iPhone 15 buyers will be reminded Lightning cables are now landfill - eviltoast

Leaker yeux1122 says that Apple Store staff have been told to make sure iPhone 15 buyers know about the change…

  • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I still have to disagree. There was no reason for them to develop lightning in the first place. It has 0 advantages over technology already available at the time, and their adapters use the technology they’re trying to upsell anyways- USB.

    As for the last subjective part of your statement: “The Apple Community forums are full of people posting stories about their broken cables, and it appears to be one of the most common issues that Apple users are facing.”

    Edit: I wish I could find a conclusive source for lightning vs micro-usb charging speed in 2012, it has proven difficult. This article suggests an extremely negligible 0.3A difference that effectively did nothing because all phone batteries at the time had a 1A charging maximum https://www.gearmo.com/things-to-know-about-lightning-cables/

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      Lightning cables had, and have, substantial advantages over micro-USB:

      • More durable ports
      • Reversible connector
      • More pins for data - micro USB wasn’t usable for their docks, for example
      • Fast enough charging to be able to charge the iPad - 12W at the time (and substantially more now) vs 9W at best (generally 2.5-5W) for micro-USB
      • Many existing micro USB cables are terrible, i.e., they only support charging (no data) or they only support charging at 2.5W
      • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ll preface this by admitting I misspoke. Lightning did develop into a better technology once the power delivery got better and I forgot they desperately needed the slightly higher PD for the 4th gen iPad. I also completely forgot about the logical data layers afforded by the extra pins because it’s such a strange niche to need direct output for your phone rather than just moving the files to a computer. However, this still doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t just switch to USB-C when it was released and proven to serve all these functions, and I take issue with every other point you made.

        More durable ports

        I would love conclusive, hard data on this but this has been spread everywhere and it’s completely anecdotal. I’ve seen the “40K to 10K” comparisons but the 40K mating cycles minimum is attributed to the lightning port while the 10K mating cycles minimum is attributed to the micro usb/usb-c cable.

        substantial advantages

        Reversible connector

        Really?

        Many existing micro USB cables are terrible, i.e., they only support charging (no data) or they only support charging at 2.5W

        Apple’s very own branded lightning cables are terrible quality. I don’t see why you wouldn’t hold a first-party manufacturer accountable for their low quality standard and then turn around and point to a low standard for third-party manufacturers.