at all, but they both have aux inputs. Bluetooth is a shitty workaround to intentional, anti-consumer stupidity. Just as almost every car (even cheap-O rental cars) integrated auxiliary audio inputs, Apple removed the audio output from their best-selling music player (the iPhone). And when gutless consumers allowed them to get away with it, everybody else followed suit and now we've regressed decades.
Twenty years ago I built an iPod dock into my car, into which I could plop my iPod (and later iPhone) and get power into the phone and audio directly into the stereo system. The phone charged, and delivered good audio quality. As a bonus, it did so without the need to dick around with two volume controls, since the 30-pin connector had a proper (fixed) line-level audio output that didn't vary with volume adjustments on the phone.
This is a level of convenience and performance that very few people enjoy now, and that is pathetic. Manufacturers have intentionally degraded so many of our consumer-electronics experiences with no payoff for us, and very questionable payoff for them.
The iPad Pro went to USB-C with no audio jack 3-4 years ago, and Apple has been selling those adaptors since at least then.
Did you know that the microphone on the wired Apple earbuds don’t work on anything other than Apple devices? Well, one nice thing about the adaptors is that they allow you to use those earbuds on any computer with a USB-C port. I’ve avoided buying new headsets thanks to them.
How so? Everyone I’ve seen using them just tapes the adapter to their earbuds and keeps the phone in their pocket or arm straps while jogging. Seems like you would have the same issue with a 3.5mm audio jack.
Speakers use Bluetooth or a lightning jack in a cradle.
You can also get straight-up Lightning or USB-C headphones. I only have a pair because Samsung's Tab tablet doesn't have an audio jack and Bluetooth latency is terrible for rhythm games.
I do hope the iPhone~USB-C tuple is more fluff resistant and less fussy about aborting charging than lightening. iPhone is the only device I have trouble actually charging.
It's not an issue specific to USB-C. There are also plenty of USB-A/Micro-USB cables that don't have the data pins connected. Typically this is only an issue with super cheap electronics that only use USB-C as a connector for power and don't really follow the spec.
I haven't heard of a phone coming with a charge-only cable. Especially because that cable is usually used for syncing to a computer (iOS)/transferring data from an old phone (Android).
I'd love one for the airport, so I didn't have to trust that the public charging points weren't hacking my machines on behalf of the local government or criminal syndicate or whatever.
USB-C to C cables to spec need the data pins for USB 2 and to support 30W. Beyond that it is cable-specific.
Unless an included cable came with a hard disk, monitor or eGPU, you can be reasonably sure it is USB 2 speeds. If it didn’t ship with a computer either, it is probably 30W max.
No, it is not. According to the spec, all C-C cables transfer data, even if only at USB 2.0 speeds. It is not the spec's fault that some cheap knockoff brands violate the spec to save a few pennies.
> It is not the spec's fault that some cheap knockoff brands violate the spec to save a few pennies
Yes it is.
The spec could have been written such that different capabilities were reflected with different physical characteristics. That is exactly what standards exist to do.
Even if we pretend spec writers wouldn't ever have predicted the proliferation of crappy cables before publishing it, this is not a new problem with USB.
It is absolutely a choice made by the USB Implementers Forum.
I suppose hypothetically you could have data capability built in to the power negotiation pairs, so that it wasn't possible to offer charging without also some amount of data... but quite some complexity to add as a trade-off, not an obvious choice.
Conveniently, that's actually the case. A USB-C port should provide no power if there's nothing plugged in, and that's sensed by the data connection pairs. However, to support A-C adapters, you can fake it through the normal connection there.
This is why some things that have a C port won't charge on a C-C cable, but will on a A-C cable, because they don't actually talk to say they need power, but the A port will provide some power regardless, but a C port won't.
Power-only cables should be specified to have a different connector. Vastly different speeds should have a different connector. It should be physically impossible to stick the wrong kind of cable in.
I think you might be missing the point. Power and data in the same cable is a huge advantage of USB-C (both Apple connectors had power and data in the same cable).
Third parties will make out-of-spec cables no matter what. Some of the ways that Apple has addressed this is the "Made for" program which goes back even to the iPod. And the devices themselves detecting and showing an "Accessory may not be supported" error message, again going back to the iPod.
There is no spec for power-only USB-C cables. Anyone making one is doing so against the spec. You can’t use a spec to solve the problem of going against the spec.
Where "compliant" is defined to mean "does the minimum required by the USB spec and thus is legally allowed to carry the USB logo and call itself a USB cable".
Is there a way I can check if a particular cable or company on say Amazon or AliExpress is certified? Obviously those that aren't certified will say they are certified, so if there's like a database of USB-C certifications somewhere that would be super helpful (particularly if it includes all the misc. stuff about USB-C that fall through the cracks like data rate, PD, supported voltages, etc.).
read the reviews? if a cable doesn't work, it'll get flagged pretty damn quickly. i've bought plenty of dirt cheap USB-C cables off amazon and they've all worked fine.
you might get a charge-only cable bundled with some sketchy usb-c accessory. if you do, throw it out. but any standalone cable sold as a cable will do data transfer. the USB-C cables that only carry power and not data is an imaginary problem.
Didn't mean to give the impression that I'm worried about USB-C cables that are power only, that is indeed an imaginary problem.
It's moreso things like PD, is it 480Mbits or is it 5Gbit or is it 10 or 20 or 40. What's the voltages, does it support PD 2.0 oh wait is it 3.0 or 3.1?
To be fair, it's been a number of years since I've tried to purchase cables, so perhaps just grabbing the Anker result at the top will net you most of these features. I just remember having to dig and not getting clear answers one way or another which is the spirit of my question.
i don't have any devices that require 40Gbit, so i can't speak to that. but in my experience, buying the cheapest cable off amazon will reliably give me 20gbit, and will charge all my devices at full speed (i don't know if it's PD2 or 3.0 or 3.1, but i do know that devices pull more power from my 100W charger than my 60W charger)
in practice, in my daily life, all USB C cables work the same. a couple years ago i got one bundled with a device that didn't support some feature, and so i put it in the garbage. problem solved. since then, all my cables work all the time in whatever device i plug them into.
This has always been possible with USB, its not anything specific to the USB-C spec. I have several power-only USB cables, in fact I even have a few USB-A to barrel cables.
not their computers, also Apple usually pushes changes forward, not backwards, in this case using lightning they just diverged from micro USB, and probably now most people have USB-C chargers
I have a feeling that he wasn't carrying the USB-C cable because he expected some kind of guerilla-connector-change suddenly on the iPhone in his pocket, but it is being used with another device.
Even crazier - outside US its massively easier to find usbc cable compared to lightning. I hope those frequent days when some (usually the same but now always) colleague is running desperately around the office interrupting everybody looking for one will be finally over.
I don't understand this. When traveling internationally I've never had a problem locating a Lightning cable.
Though I have to mention, you shouldn't really shop for cables when you're traveling and need a new one. First stop by the front desk, they usually have a huge pile of charging cables people have left behind.
Anyone who has worked in an office outside of the USA has experienced the annoying iphone user asking everyone for a cable to charge his phone because he lost/broke/forgot it.
And not all the offices are close to a shop selling those kind of things nor do these persons feel they might be better off going shopping for one directly instead of disrupting a non negligible amount of workers.
I don't even know why people have to charge their phone midday and can't wait. Even when I am going out and extending the night until dawn, I usually have battery left until I go to bed.
But if you know you won't need to charge them simultaneously, then you can only carry one cable.
For instance, I'm happy that my new laptop can charge on usb-c, so now I don't need you bring a charger for my switch and a different one for my laptop. I just take the smallest one and charge my laptop and switch with it (but not at the same time). I'm happy to know that I will be able to ditch the lightning cable for my next apple smartphone and only keep a single cable for my three devices.
The Pro model being able to record video directly to an external USB-C stick/hard drive is such a killer feature for anyone doing content creation, and easily the biggest reason to pick the Pro over the base model. This is the first time an iPhone has ever had extendable storage like this. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it called out much everywhere.
Every iPhone with USB C has DisplayPort alternate mode, it was not particularly hard to do because all these Apple Axx SoC have a DisplayPort output just in case it lands in an Apple TV later.
Good to know. I tried hooking on an old(er) iPad with USB-C to a docking station. It mirrored the screen to another monitor but did not give me an extended desktop. After researching, I learned this was called Apple Studio Display, a feature that comes in iPads released the following year of the iPad I had.
I hope your assumption is correct and they added this, including the mouse and keyboard capability.
I may get accused of being an Apple fan for this, but this is why I dread USB-C. My lightening cables always charge and have data. Having to care about this is a pain.
Why does everyone like usb-c? It is inferior to lightning. With usb-c, the connector on the device can break or come loose (male), with lightning the male connector is on the cable, so easier to replace and maintain long term!
Because having a decent, workable standard is better than having a mess of incompatible cables. I can't wait until we're done with lightning. In almost all of our cables, it's not the connector that dies anyway, it's where the cable flexes at the connector attachment.
I never understood why people say things like this and then turn around and shit on the apple laptops for using usb-c for everything.
I don't think people earnestly and legitimately think usb-c should be used for everything, and the cost of doing so is incredibly high (despite it being rather convenient if all your cables are $25 10gbps/240w 3-meter cables or whatever), it's just a convenient wedge for android fans to argue against iphone.
again, ask those same people what they think of the usb-c philosophy on macbooks and boy you're gonna get an earful. the common factor is always "this guy really hates apple" not "this guy really likes usb-c". they never do, when the chips are down.
Well, in the case of the person you're talking to, I'm typing my response on an M1 Macbook Pro. It's the best damn laptop I've ever owned. Three USB-C ports and I'm happy as a clam (in large part because it _also_ has an HDMI port).
I do have to use USB-C to A adapters now and then, mostly for dealing with embedded systems work, but it's not a big deal - almost all of that happens at my desk anyway.
USB-C has a real pain point when it comes to cable compatibility. It's _not_ a panacea. But those are mostly problems I encounter on bigger computers, such as "oh, my 2TB external SSD seems really slow", and not problems I encounter on my phone. I use a Pixel phone for historical reasons and I love that I can use the same charger and cable to charge my phone and my MBP. My wife has an iPhone, an MBP, and an iPad Pro. Her phone is the only device that needs lightning still. Good riddance!
There's a distinction between "everything should have a USB-C port" and "a laptop should have only USB-C ports."
I do have a (non-Apple) USB-C only laptop for work currently and... while I'd like a handful of other ports directly on there from time to time, it's kind of a marvel how much of a "dock" situation you get out of a single USB-C port and a cheap hub with PD passthrough. One plug and I have mouse, keyboard, monitor, plus more, and it works fine on Linux, the same exact thing can get plugged into a Mac if I occasionally use one and have all the same features... it's pretty great.
That's my point, the connector dying is a big deal, so planned obsolescence is easier with usb-c!
They should have just included a usb-c adapter. Unlike PC peripherals, phone chargers get plugged/unplugged many times every day. It's very easy with android phones for the connector stick thingy on the phone to get loose or damaged.
This feels like a government sponsored enshitification.
Why can't people just get android and let apple be. Why do some people get to force consumer standards other consumers don't like. Android can run on any type id purpose built mobile device.
So long as they are not being anti-competitive, who cares if apple uses PoE to charge phones even lol. Leave my capitialism alone!
I've been using usb-c for a few years on all my critical devices (phone, computer , tablet, raspi) and in all possible situations (car, desk, night stand, power bank) and never had an issue with the connector.
I'm sure it happens to some people but it can't be a big issue or I (as the "IT-guy") would have heard about it.
Currently my phone charges mostly with the second notebook charger I got from work or one of those cheapish Anker PD bricks.
Anegdotal evidence, but all my USB-C phones (three of them) so far have had the connector fail after 2-3 years of use, and it's not due to lint and dust in the port. Cable doesn't click into the port and falls out on its own.
I think we're all "IT guy" on HN. You are thinking with a survivor's bias. I use to have this problem with android all the time especially when I traveled
In Lightning, the springs are in the device and the pads are on the cable. With USB-C, the springs are in the cable, and the pads are in the device. There are different failure modes for the springs failing vs the tongue that the pads are on failing. One approach is not universally better than the other.
Proper cables, yes, but generally a proper cable works with improper stuff attached to it. You can charge your iPhone and the dubious ebay air freshener or whatever with a proper cable.
If you have two different connectors you invariably need at least two proper cables.
I dropped $1400+ on iPhone 14 (with the apple care thing), but TBH I was disappointed, iOS/iPhone used to be ahead of Android in terms of OS and usability.
Now it just felt like the hardware is wasted on iOS.
I still have the old Android phone, and instinctively use that rather than dealing with iOS. Next device is definitely going to be an android.
its $799. Also if you are an apple fanboy you probably have a 13 or 14 which you can trade in to bring your total price to <$400. Not a crazy tab for something you use 40 times a day.
Is there a reason why Apple have never offered induction charging? Isn't that the best way to charge a phone? We completely avoid the wearing out of the port itself, potentially avoiding repairs and extending its lifetime if spare USB charging boards are no longer available. I'm wondering why every single phone hasn't it.
What do you mean? iPhones support „magsafe 2“ since 2017 (?) and Qhi-Charging since forever. And no, there is no „general best“ - you at least have to deal with the energy that is lost through induction.
You mean wireless charging? My iPhone 11 does it, and I'm pretty sure all of the subsequent ones do as well. Maybe not on the SE. I think the 10 might have even supported it.
iPhone 8 and later support inductive charging. But it's not perfect - my wife's phone was melted by a third-party inductive charging pad that was intended for use with iPhones.
Every year it's a new camera, new whatever, but USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables.
Not increasing the price is nice, I guess. Will have to buy more USB-C cables, though. (Technically the low highest end phone is higher, but higher spec, too).
It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
Pre-order Friday, delivery 22 Sept. Probably going to move on it just to get that USB-C, need to see what carrier deals I can find.